Artist Influence

Nick Briz

Nick Briz's videos, which function partially as essays, partially as instructive tutorials, have been particularly influential to me as I would also regard them as art films. The videos tend to embody the the nature of what is being presented; for example a video teaching glitch methods, would itself be glitched. The use of multiple windows has also had a big impact on the editing of my own films, as it appears to place him directly within the digital environment he is describing. I think this technique is particularly effective for illuminating the many processes required in film, from the performance itself to the filming an, through to editing.

His films lend themselves naturally to Roland Barthes philosophy regarding that an artist should exploit and display the natural qualities of a medium. By displaying the processes of creation within the film itself, this is arguably an organic way of approaching the film medium.

This also extends to the genre of glitch art. Glitches are a natural distortion or error in data, which can produce visual or audible anomalies, which would be regarded as incorrect within a normally running application. They are, however, a presence in digital media and by replicating or creating them, artists explore the inherent qualities of the medium itself. Though this philosophy does somewhat inform my work, I intend to push it to and extreme where I explore if one medium's qualities can be translated across media into another- say the visual qualities of a glitch be rendered with paint, which in turn will distort it with its own qualities as a medium. Unlike Barthes, I wish to take these notions and apply them in an attempt to transcend medium specificity and actually subvert the specific qualities of a medium by exploring them in another.