Blog posting written by Lindsay Harrop, Cinema & Photography '13, FLEFF Intern, McMinnville, Oregon

I'm here in Park 220 where Philip Mallory Jones is having a FLEFF Lab. (You can see what fellow FLEFF Intern Blogger Matthew Reis had to say about Phil's multimedia presentation yesterday by clicking here.) Phil ran the Ithaca Video Festival, which existed from 1975-84, which was the first video art festival in the United States, and, as moderator Patty Zimmerman put it, "really contributed to legitimating video art as an art form." Phil's work had been exhibited on every continent and he is one of the pre-eminent figures in video and new-media art.

PZ: What is provocative, interesting, alluring about working in synthetic worlds for you as an artist?
PMJ: "Working in synthetic worlds is this familiar place that is also a new place. I've always made things - been compelled to fabricate things. And for me, that's fundamentally magical. To create illusions is another abiding interest and part of that is the reason why I started writing seriously in the last sixties writing fiction. Synthetic worlds, which I discovered in late '06, is a return to that. It's an entirely plastic world and I can bring anything into it. I have the possibility of creating experience. The point is to create an experience for the one who encounters it. That is imagination.

The synthetic environment has capabilities we've never encountered in the human world. There are capabilities in this realm we haven't seen replicated anywhere else. And what it means is that the people working in this are writing the book on what this is. For me, one of the intriguing possibilities is the re-invention of language."

There are 16 of us here and having a really great time talking with Phil and hearing about his experiences working with media and how he's been involved in the evolution of media. Phil's now presenting his installation "In The Sweet Bye & Bye" - which he describes as immersive media. If you're in Park, come join us!

Also, get excited for the meet-up with Franklin Lopez, director of END:CIV and George Bush Don't Like Black People, here at 2:00! See you there!

Blog posting written by Peter Keahey, Film, Photography and Visual Arts, '12, FLEFF Intern, Yellow Springs, Ohio

Peter: Does all this technology ever become overwhelming?

Philip: Daily. I have my own mechanisms for dealing with that. One of the principle mechanisms is I watch a lot of 1930s movies, early B-movies. It’s not that I think they’re good, but they take me out of the mindset, this frontier media saturation, that I work in all the time. To watch Flash Gordon conquer the universe for an hour between midnight and one a.m. helps me. I also actually study the sets of these old movies, and I pay a lot of attention to the environments and the details of their sets and lighting and camera compositions. So it’s also research, and informing how I approach 3D modeling and set design and so on. It helps to ground me in some ideas and techniques and concepts that are long term and cross media boundaries. Watching old movies refreshes my cinema vocabulary. I don’t do a lot of activities that can’t relate to making my work. So I found a way of making 30s movies useful, and I get a break from what I do thirteen hours a day.

Peter: Do you try to maintain a balance between traditional artwork and digital artwork?

Philip: Not in terms of the forms that I work in. My work is entirely digital. If I’m working with something analogue it’s in order to move it into a digital form. My sources for content and perspective are analogue. Just as I watch 1930s movies, I also seriously study photography, music, and theatre from other times. I draw from those not only content, but ideas about how things are put together. That kind of study goes back thousands of years. How are ideas shaped? How are messages shaped? How are ideas and messages coded in works from other places and times and cultures? In that way, I’m very much paying attention to analogue forms, in order to understand how and why they were made, extract that information, and move it into my contemporary work. To move these ideas from the renaissance or a temple into current work is for me a very exciting thing to do. It gives me a kind of perspective I think is very useful. It gives my work a particular character and signature.

Peter: What are your current projects?

Philip: They are entirely digital projects and deal with synthetic worlds. I’ve done this for the past four or five years now. I’ve been working in digital worlds such as Second Life and other grids. That’s been enormously exciting and challenging to me. A whole new world literally opens up. At the same time it returns me to a much older interest, animation and model making. Those have been interests of mine for a very long time. I was doing 16 mm animation in the late 60s early 70s. I was building models since I was old enough to pick up glue and use a paintbrush. Creating synthetic worlds allows me to deal with those kinds of interests. It’s entirely plastic and malleable, to the level of coding involved.
Because of the frontier nature of synthetic worlds and other virtual reality forms such as augmented reality and 3D, there’s room to invent. There’s room to innovate and experiment, and to actually shape what these things look like going into the future. The world we live in today was very much invented and shaped by the media artists that I was working with in the early seventies. There’re people that I knew, that moved from New York State to the west coast in the mid-70s to go to work in the unheard of video-game enterprise. And look at the world today. The artists and technologists of that day were involved in the creation and incubation of what we know today. Just in the concept of college programs and media art, that is a direct result of what we were doing in places like Ithaca Video Projects and other media arts centers at the dawn of the current world.

Peter: Are you still based in Ithaca?

Philip: I left Ithaca in 1987. I am currently in Athens Ohio.

Peter: What kind of work are you bringing to FLEFF this year?

Philip: I’m participating in a couple discussions about the history of media art, particularly in the Finger Lakes area. I’m also giving a talk on my current work in synthetic worlds, and how I transitioned from a literal body of work in an installation, to an installation in Second Life, coming out of the same body of work and presenting it in an entirely different way.

Blog posting written by Peter Keahey, Film, Photography and Visual Arts, '12, FLEFF Intern, Yellow Springs, Ohio

I recently had the chance to conduct a very interesting interview with new media artist Philip Mallory Jones. Mr. Jones has worked with video, film, photography, and other venues going back to the 1960s. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Arizona Governors Award for the Arts for his digital Paintings.

Currently, Mr. Jones works completely in digital and synthetic worlds, creating things such as 3D models and synthetic worlds. His work has been shown all over the world. He was also the founder of Ithaca Video Projects, a very important media center back in the 70's and 80's.

His FLEFF lectures are 4-6p.m. Thursday April 14 in Studio A in the Roy Park School of Communications, and Friday April 15 from 1-2p.m.

Peter: How long have you been involved with FLEFF?

Philip: This is my first time participating in the festival.

Peter: What made you decide to participate this year?

Philip: Patty Zimmerman contacted me and asked if I was interested in being a part of it. Because of the component of the festival involving archives and experimental television centers, and my long history in media in the Finger Lakes area, She felt it was a good idea, and appropriate, to contact me.

Peter: When you first began using “new media,” what sort of projects were you doing?

Philip: I began using video in 1969. That was the beginning of small format video. I’ve done a lot of different things for the past forty-something years. In 69-70, when Ithaca Video Projects first formed, we had a contemporary interests and concerns at that time. For me, working in video, which was new, with no courses or colleges to teach this, was the frontier. It was the possibility of inventing a new art form and a new media language. That in particular interested me. Just as many years before, filmmakers approached cinema in the same way, and photography, and so on.
Given that video, in it’s earliest days, was very different from television and very different from cinema, it was the opportunity for me and others involved at that time to really step into new territory and bring our own sensibilities and interests to this new form, and to experiment.

Peter: What sort of work was Ithaca Video Projects involved in?

Philip: Ithaca Video Projects closed in 1985. It ran for fourteen years. It was one of the first media arts centers anywhere. The involvement over those fourteen years was quite widespread not only in the Ithaca area, but also nationally and internationally. For instance, in 1985, I took that years Ithaca video festival to cities in Belgium.
During the active years of Ithaca Video Projects, we were involved with everything that went on in the Ithaca area, around New York State and beyond. We did all kinds of work with area arts associations and individual artists. It was quite extensive. It was accessible to others. We had a visiting artists program and also loaned equipment to groups and individuals in the area. It was a very community oriented arts association.

Peter: As a new media artist, how important is it to stay up to date with technology?

Philip: It’s important and it’s not important. I learned a long time ago, working with media tools, there’s always the chase for the current technology, and that hasn’t changed in forty-two years. That is a constant struggle and anxiety. With the advent of additional technologies, there’s also keeping up with the software. That’s an even bigger problem and a constant learning curve. I’m always looking at three to five different programs that I need to take the time to learn how to use.
As my ambitions and visions for work move with the technology, that’s my need to stay current. On the other hand, an artist working in any form can do great work by mastering that form and those tools. Great work can be made on a piano today just as it could several hundred years ago. It’s what the artist brings to the tool and the form that really shapes the work. So on one hand I struggle with this constant learning curve challenge, but I keep in mind, you can make great work with a stick in the sand if you’re good with a stick. It’s not the tool that makes the work; it’s the mind of the artist.

April 9 2011
 

Blog posting written by Shea Lynch, Documentary Studies and Production '14, FLEFF Intern, Glens Falls, New York

A great FLEFF Week event for anyone! Special presentation with video, installation and new media artist Philip Mallory Jones will be joining the on-campus events Thursday, April 14 in Studio A in Park Hall (4-6PM)

"Philip Mallory Jones has worked with video, film, photography, and writing for artistic, commercial, and scholarly endeavors since 1969, and has incorporated digital media since 1990. His work has been broadcast and exhibited in North America, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. He was co-founder and Director of Ithaca Video Projects (1971-85), one of the pioneering media arts centers, and Director/Curator of the Annual Ithaca Video Festival (1974-83), the first juried touring collection of video art."

"Mr. Jones’ current work includes several projects in Second Life synthetic world:  In The Sweet Bye & Bye, Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs, and Points of View: Rediscovering Vanished African American and Multiethnic Communities of Southeastern Ohio. Mr. Jones’ art portfolio includes LISSEN HERE! (2004) a book of poetry and photo-collage, plus film animations, video, interactive digital disc-based works, multi-media installations and performances. Mr. Jones has also published fiction, and created sculptures in acrylic plastics."

-from FLEFF 2011 Checkpoint Guests page

DO NOT MISS THIS! This On-campus event is on Thursday, April 14 in Studio A in Park Hall (4-6PM)

Question for the FLEFF community: What events are you looking forward to attending?