NEW AND RECENT WORKS

MUSEUM INSTALLATION

Outside / Inside: Virtual Panoramas of Independence National Historical Park
Philosophical Hall, Philadelphia, Now until Nov. 2008 at the Museum of The American Philosophical Society

As visitors roll the computer mouse over the scrolling panoramas, they discover sites, sounds, and portals that open onto virtual expeditions. New clips are added after selected expeditions, and at the end of the project, the completed interactive work will remain available on the APS Museum website. A reflection on how time and history change the ways we know a place, it is both an organic artwork developing over the course of the UNEXPECTED residency project and a documentary that will remain after it ends. MORE.

INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY WEB-SCAPE

VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN
www.unknownterritories.org

Blending fiction and fact in a fantastic scrolling landscape, VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN is a multimedia account of John Wesley Powell's famous journey down the Colorado River which launched May 25 1869.   You will discover a landscape dotted with observations, competing diary notes, and side routes – some of which may be deadly... You will travel across writing modes as well as spaces. Knowledge comes in integrating many such modes. First comes the adventure, then comes its representation. Much later, comes critical examination, and, perhaps, as a whole, re-invention... For more, visit  http://www.unknownterritories.org .

PANORAMIC NARRATIVE WEBSCAPE

VACATION IN BROOKLYN
Linked on McSweeneys with the novel Vacation, by Deb Olin Unferth. Released September 3, 2008

A panoramic narrative scene set in Brooklyn and based on the novel, Vacation, by Deb Olin Unferth... "In truth, here is the story: A man leaves a place. A man leaves another place. And another. And another. He has to keep leaving and sometimes it is good and sometimes it is not, but mostly not. It is just a series of departures, of doors closing, a briefcase snapping shut. Nothing becomes clearer. Nobody changes. The man wants to change but cannot. The man wants to change the woman he loves and left but cannot do that either..." MORE.

DOCUMENTARY DVD

From Vérité to Virtual: Conversations On The Frontier Of Film And Anthropology
Documentary DVD. Distributed by Documentary Educational Resources. Just released at www.der.org

This documentary presents panel and roundtable conversations with leading documentary filmmakers, artists and ethnographers about the future of visual anthropology. Recorded at Temple University, the targeted conversations raise questions, among others, of collaboration, aesthetics, uses of new media, and how to build a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges methods of the social sciences, humanities and fine arts. Uniquely, participants came together from across the disciplines to join in discussion about what the agenda for interdisciplinary visual anthropology might look like in this era of globalization. The responses range from the theoretically provocative to the practical. Participants include symposium panelists Phillip Alperson, Kelly Askew, Rebecca Baron, Michel Brault, Kathy Brew, Roderick Coover, Jayasinhji Jhala, Paul Stoller, and Lucien Taylor, as well as roundtable discussants Warren Bass, Noel Carroll, Kimmika Williams and others. MORE.

INSTALLATION VIDEO/MULTIMEDIA PANORAMA

Something That Happened Only Once
An Animated Panorama in Two Loops (21 Minutes)

Something That Happened Only Once is panoramic work recorded in Coyocan Plaza, Mexico City. The work blends the actions of actors and non-actors in the natural setting on a busy Saturday afternoon. The work is created through layers of photography, songs, and found sounds. Deb Olin Unferth's lyrics are adapted to music by the Dutch singer Jodi Gilbert who is joined in the performance by Dutch saxophonist, Michael Moore. Unlike many panoramas, this one is not static. The piece follows a female protagonist, a male counterpart, and other characters in a manner that suggests narrative but never becomes it. Instead it’s an expression of temperament or a consciousness – a searching, a longing, a loneliness. Presented at SIGGRAPH 2007 and the SPLIT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. MORE

VIDEO/MULTIMEDIA

The Theory of Time Here
A short film. Distributed by the Video Data Bank. NTSC DVD 6:32mins 2007

It is TIME at a street corner in London... A collaboration between filmmaker Roderick Coover and writer Deb Olin Unferth, this short marks the textual disintegration of the speaking clock in an unnerving portrait of technology, power, and the urban environment. Premiere: EKG/SCIENCE CENTER 2007. MORE

GALLERY EXHIBITION

PANORAMAS AND OTHER CIRCULAR STORIES
AN SOLO EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY RODERICK COOVER, KLEIN GALLERY/SCIENCE
Philadelphia January-March 2007

Circularities, repetitions, and the moments where break down are the themes of this multimedia show. The exhibit presents six video works which have been created using layered photographs, audio and manipulated video recordings. These works offer strange stories that loop upon themselves. The differing video works are interconnected by common motifs of travel and time. The works evoke ways that the technological imagery permeates the imagination, and they call attention to the place of desire in sensory experience and in language. MORE
REVIEWED IN ART PAPERS

DOCUMENTARY

The Language of Wine: An Anthropology of Work, Wine and the Senses
A feature documentary. French and English with Subtitles. 50 minutes NTSC and PAL. 2007.

The Language of Wine is an documentary film/DVD that presents a story about the lives of Burgundian winemakers through 13 vignettes that take place in vineyards, cellars, and winemakers' homes. Recorded in the anthropological tradition of participant observation, the documentary transports viewers to a world behind the media gloss and harvest festivities - a world shaped by very particular experiences, goals and challenges. Screened at Documenta Madrid 2007, Fingerlakes Environmental Film Festival 2007 and elsewhere. MORE

VIDEO/MULTIMEDIA

Currency
Four short films by Roderick Coover and Nick Montfort. NTSC DVD and YouTube. 2007.

The series of four small works, Currency, was developed by Roderick Coover and Nick Montfort. The two used constrained forms and processes, determined before any subject matter or themes were agreed upon, to facilitate contemporaneous writing and video production. The techniques used were intended to shape the way the collaborators communicated about and contributed to each of the projects. To begin work on each of the four pieces, the two changed roles: The writer, Montfort, provided a photograph to serve as a starting point, while the video artist, Coover, provided the initial text -- the title. The two then added text and video sections alternately, communicating through their contributions rather than discussing the pieces in progress, fashioning and following their own additional and sometimes medium-specific constraints on composition as they worked. MORE

 

CD-ROM

Cultures In Webs: Working in Hypermedia with the Documentary Image
Interactive CD-ROM. Distributed by Eastgate Systems

Cultures in Webs is an interactive CD-ROM exploring innovative appraoches to documentary production in the age of digital media. The work integrates text, photos and video clips in a series of theoretical and practical studies using original material recorded in Western Europe and West Africa. MORE
REVIEWED IN RHIZOME

 

ESSAYS

Roderick Coover's writing includes the following articles and interviews:

Film as provocation: Filip Remunda on selling a world that doesn't exist in Czech Dream.” In Decode Myths, edited by Gabriel Solomons. Bristol (UK): Intellect Press. July 2007. ISBN 9781841509815.

"Interactive Media And The Construction(S) Of Memory In Nonfiction Film." In The Cinema Of Robert Gardner, edited by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor. Oxford and Gordonsville: Berg Publishers/ Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming, December 2007. ISBN 9781845207731.  

"Filmmaker To Filmmaker: Robert Gardner And The Cinematic Process" American Anthropologist. September 2007.

"Politics of the Pomelo: Fighting Censorship In Malaysia." Cineaste Film Journal. June 2007.

"Touchy Subjects: An interview with Malaysian Filmmaker Amir Muhammad." Cineaste Film Journal. June 2007.

"Czech Dreams In A Capitalist Republic." Film International. May 2007.

"DUST, An American Western In The Balkan Wild East; An interview with Milcho Manchevski." Film Quarterly. Winter 2005.

“Using Digital Tools In Cross-Cultural Research Analysis And Representation.” Journal of Visual Studies, Summer 2004.

“Working With Images, Images Of Work: Using Digital Interface, Photography, And Hypertext In Ethnography.” In Working Images. Edited By Sarah Pink. London: Routledge, August 2004. ISBN: 041530654X

“Contexts And Appearances: Using Images And Text In Nonfiction Digital Storytelling.” NMEDIAC On-Line Journal Of New Media And Culture,University of North Carolina Press, Fall 2003.

“Gardner And Östör: Making Forest Of Bliss." Co-authored with Lucien Taylor. American Anthropologist Centennial Edition, June, 2002.

"Worldmaking, Metaphors, And Montage In The Representation Of Cultures: Cross-Cultural Filmmaking And The Poetics Of Robert Gardner's Forest Of Bliss," Visual Anthropology 14(4), 2001.

MORE ON WRITING and TEACHING