Houyhnhnms.tv News

- Who is eddie d?
a video artist (or media artist if you like). I make short tapes and installations. The tapes have a musical background and I like to de- and re-construct text and language.
I use mostly ‘found’ (better term would be ’searched’) footage from television and movies. Editing is my main tool and I love doing it. I like to work on the frame level of the footage en rebuild from there. For me video is animation.
My installations are more about objects and single gestures. I use a very basic form of interactivity (buttons, motion detectors) to prevent a work from blaring on all the time (when sound is used) and also to let the work unfold itself only then, when someone is watching it or in its proximity.
I love making my work but since I am pretty lazy I don’t make many works in a year.
Being an artist is the best way of keeping my independence, which is very important to me.

- What are your projects?
At the moment I am searching and collecting material for installations. I want to make some more still live inspired works (see my website for examples) and am looking at a lot of movies, old tv series and strange infomercials for footage. This means downloading and going to the library a lot.
This process also gave me ideas and material for a new video so this period is more about contemplating and writing then actually making stuff.
But I also found material for a ‘what is Houyhnhnms” video and am collecting more to make it soon. I like to do this kind of ‘quick and dirty’ stuff every now and then, since I usually work for months on a video that could be as short as 50 seconds. (I have a rule that no art video should be longer then the average Ramones song, which is about 3 min, unless you have a very good reason)

- What kind of things inspire you?
I was a ‘first-wave punk’ in 1977 and still love the Do It Yourself mentality that arose in that time. Music is a big inspiration, bands from that era like the Fall and The Ramones can still get me up to want to make work, but also bands like Eels or the Hives, people like David Thomas (from Pere Ubu) and experimental music and -sound stuff. Music (and sound) in general probably.
And of course the world around me inspires me, as seen on tv or in real live.

- What’s the future of audiovisual art?
I have absolutely no idea. But I do think that with all the user-generated crap around, the need for a good artist is as great as ever.
The internet does give a good way of presenting work to a wider audience all over the world, the problem being of course that they still have to find it.

- What’s houyhnhnms.tv for you?
It is a good way to help that interested audience find the good stuff.
I want to present my work to as many people as possible. This is a problem for the mainstream art world because they are more interested in exclusivity; that makes more money.
Houyhnhnms is a way to present good (I also mean technically) quality video art and experimental movies and bypass traditional tv and art scenes.
I am not to keen on the fact that people can vote because you can see on sites like Youtube that the average highest vote is not the best stuff, but I can see that it can give a notion of community and make people feel more connected to the site.
I am not much of a social community person (I am an artist and as ego-centric as an artist can get I guess) but it looks like this is growing into a good artist and art-interested community and since I find myself getting involved, for me something must be right around here.

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eddie d
for all your media art
www.eddied.nu
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