A photographic imagination

Video Project Environments
Diorio, Ron

Ron Diorio
New York based media artist

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biography

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Interview: 10 questions

1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background

I was born and raised in NYC (Manhattan). I am self taught film maker and photographer.

2. When, how and why started you filming?

In 2003 I started a “digital storytelling project” that quickly turned in a photo-based contemporary art project culminating in 2008 with two solo exhibitions at the Peter Hay Halpert Gallery in New York. In the summer of 2008 prior to the second exhibition I decided I to go back to finish what I started in 2003. I was able to produce 18 short (1-5 minute) pieces during late summer 2008 through spring 2009.

3. What kind of subjects have your films?

What I have been able to explore so far war, money, sex, art and the general unsettled worlds that my mind wonders to.

4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?

I see these films as experimental documentary and they develop in an organic way.

5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.

A few low-fi video/slide show editing programs plus Audacity for audio capture and edit. An assortment of capture devices PDAs, mobile phones, point and shoot still and video cameras.

6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general
and you personally?

I think mew media is the most interesting part: the ability to produce and distribute at will and being able to develop a method of expressing oneself in a very public way. Engaging even a small audience over time with a body of work allows for intimacy and understanding that traditional outlets - i.e. festivals, screenings, TV - can’t scale to.

7. How do you finance your films?

Self-financed through the sale of my art work

8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?

I work individually however that is more from convenience at this point in time.

9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?

Albums like Nebraska (Springsteen) , Street Hassle (Lou Reed), John Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy, Bugs Bunny, Fellini, Pasolini, Scorsese and Chris Marker

10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?

I am currently preparing for a new project which I plan to begin in September called “One thousand minutes” which will act as a notebook/sketchbook, assembling and re-assembling what I hope to be hundreds of short pieces about the battle to deconstruct America under Obama.

Can works of yours viewed online besides on VideoChannel? Where?

RECENT VIDEO

2009

A film inside your head (2009 Silent) 01:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGWw4wvokJo

New Beginnings (2009) 01:29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylH3pVdXgk4

Embarkation (2009) 02:36
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxiz0q38CU

A winter wind (2009) 03:02
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFuCjcJz24M

2008

Nightlight (2008) 01:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WAyF6rZQKQ

No fanfare (2008) 01:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQTZX-yfMNw

An Amercian Tragedy #490 (2008) 01:20
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2914215623

A season of wants (2008) 02:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAcLyuA8Y2Q

Nervous thinking (2008) 05:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cood8hmo7Dc

A penny candy (2008) 01:25
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbu_9KLxR1c

Some bad news (2008) 01:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qussjPzvpP0

Pay back (2008) 01:31
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_HZB8k9pXs

Before (2008) 00:32
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2727337291

Hospice (2008) 01:30
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2745987135

No strings attached (2008) 01:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7LhnNp3LNY

What I did during the war Part 1: Fear (2008) 01:06
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2410592992

What I did during the war Part 2: Greed (2008) 01:30
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2483109676/

What I did during the war Part 3: Sex (2008) 01:21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j4AY8bC4CI

What I did during the war Part 4: Ragazzi di vita (2008) 01:27
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av_producer/2641215137

Links & resources

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
http://www.phhfineart.com/ron_diorio.html

Photography, Spring 2008: Gregory Crewdson to Ron Diorio
http://www.haberarts.com/crewdson.htm

New Artist of the Week Series #5, Ron Diorio
http://thomashawk.com/2008/11/new-artist-of-week-series-5-ron-dorio.html

State of the art
http://stateoftheart.popphoto.com/blog/2008/01/where-to-go-a-1.html

The Daily Flog: Around Here
http://blog.fotolog.com/2008/01/around-here

Tim Connor: Ron Diorio’s “Around Here” opens in Chelsea
http://timconnor.blogspot.com/2008/01/ron-diorios-around-here-opens-in.html

Photographer Focus: Ron Diorio
http://www.aphotographicimagination.com/2006/08/photographer_focus_interview.html
Note: site is no longer up/this is my blog

NYC Exposition
http://nycexposition.blogspot.com/2005/10/coming-home.html

Mysteries of the Glance.
By Norman Taylor
http://www.aphotographicimagination.com/2006/08/mysteries_of_the_glance.html

Photography Now
http://www.cpw.org/exhibitions/2005/photonow_isis/photonow/pages/

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Posted by admin at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some bad news (2008)

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The video work that summarizes the years 2001-2008 as they came: fear, money, fidelity and art. Each piece is 90 seconds or less, a limit of the video publishing platform on Flickr. Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

What I did during the war: Part 1 Fear
(01:06)

Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

Images and Montage: Ron Diorio
Music: Souvenir de Porto Rico op 31 (Louis Morzan Gottschalk ) from Archvie.org
Words: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1940) from Archvie.org

What I did during the war; Part 2 Money
(01:30)

Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

Images and Montage: Ron Diorio

Librivox recording
"The error of imaginary causes"
The Twilight of the Idols
by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Read by D.E. Wittkower
www.archive.org/details/the_twilight_of_the_idols_librivox

Other audio sample
The Psalters, Home for Refugees
www.archive.org/

What I did during the war, Part 3 The Surge (Sex)
(01:20)

Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

What I did during the war, Part 4 Ragazzi di vita (Art)
(01:27)

Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
www.phhfineart.com/

Posted by admin at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Poegles project

Ongoing multimedia exploration images and spoken word performances of constructed texts based on Poegles. Poegles are poems made from Google search results.

A season of wants (2008)

Search term "I want"

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Penny candy (2008)

Search term "hometown"

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Some bad news (2008)

Search term "secrets"

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Night light (2008)

Search term "night light"

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About Ron Diorio
Ron Diorio is a web based artist working in multiple media including photography, video, spoken word and interactive applications. Ron has had three solo shows of his photographs, which have also been included in many group shows. Ron's work has been exhibited internationally and is currently represented by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York City (phhfineart.com) . He produced Zine TV (93-95), a DIY television series on the diversity and creativity of the self publishing community - the "zine scene" of the mid 90s. Ron's current video work focuses on virtuality and the "imitation of life" in the early 21st century. The work is presented through short personal essays weaving, spoken word, video, photography, Poegles, and found public forum
postings and other texts. Ron is VP for Product and Community Development for The Economist/Economist.com. He is a life long New Yorker and lives with his wife and two children in northern Manhattan.

Statement of work
I am a citizen artist and through the social web the audience and this body of work have found each other. This current video work extends my recent photographic explorations challenging the veracity of documentary practices through the ambiguity of place and persona, manipulation of media, low-fi production and social methods of distribution. The video links included in this submission include my most recent work produced and premiered online for the active online community audience involved with my work since 2004.

About the Poegles Project
The Poegles Project was started in 2008 as an exploration of the emerging dominance of meta data indexing, the organization of information and the machine prioritizion of those results. It attempts to re-describe the origination of narration and the assembly of visual and audio cues drawing on the notions of surrealist poetry, Burroughs cut-ups and the photo-cinema of Chris Marker.

Posted by admin at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A season of wants

I want to be a super hero
I want to return
I want to date
I want to be heard
I want to focus
I want to lock up
I want 18 million dollars
I want my title back
I want a win
I want to watch
I want to establish an identity
I want to ban booze
I want to stay safe
I want you
I want a child
I want a friend on facebook
I want season tickets
I want be a guy that makes stupid comments
I want date a rock star

I want a lot

I want stay
I want see how it ends
I want be a part
I want discuss your future
I want to change it
I want a new deal
I want to rock
I want it the best way
I want to be a spoiler
I want to stop
I want to outlaw
I want to say too much
I want to keep all my cards on the table
I want to to be patient
I want to you to believe
I want to eat at a table with my own silver
I want a wife
I want to be back

Posted by admin at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in June 2003, I started what I thought was going to be a small, simple digital storytelling project. That project branched off into a photographic adventure that has left me changed for the better. However as with all circles you eventually come back. In this case I was renewed by the release of Flickr video which allowed me to create with a fixed 90 second framework and publish to a community of people who were familiar with my body of work, some for almost all five years.

Slowly I have become focused on ths "new" thing. It has re-invigorated my photo-image making but had subtly allowed me to re-define myself as a "recording artist": images, video and spoken word. This is the longest of the pieces I have produced.

The text was adapted from a forum posting on Craig's List, I recorded and mixed the voice over and the sound track. I wanted to use as few images as possible within the video with movement and frame transitions adding duration and ambiguity. I am still in the craft stage. No technique comes without repetition and so this is still early days.

Posted by admin at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Came home last night, found a copy Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" in our laundry room. Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" is one of my favorite books however I never quite warmed up to and "American Tragedy". I flipped open to American Tragedy and parsed some of the text, recorded a quick soundtrack voice over and assembled a small adaptation.

An American Tragedy 490

some time in the future
on the way down

sure as anything
she must do

get in one
get in another
just ahead

just behind

the state he had been in
pleading
silence
delay

if he were she
some little hotel
a trip maybe
nearest quiet corner

so secret

but she must not ask him now

Adpated from An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (p.490/Signet Classic Edition)

Posted by admin at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to update you on your interest in participating in the video project

As you may already know, I have created some short videos using the photographs in my stream and text and audio/sound derived from both original and other sources. Those films can be found here:

www.youtube.com/user/avproducer

My goal for this project is to push the boundaries of what I can do with multimedia tools, explore collaboration and the weaving of narratives and different voices. I am hoping to go beyond the slideshow so there is room to experiment.

The project's working title is "A grammar of motives". The title comes from a book by Kenneth Burke that I started to read back in 1979 and have never finished although I own two copies and frequently flip through them.

I am currently planning 5 sections to mirror Burke's dramatic pentad:
+ act
+ scene
+ agent
+ agency
+ purpose

More on Kenneth Burke here
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Burke

With that brief introduction to the project, this is how you can contribute.

Record an audio/video diary entry/entries about the intersections of your life (real or imagined) and the work in my photostream. The entry can be in the form of poem/letter/lullaby/rant.

Record a voice mail message to me about something that has just happened. You can report. I am open to other possibilities - pass the phone around a dinner party, dial in from a church service, a bathroom stall or call from the beach - the settings are endless.

An informal, intimate and authentic voice is all you need to bring!

You can contribute as much as you'd like and it would be helpful to me for you to identify your self at the beginning or the end of your call/recording.

To record you can call a voice mail box

646-495-9204 x 52402

or

Upload a file as MP3/WAV/MP4
URL: drop.io/rdiorio
dropio1

Click (add) File

You can email me via flickr mail with questions.

I appreciate your help and look forward to seeing what we get. I also anticipate the need to have some specific passages of text recorded and I may additionally each out to you for that.

I am hoping to complete the collection of material by mid April.

Posted by admin at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From WSJ.com

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs's recent open letter urging that digital music be distributed free of copyright protections was aimed at the recording industry. But it made waves in another key constituency Mr. Jobs does business with: movie makers.

Executives at Hollywood studios believe it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections spreads to movies from music. Until now, the studios have steadfastly asserted that copy protections -- known as digital rights management -- are essential to preventing piracy of films.

The studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course ..

Posted by admin at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Robin Good

"To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some... just people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them, and - you know - suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart - you know - and? make a beautiful film with her little father's camera...corder - and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an art form.
That's my opinion."

Francis Ford Coppola

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In Quantity has a quality all of its ownv Davin McHenry writes:

I joined a Yahoo email group recently the focuses on newspaper video. The group seems to be mostly photography staffers hashing out how to add video to their websites. What struck me was how most folks seemed to be centered on buying high-end video equipment and expensive and complicated editing packages. The goal seems to bring documentary-quality video to newspapers, mostly in the hands of photographers-turned-videographers.

And I just don’t see how that’s going to work.

A bit of disclosure here. At Bakersfield.com we’ve taken a decidedly low-fi approach to video. Ninety percent of our video is shot by reporters and 99 percent is shot with point and shoot , consumer-grade cameras. With our staff (~24 reporters) and our equipment (2-3 cameras) we’ve been able to shoot and edit 600+ videos this past year. We’re averaging about 700-800 views per day in recent months.

If we had taken the opposite approach and focused entirely on our photo staff I think the flow would have been significantly lower. I imagine we would have had, at best, 2-3 videos per week, rather than per day.

I don’t see how you build a daily audience with that kind of content flow. Especially given the nature of online video.

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From Teaching online jounralism

Between You and Me.
A film by Patry Krebisz

A friend recently bought the Canon EOS 20D. I tried its burst mode and was in seventh heaven. In this mode we could record at five frames per second (as opposed to film’s 24). We could shoot for about 12 seconds before the camera’s memory buffer would fill up, so our takes had to be really exact -- no long, hypnotic shots. I did a series of tests beforehand to find the best setup ...

I have been working on some still image based products for the last few months. I have a created a few prototypes and a couple of small films of my own photographic works.

This flip book style is an interesting approach that I hope to incorporate in the next interations.

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From Thomas Hawk

Why after a year and a half can't Yahoo! get it together and get Flickr's interesting photos integrated better into Yahoo! Image Search? It's amazing that Yahoo! has a legitimate trump card where they could dramatically show their superiority to Google and it largely gets ignored.

I know I sound like a broken record but why doesn't Flickr just throw the video upload switch and let this very dedicated community develop into the leading shared orginal content video service.

Posted by admin at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am so often convinced the blogs, vlogs, pods are linked to the very modern tradition of photography.

Does this statement ring true?

Blogging is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about blogs we are talking about modernity; the doubts that blogs inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Blogging is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of blogging was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was blogging a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

The original:
The Treacherous Medium

Photography is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about photography we are talking about modernity; the doubts that photography inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Photography is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of photography was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was photography a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

Thanks to GalleryHopper for the pointer

What do you think?

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A short film.
Words by John Dos Passos

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When worlds collide

From Publishing 2.0

The widely-used and much reviled term “user-generated content” implies that somebody is making something. But the dirty little secret of “user-generated” sites like YouTube and MySpace is that much of the content is not made by the users themselves — it’s appropriated from someone else.

At the end of the day, whenever anybody uploads or posts something to the web, it’s just a form of publishing. What’s radical about the new digital reality is that I can publish anything that I made — and I can publish anything that anybody else made.

Basic common sense tells you that if I were to take all of the content from another blog, publish it here, and then run ads against it, that would be wrong. Much of the tangled web we now face results from the euphemistic obfuscation of terms like “user-generated content.” If we call it what it is — for example, people streaming music from their MySpace pages while MySpace runs ads on those pages — then we can have a clear debate about the right and wrong of it.

In a great tradiion, MySpace and You Tube is the home of appropriation art. In that sense we have contemporary and modern traditions that as Wiikipedia says of Duchamp: "Duchamp's "creativity" as an artist lies in the gesture of selecting the urinal as an art piece and displaying it in an artistic context." So MySpace and You Tube "artists", if they can prove the transformative nature the "long tail" on the appropriated work on their page they can sit at ease. .

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