THE ERL KING
The Erl King is a seamless and cinematic multi-media piece that the viewer could interrupt the flow at any moment. It was based on a connection, between two famous nineteenth-century texts, Goethe's Erlkönig and one of the dreams analyzed by Sigmund Freud. As part of the Variable Media Peoject, this artwork was recreated by the artists together with the Guggenheim's variable media team and consultant Jeff Rothenberg to digitize the video and audio. Software engineer Isaac Dimitrovsky programmed a new interpreter for the original PASCAL code. When the PASCAL code sends a command to load audio, video, text, or graphics files from their original storage devices, the interpreter emulates the function of the video switcher, the graphics cache, and the laser disc players to ensure that video and sound clips play at the right times.
This re-creation is not emulation in the deepest sense, for the interpreter mimics only the PASCAL program's calls to hardware peripherals, and not the entire computer on which it runs. Nevertheless, the old code still calls the shots—quite literally—while the new code replaces obsolete hardware so that The Erl King can function in its intended way.
Heralded as one of the first works of interactive video art, The Erl King invited the viewer to control the work’s narrative structure through the use of a touch-screen monitor. The piece was created between 1982-85 and exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum.
One Man Band 1900/2018
(2018) (6 minutes) Filmmaker with Grahame Weinbren
One Man Band is an experimental film inspired by Melies’ silent and magical movie “One Man Band” (1900). It premiered December 11th, 2018 at Film Forum and screened January 5th, 2019 at Hi Jack, an experimental film venue in NYC. It is currently submitted to film festivals. One Man Band examines how complicated and difficult it must have been for Melies, at the turn of the century, to create his illusions. This follows another re-make of “Troublesome Heads 1898”-completed 2017. Four parts have been completed in this series of re-makes of silent, turn of the century films. All will be completed in spring 2019.
