Peer Bode

Movies

Work of Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction
Production Assistant
In an homage to Walter Benjamin and his essay The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Buchanan's video questions how image processing transforms the role of the artist in society, as well as the nature of contemporary society itself, by juxtaposing images of the making and eating of a television-shaped cake, distorted text from writers Georgi Plekhanov and Herbert Marcuse, and footage of herself working.
Music on Triggering Surfaces
Director
In Music on Triggering Surfaces, Bode constructs an interface between audio and video systems. The luminance information (voltage) from the visual images traversed by the black dot is routed to an oscillator to produce the audio signal, which varies according to the changing luminance. The video image itself then triggers the audio. The shifting grey-scale of the image becomes a two-dimensional sound map or audio score.
Video Locomotion (man performing forward hand leap)
Director
Working with collected postcards, in this case, the durational photo series by the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, this video re-enacts the proto-cinema moment using two varyingly synchronized b+w video cameras and a video keyer.
We Can't Go Home Again
Cinematography
Nicholas Ray plays himself, acting as mentor, friend, and artistic inspiration to his students at Binghamton.
Blue
Director
An electronic synthetic color video, based on a memory of Larry Gottheim’s film “Blues”. Natural and electronic real time events, new American electronic cinema. B&W video camera, Paik-Abe colorizer, 1/2” vtr, blue berries, bowl and milk. The filmmakers stopped talking to me. Viva Video.