Gregg Biermann

""New York Gradual" is a digital-age motion study consisting of three dolly shots taken during lunch hour in mid-town Manhattan. There are three sections, each of which is set to one piece of synthetic choral/electronic music that I composed. . . Within each section the images repeat in blocks of five frames at a time, and gradually advance one frame at a time for each block. The result of this simple pattern interacting with the imagery is a fascinating study of ordinary street life." (Gregg Biermann)

An iconic scene from the beloved Hollywood musical The Sound of Music is transformed through a contrapuntal progression of split screen effects. The resulting mosaic reveals haunting melodies and reverberating dissonance.

Biermann slices Rear Window into nineteen vertical columns, each slightly out of phase with the next, reverberating out from a solitary instant in the temporal center of the work where the entire frame coalesces.

The famed Hall of Mirrors sequence of Welles' classic noir The Lady from Shanghai is transformed through a succession of four algorithmic progressions of split screen patterns. The result is hypnotic, kaleidoscopic and a bit uncanny.

One of the most iconic sequences in the history of Hollywood cinema (from Alfred Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST) is deconstructed and reassembled to illuminate the patterns, rhythms and choreography of the original so as to break through and make for an eight banded kinetic tour de force. As the piece progresses the temporal displacement of each band gets closer and closer until they all unite into a remarkable grand finale.

As digital multiples and shuffles of Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni wade through the Trevi Fountain from LA DOLCE VITA, THE SWEET ALGORITHM continues Gregg Biermann's series of films dissecting and repurposing classic film scenes into pulsating, almost hypnotic collage works.

Forty-one separate shots that have been appropriated and excised from the Hitchcock classic Vertigo are repeated and transformed into a composite sequence of concentric rectangles. Each rectangle appears over the last and grows larger over time. The narrative of the original is all but lost and in its place is a hypnotic and meditative display of forms and sounds.

An experimental film superimposing a clip from "Singin' in the Rain" over itself seven times.

With "The Hills Are Alive" BIermann takes an iconic scene from the 1965 Hollywood musical and reveals another take on the tenderness of this Rodgers and Hammerstein song, deconstructing it down to its smallest components, repeating its moments and reinscribing its music into something completely different.

The camera moves in a variety of ways, examining the inside of a 3D animated sphere on the inside of which a scene from Psycho is wrapped.

ORANGE is inspired by the direct film (cameraless) tradition. This tradition includes works in which the filmstrip is directly manipulated by painting, scratching, or otherwise placing objects on it. This tradition was probably originated by Len Lye in his hand painted A COLOUR BOX from 1935. To create his piece, Gregg Biermann cut up an orange into several pieces and scanned the pieces into his computer. He then took the image files of the orange pieces and “pasted” them directly into the video strip using a photo editing software package. This technique then transforms the orange pieces into what appears to be a random exploding jumble of images when viewed.

GRAPEFRUIT explores the surface texture of a half grapefruit. The scanned image of the grapefruit is placed in a three-dimensional space and the viewer moves around it as if it were a planetary body.

Cinema Study is a reworking of images and sounds taken from Orson Welles landmark film Citizen Kane. The piece breaks the frame into multiple smaller rectangles, each with short video and audio samples from the original film. Part of the activity of the viewer seems to be the activity of keeping track of the images, which pop around the screen, and how they relate to the sounds. All of the sounds in the piece are in a precise synchronous relationship with the images on the screen. The original narrative film breaks down almost completely, and becomes an almost pure visual and musical experience. Call it Citizen Kane the re-mix.

A short sequence from Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE is put through its paces and analyzed anew through a series of global transformations.

A sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey is sliced into 40 vertical bars, each moving at a slightly different rate while coalescing in the center of the piece for a single frame. The result allows for fascinating spatial-temporal distortions as the viewer experiences various instants in time simultaneously.