into abstraction | form and memories
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Into Abstraction | Form and Memories, the artist Walter Smith continues his exploration of field recordings translated into abstract constructs.
into abstraction | form and void
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The exploration of abstract forms and memory attachments.
your world beginning | maps, mountains, and trails – day 7
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Day 7 finds “Your World Beginning”, on the trail to the summit of Waterrock Knob. In search of a transitional ambience of Fall colors, fog, and rain. This is an incredible location here at the summit. There is always a constant or intermittent wind blowing. The clouds shift quickly above, or as today, the fog can be seen everywhere.
Waterrock Knob is a mountain peak in the state of North Carolina. It is the highest peak in the Plott Balsams and is the 16th highest mountain in the Eastern United States. It is the 15th highest of the 40 mountains in North Carolina over 6000 feet.
The mountain is split by both Haywood and Jackson counties in the western part of the state. It is located in the Plott Balsams mountain chain between the Great Smoky Mountains and the Great Balsam Mountains. The mountain’s summit is located within the Blue Ridge Parkway National Park Service unit.
The mountain is a popular destination with tourists and amateur hikers as it is easily accessible from the Parkway. A visitors center is located near its summit and a hiking trail leads to its top. The hiking trail and visitors center are manned and maintained by the National Park Service, part of the United States Department of the Interior.
your world beginning | a life of contradictions and disappearing things – day 5
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Day – 5 in the “Your World Disappearing” series brings us into a life of contradictions and disappearing things. Filmed in part in Asheville, NC, the film examines isolation, entropy, conflicting realities, and reflection. Multiple layers of contrasting elements explore our ambiguities as to what is real and what is an illusion: Life in all its complexity has multiple paths, roads, objectives and choices.
your world beginning | every artistic moment has its place – day 4
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As we move forward in our creative process, we sometimes travel back on the unending edge of everything, endure a storm or two, exist in solitude, and find that every artistic moment has its place.
your world beginning | into the gathering of dreams – day 3
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“Into the Gathering of Dreams – Day 3”, continues my series “Your World Beginning”, which explores the fusion of past, present, and future through the lens of daily life, dreams, and aspirations; beautiful times gone by, transcending the mundane, and an unknown future. The series is an attempt to capture the essence of being in the present moment, while simultaneously reliving moments from the past and dreaming of the future: Into the gathering of dreams.
The central filming in the video is from an afternoon biking at the Forks Area Trail System (FATS) in South Carolina, located on the border of South Carolina and Georgia. The filming of the biking was produced in 2010. The system consists of four machine-made trails, each approximately 6 miles in length. They are fast and free-flowing, making for a wonderful biking experience. Located in the midlands of South Carolina, the trails themselves are not as intimidating as the mountain trails located in North Carolina and are a joy to ride.
“Into the Gathering of Dreams” combines different elements, each having its own moment in time and space. I recently watched again, a documentary on the opera “Einstein on the Beach” by Robert Wilson and Phillip Glass. I had the pleasure of seeing this 4 hour opera in 1984 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I mention this because the main concept was how time and space interacts with objects, people and places. Place a familiar object in an unfamiliar place and you create a new reality. Surreal, beautiful, conflicting, or contrasting, yet a reality unto itself. Part of my process as a digital artist is to reinvent and remix these “realities”. The digital medium and digital process itself, provides a beautiful, infinite and creative end to this objective. And it is also my objective through the process to infuse an emotional integrity, influenced by the experiences we all share. To touch on something that is universal.
your world beginning | drifting into everything – day 2 : video art HD
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The fourth short film in the “Your World Beginning” series, again explores the connection between our relationship with our memories, dreams, and everyday life. The series is my attempt to delve deeper into those moments when we are living through the patterns of life that we have created for ourselves, while simultaneously feeling the ambiguity and lightness of our dreams and aspirations.
In composing the music, I am using sound samples to create a layered sonic ambience, with hints of melody and tonality. In the series, organic sounds and industrial technological sounds merge to create dreamlike structures to enrich the imagination and supplement the visual composition.
your world beginning | transcending the mundane – day 1 – video art HD
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On the edge of everything beginning … the further away we are, the closer the moment. Waking, dreaming and making pasta.
traveling without moving | your world beginning – video art HD
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“Traveling Without Moving,” is the bridge between the past and the future i.e. “Your World Disappearing” and “Your World Beginning.” A video self-portrait that is a visual journey of memories, delineated thoughts, dreams and aspirations. There is a slight contradiction at work here. The body is in motion in time, and the mind is still; the painful past and uncertain future struggle against the stillness of being present in this time and space i.e. traveling in the present moment.
give your falling tears to memories and songs | extended remix
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A remix of new and extended audio and visual material to further convey the expressive mood of ambiguity, magic and lost and the ending of things.
give your falling tears to memories and songs | your world disappearing
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This is the seventh video in “Your World Disappearing” series. It is a again, a short film reflecting on the magic and lost of relationships, and our place in the world. Seemingly things are disappearing. I have completed an extended remix version of this video and will feature it in my next post.
we can never go out and play | your world disappearing | HD video art
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Recently I had the opportunity to view a documentary by German filmmaker Werner Herzog entitled “From One Second To The Next.” The subject was texting and driving, and the effect it had on several individuals, including victims, family members, perpetrators, and law enforcement. While watching the film I could feel the emotional pain of all involved.
Texting and driving is a senseless act, and within a moment of lapse concentration can produce tragic results: Loved ones lost, lives ruined.
My video entitled “We Can Never Go Out And Play” was influenced by one family and one child named Xavier featured in the film. X-Man was his nickname. He was struck by a distracted driver texting while he crossed the street with his older sister. She says, “One moment he was holding my hand and the next moment he was gone”. His mother, riddled with pain and sorrow explained his massive injuries. Including paralysis and respiratory injuries requiring constant connection to ventilators to breathe.
What caught my attention, and what was the impetus for my film, was her stating that the most painful thing for her was not being able to say … “go out and play”. She sat there, her eyes focused on the lens of the camera, and repeated that this simple gesture of love, in saying, “go out and play,” would be lost forever.
My film work usually comes from a place of the abstract. My series entitled “Your World Disappearing” explores ambiguity, magic and lost, isolation, and endings. In the series I am imploring, in the abstract, environmental landscapes and organic forms to convey these existential concepts and personal entropy.
Because I see things in the abstract when revealing my emotional state there may appear to be a disconnect between what the viewer is seeing and my personal objective. A perfect example is this series, and this video piece in particular. All my work is created concurrently with how I am feeling emotionally. Presently, I am feeling a sense of separation from a loved one, and from my own aspirations and intentions. And most notably my place in this world. Like the wind blowing fiercely in an atomic storm and tree branches succumbing to the will of the unknown, I find my sense of self searching for its own survival.
form and void | your world disappearing | video art
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My fifth video “Form and Void”, in my short film series entitled “Your World Disappearing” continues the exploration of ambiguity, magic and lost, and on the edge of everything ending. Again, I am using film that I shot from various locales such as the shore, mountains, and forest combined with some sampled imagery to bring this series into an elemental sense of organic ambiance. I composed the music from samples and each piece is constructed to give the feeling of alienation, detachment and a bittersweet wonderment.
the further away we are, the closer we are apart | your world disappearing | HD video art
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The fourth video in the “Your World Disappearing” series. A series that reflects on loss and an approaching end of everything.
on the edge of everything ending | HD video art – 56 seconds
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The third installment in the “Your World Disappearing” series. A series that reflects loss and an approaching end of everything.
give your tears to time | your world disappearing – video art
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He wrote
in fervent oscillation;
through the center that does not hold …
fingers bloodied and broken
the painful past
and uncertain future,
forged together
in this present moment,
penned with tears given to time
and his world disappearing …
My second video in my short film series under the title “Your World Disappearing”. Exploring ambiguity, and emotional constructs through the lens of ambient minimalism fused with organic and natural elements. “Through art I feel like subtracting”.
your world disappearing | high definition video art
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A short film of ambient minimalism. Exploring the theme of “through art I feel like subtracting” i.e. Memories fading, dreams ending and your world disappearing.
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experiment: data complex 10 | the world in recollection (a returning place remix) | video art HD
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“The World In Recollection” will be the last in my featured series of the emerging world concept. I am not sure where I will venture into next with video, but I hope to feature more of my own experimental imagery.
experiment: data complex 9 | a world inside (a zen nature remix) | video art in HD
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“A World Inside (A Zen Nature Remix)” is an audio and visual remix of the video piece I composed a few months back entitled “Zen Nature | Landscapes for Well being”. In this remix I added the spinning globe, which I have been featuring in my two previous videos. The emerging global image represents the continuous complexity of societal and existential relationships: In “Data complex 7”, the focused was on social, civil, and political entities. In “Data Complex 8”, I explored emotional ambiguities, abstract thought, and memory attachments as it pertains to the individual. In this piece, “Data Complex 9”, I draw attention to the Earth itself, as a landscape for well-being and Spiritual connection. In the remix, small distinct sound samples were added to the soundtrack, along with poetic thought to the visual construct. The actual visual and aural part of the video ends around the 5 minute mark, with an additional 1:46 seconds of a black screen and silence. “Into creation, into silence”. A moment for the viewer to explore his or her own meditative recollection.
experiment: data complex 7 | a world apart | video art
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After several weeks of editing, I have completed my most recent video in my “Experiment: Data Complex” series. It is entitled ” A World Apart” and it focuses on the historical, and current separatist constructs that have negatively affected African-Americans and society as a whole. The Data Complex series brings together modern digital technology, and ambient music with various visual artistic styles such as Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Futurism to convey its message. Recently I watched the video of the Jay Z performance art piece entitled “Picasso Baby” at the Pace Gallery in New York City. His merging of Hip Hop culture and High Art culture was impressive. As a digital artist, and an African-American artist, I believe as Jay Z so eloquently said, that (and I paraphrase) it is a time for us to take the technology and expand our vision for the world to see. I hope to always push forward and merge the boundaries of digital art, video art, and contemporary soundscapes as tools to bring together “A World Apart”.
experiment: data complex 6 | all is forgiven
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All is forgiven …
with the final
curtain call
and their last dance
with our beating hearts
and the setting sun
with its’ last goodbye
All is forgiven …
when strange fruit
and black bodies
(hooded)
as they sometimes may be
succumbs … for the last time
to the poplar tree
experiment: data complex 5 | a returning place | video art
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The journey to silence as visited through “A Returning Place”. Often the road to our true essence is discovered through the meditative path of silence. In that silence, we navigate the past; leaving it behind. We dismiss the anxiety of an uncertain future; freeing us from our thoughts. It is our hope that we find the journey without moving, The one that takes us on the road inward: The present moment, and the freedom through enlightenment to see things as they really are.
This video captures some of the elements of natural and man-made silence: Silent films, Space, singularity, and the journey one takes alone … in this thing called life.
experiment: data complex 3 | nostalgia | video art
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The day on the beach brought back memories of beautiful times gone by: She the choreographer and dancer, and he the artist and filmmaker. Together they drifted back to the beginning of their artistic dreams. Fused with the technology of the post-modern world and the collective mindset of a creative construct, they forged ahead into the unknown: History has a way of repeating itself. What is old is new. The same as it ever was. Forever and a day.
experiment: data complex 2 | shipwrecked | video art
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Drifting on the endless sea, a Titanic moment: Crushed against the data of memories, hopes and dreams. Cold and icy. Feeling a part of something, in the place of everything, on the edge of nothingness. Falling from the sky with no structure to evolve into. Living in a deep, dark, place masquerading as a beautiful heaven; a post modern world, an urban complexity. Data Complex – Shipwrecked.
n e w d i g i t a l s c a p e s 