black box a space for new media Takeshi Murata

akeshi Murata (b. Chicago, Illinois, 1974; lives One of the most memorable moments in Rambo, Tand works in Saugerties, New York) takes First Blood, 1982, is when Sylvester Stallone “found-object” images from feature films and emerges from his perch, camouflaged within digitally re-works and re-joins them, weaving a mud bank to become a pumped-up fighting them into his own throbbing cinematic tapes- machine. In several sequences in Untitled (Pink tries. Each short hallucinogenic film involves Dot), 2006, Murata manipulates the hero, the thousands of individually rendered alterations action really, from this and other scenes to and can take up to a year to complete. The different dramatic effect. The pink dot throbs effect is like visual quicksand—as viewers sink like the viewer’s pulse. Set against different in deeper and deeper but cannot recall what backdrops, the spot seems to widen like the visual shifts led from one to the next. Murata’s viewer’s incredulous eye beholding an action pieces explore the array of expressive possi- film. Whatever begins as an on-screen conflict bilities in this specialized manner of work that from the movie, in the artist’s hands is quickly might be called “electronic painting.” deconstructed into cascades of colors that spill, flow, and dissolve into mesmerizing While the title for Cone Eater, 2004, brings to abstractions. Uzi gives way to ooze. mind the retinal photoreceptors called cones that may determine the eye’s sensitivity to Murata’s works coincide with an ironic color and level of visual acuity, the artist development in the evolution of filmmaking. confides a dual reference: “Growing up we lived In early cinematic devices, hand-cranked near a buffalo sanctuary and ice cream stand. motion allowed figures to move across a Tourists were always pulling up and eating ice flowing background. This scheme was also cream that melted while they watched—we characteristic of early cartoons, in which hand- call them the ‘cone-eatas.’” The film begins drawn aspects were accentuated. Advances with a split second of dimensionless black in camera and projection technology moved space. A stylized face emerges reminiscent of mainstream cinema toward the “real” rather the symmetry of ancient heraldry, masks and than the “trick” film associated with obviously totems depicting gods and demons, and icons hand-wrought techniques. For decades, from videogames. The center of the imagery Hollywood relegated animation—with a few holds until the soundtrack signals a burst into notable exceptions in which it was mixed a morphing mosaic, described by film archivist with live-action, such as Gene Kelly’s Anchors Andrew Lampert as, “A psychedelic digi-death Aweigh, 1945, and Invitation to the Dance, 1956, Rorschach test of melting pixels.” and director Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988—to kids’ fare until digital For Monster Movie, 2005, the artist sampled technologies made hand-worked imagery once Caveman, a 1981 B-movie featuring Ringo Starr. again key to animated features as well as Its playful nod toward evolution makes it an live-action filmmaking. Murata’sMonster might apt metaphor for Murata’s approach, but don’t be considered his “missing link” between the look for Ringo between the pixels. What drew antiquated scuffle between figure and ground the artist’s attention was the wonderfully in the first cartoons and the infinite visual cheesy yeti. Its submersion and emersion of- permutations available to filmmakers today. fer occasions for the artist to shift in and out Kelly Gordon, Associate Curator of abstraction. When Caveman was released, theatre-goers received glossaries for decipher- To download a free Podcast between exhibition ing the made up prehistoric terms. Murata also curator Kelly Gordon and the artist, please visit uses the film as a departure point to invent his www.hirshhorn.si.edu. own—in this case pictorial—vocabulary.

Support for the Black Box program is provided in part by Lawrence Cohen/Ringler Associates.