Videography: a materialist, intermedia game

**This project is partly supported by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's Research Grant Council (Project No. CityU 11404614) , "Where Else to Look.

In a time when image-making is a ubiquitous activity for almost everyone, I ask my art students what makes their practice different. Between mainstream moving image for a mythicized pop audience and an often alienating, misleading domain of experimental cinema, I critically interpolate through a series of purposeful, philosophical and ethically constructed image-making exercises.
Invoking the idea of objectile and projectile (Deleuze, Bryant, Lai), I propose a videographic practice by which students explore every image, or moving image sequence, as at once raw material and document, capable of evolving as an image event that discloses hidden forms and presences. “Micro narratives” is then the very term with which I supersede plot-based story by description, that is, the flow of perceptual time and the evolving status of a sight-and-sound situation, underlined by an ethical commitment to stretched perception and cognition and refreshed attentiveness, which is the necessary role of art in society.
In this presentation, I discuss a series of videographic tasks that turn the above into open experiences, following the principles of rule-based creativity (working with constraints), highlighting “discovery” over “representation”. The city itself is not only a playground for visual magic, but also a laboratory to maximize technological affordances to generate new experiences and new knowledge of the urban space. Art students are, then, encouraged to be more than just a stake-holder, but rather to be a re-grounder as well in image-making. (Amie L. Thomasson)