Lost is found

A story so unbelievable I must share it:


Aaron and I got married this past July. The night before our wedding, we had a great party--Texas-themed, of course--at the Mill in Iowa City. We drank, we danced, we hollered, we drank, we played practical jokes, and we drank some more. At the end of the night, my parents caught a cab back to the Alexis Park Inn to get some rest and enjoy the oddly wonderful paintings of airplanes that adorned the walls of their room.

Morning comes, and my mom discovers that her camera is missing. Her prized possession, the inspiration for much of her work as a printmaker, her "little child," as she calls it. We search everywhere, we hound Old Capital Cab, we investigate every nook and cranny, but it's gone, and all of the pictures from the previous night's festivites with it. We give it up for lost, and my mom, devasted, throws away her battery charger, her cables, all the vestiges of what once was, and returns home to California.

Flash forward to January--six months later. My mom receives a call from a guy named Dan, a driver for Old Capital Cab in Iowa City. He found a camera wedged in the seat of his van, and could it be hers? Two days later, Dan dropped it off to me, party pictures and all, having survived the worst of the Iowa summer and most of the winter. This shot is one of my favorites.

Still life with scruffy

Found photos, from a roll of now-obsolete Kodak 126 film purloined from an old camera at Houseworks. They all seem to be taken from about child-level, of interesting child-like things. A big shout out to Dwayne's for continuing to process old, discontinued, and otherwise oddball film.

Could be from 1980--but could be from Grandma's house, last year

Scruffy's first close-up

The view from below

Scruffy's put on weight

Scruffy: the inspiration for the little dog(?) in Mr. Boffo?

Meditations on corn (maze)

meditations on corn (maze) (3 min., 2005) Shot in-camera on Super 8 Kodachrome in the Field of Fun corn maze just outside of Iowa City. You can't be a filmmaker in Iowa without making at least one film about corn.

My personal favorite corn maze is the portrait of Willie Nelson at Bloomsbury Family Farm ("Eastern Iowa's largest agritainment facility"). Want a corn maze of your own? You can hire "the world's #1 maze company" to create a spectacular one for you.

Junkspotting 2

Some old garbage, some new garbage, all spotted on the path that runs alongside Highway 6 in Iowa City.

Babies to Go

The trailer for Stephen Soderbergh's new movie Bubble reminded me of my own filmed homage to doll-heads.



Babies to Go (2 min. excerpt, 1989)
This montage comes from the opening of "Babies to Go," the video opus I made at age 15. Unlike the plot of Soderbergh's flick, this movie serves as a cautionary tale against the ethical perils of genetic engineering. It's a comedy.

Shot on VHS, dubbed a couple generations down, transferred to DVD, captured from DVD, then compressed for the web. The video quality is... interesting. The opening slate for Marin Community Programming (the public access station on which the video aired) is absolutely precious.

Ah, analog. How I miss thee.

Wanna see some really creepy dolls?

Through the Eyes of a Thrift Store Camera

Some frames from a roll of film I recovered from a cheap camera at Houseworks (the best consignment shop in Iowa City):

The only clue as to its previous existence


Its neighbors in the basket in which it lived


Its buddy on the shelf next door

I don't know whether anyone ever adopted this little pet. He may still be sitting in the basket, filmless, waiting to be reloaded.

Trainjumping

While on my walk to PATV today, I got stuck behind a slow moving train at an intersection.

Then the train stopped completely. Eventually I had to climb up and jump between two cars to get by. It was a good little thrill.

Found: Crumpled Up Check for $.50

A fifty cent check from the Johnson County Sheriff's Jail Account, found wet and balled up in a parking lot near the jailhouse. All names and numbers have been blurred to protect the innocent (guilty?).

Junkspotting

A short list of items of garbage spotted along my walk down Highway 6 in Iowa City. About 2 min.

Portrait by Self Portrait

Margo (2003, 1 min.)--Part portrait, part self-portrait. Image by Jennifer Proctor, Sound by Margo Greenlaw. Screened at FLEX and Aurora Picture Show's Extremely Shorts (curated by Craig Baldwin).

4:15 Lakeside Bus

Part experiment in Audioblogging, part sonic history of the Iowa City bus riding experience. Recorded by Cingular cell phone. Experiment conclusion: audio quality not so good. Reason: poor quality cell phone reception. Solution: To be determined...

Elmo reveals his true feelings

In one of my latest favorite warpings of consumer culture, Boing Boing reports an incident involving the "Shout!" Dancing Elmo doll, in which Elmo seems to sing "You make me wanna (shout!) Beat up Elmo! (shout!) Shoot his foot out!"

Check out Boing Boing for more on the Evil Elmo story and a link to the actual sound file. I haven't laughed that hard in days.


I'd hate to see what I'd make Embittered Dry Gulch Elmo want to do.

Found note

Front (back?)

Back (front?)

Part scribbly drawing, part grocery list. Found near the Mexican market on the southside of Iowa City.

Found photo

Iowa City's not the best for found objects, but occasionally something interesting pops up. This image came from a disposable camera found on the railroad tracks that was submitted to the first ever State of Iowa Found Object Championship at last year's Bike-in Theater. I processed the film and this was one of the gems. Still, my favorite Iowa City found film so far was the gay porn flick I found in a Super 8 projector that I bought at a consignment store last summer. Maybe someday I'll post an image or two from that.

(dis)placement

Just accepted to Resolutions '06 at Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY

(dis)placement (2005, 5 min, 8mm) A meditation on lost memories through the tail end discards of old 8mm home movies. Image by Aaron Valdez, Sound Design by Jennifer Proctor.

See the movie:
http://aaronvaldez.blogspot.com/2005/08/displacement.html

And a partial inspiration for the sound:
Virtual bubble wrap

Self portrait in bleach and ink

Surfacing (2003, 16mm and mini-DV, 2:30). With sound. Created with original 16mm slow motion footage partially bleached with Clorox, clear leader hand-painted with India ink, and a little Final Cut Pro to mix it all up.

Screened at Aurora Picture Show's Extremely Shorts (curated by Craig Baldwin), Dallas Video Festival, Ms. Films, Flicker Austin, and Flicker Chapel Hill.