Video, Audio, and Related Works


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Thumbnail photo of Plied Pipes installation
 

Plied Pipes (2017), installation with HD video (3:55 min., looping), painter's plastic, and a fan.

The projection surface is a 9' x 15' swath of very lightweight painter's plastic attached to a fan. The projected video comprises manipulated footage of a sing-along to a famous children's movie, with selected lyrics unpixellated and with interpolated excerpts from Hamlet. The audio is two tracks of me playing my bathroom plumbing, recorded on a defective recorder. Documentation video here; video component here.

This piece continues my explorations/spoofings relating to dimensionality and systems, with an eye toward border- and identity-related equilibria. Exhibited at The Reading Room and the MAC, Dallas and highlighted in D Magazine as a top pick for Dallas Art Fair weekend in 2018.

   



Thumbnail of Instant Public Square
 

Instant Public Square (2019), HD video (5:34 min., looping).

This video can be carried on a cell phone and, with a small adapter, installed wherever there's an available projector and overhead surface, to create a "public square" that can encompass real people even if the greenery's just digital.

Created as part of the common ground exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Dallas, which was selected as #1 of Glasstire's "Top Five" in Texas for the week of Dec. 5, 2019.

   



GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer Representative Image
 

GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer Shoot Vols. 1 + 2 (2019), HD video (19:03 min.). Concept and quotations compilation by Carolyn Sortor; editing by Michael A. Morris; videography by Morris and Sortor.

Passers-by were invited to read their choice(s) from a compilation of quotations from great artists and other thinkers. Reader credits, quotations, and sources here. Completed for the Working Groups exhibition at the MAC; originally conceived as part of the OccuLibrary project. Currently hosted online by Glasstire.

   



Still from Location Marker Shadow video


Installation view of MAC Location Marker Slab

 

The Infrathin: A body of work in which the "infrathin" as conceived by Marcel Duchamp and adapted by Kenneth Goldsmith is further extended as a vehicle/pretext for explorations/spoofings relating to location, national and other subsystems and their boundaries, and the apparently fictive distinctions among various dimensions (2-, 3-, 4- and 5-D, etc.). Works in video, print, and other media deploy components accidentally unpacked from an obsolete online map, manifest an interpenetration of elements from meatspace and the virtual world, and/or evince interests relating to the creation and control of essential corporeal and incorporeal infrastructures, among other things.

Position + Permeability (infrathin 32.782083 x -96.766809) (2017), solo show at Beefhaus, Dallas.

Infrathin 29.401248 x -98.485324 (2015), solo show at the Epitome Institute, San Antonio.

MAC Location Marker Slab (2015). Digital print on stone slab. The image was ripped from Google Maps after coordinating with the MAC regarding the relocation of their marker after they moved. The slab was installed as exactly as possible on the geographical spot corresponding to the point marked on Google Maps.

See also related works below.

   


Location Marker Shadow video installation
 

Location Marker Shadow (Drywallers) (2015-17), HD video projection with audio, 4:29 min., looping, on draped 9' x 16’ seamless paper, with LED crawl.

The video comprises a screen recording of Photoshop glitchiness as I zoom in and out on the tiny location marker shadow JPEG retired by Google Maps in 2013. The audio is a recording made as Hispanic workers built a wall to create my studio. Video viewable here.

The LED crawl compiles quotations from various U.S. Supreme Court opinions regarding the fundamental right of interstate travel.

Part of The Infrathin body of work; exhibited at Beefhaus, Dallas; documentation at Position + Permeability (infrathin 32.782083 x -96.766809).

   


Moving Time Thumbnail
 

Moving Time (2017). Installation with ca. 2,900 custom 3 x 3” sticky notes, audio, and dying sod. Visitors were invited to take a pad of location marker sticky notes and deploy them in meatspace.

Part of The Infrathin body of work; exhibited at Beefhaus, Dallas; documentation at Position + Permeability (infrathin 32.782083 x -96.766809).

   


Still, Navigation Arrows
 

Navigation Arrows (2015-17), HD video on window-sized flatscreen; 5:16 min., looping.

Juxtaposing the fifth-dimensional natures of certain kinds of branding, identity, and mapping with the generativity of materiality. Part of The Infrathin body of work; exhibited at Beefhaus, Dallas and the Epitome Institute, San Antonio; documentation photos at Infrathin 29.401248 x -98.485324. Please contact carolyn at sortor dot com to view the video.

   


 

Navigation at 29.401248 x -98.485324 (2015), HD video with audio on iPad, 1:38 min.

I erased the "floor" in the gallery floor plan and narrated my navigation of the "gallery" (beverages in the northwest corner).

Part of The Infrathin body of work; exhibited at the Epitome Institute, San Antonio and screened at Beefhaus and 500X in Dallas and at the Southern Colorado Film Festival.

   



Still from Thinker
 

Thinker (2016), b&w, HD video, 1:38 min.

On thinking, feeling, and imagining; and speculating about mirrorings between us and our leaders. Also conducting a musical experiment.

First prize, Extremely Shorts festival (2017), Aurora Picture Show, Houston; also selected for Experiments in Cinema (2018), Albuquerque, and Beeflix III (2017), Beefhaus, Dallas.

   



Photo of performance
 

Brise Soleil (2016), recording of audio performance for live radio broadcast.

In collaboration with Karen Weiner. The artists read texts relating to borders, migration, urbanism, futurism, climate change, and the sun, sometimes reading simultaneously and sometimes not, creating an audio brise soleil. Performed at Pollock Gallery, Southern Methodist University in conjunction with the New Cities, Future Ruins conference, for the RadioEE.net broadcast, SOLARIO.

   



Still from "Slideshow" (1997-2016)
 

"Slideshow" (1997-2016) (2016), HD video, 4:58 min.

An experiment in the effects of not-quite-rhythmic audio on our experience of time and the visual, in conjunction with photos shot over some 20 years evincing various interests including the potential of photography to evoke the autonomy of objects. Selected by Andrea Karnes for Slideluck Dallas 2016 and by Bart Weiss for the Dallas Medianale 2019.

   



Whose Secrets Thumbnail  

Whose Secrets (2014), HD video, 5:49 min.

Based on Ladar Levison’s account of the “due process” he experienced in a secret US FISA court after the ISP company he founded was reported to have been used by Edward Snowden.

Juror and audience awards for experimental work, Southern Colorado Film Festival 2016; selected for Experiments in Cinema 2016; and, before the visuals were added, included in semigloss. Magazine, Issue #5, exhibited at Hello Gallery, Houston and in And then I whirled at the sound of . . . , curated by Janeil Engelstad for Oil and Cotton, Dallas, and presented at the Contemporary Art Museum and James Turrell Skyspace, Houston, the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, and elsewhere.

   



Still fr Transmembrane Pressure  

Transmembrane Pressure (2014), HD video, 4:10 min.

Recording of performance with video originally broadcast live via Google Hangouts as part of The Santa Fe International New Media Festival. The background video deploys 25 of the (as of this writing) more than 625,000 videos uploaded to YouTube by the mysterious "Webdriver Torso." The piece reflects my interests in dimensionality, sociality in real and virtual spaces, and systems in general, among other things.

In 2015, Transmembrane Pressure was curated by Carson Chan for Aurora, Dallas.

   



Representative image  

ask not / art thou (2013), HD video, 11:16 min.

We All Have Our Leaders – Collective Forgetting – The Most Lamentable Comedy of Pyramus and Thisby – JFK Gets Spanked.

Made for The Artists' Commission, curated by Sally Warren, which opened at Gray Matters Gallery, Dallas on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Review in Glasstire.

   



 

Glass Valley (2013), HD video, 4:37 min. Made for the Expanded Cinema 2013 program on the 999 x 193' LED display wrapping the Omni Dallas Hotel, Dallas, TX, with audio to be simulcast on KXT 91.7 FM public radio.

Envisioning the glass buttes of Dallas as an uncanny Monument Valley, Glass Valley assembles shards of the historical West as mythologized by Hollywood, seeking insights relevant for the city today while considering new possibilities for our individual and collective identities.

Curated for E.C. 2013 by Mona Kasra and selected by Gabriel Ritter for 500 Expo 2014 and by Jenny Vogel for an encore on the Omni in E.C. 2014. Review in Pegasus News.

   



Braille  

Braille (2012), HD video, 3:08 min.

Created for the first Expanded Cinema program on the 999 x 193' LED display wrapping the Omni Dallas Hotel, Dallas, TX, with audio simulcast on KXT 91.7 FM public radio. Two hands on opposite sides of the building seamlessly circle it but never meet, "reading" a gigantic text that the blind can't see and the sighted can't read.
I led the effort to make the template to enable myself and others to make videos for the Omni display and coordinated and co-curated the program.

For my work on this and other projects, I received a "Mastermind" award from the Dallas Observer, and Expanded Cinema was also recognized as among the top art events of 2012 by both the Observer and D Magazine; see here, here, here, and here.

   



C+B Veiled  

The Wedding Project (2011---), relational/participatory project with wedding, people, HD videos, etc.

The main event has occurred; the final videos and other works are in post-production. In lieu of gifts, ca. 150 collaborators/guests cut veils, drew “2-D” flowers, shot video, etc., and/or wore white or their own wedding dresses so as to participate as additional "brides" while also forming a human screen. The real marriage of two individuals served as an occasion to explore psychological, social, historical, dimensional, and other contexts – including the bonds that have in some sense always existed among all of humanity but are now, via the internet, becoming more quickly and widely interconnected. 

Included in Flavorwire's eight "Real Performance Art Weddings That Look a Whole Lot More Fun Than Sean Parker's." More info here.

   



Textures of Dallas Still  

[Submission for the "Texture of Dallas" Competition] (2010), HD video, 4 min.

Two buildings present contrasting architectural textures through which various meanings are literally and figuratively signalled. One of 10 entries selected for screening at the 2010 Dallas VideoFest.

   



bloodwork_snapz  

Bloodwork (2009), composite video with participatory variation, 4:17 min.

This and the other composite pieces below were created by screen-capturing a live, "VJ'd" performance of a curated array of embedded YouTube videos; hence the skips and real-time cursor action.
All audio is native to the appropriated videos, manipulated only by using the YouTube controls.

You can create your own version of this piece by going
here, sizing and shaping your browser window to configure the vidis in the array you prefer, adjusting the volumes, and VJ-ing them as you like.

This and the other "hive" videos were exhibited in a solo show, Seismic Hive, at The Reading Room Gallery in 2015; reviewed in Glasstire. Also presented in conjunction with this exhibition was Necronetworking, a durational performance with texts.

   



falls-short3  

Falls (2009), composite video with participatory variation, 3:31 min.

You can make your own version of this piece by going here.

Screened at Aurora 2013 and featured in the 2013 Artopia event at the Dallas Contemporary and in X20+ Version II, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, all Dallas, TX. This and the other "hive" videos were also exhibited in a solo show, Seismic Hive, at The Reading Room Gallery in 2015; reviewed here. Also presented in conjunction with this exhibition was Necronetworking, a durational performance with texts.

   



pass2  

Pass (2009), composite video with participatory variation, 4:45 min.

You can make your own version of this piece by going here.

This and the other "hive" videos were exhibited in a solo show, Seismic Hive, at The Reading Room Gallery in 2015; reviewed here. Also presented in conjunction with this exhibition was Necronetworking, a durational performance with texts.

   



lawally_quad3best  

La Wally Chorus (2009), composite video with participatory variation, 5:35 min.

You can make your own version of this piece by going here.

This and the other "hive" videos were exhibited in a solo show, Seismic Hive, at The Reading Room Gallery in 2015; reviewed here. Also presented in conjunction with this exhibition was Necronetworking, a durational performance with texts.

   



Installation view of La Wally - Callas Page
 

La Wally – Callas Page (2009), digital image.

This companion image to La Wally Chorus is a 24-foot long, actual-size facsimile of the YouTube page on which I found the Callas version, including the lyrics and all 288 comments as of November 15, 2009.

A 15' version of this image and a 24' image reproducing a similar, more recent YouTube page, both printed on vintage seismic graph paper from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, were shown together with the "hive" videos listed above in a solo show, Seismic Hive, at The Reading Room Gallery in 2015; reviewed in Glasstire. Also presented in conjunction with this exhibition was Necronetworking, a durational performance with texts.

   



vmailjuliesnapz  

Voicemail Regression (2009), SD video displayed on a cell phone, 55 secs.

The audio, a single, unedited track, was created accidentally when I left a v-mail for a friend, Julie Jackson, while simultaneously picking up a wrong-number v-mail left for me by someone else. I unconsciously timed my vmail message to match the length of the message I was listening to, and Julie's answering machine picked up both vmails, both of which concerned retail transactions. Julie used her cell phone to video the audio playback and upload it to Flickr, where I re-"filmed" it off my monitor.

Exhibited in Glitch - Metroplex Video, CentralTrak, Dallas, TX.

   



Aquariam Still  

Aquarium (2009), HD video, 1:43 min.

   



Monitor Still  

Monitor (2009), HD video, 2:45 min.

Photos shot by Ben Britt under my direction.

   



Still from The Whale  

The Whale (2008), SD video, 3:32 min. (draft)

In response to an audited course assignment.

   



 

Ten Self-Portraits in No Particular Order (2008), SD video, 13 min. (rough cut)

In response to an audited course assignment. Screened in Evocative Objects, The Reading Room, Dallas, TX.

   



Intraject Certificate  

Intrajection (2006---), a three-part multimedia project, of which part (1) has been realized.

Comprising (1) the auctioning of a unique digital print, Intraject Certificate, at the Dallas Contemporary on March 11, 2006, which certificate evidenced the rights of the winning bidder to (2) a unique performance art piece to be performed at a time and place of the winner's choosing, which performance will be videotaped to produce (3) a limited edition of five video DVD's, one of which will be reserved for the winner.

The performance was to involve, among other things, six performers standing in a circle facing the center, speaking a script edited from three year's-worth of spam emails, with the winning bidder (or their designee) seated in the center of the circle. The project sold at the auction, but Parts (2) and (3) were indefinitely delayed due to complications including a flood and the winner's moving to another state.

A companion project, Positioning, would have comprised and documented the marketing and p.r. efforts of the artist with respect to the Intrajection project.

   



Grace at Camp Casey Still  

Grace at Camp Casey (2005), SD video, 8:54 min.

Short documentary on the protest that helped turned the tide of U.S. opinion against the 2003 Iraq war, with footage of Cindy Sheehan and other key figures at their camp outside President G.W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas on day five, when there were just 100 protesters, and 20 days later, when there were thousands.

Broadcast nationally on Current TV in a six-month rotation beginning in 2005, and screened in the 2006 Dallas VideoFest and ChickFlicks.

   



Cressida Project Title Page  

The Cressida Project (2005---), multimedia project with video, prints, and sculptures; video ca. 25 min.; never completed.

The video was to have comprised two main story lines drawing on Shakespeare, Plato, and other sources, one of which was to have taken place in an imaginary future nation, the United Democratic Islamic Emirates (U.D.I.E.). Scenes or images involving confinement, power, control and sadism, interpretation, transmission of knowledge, reproduction, and escape were to be used to implicate questions about identity, trauma, safety, and transformation – if not within a single lifetime, sometimes through succeeding generations. The project would also have included related prints and sculptures. More info here.

   



Creamistress 6 Title Page  

Creamistress 6: "The Centered Polenta" (2003-4), multimedia project with SD video, prints, and sculptures; video 7 min.

A dryly humorous, Wind Done Gone-type response to Matthew Barney's art world blockbuster, the Cremaster Cycle. Like Barney’s epic, meaning-packed, but only 7 min. long and completed for $400. Click on the link for the online catalogue; contact carolyn at sortor dot com to view the video.

Exhibited in a solo show with related works at Conduit Gallery, Dallas and in group shows with related works at Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, NY and at BoCA in San Francisco, CA. Scheduled to be screened at the Dallas Museum of Art, and screened at Ballroom Marfa and in the Edgworks Film Festival and the Texas Show at the Dallas VideoFest. Reviews and notices: The New Yorker, Tom Moody, James Wagner, and The Dallas Observer here and here.

   



Kitty Karaoke Macbeth Still  

Kitty Karaoke Macbeth (2007), HD video, 1:33 min.

In the tradition of Marcel Broodthaers' Interview With A Cat (1970) and Bill Davenport's Art with Cats (1997), the eponymous role in a scene from Macbeth is played by my cat, while I play Lady M. Set, shot, and edited in less than three hours, which may or may not be all the concept deserves.

   



Looking Glasses Still  

Looking Glasses (2000), SD video, 38 secs.

An eight-line poem concerning perception, containment, and escape is visualized using still imagery and computer animation. Selected for the Texas Show in the 2000 Dallas VideoFest and for SXSW.

   



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