BRATTLEBORO — On Oct. 3, the first day of the 2013 Brattleboro Literary Festival, the Center for Digital Art (CDA) in Brattleboro hosts the fourth annual Words and Video Exhibition, a free screening of short films and video art pieces.
The works are presented in collaboration with the Brattleboro Literary Festival and Write Action, a local writers' group.
As in previous such exhibitions, the pieces selected for the Words and Video Exhibition were inspired by works of writing, or were made in collaboration between writers and filmmakers, and were collected in the spirit of exploring the intersections between words and images, written language, and visual signifiers.
Organizers selected from established and emerging video artists and filmmakers to curate nine works for this show of five to 17 minutes each, for about an hour and a half of viewing: six short films, two experimental video art installations, and one reading accompanied by a video projection:
• “Too Many Daves” by Kevin Abrams captures Dr. Seuss's trademark wit and delightfully unrefined humor.
• “The Death and Birth of Jesse James” by Wyatt Andrews is built around a filmed performance of GennaRose Nethercott's soliloquy Jesse James, based on one of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild West and his seemingly unearthly transformation from man to myth.
• “Pop Cowboy” by Christian Hali bathes an image of the iconic American cowboy in a high-contrast pop art palette.
• Christian McEwen will read two excerpts from her book “World Enough & Time” (Bauhan), set against a video background projection by Michael Hanisch.
• In “Decay Unsynched,” Michel Moyse filmed Lissa Weinmann reading her story Decay, and then rearranged the reading in his signature style of motion painting.
• Jessica Oreck's “Venus,” a selection at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, reveals how images of a group of leather-skinned female sunbathers take on abstract form when juxtaposed with narration about the birth of the planet Venus.
• Intended as an immersive video/audio installation, “Burning Through” by Matt Ostrowski gives an interpretive reading of The Miller's Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales.”
• In “Mauvais Garçon/Bad Boy,” Walter Ungerer recorded, edited, and altered conversations with friends to produce an assemblage of transformed, visual profiles of the participants.
• In “Quad 1/11,” Emma Zbiral-Teller interprets Samuel Beckett, writing through four figures moving in the style of a musical canon.
These artists have had their work presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Biennale, and Geneva's Center for Contemporary Image.
Closer to home, they've been featured at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center and Brattleboro's Hooker-Dunham Theater.
What to expect
But what is digital art?
According to Center for Digital Art Artistic Director Michel Moyse, it's is a hybrid of animation, live action, and video tape, using some linear and “mostly non-linear” narratives.
“It's more than the sum of its parts; it's the alchemy that combines all these things into a new creation. In these works, the emphasis is on visual rather than filmic narrative,” Moyse explains.
He also contends that artists usually consider what they do not films, strictly speaking, but rather works of visual art.
Moyse is an artist, filmmaker, and teacher who has had an extensive background in film and video dating from 1963, when he began work as a sound editor in New York City under the likes of Woody Allen, Brian De Palma, Peter Yates, Otto Preminger, and Alan J. Pakula.
Throughout his career, Moyse has been committed to experimental art and video. Backed by early work in canvas, plastic, and glass, he shifted in later works to motion painting, a series of digital artwork exploding the concept of traditional two-dimensional art through the addition of distinctive motion, sound, and narrative elements.
Moyse and his wife, Linda, in 1996 founded CDA, an educational organization for digital media, art, and film studies in southern Vermont.
CDA delivers classes, workshops, film festivals and screenings, art exhibits, and performances to Brattleboro.
Since opening for business at the Cotton Mill in 1997, CDA has given local high school students the chance to discover digital video and computer editing software.
Students have worked individually and in groups to create short films, documentaries, and animations. Several have created feature-length films.
CDA recently added digital media and art courses for local artists, and professional development workshops for educators.
Initially, the Words and Video Exhibition featured live poets reading their works while digital images were projected on a screen behind them. Although one presentation this year employs this method, the rest will be self-contained.
“This year we have a more diverse body of work than we have ever had,” says Linda Moyse. “For the first time, many of our contributors have come from outside the local area, from places as diverse as New York, Boston, and California.”
The Words and Video Exhibitions have in the past been the only public presentations by CDA - but that is about to change.
“Our original mission in creating CDA was twofold,” says Linda. “The first was educating the community on digital arts. But the second, which was equally important, was presenting performances to the community. Only this year have we had time to begin to address this second goal of CDA. Now that we have hired Ian McPherson, who will organize events, public relations, and outreach for CDA, we are now able to open many events to the public.”
She adds that CDA plans to host many events highlighting the work of local and nationally prominent digital artists. The next offering is Jason Martin's “Power Animal Systems,” a multimedia performance project.