Skill/Ability: Camera Operation

Possessions of a Randomly Acquired Mind is an animated video piece that matches closeups of biological and mechanical processes to outline drawings of men in motion. The video, which also yielded a series of prints, illustrates what the artist calls the multiple axes of sensation, emotion and cognition. Movement is easier to depict than thought, of course, but Smallwood’s handsome renderings neatly juxtapose micro and macro.

WhoWeAm is an online blog and research project, developed by the Imaging Research Center, that focuses on better understanding human behavior through aggregating contemporary scientific data along with documentary film making. It seeks to find common threads between our best scientific understanding and the reflected thoughts of individuals. There has been many iterations of this project over the last few years, and I have contributed to various aspects of production including media research, creative direction, 2D animation/compositing and most recently as a cameraman and lead editor. Some of the films I have edited are shown here, but additional media may be found at whoweam.com.

The See Intuit booth was commissioned by the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Science for the first annual USA Science and Engineering Festival at the National Mall in Washington D.C. The booth was designed with two goals in mind, to highlight contemporary scientific research on intuition, and as an interactive puzzle to help realize the implications of said research. More information can be found here.

Playing Pericles: Shakespeare for Social Change, was a collaborative effort in experimental theater between the departments of Theater, English and the Imaging Research Center. As its grounding premise, the project explored notions of play and the role of imagination in guiding all production decisions. The undergraduate actors performed all roles using a variety of children’s toys, kneeling around a short table in front of a small audience. I was the Creative Director of the project and was charged with both designing and producing the visuals, as well as overseeing the process of chroma-keying live action with animation throughout the entire performance. The performances were filmed against a green screen and composited in real-time against these animated backdrops, which were dynamically projected onto a screen hanging above the actors. For the resulting performances, the IRC’s production studio was converted into a black box style technical theater. The performance ran for 3 days in May 2010. More information can be found here.

Of Me For You is a series of video monologues focusing on the boundary between public actions and private thoughts being experienced and reflected upon by the on screen persona. The framed lens not only acts as a visual metaphor for the split between experiential awareness and reflected thought of the persona in the video, but also as symbolic boundary between what is kept private and what is shared within the confines of the enclosure. From the outside, the semi-transparent walls of the enclosure mimic these themes by acting as a boundary and filter for what occurs within.