Self Portrait of Paul DeMarinis 2003 is an installation in 2 parts; a transmitter and a receiver. The transmit side consists of a low resolution image stored in computer memory feeding an audio speaker. The image is encoded into a sequence of voice tones. A low pitched note represents a black pixel and a high pitched note represents a white pixel with tones between representing gray levels between black and white. As these tones (or pixels) are emitted from the speaker they are picked up by the microphone (or receiver) and decoded into a gray level and displayed as the next pixel on a screen. This transmit/receive process is based on sound and thus noise in the room can cause distortion in the image. It takes about 90 seconds for the complete image to be transmitted and displayed and then the cycle starts over again. Both the image and the voice are Paul DeMarinis’.

Transforming, distorting, re-encoding, clarifying… streams of information are a way of describing Paul DeMarinis’ work and in seeing his work from this perspective I have been quite inspired by it, as much of my own work is in a similar vein. This work is a small homage to Paul. In particular for this work I was looking at encoding an image into a sequence of sounds such that the process of encoding and retrieval would involve human scale methods(2 pixels per second instead of say 1,000 or 1,000,000 pixels per second) and environments so that that people in the vicinity would be aware of their relationship to the distortion of the process by being noise in system.

Director:   Jim Campbell  (their other films)
Producer:	Genre:  Experimental
Country:  USA	Copyright Year:  2003
Original Format:	Color Type:
Sound Type:	Length:  00:02:30
Original Language:	Subtitle Language:
Label:   Aspect Magazine
Other Info: COMMENTATOR BIOGRAPHY: Marisa S. Olson is an artist, critic, and curator. Her site-specific installations have been seen in various North American and European cities, and her essays on contemporary art and visual culture have appeared in Flash Art, Art on Paper, Afterimage, Wired, Mute, Artweek, Surface, Planet, Rhizome, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. As Associate Director of SF Camerawork, Marisa curates exhibitions and edits Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts. She is also adjunct curator for Zero:One and has previously worked on programs at the ICA, London; the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Walker Art Center; the American Film Institute (AFI); the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in San Diego; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; and SFMOMA, where she serves on the media arts advisory board, and is co-founder/editor in chief of the zine, SMAC!. Marisa has been a visiting scholar or artist in residence at the University of London/Goldsmiths College, the Smithsonian Institute, Northwestern University, the New School, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Technical University-Dresden.

This film has never been screened

Microcinema Interview/Article:

Compilations containing this film
	Commercial DVD Aspect - The Chronicle of New Media, Volume III (MC-266) The Artist as Content	2004	Available from the Microcinema DVD Store