Player vs. Played

Abstract

Dark By Marco Brambilla Santa Monica Museum of Art Santa Monica, California May 21-August 20, 2011 Entering the darkened maze constructed to house media artist Marco Brambilla's survey exhibition The Dark Lining at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, viewers had the opportunity to walk through a carefully choreographed presentation of seven time-based works. Each piece was isolated and viewed either on a separate wall or in a perfectly proportioned room where the viewer had no distractions or sound bleeds, enabling their undivided attention. works demand attention and careful scrutiny. Brambilla is a master of montage, and most of his pieces result from hours of compositing found footage. earliest work on view is Wall of Death (2001), a single-channel video projection that documents a motorcyclist standing on the pedals of his bike with his arms raised as he endlessly circles a spinning wooden drum. Through precise editing, Brambilla has created the illusion of a continuous stunt by repeating short clips of the biker in constant motion despite changes in perspective and point of view. vertiginous motion is dizzying and disorienting. While Wall of Death is fascinating to watch, Brambilla chooses not to reference the history of the stunt or its potential danger; instead the video becomes a visually engaging formal study based on a smart editing concept in which the series of loops become progressively shorter while creating the illusion that each sequence could have gone on indefinitely. Much of Brambilla's work purports to be more than it is. He frequently uses found footage, yet beyond overwhelming the viewer with a bombardment of imagery, offers very little commentary on the source of his extractions. Cathedral (2008) is a perfect example of Branibilla's skill at combining and mirroring imagery to enhance visual impact. Shot during the Christmas shopping season at the Toronto Ealon Centre mall, this nine-minute video loop juxtaposes fragmented shoppers crisscrossing the screen as if in perpetual kaleidoscopic motion. doubling and layering of the shoppers and the architecture creates a dense visual Held. accompanying soundtrack, with its digitized dinging and the ringing of distant bells, is as abstracted as the imagery. Amid the camera's slow-motion pan one can make out many of the store names as well as the cathedral ceiling of the space. These elements coalesce in a sophisticated array of dynamic imagery whose patterned effects are reminiscent of stained glass windows. piece neither celebrates nor criticizes consumer culture at the height of the holiday shopping season, but simply uses it as colorful, vibrant, and richly textured source material. Sea of Tranquility (2006) is Brambilla at his most minimal and poetic. It is a portrayal of decay as Brambilla imagines the disintegration of the lunar module, Eagle, placed on the moon by the astronauts of the 1969 Apollo spaceflight. Through accelerated time lapse as the video is just over i hree minutes in length the lunar module and the American flag placed by its side are slowly eaten away, becoming a pile of rubble. soundtrack, based on the actual communication between mission control and the lunar pod, has been digitally manipulated, foregrounding beeps and blips and eliminating dialogue so that both sound and image are devoid of human presence. work becomes a vivid fantasy portrait of the isolation and harsh conditions of the lunar landscape, while simultaneously a statement about the vulnerability of our creations and the limits of technology. three-channel installation HalfLife (2002) is a thoughtful meditation and commentary on online gaming-specifically the first-person shooter game Counter-Strike. …