Brian Murphy Gallery Visit

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Robert Mc Coy

Professor Jason

Digital Foundations

10 December 2016

Brian Murphy Gallery Write Up

Brian Murphy is known as a media artist who works specifically on film, video, and books. His works deal with mixing digital media and reality, and how they connect with each other. The difference with this gallery show is that he was experimenting with frame by frame GIFs. Also at this gallery he showed off three of his big known pieces, which are about wrestling and how the fighters fight each other.

One of the many interesting works that Brian Murphy displayed at the gallery was called Kingographophone. This interactive composition is about putting on a pair of headphones and flipping through a book displayed with the music. What it seems like the interactive work does is that it gives people an understanding of syncing sounds; while giving people an opportunity to play with the art it-self unlike other galleries. Brian Murphy was interested with the idea of an interactive gallery, by messing with an apparatus and assembling a moving picture in our head with using said apparatus.

Murphy was inspired by Ken Jacobs sound sync to film, but drastically slowed down for his composition. Knowing how slow the works are by comparison he turned six seconds of film into twelve minutes of footage. Even though the works are long he said that, he may work on it for a week and then trash it; or he would need to start over and over till he would get what he

 

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desired. He was also able to control some videos using an electromagnet to create a voltage controlled video effect.

The final interesting aspect of Brian’s gallery is the ways he could manipulate his images for his works. One of the ways he took his DNA and manipulated the sound with his DNA. After he manipulated his sound with his DNA he sequenced the audio and made music from those sounds. Another interesting way he made his compositions is that manipulated the images frame by frame until he got what he desired for his videos. Also with his flipbook he made the composition more dynamic by adding a soundtrack with the flipbook to give it a specific tone when flipped through.

Brian Murphy’s gallery was not just about digital media, but it was about how many forms of manipulation can influence one’s own compositions. As seen from his works, there are many types of manipulation which can be changed with physical or digital means. Whether it is an electro magnet or using his own DNA sequence to aid in the development of his works.