moving images other projects cv links contact

Performance with 2x16mm projection, analog video signal as audio, 2013

The second in a series of works that explore the nature of interpretation. In this case, a pair of 16mm projections are overlapped while being captured by an HD video camera. The analog component signal is fed into an audio mixer without any further filtering. All audio in the piece is produced by the camera's output. The video waveform is manipulated by the film projection to produce a real-time, synaesthetic cinematic experience using the artifacts of one medium interpreting another as raw material.

Iterations EFF Clips from Michael Morris on Vimeo.

Performance with 3x16mm projection, choreography, and live audio. Collaborative work with Danielle Georgiou and Julie Mckendrick, 2012

Using a series of film loops, inverted silhouettes of dancers slowly drift in and out of sync while illuminating the space between audience and screen that two dancers navigate through. Inspired by the tape works of Steve Reich.

Sight specific video, presented on the LED surface of Dallas' Omni Hotel as part of the 25th Dallas VideoFest's much lauded "Expanded Cinema" program. The buildings surface was temporarily transformed into a moving monument for Dallas first lady: Juanita Dale Slusher (aka Candy Barr), the exotic dancer who performed very close to the site of the hotel at Abe Weinstein's Colony Club.

Candy Barr would say that the moments when she was dancing were the times she felt the freest. This monument, if only for a few minutes, sought to give her back this freedom while setting her image prominantly among the lights of Dallas, a city that both abused her and made her an underground star.

See Colette Copeland's article on Glasstire here.
See Jaimie Laughlin's article on Mixmaster here.

Collaborative Installation with Nick Barbee for Monstrous Couplings at University of Texas-Dallas. Curated by Andy Amato.

1 AU, or exactly 149,597,870,700 metres (92,955,807.273 mi) or approximately the mean Earth-Sun distance
cyanotype, 1 meter x 1 meter

Foot of Iron
cyanotype, 1 foot x 1 foot and 1 cubit x 1 cubit

Boreal Citric Acid
plastic tub, water, bath for cyanotype prints, lemons, hydrogen peroxide, halogen lights

Geometrical Caclulus of the Universal Destinies 8mm film and digital video, 8 minute loop

MM and NB: "We started with the Fourierist Commune that was here in Dallas in the mid 19th century called La Reunion. Thought a commune would be a nice way to frame a collaborative piece. Mike edited together some footage of the land where the commune once stood, as well as a few markers and memorials. We created cyanotypes that are intended to show various forms of measurement, both rational, an AU being rational, as well as a Meter, and more known, albeit less precise measurements based on the body such as cubits and feet. The two parts overlap in the sculptural element, lemons floating in piss yellow water. It is at once a record of the Cyanotype process, and a representation of Fourier's most cited idea of a lemonade sea."

Review by Betsy Lewis: here.

Rituala Kino was a collaborative performance by Michael Morris, Andrew Blanton, Cody Ross Rex, Amanda Preston, and Danielle Georgiou (with DGDG).

As part of Centraltrak's 2012 performance series Harakiri: To Die For Performances, curated by Danielle Georgiou, a cinematic ritual was staged to question the space of reception inhabited by the audience when experiencing cinematic works in a gallery setting. The audience was restricted to a specific area while the rite was performed. At the culmination, the audience was released to engage in as active or passive a mode as they saw fit, with the hope of exploding the cinematic space into a participatory ecstatic dance party.

A two channel performance utilizing the interpretive artifacts that occur between 16mm film and analogue NTSC video.

It's Just Meant To Be at Oliver Francis - Time Based Installations from Michael Morris on Vimeo.

It's Just Meant To Be -16mm loop, 2012

Blue Movie - 3 cyanotype prints, 2012

Blue Movie - cyanotype on 16mm, video loop, 2012

Wheel and Axle Machine - 1/4" tape loop, inherited tape recorder, 2012

A Gentle Mind Confused - 7" records, record player (jacket cover by Rebecca Mir), 2012

A More Perfect Eye - inherited 8mm camera, tripod, cinema light, diffusion material, 2012

For Adam And Allie (wedding gift) - digital video, 2010

Confessors - 8mm film on digital video, 2010