Activated Memory I & II

Activated Memory is a two video project based on animated photographs of different parks and buildings of Montreal. Through the use of video feedback, 3D animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of "reality" subsist. The music accompaniment is composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.

Activated Memory I is a journey through a serene landscape where the trees and fields are at once surreal and familiar.Through the use of video feedback, 3d animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of "reality" subsist. This video was created for The Download Program of Rhizome.org. Music composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.

Activated Memory II, created for bubblebyte.org, uses buildings as the main subject of observation. As a counterpoint to parks (Activated Memory I), buildings are characterised by angular forms and opaque surfaces. Architecture is used as a point of departure to create instability. Buildings discompose their limits into the frame while the geometric original shapes and dimensions of the image loose control to create an entrance to a chaotic space where forms become liquid. Music composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.

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The videos are also part of a solo show starting today on bubblebyte.org.

NEWS

A lot of exciting news this month concerning my personal work. I thought I'd share! First, this week Roger Tellier-Craig AKA Le Révélateur and I had the chance to be invited to the Montreal Sessions, a radio show on CKUT, curated this month by Natasha Pickowicz. We played some music that inspired our work, and discussed about our projects among many other things. You can listen to the show here. (November 8th).

Other great news came from the San Francisco Label Root Strata.
A DVD of my work with Le Révélateur will be released on November 15th and 100 copies will be available to purchase online. Maxwell August Croy from the label did a great job designing the sleeve and the DVD cover from still images of the videos. I'll post more informations about it later.

I have also contributed to the online and printed magazine I WANT YOU, and it is out now! You can give a look here.

And finally, Le Révélateur and I will play a concert with new material at Casa Del Popolo this Saturday. The line-up is awesome (Steve Hauschildt + Driphouse + Souffle) so if you are in Montreal come check it out! The poster was made by the talented collage artist (and musician) Félix Morel.

ACTIVATED MEMORY

Stills taken from a serie of videos in progress that I have entitled "Activated Memory". I'm using photographs that I take of Montreal parcs and houses and I animate them in order to create enclosed gardens and artificial environments.

AGE MAZE /// Le Révélateur

Video for Le Révélateur

Age Maze along with Bleu Nuit and Mirages will be released on DVD this October by the San Francisco label Root Strata.

STATION BALNÉAIRE /// VARIATION I

Images of the Almalfi Coast have been transformed by video feedback. The rigid transitions, inspired by early computer art, contrast with the aleatory movements of the electronic light.

Music by Roger Tellier-Craig

Il Labirinto di Cristallo

bubblebyte.org is pleased to present Il Labirinto di Cristallo, a collective exhibition by diverse International practitioners working around the themes of Oceano, Futuro, Industriale and Azteca.

The show, inspired by the early 1990s British TV program “The Crystal Maze”, is conceived as a journey set around different areas, visions and artistic approaches, stressing and stretching visual possibilities in a playful and kaleidoscope mode that flirts with space and time displacement.

The diversity of vision and artistic approach allows discovery and experimentation, constantly crossing the line between imagination and reality, virtual and factual, abstract and actual, leading visitors throughout a multilayered and unexpected random wandering.

http://bubblebyte.org/

LA DIMENSION PROCHAINE

Stills from video experiments made using vintage postcards bought in Positano.

STATIONS BALNÉAIRES

Over the last few months, I have been working intensively on the footage I got from Positano and Capri. Out of this footage, I made an 8 minute video called Station Balnéaire for a show at the Ghost Gallery in Seattle, curated by Christian Petersen (including the work of Sara Ludy and Nicolas Sassoon among others). More info HERE. I also produced a series of stills taken from the video which will be posted soon on the site of their online magazine I Want You. It's worth taking a look at their website, there are some really amazing images. (Check out Stellar Om Source)

I am also working on a live video projection that will take place at the Montreal Gallery Espace Projet organised by Le Phosphène Ciné-club. Roger Tellier-Craig will accompany my images with his great electronic music and it will be very different from what we usually do with Le Révélateur. This will happen next Wednesday, July 13. Here are various stills taken from my experiments with these inspiring landscapes.

BLEU NUIT - LE RÉVÉLATEUR

Bleu Nuit is made using video feedbacks as basic material. Through various processes of image manipulations, colors emerged from electronic light to create improbable landscapes. It is also a collaboration with Le Révélateur, who’s music was the primal inspiration for the completion of this video. Bleu Nuit is a track from Le Révélateur's forthcoming LP on Gneiss Things, Fictions.

BLEU NUIT from Sabrina Ratté on Vimeo.

POSITANO

IN MY VIDEO CAMERA

TEXTURES OF LIGHT II

TEXTURES OF LIGHT

TRANSIT

An illuminated map of some neighbourhood in Paris became a landscape...
Music by Roger Tellier-Craig

MUSIC VIDEO

I just finished this video for Boxcutter... Having a lot of fun with video feedback.

Track 'TV Troubles' taken from his album The Dissolve released on Planet Mu 25 April 2011.

FOUND VIDEO #1

Found Video #1 is the first video of a serie that I intend to do as an exercise in reappropriating videos. This first exercise is based on the impossibility to understand the conversation that is taking place about video art and Nam June Paik. I decided to play with this element of foreign language and to use it as music. The framing and the video feedback transform this conventional interview into an abstract dance of images. As the interview goes, the images start to fade away, leaving place to light and abstract forms.

NEON SUNLIGHT

Stills from a work in progress.

1.

THE LAST OF THE EPIC VIDEOS

I made it! I succeeded in making one video a week for a whole year!

52-Pick-Up is a project conceived and coordinated by Dayna McLeod: "52 Pick-Up is a series of videos made by anyone who is up for the challenge of making one video a week for 52 weeks straight. It is a video production challenge. Equivalent to drawing a sketch-a day or writing a page-a-day, it's an exercise in endurance to get the juices flowing with a quick deadline that can be used as an excuse for both brilliance and failure."

When I started this project, I thought that I could miss one or two weeks occasionnally... But I caught myself being really engaged in the process, not wanting to miss one week even if it meant posting some ugly weird stuff.
After a year, I can say that it radically transformed my philosophy about producing work, and about what I value in terms of video making. Now, I feel more strongly about the process than about anything else. The gems that come out of this process are rare and not to be expected. Making videos is all about work. The magic occurs once in a while, in between two ugly videos...

Most of the videos on that 52 Pick-Up page are sketches and experimentations that I've integrated later in more accomplished works. I tried to create new and different approaches with each video, finding my own "home-made" way of creating visual effects. Here are some videos that never ended up on my Vimeo or anywhere else, but that I am still very fond of.

WEEK 4
La mer électronique---music by Laurie Spiegel

WEEK 26
My own interpretation of BILITIS, A french soft porn directed by David Hamilton in 1977. The soundtrack is from Francis Lai --- It was a treat

WEEK 40
L'entre-Deux 2?


WEEK 43
Extrait de l'infini ---Music by Stellar OM Source.

WEEK 51

Tests for a live projection with Le Révélateur.

CORPORATE SPACES AND LIGHT

Montreal in my cell phone.