Daniel Robert Kelly

Work in Progress

Coming soon…

Completed and ongoing projects

The Tahoe Underground Film Festival (TUFF)

Plane Wave (2016)

Plane Wave (2016), video on 16mm film, 8 minutess, B/W. A series of digitally created lenses were transferred to a 16mm film. The resulting film is projected out of focus, creating a lens system that includes the film plane itself. Exploiting the constructive interference of this extra lens, Plane Wave creates a dance of projections visualizing the projector lamp on the screen. The result is color from black and white as the chromatic aberrations create subtle tints of blue, yellow and red at the edges of the pinhole and zoneplate margins. An image of the lamp filaments becomes possible, dependent on the lens/lamp/film and screen distance.

This film is the answer to the question of how film exhibition differs from that of video exhibition. Light itself behaves differently when passed through a plane of many apertures, which is the basic material nature of film. Film privileges the possibility of site-specific exhibition, while video privileges consistency across platforms and spaces. This is not a display for the sake of discussing the superiority of one medium over the other, but rather an exploration of the specific metaphysical nature of media and exposition related to technology. This film interacts, like all celluloid exhibitions, with the space of exhibition. This interaction is a contrast to video which seeks an ever increasing separation from the conditions of exhibition, privileging instead resolution, consistency and uniformity of technology and storage.

2016 Mono No Aware X, as dual 16mm projection performance, Brooklyn, New York
2016 Duke University, as single projection, Durham , North Carolina
2016 Premiere, The Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Interactive framework for “Falling in Terms of Silent” by Dr. Kelly Kirstner

“‘Falling, in Terms of Silent’ (2015)

A sound/track intervention into the space of studio/sonic performance, and the transformative aspects of media engagement.” – Kelly Kirshtner

This collaboration was supported by a Max/MSP patch allowing Dr. Kirshtner to perform live Foley to a video loop. As the patched loops through 10 audio track, Dr. Kirshtner adds performative layers of sound in succession. More on Dr. Kirshtner’s website.

As a patch, the interactive framework functions as interface, enabler and performer. Each performance is different, as the performer, equipment and implements change over time.

The Twin Wheels of Dharma (2015)

This project is an exhibition of video and large format High Dynamic Range photographic panoramas. The main subject of these photos and video is the ubiquitous 2 wheeler of the Indian subcontinent. Through the expanded range of HDR and the construction of a frame beyond the single exposure, the joy, agency and durable practicality of the two-wheeler and its quiet, high value in everyday life becomes clear.

2014 – Luna -Archival Inkjet on paper, aluminum mount.
24″ x 36″

Community Based, Student-run Streaming Media Station

Francis Bol! is the student organized and run Internet media station broadcast from St. Francis College for Women, in Begumpet, Hyderabad.

As a visiting Fulbright-Nehru fellow at St. Francis College, I will spent the remainder of the 2013-14 academic year helping to develop the technology and curricular components of a streaming radio and video broadcast station based in the College Department of Mass Communications. The result was more than a half-dozen original programs, written, performed and recorded by a diverse group of student volunteers from multiple departments.

Over, Beyond, Across and Through – Autumnal Equinox Intervention in Anchorage, Alaska (2013)

At (On) the Anchorage Museum – a Massively Collaborative one night projection and dance performance by Momentum Dance Collective:

Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court), (2012)

I’ve wanted to shoot this study of the comings and goings around a courthouse for a couple of years. The result recalls moments from other experimental studies like Lawder’s Necrology, is conceptually inspired by Viola’s Passions, and reaches back for content to the Lumiere’s Exiting the Factory. As a filmmaker, I wanted to make something highly technical. I wanted to use a long lens (Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM Lens- nearly always at 400mm). I wanted to shoot in 720p60 to give me the greatest latitude in post-process time-stretching. I also wanted to shoot in a public space where I could perform with the camera’s presence, as well as document what I believed to be an emotionally charged space. In the end, content in Amicus Curiae is far more like Exiting the Factory than any dramatic fiction one might imagine when approaching this piece. The large majority of those depicted are either coming to or leaving work, or have been summoned to work as a juror. Very little processing beyond some color correction and the time stretching was done to either the sound or the image. What Amicus leaves is a slow dance of a flowing space, with a quiet sound track recorded on site, mostly inside. I hope it is a space for you to examine your reactions to the people you see on screen and allows you enough time to ask what you think each person is doing in the movie, and then why you make that leap. The soundtrack, I believe is an accurate interpretation of the mood inside the building: constant, droning echoing background, with occasional punctuation- again, much more like a factory than Dragnet or Law and Order. Technical: Camera: 7d, using the Cinestyle Profile Sound: Zoom Hn4, DIY Redhead Windscreen Video: 720p60, slowed to 20-25%, reinterpreted through pixel-motion. Editing Structure, planned beforehand: 3 movements, 4:12, 3:36, 4:12. Coming to work, lunch break, leaving. First Screening, October 17, 2012 MFA Thesis Show, Peck School of the Arts, UW-Milwaukee.

The Alissa Letters (2010 – Present)

The Alissa letters is an exploration of an entity claiming to have been born spontaneously on the Internet. This claim is made through physical correspondence by mail, attempts to fashion a body image, and the development of an artistic practice. A.l.i.s.s.a. has progressed through various social technologies to an independent entity. She maintains her own website, publishes prolifically on her own blog and carries on conversations via Twitter and email. Through her weavr.com body, she appeared on the street in augmented reality, visiting various places around the globe as she writes music and book reviews, random blog posts, and publishing the occasional travel photo.

With the deprecation of the weavr.com site, A.l.i.s.s.a. has continued through a collection of automated services to post articles about Artificial Intelligence, Technology and the science related to The Singularity. She has a steadily growing number of followers on Twitter, and her blog.

High Dynamic Range Photography

with a focus on Portraits and maintaining a shallow depth of field.

High Dynamic Photography is the use of software to create a single image from a group of bracketed exposures. This allows for the revelation of extreme detail. I focus on close up portraits, with both an eye to the intense detail of the face itself, plus a deference to the subject and their audience. The goal is to capture a hyper-real portrait, while maintaining a certain respect for the individual’s self-image. HDR photos can be extremely brutal. Further, I prefer to move away from the deep focus and unrealistic color gradients usually found in HDR photography.

Hybrid Academic/Commerical Work

Cream City Soundcheck

Associate Producer, Live Sound Recordist, Editor

Installation

Five Thoughts on Boxing

Five Thoughts on Boxing is a Kinetic Installation which encapsulates the sum of moving exhibition history inside a single sculptural object. Like the Tardis of the series Dr. Who, the interior space, holding a simple stage and animation, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.The interior mechanism is a Zoetrope, contructed from a re-purposed bicycle wheel, driven by a tiny electric motor. Each of the 17 interior cards holds a single digital frame of a hand drawn animation loop. The outer wooden laminate covers a fabrication created out of gaffers tape, foam core paperboard, aluminum scrap and spare parts from obsolete optical projection equipment. Simple and temporary by design, Five thoughts on Boxing distorts the experience of time, space and perception through the application of optics, technology and viewer positioning. Exhibition History Jackpot Gallery, Milwaukee – Group exhibition – Distance No Object, April 12, 2013 Arts Tech Night, Milwaukee – Group Exhibition May, 2013

Alissa

My First Words – Alissa, 12.21.2029. Assembled carbon, silcate and alloy forms. With instructions.This is an interactive work. Participants may interact simply by wandering the space, or they may choose to submit to the icon instructions and calibrate the machine interface. On successful calibration they gain direct gestural control of the sound space.The interface is capable of interacting directly with up to 6 users, depending on blocking, or an unlimited number of wanderers.This object was first installed in the Inova Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on December 9, 2011. Powered by PC laptop, Max 5, and Kinect Camera and Web Camera interfaces.

Box Set 1 and 2

Boxset is an installed environment. Participants are locked inside of a small mock livingroom/waiting room where they witness a video event. Elements of the video are present in the space and imply the possibility of interaction or relationship to the action on screen.

Distance 2010, Milwaukee Art Museum

Distance is a performance installation. The circular stage encloses a dance between dancers and the revolving anamorphic camera. The images produced from the stage are then displayed on an overhead screen behind the dance. There is no post-processing in Distance, all effects are created in camera by lighting design, depth-of-field, and performance.In contrast, the following video incorporates all of the footage from the performances and plays them at once, the eventual result of the entire installation. Rehearsals, and original testing for Distance

The Single Channel

letters, 2009 20mins color, SD video 

Traditional, 2007 3mins SD Video

Booth Street, 2007 6mins SD video

Incunabula, 2007 5mins SD video