RECOMMENDED VIEWING

I continue to hope that I can make EFEELE into a hub for audio-visual explorations. Of course, it is not going to happen by myself, so I hope that I can rope in the various like-minds I’ve met over the years and also make connections with some new people.

In fact, the project that I feature in this issue, Seoul of an Alien, marks my first step into collaborative work. I have never been much of a “team player.” But, at 30 years old, I look back on things I did earlier in my life, and realize they could have gone much further if I had more people involved. That said -- at a younger age, my own ideas were fragile, so I was better off working them out on many own. Collaboration is a wonderful thing. There seems nothing better than to have access to friend’s music, photos, words, and ideas. In a sense then, most of these videos are not direct collaboration, but rather me thieving from friends. There is talent everywhere that there is time and space to let it come out.

I think that video design software like Apple’s Motion or Adobe’s Aftereffects are the word processors of the future. The power of combining text-audio-video is massive, but there’s always going to be a place for the unaffected word on paper, vinyl disc on turntable, the photographic negative, and objects made by hand -- I hope EFEELE can reflect both.

In February 2007, I made the move from Seoul, Korea to Kamloops, Canada. I had been living in Japan and Korea exclusively since 1999. I am eager to connect things on the West coast of North America to things going on in Northeast Asia. But at the same time after spending all the last ten years around the Pacific Rim, I hope to get a taste of other parts of the world.

As a video artist, I am still learning. I see a car commercial on TV, and I know that I will never be able to make videos at that level of sophistication. But it helps to think that my videos damage the world less.

If you are one of the few people who have seen my collection of films from Okinawa, Pacific Resistance, I want to mention that I am re-editing that collection -- I hope it is ready to go online or onto DVD later this year.

As I write this, I prepare for a 3-week trip back to Japan and Korea.

In this hectic fast paced world with so much distraction around and so much competing for our attention, if you have taken the time to watch some of my videos or read my words, then I really appreciate it.

 

                                                            - DoAn Forest    (June 2nd, 2007)

 

 

P.S.S. Here’s my business card. I’ll be happy to hear from people:

 

P.S.S.S. If you’re making videos yourself or like looking at videos online, you can do a whole lot better than youtube, where the quality of video encoding is terrible, and artists are exploited. Try Revver or Vimeo instead. I like Revver because it has a great player, and it shares ad revenue with the artists. Vimeo, on the other hand, is very simple and ad-free -- it is a great place to find a great community built around a love of quirky and interesting video projects.

 

 

 

            

 

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR