Flash Polaroids

Brian Kim Stefans


Studies
Countryside
Heathrow
Williamsburg Bridge

Portraits
Rachel 1
Rachel 2
David 1
David 2

Micro-narrative
Subway Woman
Guy Cat Pan (w/ sound)

Interactive
Fish Tale
Fisheye TV (w/ sound, a collaboration with geniwaite)


The Flash Polaroids occupy a middle ground between an experimental film/video aesthetic - particularly the works that use the single frame as the unit of composition - and interactive installation video works. The earlier "Studies" involve loops of digital photographs taken in "burst mode" - in quick succession - and were partly inspired by David Crawford's Stop Motion Studies. The "Portraits" involve several views of the same subject in juxtaposition, and could be compared to a Warholian take on the portrait - a moving image that essentially sits still, or a still image that moves only slightly over time. The "Micro-narratives" introduce "stories" to the Flash Polaroids, especially "Guy Cat Pan," which, like a metaphysical painting of De Chirico's, gets its charge by placing disparate, enigmatic objects on the same stage. The "Interactive" set pushes outward toward the user, and demonstrate what could be done with this simple use of Flash and digital photographs as projections in an installation setting.


About the artist


Known primarily as a poet, Brian Kim Stefans has been producing work for the web since 1998. His most well-known work is The Dreamlife of Letters, a 14-minute Flash poem that can be found, along with other works, at arras.net in the "web poetry" section. Other web projects include the anti-war blog Circulars, and the series of New York Times detournements called "The Vaneigem Series," which incurred a cease-and-desist letter from the Times (see interview). He edits the series of Slash Ubu e-books that are found at www.ubu.com/ubu, and has published several books of poetry (Free Space Comix, Gulf, Angry Penguins) and one of experimental criticism, Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics. He is working on a new series of 24 short pieces of digital poetry called "A Book Of Poems," due in Spring 2005.

www.arras.net
Website with links to all of BKS's internet poems, writing, and visual works.

Free Space Comix: The Blog

Brian Kim Stefans feature at Iowa Review Web
Including interview with regarding "The Vaneigem Series" works that were forced to be removed from the web by the New York Times.

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