Critical Mass is the first in a series of DVD collections of experimental shorts by artists working with sculptors, soundscape artists, poets, dancers and fine artists. 

Critical Mass:Synaesthesia can be found under a separate listing

Critical Mass:Kinetica is scheduled for release in jan 2008

SAVE £5 Buy the first two Critical Mass DVDs together for £15 (see separate listing)

“TALSKIDDY”

Lee Hodges 

Film collides as a marriage of memories, a perpetual rhythm of past and
future, tentative, fleeting glances are wrapped in a cloak of mystery and
suggestion. In the ancient language of the Cornish 'Talskiddy' means
'Hillbrow of Shadows'.

“EQUILIBRIUM”

Simon Withers & Steve Friendship

A meditation.

A dynamic mandala,

wave exciting wave.

Resonant soundscape,

particle oscillations,

harmonic accord.

“LUXA”

Geoff Litherland

A journey into a beautiful, abstract, shimmering, irregular geometric world. A balance of stillness and movement, encapsulating the moment and feeling of the sublime in nature, a meditative elation. geometric patterns collide with each other.

 “CHECK”

Jeevan Choudhry

An impromptu game of chess between a Town Hall Caretaker and a Supercomputer awaiting it’s Super opponent.  But whose rules are they playing by???

“CHLADNI”

Barry Hale

Over the last six years my work has explored the creative possibilities of Intraference, isolating amplifying and manipulating inherent signals resident within the electronics of audio visual equipment and manipulating these signals in real time to create evolving mandalas of light.  No computer programming is involved in their creation.  Chladni is a visual representation of the conscious manipulation of the artist to channel coherence from the noise of a chaotic feedback system.  Chladni is reminiscent of the acoustic waveforms Ernst Chladni, the father of acoustics, created in the 18^th century by scraping a violin bow along the edge of a glass or metal plate spread with fine sand. The resulting symmetrical patterns, known as Chladni figures, are physical representations of audio waveforms.

“A POSTCARD FROM SUTTON ON SEA “

Simon Withers & Steve Friendship

The idea is drawn from our interest in the picture postcard, from the kitsch, the straight-faced, the wildly exotic and the deadly dull. Sutton-on-Sea is chosen as the location because of a mutual fascination with marginal seaside towns and Simon is a resident artist on the sea front. A key feature of this work is a series of environmental interventions and installations. The film is composed of five separate scenes, one acting as a background and the four others superimposed. These scenes develop as a moving picture postcard through the use of dissolves. The form allows presentation of four separate but related scenes, but also enables the scenes to connect or juxtapose. It is primarily a piece about image, so connections between separate elements are made through compositional equivalence, metaphor & metonymy.

“ORANGE GIRL”

Mark Devenport & Mark Gwynn-Jones

I fell in love with an Orange Girl,  bright as marmalade, at night she slept on a solar bed  and dreamt in vivid grey...   A film poem exploring the destructive power of our popular media, the constraints it places on what we consider beautiful and the damage caused to those who identify with the endless images of physical perfection. In contrast to the gloss and overproduction of our advertising industry, our films power lies in its immediacy and directness; a voice from the street that reveals how ugly our idea of beauty really is.

“ PHASIA “

Barry Hale & Jane Mulchrone

The film evolves from the practice of Film maker Barry Hale and dancer and choreographer Jane Mulchrone. Chaos theory reveals how our every movement affects the unseen molecules around us. The compound effect of a tiny action can be enormous. Within the space time dynamics of video feedback such tiny actions can clearly be seen to generate instant and massive change. Phasia begins with film maker and dancer manipulating video feedback independently, as the artistic journey develops, the artists conspire to create architectures of light and physical form.

“ WILL “

Caroline Locke  & Su Ansell

 “ Will ” takes its subject from superstitions and the idea of 'reversal' or making the unknown safe eg. by throwing salt over your shoulder. It uses stark images drawn from superstitions with some performance by Caroline. Images link with previous work such as the slit bellies of hammocks in Carolinas installations; slowly shedding their load of sand onto the floor. The visual style is akin to Su's film 'Cul-de-Sac' in which the subject staring into the lens is hit in the face by the camera swinging forward. We wanted the images to cross-connect , making reference to each other in a poetic manner.  “Will - the anti opposites looking it straight in the eye, superstitions, taboos rising to the challenge of the taboo, sense of release, letting go freedom versus determinism determination, overriding power NO…FEAR “

“ SCRATCH THE ITCH “

Stewart Collinson,  Melanie Jordan and Andy Hewitt.

The collaboration emerged from a common interest in light, the hand-drawn image, the hand-made mark and a shared desire to work in an experimental. This subsequently developed into a film, using drawings, diagrams, doodles, scribbles and text. The intention is to celebrate the raw material of graphic and visual communication - from the energy and dynamism of simple marks on paper, to the indecipherable code that erupts from time to time on the computer monitor; and from the personal, non - commercial, non art, evidence of the hand - haptic, ordinary human activity. It is a non-narrative film stimulated by the interaction of visual rhythms created by looping the material, essentially this is a film for the eyes and ears and “old brain”, as Len Lye termed it. The soundtrack consists of a collage of sounds which relate to drawing, paper, mark-making, text, language, writing, typing and word processing.

"GEOMETRY AND GRAVITY"

Jan Kopinski and Tony Hill

 The film aims to make an exploration of geometry and gravity through the complex movement of a particular shape. The film also seeks to experiment with viewpoint, orientation and camera movement together with sound shape-shifting to disturb and undermine the 'normal' perceptions of reality. To create a structure which evolves from abstract images of moving light and shade, surfaces and edges to images of a person moving with an extraordinary motion through landscape and cityscape. A continuity of motion form and sound dynamic is maintained throughout.

“STILL TRYNA SPOONFEED US “

Bill Ming, Kirsty A Mitchell Ahern & John Ahern :

Inspired by one of Bill’s life-size wood carvings of human figures the film takes its subject from the idea of masks, the concealment of what lies behind them and the revealing of layers within human identity. Its imagery revolves around three principle elements as the piece evolves: The felling of a tree and the symbolism of its layers. Constantly moving shots of three sculptures and the iconography of their body fragments. And finally a digital montage of unfurling layers of images being stripped away to reveal layers beneath.  The soundtrack is be based upon a sound poem derived from Bill’s Journals set to sounds gathered from the artists studio, the tree location and audio images concerned with identity.

“ SHAKER”

Peter Shenton and Laura Smith

Developed from a collaboration between dancer Pete Shenton and film maker Laura Smith, Shaker is a tongue-in-cheek mix of dance and comedy, in which a man tries to capture the heart of a female choreographer, who’s only wish is to disappear.

Threshold Studios aims to bring you a wide range of independent digital art, guerrilla shorts, avant garde classics and features from around the world.

 

Grassroots DV and film production has reached an unprecedented scale.  Festivals and informal club screenings reveal a groundswell of interest in alternatives to mainstream movies.  The form is changing, film and video, digital art crossing over boundaries into club visuals and art installations.  DVDs of independent movies and art film beyond the mainstream are now available online directly from the artists or from tiny labels dedicated to work from the edge.  The archive of work by past directors from the alternative histories of the cinema and the avant garde is now more accessible than ever it was before.  The work of contemporary guerrilla film makers is reaching wider audiences through their access to domestic DV cameras, computer editing and DVD authoring software.

In the past, Threshold Studios have produced CD ROMS and now DVDs of work by digital artists working in sound, single screen film and video, installation and on the web.  We have commissioned twenty two short films in the last 2 years, most of them are available here in our ebay shop.

We also aim to stock a growing range of interesting work by other people from all over the world.  We hope this work excites and inspires you.  We want to see an explosion of experimental work and new ideas from those in the margins of the art, film and TV industry.  Buying from us allows us to reinvest the money in further commissions, promote new talent and fresh visions on CD and DVD to the rest of the world.  We are always interested to hear from new directors and artists working in the experimental and avant garde.

 

 

KEYWORDS avant garde art film brakhage kenneth anger andy warhol kerouac warp films ninja tune touch ash international staalplaat mekas kotting digital shorts dance film onedotzero brit art cabaret voltaire tg alternative culture occulture maya deren video feedback vj cult digital art nekes experimental ambient bunuel richter dali leger artaud dulac nik zedd linklater bfi underground emin hirst wearing anchor bay jodorowsky polanski animation quay svankmeyer, guerilla film makers, short film & art video, short movies auter polanski, tarantino, von trier, bunuel, spike jonze, chris cunningham, anger, brakhage, deren, latham, kotting, jarman, onedotzero, lux, warp, raindance surrealist, black & afro Caribbean cinema, animation, manga

 

Powered by eBay Turbo Lister