During the spring I took a class called "Currents of New Media" which explores the history of new media art which has only been in existence the past 20-30 years if that long. This is a piece I wrote on a new media artist who's work inspires my heart and soul to keep on creating. I also wrote my first short Wikipedia article on the artist. So if you check Murdim Project or Jacques Davis...I'm the author.
February 27th, 2009, 11:37am – created February 14, 2009
Artist: Jacques Davis - murdim
Rhizome Terms: Social classes, Video
Artist Terms: individuality, strength, togetherness
With the rise of new technology, large moving images are starting to cover the walls of our cities and even our living rooms. Some examples are: “The Thing” (1991) founded by German sculptor Wolfgang Staehle, an electronic bulletin board system that functioned as a forum for artists and cultural theorists. The Ars Electronica Center at Linz, Austria, exterior view. However, what most of us in the United States are used to seeing that resembles these pieces are New York Times Square’s large ads. When viewers look closer and pay more attention, one realizes these are only huge blow-ups of a regular movie.
One of the most recent displays of new media art to hit the scene last year and this year is the murdim Project, (Global Village, Marathon, Mobilisation, Paris Plage). Reminisce of the Neo-Dada art movement, also known as Fluxus, in particular the artist Nam June Paik, the murdim Project is about "contenant et le contenu". In the world of moving images, it represents the container and what’s inside.
The murdim Project consists of several 20-minute organic waterfall like totem pole murals echoing the sounds of the crowded streets of Paris. They range between 2 and 7 meters high of moving images that are always the same and yet always different. It allows viewers to see at the same time thousands of people all together, and one by one as they come closer.
http://www.murdim.com/earth.html
The images have a meaning when you see them from afar but not necessarily the same meaning seen close up and personal. It also allows you to think of images in terms of not being part of a “movie”. For instance, like every day life in Paris, with similarities to Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera, the Artist of the murdim Project captures everyday scenes from daily life in a city. Only these images are not part of a typical “movie” in that you do not have to sit to look at. These are in fact images that go far beyond the usual A3, 16 x 9 and other 1080 sizes. Or, even to think of images that go further than kaleidoscopic computer graphics.
Jacques Davis, the artist behind murdim Project uses crowds and nature as his subjects. Living and working in Paris, France, Davis worked for 35 years as a photographer doing mostly large slide shows, later with video, and video walls. Be it swimming pools, demonstrations, political meetings, markets, and other gatherings as his subjects for the camera, crowds are the main focus. To view the crowds from afar as a totem, the viewer sees the strength, will and force of a crowd while at the same time one can see close-ups of thousands of very individually unique people.
Davis uses 10 to 20 HDV cameras on each totem. Totems are stitched together and broadcast on LCD screens, with each camera aiming at a different part of the scene the same way one would shoot in panoramic photography. Davis states that “It’s time consuming and pixel consuming, my movies are huge”.
In a recent correspondence via email from Jacques Davis, he states the following:
“You take a computer, Illustrator, Photoshop, you get 32 millions color graphics that you animate with After Effects or Flash, you buy 2000 LCD screens and you cover the front of CSU East Bay. You've just invented video wall murals technique; and your name is Nam June Paik ...2.”
Research Sources:
www.Rhizome.org
www.murdim.com
Multimedia Artist Jacques Davis info@murdim.com
New Media Art by Mark Tribe/Reena Jana pages 22 and 24
Wikepedia
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