This is a video commentary on Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans (above).
This is not an actual art project.

An animated piece that utilizes the text from my journal-sketch books.
The work uses text aesthetically as well as a signifier.

Originally, this series of videos was inspired by music video competitions curated the band Radiohead. This first one is my own animated version of one of my favorite songs entitled: There, There.

This is my own cover of the song with me playing the role of singer, and instrumentalist.

This is an excerpt of the first of the series. This was originally inspired by a music video competition.
One of the requirements was for the artist to put himself in the role of the rock star. The music here is taking from the original recording by Radiohead. The work has me lip syncing to Thom Yorke's vocal track, with the aim of staying true to the emotion of the song.

This is my own cover of the song their song Optimistic, once again, playing all parts.
My use of text and animation is related to some of my other project listed above (The Matter of Text).

The two works are set for small orchestra.
1) Lff !
This work is set for two pianos, harp, strings, and percussion.
The title is a constructed word that Joyce used in Finnegans Wake.
This piece explores his idea of aesthetic arrest, static vs kinetic, fear vs desire.
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2) Ananta
Set for small ensemble explores conflicting energies as seen witnessed in the work of Joyce.
Influenced by Ulysses in structure. The musical language is intentionally obscure exploring the emotions experienced in a single day.

A series of digitally created images that investigate the idea of the social mask.
My interest in text became increasingly important during the creation of these works.

I am also exploring the mask as a restrictive inhibiting structure that hides the inner self, left trapped inside.

Digital video still paintings generated by a combination of digital, animated, and video processes. I reversed the normal aim of time-based mediums to produce static individual frames of video using live processes as well as source footage and coding. The degradation of the image was achieved via an algorithm that, frame by frame, deteriorated the original image until the ending frames were completely destroyed in abstraction.

The imagery explores the destruction and resurrection of the self. My aim was to explore the use of various mediums to express the degeneration of the self towards a regenerated "spiritual" birth in the existential sense. The images represent the metaphorical implications of existence and transcendence. Text plays an important role, a reference to the fictitious narrative processes that maintain the idea of a separate existence.

The last words of a fictitious creature that dwells in some unknown algorithmic dream-scape somewhere between machine and flesh. The work explores my on going fascination with the relationship between existence, aesthetics, and "spirituality" (transcendence). The work is set for: animation, music, and my own poetry ("spoken" by the computer).

This video portion of the installation was shot on location in New York City, San Francisco, DC, and Baltimore over the course of nearly a year and a half. The work was shot entirely with the use of a cell phone.

The film/installation, Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans, is an inquiry into the philosophical and spiritual implications of being. It is an examination of perception, language, and objects and their relationship to being. The narcissistic treatment of the main character, played by myself, is intentional and ambiguous, drawing upon Sartre's symbolic use of the mirror. He serves a multiplicity of roles, that of archetype, self, observer, and object. Like the antagonist, Mysterium Tremendum is self absorbed, about itself yet pointing to everything outside itself.

All we can know is that we exist, and primarily we exist as if asleep. Only intermittently, do we open our eyes and see the world. These moments of awareness make up the frames of the film. The film has many influences, including phenomenology, which attempts to understand the world through perception of the lived moment. James Joyce's interpretation of beauty and aesthetic arrest, as well as the construction of one of his most inaccessible works, Finnegans Wake, has also played a part. Like that work, the film is circular and without end. And like Joyce's book, Mysterium Tremedum is about itself, its creation and destruction.

Another important inspiration has been the work of the anti-artists and Dadaists, especially Marcel Duchamp. Anti-art leads to the acknowledgment that art is everywhere and is anything that evokes Joyce's aesthetic arrest, a spiritual reaction that links art to divinity and Nirvana. Art is not so much created as it is revealed to the beholder. The installation of the film continues that theme, as the filmmaker periodically enters the gallery while filming and adds new video to the work. The film also demonstrates that to experience aesthetic arrest, one must abandon preconceived notions to see with new eyes, and it encourages others to do the same. (please refer to the video commentary and documentation below).