Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin: Artifacts
With artists in person

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From Polaroids to AI, digital compression to big-budget Hollywood spectacle, the work of multi-disciplinary California artists Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin look quizzically at imaging technologies and their shaky claims to reality. Making bold leaps between stylistic approaches and historical reference points, the films in this program all share a fascination with the blurred line between human and non-human, representation and abstraction, artifact and apparition. This program will feature the Chicago debut of their newest collaboration Nearest Neighbor (2023, 23 minutes), in which 21st-century birdwatching becomes an exercise in cracked machine-learning. Also featured are Lossless #3, Goodwin and Baron’s data-moshing landmark from 2008; Detour de Force (2014, 29 min), Baron’s archival documentary on parapsychological photographer Ted Serios; and Artifact #1 (2011, 13 min), in which Goodwin transforms the Steve McQueen action classic Bullitt into a fever dream of light and color.

Baron and Goodwin will appear in person to discuss their work.

Films screened:

Nearest Neighbor (Rebecca Baron & Douglas Goodwin, 2023, 23 min, digital)

Lossless #3 (Rebecca Baron & Douglas Goodwin, 2008, 10 min, digital) Courtesy of VDB

Detour de Force (Rebecca Baron, 2014, 29 min, digital) Courtesy of VDB

Artifact #1 (Douglas Goodwin, 2011, 13 min, digital)

TRT: ~75 min

About the artists:

Rebecca Baron is a Los Angeles-based media artist known for her lyrical essay films which explore the construction of history, with a particular interest in still photography and its relationship to the moving image.

Her work has screened widely at international film festivals and media venues including documenta 12, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Toronto Film Festival, London Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty Film Seminar, Viennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her films have received awards at the San Francisco, Black Maria, Montreal, Leipzig, Athens, Onion City, KIN, Sinking Creek and Ann Arbor Film Festivals. She is the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has taught documentary and experimental film at Massachusetts College of Art, Harvard University, and since 2000 at California Institute of the Arts.

Early adopter. Web pioneer. Connoisseur of emerging technologies. Appreciator of systems. Collector of analog devices. Teacher of technology, high and low. Douglas Goodwin is a technologist investigating the mechanisms by which language and other technologies mediate our perception of reality.

Goodwin’s work has shown at many venues including the Toronto International Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, Ambulante, London Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Frankfurt Film Museum, SIGGRAPH, REDCAT, the Orphans Film Symposium, the Courtisane Festival, Eyebeam, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. “Lossless,” a collaboration with Rebeca Baron, was the first digital work to enter the collection of the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

He currently serves as the first Fletcher Jones Foundation Scholar in Computation and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College.

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