serial consign

[francis theberge / trame004 (screen capture)]

For the past few months I've been communicating with the energetic Francis Theberge, who has been acting as an ambassador of sorts for the TIND video/art collective. I was introduced to Francis through his contribution to the last issue of Vague Terrain and I am quite indebted to Carrie Gates for tuning me in to his experimental video. TIND stands for thisisnotdesign, and the five member outfit have been active with a variety of multimedia installation and VJ-related projects over the last decade in Montreal. I've been having a lot of fun working through Francis' archives and thought it would be worthwhile to share links to a few of his projects and the work of TIND.

The above video is the fifth installment of Francis' trame series of experimental shorts. Each of these works is a rapid-fire inventory of glitch effects, treatments and composites. These pieces all clock in at around 60 seconds and feel much more like thematic case studies than demo reels. The shorts each explore similar base footage (love those ghostly female forms), and then process said imagery with a minor arsenal of digital and analog tools, including a video glitcher by Karl Klomp. Francis' dedication to error-aesthetics is quite apparent and range of techniques he employs is commendable. He recently consolidated this research into circuit bending, video feedback and camera mods into glitchism: hacking artistique, a workshop that he presented at this years edition of the Mapping Festival in Geneva.

You can view the rest of the trame series on the thisisnotdesign youtube channel or higher resolution FLV's of the first two shorts in Francis' aforementioned Vague Terrain submission.