HF CRITICAL MASS APPLIED TO CINEMATOGRAPHY BY NASA(CRYSTALLINE ROCK)

HF CRITICAL MASS APPLIED TO CINEMATOGRAPHY
BY NASA(CRYSTALLINE ROCK)
3:00-STEREO-VIDEO-2004 BY BARBARA LATTANZI

The series of videos under the collective title "HF Critical Mass applied to Cinematography by NASA" riffs a period in U.S. history marked by technological optimism and ideological strife. Each of the videos in the series samples NASA footage from the 1968-72 U.S. Apollo missions to the moon. Applied to these archival fragments is my original software, consisting of a simple, dynamically-modifiable algorithm. The software itself derives from another archive - that of the American avant-garde film movement from the same historical period. "HF Critical Mass" software abstracts and encodes the structural motif of one of the signature experimental films from that period - a time when avant-garde film practice had reached a point of particular intensity.BL