This traveling festival of digital works runs Friday, December 3, through Sunday, December 5, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago; tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. For more information call 312-397-4010; a full schedule is online at www.resfest.com.
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Videos That Rock, an 85-minute program of 23 works, includes many strong music videos. The low-tech animated blob humans in Hannes Hayha’s I Love Death (music by Lodger) are appropriate to this charmingly simple parable of birth, marriage, and death. The surreal paintings of Hieronymus Bosch are animated into a compelling vision of hell in Syd Garon and Eric Henry’s Spokes on the Wheel of Torment (music by Buckethead), and in Brett Simon’s Belly Polar Bear’s song about a man giving up on life is illustrated by images of a face superimposed on abstract lines and a wet pane of glass. Kuntzel & Deygas’s Come Home Billy Bird uses animation, rapid cutting, and split-screen effects to convey the loss of autonomy in today’s air-travel system, accompanied by a Divine Comedy song about an international business traveler. (Sun 12/5, 3 PM)
The seven videos in Shorts #3 (84 min.) include portraits of fascinating eccentrics. Cheryl Dunn’s Bicycle Gangs of New York depicts, among others, members of Black Label, who build and ride tall bikes, the group Manhattan Rickshaw, and a unicyclist moving along busy streets, but the irritating, repetitive techno sound track blurs the distinctions between them. The clueless narcissist in Brandon Dickerson’s quietly insightful Mel Howard: Professional Music Video Actor (2003) gripes that a camera passed him and focused on another actor (with a far more interesting face), then talks about his “legacy.” (Sun 12/5, 5 PM)
