SFAQ_issue_sixteen

OM Rider, 2013. 11:39. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
Night Moves, 2012. 6:04. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
Infinite Doors, 2010. 2:04. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
I, Popeye, 2010, 6:05. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
Monster Movie, 2005. 3:55. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
Untitled (Pink Dot), 2007, 5:00. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
Silver, 2006. 11:00. Courtesy Takeshi Murata and Ratio 3, San Francisco.
and 100% mirrored planes. We ended up building everything in the day and shooting
and animating at night. We worked every day without much sleep at the end, but it was
a great experience. There was an immediacy that I like looking back at this one.
Oneohtrix Point Never - Problem Areas
Here we have this great interaction between the still image and your
videos. This film gives us prolonged looks into your highly refined installations
and the narratives found within each. I’d like to ask you some
about your photography later on, but what was the impetus to create
this piece?
I’m a huge fan of Dan’s music, so I jumped at the opportunity to be part of his latest
release. The other artists involved were great, and many were friends. The images I used
were also produced as prints. I had really wanted to release them back on the screen as
well, where they had been made. I like the idea of a still life—a minimally moving music
video—and the song was a perfect fit.
OM Rider
Flipping between a synth-playing werewolf in a desert and an old, stringy
man sitting in a chair silently sipping coffee from a to-go cup, OM Rider
presents a strong story. The werewolf eats a fish and vomits, the man
throws dice and repeatedly lands snake-eyes. The werewolf jumps on
a motorcycle and speeds off into the night, the man stares at a knife
lodged in his table. The werewolf gets high. Then, like some long-take
Dario Argento shot in Suspiria, the camera follows the man up a spiral
staircase with only a hint of red light illuminating the scene. The old man
cuts a banana, hears the werewolf growl, and gets one look at him in the
reflection of his knife before having his head snapped. Slumped over the
table, the army’s bugle cry, “Taps,” begins to play. Between OM Rider
and your photography works in Synthesizers, I feel like you’re treading
a very different path. The elements are present in each—American pop
culture, elements of ‘80s camp and masterpieces, a digital reality created
from our own—but now we have tight narratives and 3D animation
without artifacts or manipulations. How would you describe OM Rider
within your previous pieces? Does it represent any major change for you?
A couple years ago I decided I had to teach myself 3D. It’s allowed me to consider
much more. Even just adding a 3rd dimension, and thinking in terms of sculpture, film
and painting, was a big change. I’m still only beginning to understand the possibilities.
The other reason I’ve been interested in the process is that it’s used everywhere in the
culture. By using it myself, I feel like I can address things more from the inside. OM Rider
is my first video going this way. Inside out.
THE PHOTOGRAPHY
Synthesizers
The photographs of this series are so elegantly constructed that their
fabrication eludes me entirely. The focus on color arrangement and the
materiality of the objects is puzzling in an exciting way—are they porcelain
or digitally crafted? Is a camera even involved? Oddly, it isn’t until a
video from Synthesizers, titled Street Trash, that I am able to convince
myself that these are digital renderings and not physical fabrications;
something in the way a light source warps and briefly moves across a
beer can shows the man behind the curtain. Speaking of, Street Trash is
a sensational video. It is hypnotic. As soon as I lose myself to watching a
yellow highlight wrap around a perfect cone to fade into a purple shadow,
over and over, this concentrated study of geometry and color, my eye
darts back to the lighter, then the Coors Light, and always again to the
VHS of Street Trash, like some memento of ‘80s despair. How have the
films of the ‘80s influenced you?
I’m a huge fan of ‘70s and ‘80s movies. Your earlier reference to Argento was right
on, too. And the ‘80s were the Renaissance of shlocky trash horror. They were lawless,
lowbrow and cartoonish, and often reflected one human nature perfectly without
talking down to the viewer. One of my latest interests has been re-examining these in
my own life, and in a different era. I try to avoid nostalgia, but who knows.
I feel like your intentionality with photography is altogether different
from that of your films. There is a distinct layering of symbols that can
be almost systematically connected to varying histories. Objects link to
each other tightly both spatially and ideologically to create a concentrated
narrative. How does the still differ from film in potentiality for
you?
The narrative of a still image can be less rigid than in moving images. I like that still
images can leave the flow of the narrative up to the view. In linear film, you are always
guiding the viewer. The smaller area of the movie screen, or lower resolution, makes
visual detail much more difficult. So with the still life, I wanted to concentrate on detail
and non-linear, non-paced narrative. I found and modeled all kinds of objects that had
connections for me, then composed them all at once in several different spaces.
How do you envision the future of digital art? For me it feels limitless, as
if artists have just opened Pandora’s Box, even though we are decades
in now. Do you think you would be creating work if you had to operate
outside of the digital realm?
I think the “digital” distinction in terms of production is almost gone. In many fields—
photography, film, and print especially—it’s getting nearly impossible to produce work
non-digitally. And, obviously, it is almost impossible to escape culturally. It does feel
limitless, for better or worse!