Pilot Residency Report – Andrew Kim

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Report by Andrew Kim

As the LaborBerlin Pilot Artist in Residence (July 2016), I was asked to work with the lab’s newly acquired Crass Animation Stand and Optical Printer System. This was an opportunity to advance past work involving interference patterns, or the “Moiré effect”. Prior to the residency, I finished a film titled, Temples it Knows No Longer. This film employs animation and multiple exposure techniques, in combination with filtered light, to create a motion picture mandala. Here, superimposed colors rotate and blend according to patterns created by interlacing circles. In an effort to further develop this technique, I sought to replace moving images where there had previously been only colored light.

The process involved animating a matte, and from that, printing its reverse or counter matte.

Both seen here:

These matte elements were then optically printed, along with filmed footage, to create a composite of two moving images.

The tests can be seen here:

The footage brought together in these composite images was photographed at Field Station Berlin, located on the outskirts of what was formerly West Berlin. This site is significant as a bygone NSA “listening post”, an American installation designed to intercept East German transmissions. Though defunct, the Field Station inspired me to consider the contemporary debate concerning political boundaries in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. I am exploring how the interference patterns, applied to such imagery, provide a way to visualize and assess this ongoing dialogue. The tests serve as part of a current project exploring the notion of borders (and crossings), both real and virtual.

As a side project I also created a short animation using a book purchased from a secondhand shop near LaborBerlin. The text, an instructional manual, comprises step-by-step images of Judo throws in sequence. I photographed them to reconstitute the movement inherent in these still images across time. It’s a fun movie. It’s called Umarmungen, or Hugs in English.

judo

judo