HARD TIMES / SCRABBLE VALUE : A PLAY IN 2 PARTS 2010 3-Channel Digital Video

3 Channel Video / 6 Channel Sound

Hard Times / Scrabble Value: A Play in 2 Parts is an economic and textual analysis of the book “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens. By decoding the book via different filters: Scrabble letter/number use values and noun pictorial representations, factual readings of the source material become “relatively” suggestive, posing a dialectical mode of reasoning and conversational word play.

The 3-channel video is the duration of the audio book equivalent: 4 hours 24 minutes

Design and Animation: Jennifer Schmidt
Audio: Jennifer Schmidt

SMALL POX POLKA DOTS 2009 Digital Video Animation

Small Pox Polka Dots is an animated wallpaper that plays with notions of abstraction and innocuousness within an infectious frenzy of patterned information.

Offset Printed Template, Drawing and Animation: Jennifer Schmidt

READERS DIGEST 2007-08 Digital Video

Readers Digest features video footage of thousands of magazine pages becoming digested through analog video processing into a painterly scape of synthesized information-- pulling out graphics, colors and words indeterminately to form new compositions of popular information. The pages are animated sequentially to allow the graphics of the magazine pages to be a determinate of the flow and reception of content. The video footage was processed at the Experimental Television Center using equipment built by Nam June Paik, David Jones, and Dan Sandin. Sound occasionally comes in and out, generated by the machines.

Photography and Animation: Jennifer Schmidt
Analog Processing: Colin Asquith and Jennifer Schmidt

PSYCHEDELIC SWATCH 2007 Digital Video 2:06min

While at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in Greensboro, NC, I wandered through a collection of fabric patterns-- swatches of material on furniture, dolls, clothes, bags, sheets and curtains-- folded on shelves and rolled along the walls. The collection becoming in essence something else: a stylistic portrait of a particular genre, defined by the visual patterns present (their designs and colors spanning 1960-1987).

Psychedelic Swatch is a play on the idea of psychedelia and the generalized notion of what it represents.

By layering 15 audio recordings that were recorded within Elsewhere, I was able to respond to the visuals of psychedelia within the video-- producing a stereo mix that's stylistically acid rock. Dense with tracks, the audio creates a hypnotic groove of feedback.

Photography and Animation: Jennifer Schmidt
Audio: Jennifer Schmidt

ELSEWHERE 2007 Digital Video 0:38sec

Greetings from Elsewhere: as seen and experienced within one space and one time. A collective illustration of transitory objects and images framed by media and popular belief. (printed: labels, packaging, records, paintings, drawings, and photographs; some crafts)

Photography and Animation: Jennifer Schmidt

TULIPOMANIA / EVERQUEST 2007 3-Channel Digital Video 8:00min

“Tulipomania / EverQuest” explores how we impart value to ephemeral things by juxtaposing the sensations of 17th century Tulipomania and the spirit of the contemporary videogame EverQuest, within a graphically animated video.

3 videos compose the project, "Turk Tulipo", "PA-Dutch Tulipo", and "Neth Tulipo", which portray independent scavenger hunts—tracing the presence and symbolism of the tulip motif within three distinct locations and cultures. Synched in timing and playback: when all three videos display the same animated tulip sequence, a 3-of-a-kind / jackpot "game response" is activated, presenting tulip flowers blowing in the breeze to bombastic music.

The video involves a visual interweaving of images collected and photographed on location in the Netherlands, Turkey, and Pennsylvania, rendered graphics of the tulip as icon, and recorded footage of the actual flower. The still images and time-based footage compose an experimental, non-narrative sequence within a game interface similar to a slot machine, utilizing animation, sound and montage to create a synchronized 3- channel video installation.

Audio, Video, and Adventure: Jennifer Schmidt

i firefly 2007 Digital Video 4:35min

Videography: Jennifer Schmidt

HAWAIIAN SUNSET 2006 Digital Video (excerpt) 31:00min

A hawaiian car seat "sets with the sun" during an afternoon drive. No special effects or transitions.

The printed image of a hawaiian sunset on the fabric of a car seat appears to "set with the sun", creating a temporal atmosphere of terra incognita, as light is reflected on its surface. (The video is to be projected)

Driving and Videography: Jennifer Schmidt

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN 2006 Digital Video (excerpt) 48:00min

Videography: Jennifer Schmidt

HYMN 2006 Digital Video 3:00min

With Hymn the printer as object becomes a theater for humanistic projection. Information is transcribed and translated through the device to differentiate a printed image of two people sitting in a pew, accompanied by a phonetic score of its own making—an operatic hymn of hums, bleeps, and drones, which mediate and pronounce the "event of reproduction" an existential act of prayer and insistence.

Videography: Jennifer Schmidt

QPON 2006 Digital Video 2:25min

Once upon a time... an acoustic clipping, of scissors snipping, their way along a coupon dash.

Designs: Jennifer Schmidt
Animation and Videography: Jennifer Schmidt
Audio by Jennifer Schmidt

WATERLOGGED 2005 Digital Video 3:00min

Channeling the route by which content follows, Waterlogged is the interception of a sequence of vignettes, transmitted between source and a receiver. Graphic impressionism establishes meaning through a loose symbolic and linguistic connection with other frames and scenes. Flicking channels on and off, a current flows, and resistors a statically charged log of saturated emot(ion) plus icon.

"If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Paper-Cut Designs: Jennifer Schmidt
Animation and Videography: Jennifer Schmidt
Audio by L.Contra

LETTERS IN A COMA 2004 Digital Video 5:25min > Project Notes

An empathetic response to trauma, Letters in a Coma is a video animation of solitary tic tac toe drawings, played by Jennifer Schmidt while experiencing a loved one in a coma. Through the process of playing the child-like game over and over and making simple decisions framed by a known outcome, the artist attempts to transfer and translate personal feelings of loss and remission onto a projected medium using graphic symbolism as a means to aesthetically and conceptually reference the color coded computer interface of an Intensive Care Unit vital signs monitor.

The x's and o's, lined with pink and yellow highlighter, shift and fade to the rhythm of a respirator. Like a sampler stitch, they methodically record sentiments and thoughts with care-- on a white sheet, while two folk motif birds look-on as fixed, unmoving observers.

Solitaire Tic Tac Toe: played and highlighted by Jennifer Schmidt
Video Animation of Tic Tac Toe Drawings: Jennifer Schmidt
Audio by L.Contra
For Mandy

SCAN-TRON 2003 Digital Video 1:30min

Referencing the recording and reading of responses embedded within a series of fabricated standardized test sheets, the techno pop graphics of Scan-Tron become mentally charged with viable questions and patterns of decision-making. During the months of November, December, and January 2003, Jennifer Schmidt responded to a series of test forms-- filling in answers with a #2 pencil-- according to a given set of rules and unknown objectives.

Scantron Tests: designed and offset printed by Jennifer Schmidt
Video Animation of Scantron Tests: Jennifer Schmidt
Sound co-produced by L.Contra

WHAT'S IN A NAME? 2001 Digital Video 36sec advertisement

Working in response to commercial advertising and the prevalent use of logos, trademarks, and other recognizable symbols to define a particular product, service or identity, What’s in a Name? addresses the ambiguous nature of sir names, their history, and role as personal branding.

Questions of authorship and identity are evoked in the singing and recollection of the American folk song / jingle "John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt"--- a song of unknown provenance and meaning, often sung by children during play, singularly and in rounds.....the lyrics linger in the viewer’s audible memory, to be repeated silently or aloud— as an echo of a learned tradition, promoted in the present day.

Sound co-produced by L.Contra

SPANGLED 2001 Digital Video 15min

SPANGLED: the bright and glittery ornament references current broadcast news and American history. The footage was recorded on the 4th of July. I was very interested in drawing attention to the event itself- the tradition of the firework display. By juxtaposing the date of the war of 1812 with recent footage, I am linking the present with the "Star Spangled Banner" of the past.

WAVE POOL 2001 Digital Video 2:33min

Durational Drawing, Installation, and Digital Video: Installation of repeat wave drawings on blue post-it notes within an architectural space. The drawings become animated and move with the wind of oscillating fans- in an ephemeral environment, where the location and context is unknown and temperamental.

Videography by Jordan Wolfson