WashMachine Video Current (project description)

2007-02-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

Unearthed time capsule transmits the crossed signals of performance artists, circuit benders, culture-jammers and a mad scientist in the epic experimental documentary from the WashMachine art collective.

Blending science fiction and visual ethnography through audio/video processing of the original and the copy, to reflect upon the dissonance between the personal and cultural.

Pedestrian interviews, stop-motion collage, science fiction fantasy and video journal entries from a vibrant sub-culture of artists create a collective current of questions and expressions from the first ten years of wartime America.

In a unique process of open collaboration and chance operations we are mixing fiction with non-fiction to confront conflicts of cultural identity. WashMachine Video Current is a precious document of a pivotal moment in recent history and the subsequent years, as well as an experimental ethnography of a modern community of artists.

Transmissions of American Noise

At the on set of post-production both audio and video were processed through a series of generation loss experiments. Generation loss is the difference in quality between an original and a copy. Stop-motion collages of disintegrating frames, treated with paint, then re-photographed revealing a dichotomy of images and ideas filtered and altered with every re-shaping and re-telling. Cross-transferring analog and digital by making copies of copies we are illustrating the entropic nature of communication.

WashMachine Video Current ignores boundaries of genre and medium, engaging the interior world of the viewer. Overly determined plots used in conventional modes of storytelling encourage passivity, while our mission is to invoke awareness and reflection.

“Where do we gather our collective ideas and opinions?”

Transfixed within a culture of amnesia where the spectrum for debate is limited by the interest and agenda of government/corporation. New stories and experiences are needed to help re-define authoritative information and our individual media diets. WashMachine Video Current provides an outlet for unheard voices outside the sectors of coordinated power for new observations on American culture.

A kaleidoscope of small towns, cities, roadside culture and surreal landscapes, scattered with a cacophony of voices and characters in constant, alternating flux we get glimpses into American life, art, and opinion of extreme differences. Encouraging the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions, to confront new questions and to gain appreciation of the collective conscious.

We scour the land filming mirages and reflections with improvisational camera perspectives, responding to the scene unfolding before the lens with bursts of imagery and expanses of meditation. We are documenting a collective dream-time, finding unity in opposites and simultaneous experiences. The camera’s point of view serves as our main character and guide through an endless American brain-scape.

All across the country pedestrians are interviewed about media, culture and modern society. Participants are encouraged to reflect on their own experience or outlook, and to respond subjectively. Responses are laced into the lost transmission sound-scape of our American collective conscious. People in different places and moments in time discuss and debate cultural observations and opinions. We have only a brief peek into the lives of these characters, yet we sense that we are apprehending an entire world in the cross signals.

Director: Jimi Pantalon

2001 -2010

72min*

WASHMACHINE VIDEO CURRENT

WashMachine Video Current (project description)