Self Improvement
Clint Enns - 2010, 2:43, found footage/after effects, Winnipeg, Canada
A self help video that rests somewhere between the realms of code hacking, archaic design and spiritual awakening.
Clint Enns is a video artist and filmmaker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. His work has shown both nationally and internationally at festivals, alternative spaces and mircocinemas. He has recently completed a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Manitoba, and will continue his studies in cinema and media at York University.
Questions & Answers
ATA: Where did you find your materials (videos and voiceover/sountrack)?
CE: All of the material for this video was found and manipulated. The source material for the images was an S-Plus VHS. S-Plus is statistical analysis software. I transferred the VHS and re-worked the images with After Effects help from Winnipeg animator Leslie Supnet. The soundtrack was originally from a religious sermon. I manipulated the voice in order to make it deliberately esoteric. Most of the lines in the video are created by blending and fusing two or three separate lines of dialogue from the original source.
ATA: Do you have any idea what the excellent-looking graph produced by the laser printer could be plotting?
CE: I can only conjecture. I imagine it to be plotting out data that provides information that "by its very existence - changes every about the world in which we live!"
ATA: As you are both a video artist and a credentialed mathematician, I'm curious about your thoughts on the relationship between math and what I can best describe as "pseudospirituality". What I'm thinking about is evident in both the juxtaposition of old technologies and self-help-guruspeak in Self Improvement and elsewhere in your work, particularly in your musings on glitches.
CE: This video is part of a series of 5 that ultimately deal with our spiritual void and what we attempt to fill this void with. Although each of the videos are intentionally convoluted and esoteric, these meta-themes should be easily recognizable. Self Improvement deals with how we interact with technology and with our attempt to feel the void by interacting with this technology. The next film in the series is called Connecting With Nature and it demonstrates an attempt to become one with nature through technology and so on. All of these videos lie somewhere within the realms of infomercial, guide to spiritual enlightenment, cosmic speculation and archaic design.
Q&A by Liz Wing
