Proliferation, 3:18, digital animation with sound, 2017

About Proliferation

The recursive motif developed in Proliferation began as a drawing on isometric graph paper. In 2003, during an artist’s residency at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, NY. I installed four large wall drawings derived from this motif, which, taken together, implied a sequence of increasing elaboration at smaller and smaller scales, a kind of home-made fractal in progress. The residency also gave me time to renew some experiments I’d been making in 3-D computer animation, and I focussed on modeling the branching, nested structure in such a way that although it was now solid, it looked identical to the flat drawing. Then I found I could animate the forms by scaling them up or down selectively while zooming the (perspective-less) virtual camera. 

Descent (view installation).

The four wall drawings of the Hallwalls installation correspond to the film’s four episodes, the final one of which, after scaling into place, begins to rotate, from the smallest to the largest. As there are seven nested generations, a seven-fold compound rotation eventually results. As each form begins to rotate on its axis, it lifts out of the isometric grid to become truly 3-D for the first time. 

Descent had a soundtrack made from local field recordings, including Niagara Falls and freight trains. It played on a CRT monitor alongside the wall drawings in a loop. I later completed the animation as a separate film with a new sound score, a collage of generic sound effects. This second incarnation of Proliferation was exhibited as a looping installation, both on monitors and continuously projected, and also as a single view projection. In the latter form, it was included in En Perfecto Desorden at the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, in a program curated by Perry Bard. In 2017 I modified the film, adding color and making other changes, and invited Zig Gron to collaborate as composer. (To read more about Zig Gron, see my notes on 8 Ecstasies, another film collaboration.) His dense, industrialized sound score adds a dystopian mood with synesthetic precision. In 2018 this final version of the film was screened at the Punta Y Raya Film Festival,  in Wroclaw, Poland, and at the IFC Center in New York, among other venues.