iotaQuarterly 2016 V1: Miko Revereza
As a new means
to bring visual music to you we are starting a new series of blog posts titled the iotaQuarterly. The goal is to introduce new works from established, emerging and up-and-coming artists in a variety of areas of visual music, fine art animation and experimental film. As much as possible we try to bring previously unreleased films, images and artwork making these Quarterlies a digital opportunity to premiere works.
To begin we introduce Miko Revereza! A regular name with dublab, creating energetic and abstract live-visuals for events, and the Echo Park Film Center, where he was an artist in resident in 2014 working on Pixelvision media, it was inevitable that we also introduce him to you. His vimeo page is a treasure trove of fragments, experiments and other observations. “Curiouser and curiouser” I found myself saying on a particular series of Arabic Numerals. Initially there were only 1 – 6, but after some discussion (as well as begging and pleading) Miko has generously allowed the remainder 7 – 13 to be broadcast to us now for the first time. The Arabic Series is a grab-bag of video glitches, feedback loops and passing thoughts. The images, all recorded from his mobile phone, are complex and often difficult to distinguish, which welcomes the relatively simplistic audio.
The series starts off with what seems to be a subtle request to be super human. Miko uses the most basic VFX technique of forced perspective extending his finger in front of the camera against some neon lights as if to say “I want super powers.” From there the series jumps off the cliff of crazy abstract video glitches.
After viewing
just a few of these pieces I couldn’t leave it at that. I had to know more. So, I sent Miko a few brain teasers and this is his response
This is an informal collection of random visual experiments from my phone documenting things I was working on and using various apps to process the footage. It’s a given I always have my phone on me and so I started to work on these little experiments here and there while waiting for the bus or before falling asleep. I like the idea that I can create things on my phone. I feel like the phone gets back to what’s happening at that moment, that initial spark of creativity and inquiry for visual experimentation.
I taped a lot of music videos when I was in elementary school. I had a pretty great collection on one VHS tape, I wish I still had it. That was my intro to moving pictures and visual music. I guess the musicality of visuals is inherent in the medium since both music and cinema are both physical/time based mediums. In both, I’m drawn to the volatility of it. The camera image getting progressively shakier and shakier as your arm gets tired. Or the generation loss and deterioration of the image when it’s getting transferred, or re-recorded. I’m into that and how we stay authentic to the physicality of these mediums even as a purely digital form.
Nam-June Paik made me feel like being an Asian American doing video art is a very cool thing. Let’s fuck with these American TV images the way these images have fucked with our cultural identity.Hype Williams is my favorite Hip-hop video director. He had dope visual style in the 90s that was so saturated, sci-fi and noir at the same time. His iconic mirrored room sets look like Yayoi Kusamainstallations shot with a fish eye lens with Puffy and ma$e in front with shiny vinyl red jump suits. Communist Godard inspires me more than early New Wave Godard because in these films you can see the process of learning as he goes along, the film contains the notes on how he made the film or “means of production” and how easy it is for you to make this film too.Wim Wenders and particularly his documentaries A Notebook of Cities and Clothes and Tokyo Ga showed me that making a documentary about a subject in the beginning can lead you to making a documentary about your TV in the end. Cinema and media is infinitely meta.
Depending on what kind of work it is gets exposure in a particular cultural sphere. I get a lot of exposure from doing commissioned music videos because of the infrastructure of PR that’s already set up for it. I also get exposure doing live video art at music shows or doing video installations in galleries. I think my favorite and most rewarding kind of exposure is when my film is in a film festival. My film DROGA which I shot on Super 8 during my residency at the Echo Park Film Center has been touring all these international film festivals as part of a retrospective program of Philippine experimental cinema (Kalampag Tracking Agency). Its amazing that my film has been to more cities than I ever have and gets to meet all these people around the world.
As you can see
Miko is quite a bright young filmmaker who is not only grabbing influences from all over time and space, but also maintaining his creativity whether he be waiting for a bus on the streets of LA or commissioned by a record company to make a music video. He exemplifies many of the positive characteristics of immediacy and patience. Creativity seems to radiate out of his fingertips. And I hear from a secret inside source that he is in the midst of production on a feature length film. I’m quite excited to see how that turns out and if you haven’t yet, please check out his Arabic Numeral Series.
- Paul Shepherd