Abstract
This chapter examines some of the history and theory regarding funding of digital video art and experimental filmmaking. It aims at discerning changes in practices and definitions driven by the current pervasion of digital technologies. I argue that some of the aesthetic styles and content formats of digital video art and experimental film have been co-opted both by “mainstream ” Hollywood cinema and by independent and do-it-yourself (DIY) video culture . I shall discuss that this process of technology-driven “mainstreaming” not only redefines the culture of digital video art and experimental filmmaking but also opens up new opportunities for the artist and, importantly, challenges the existing funding ecosystem for digital video art and experimental filmmaking. Relying on interviews with contemporary filmmakers, correspondence with funders, and literature on the topic of funding in digital video art and experimental filmmaking in the United States, the chapter explores that public funding, in the US context, requires digital video art and experimental film artists to work with small budgets, piecemeal funding from local and private sources and support from academia.
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Notes
- 1.
Kathryn Ramey (2016), of the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College, in her recent book on experimental filmmaking, writes in her introduction that she includes interviews with people who make “stuff (we might call it art, or experimental film, or digital-based communicative acts or (…) you get the idea)” thus highlighting the difficulty in defining the borders of this art form. The artists of this form I will refer to as “makers of digital video art and experimental film” as categorizing them as either “artists” or “filmmakers” alone is limiting to the arena in which they work and the boundaries they cross.
- 2.
Selfies are pictures of oneself that are taken usually with a smartphone and shared via social media. I use this term as an anachronism also to refer to self-referential films characteristic of experimental and avant-garde film. Loop is a short set of images and sounds that plays over and over. Multiple-screen involves having more than one set of images and narratives on the same screen or one picture across multiple screens. Hybrid cinema is the combination of moving images, sound, graphics and text together on the screen.
- 3.
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) was created in the late 1980s and became popular as a small file size that allowed movement and was cross-browser compatible. During the 1990s, GIFs became popular as a way to add moving imagery to web pages without high bandwidth needs (Baraniuk, 2013).
- 4.
Green-screen technique is the practice of recording images of an actor on a green or monochrome background which is later replaced in editing with either animated or real images that were not there at the time of recording. Rotoscoping is the painting over of live-action images to make animation.
- 5.
Keelayjams video “Funeral” provides a good example of avant-garde style in Vine: https://vine.co/v/hzbPF55wWgr
- 6.
The term media arts generally refers to time-based art works that involve recording visuals and sound and was used with the advent of video, when a broader term was needed for moving image art works that did not necessarily involve film.
- 7.
See National Endowment for the Arts, particularly ch. 6 on Culture Wars (pp. 89–110).
- 8.
Karen Helmerson, program director of the NYSCA Electronic Media, Film and Visual Art group, kindly accessed these documents.
- 9.
Zach Braff—US$3,105,473 from 46,520 backers in 2013 for Wish I Were Here; Charlie Kauffman—US$406,237 from 5770 backers in 2012 for Anomolisa, Spike Lee—US$1,418,910 from 6421 backers, in 2013 for The Newest, Hottest Spike Lee Joint (eventually Da Sweet Blood of Jesus).
- 10.
Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren’s “The Private Life of a Cat,” 1944. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_iFk1eU1B0. A famous early art/experimental film that is essentially a cat video.
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Daly, K.M. (2018). “Avant-Garde Film” Goes Digital Video: How Does the United States Fund Digital Video Art and Experimental Filmmaking?. In: Murschetz, P., Teichmann, R., Karmasin, M. (eds) Handbook of State Aid for Film. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71716-6_29
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