By Martin Horn
2007

Originally broadcast on CBC Radio One’s “Definitely Not The Opera” (DNTO), this pieces explores the meaning and essence of that sitcom staple, the laugh track. It briefly explores the origins of the laugh track before examining the new crop of laugh track-less situation comedies emerging on the airwaves. The piece was written and performed by Martin Horn and produced at CBC studios in Montreal and Winnpeg. It features an interview with Ken Levine, a television writer with credits including Frasier, Cheers, and The Simpsons.

Death of the Laugh Track

By Ali Rahman & Ashley Wong
2005

Post-millennial technophilia and the ubiquity of laptop computers conspired to form a new class of electronic musician, the laptop musician. Often times their faces were obscured by their screens as they sat on stage and played intensely sophisticated compositions focused on timbre, pulse and collage. Are these people actually performing? Are they just pressing play? What is the difference anyway? This short documentary sought to explore these and other questions surrounding the laptop scene that was peaking in 2004.

By Ali Rahman & Sarah Taylor
2005

This video made effort to visually articulate the principal of phasing as explored by Steve Reich in his early tape experiments. Here, a single layer of video is shot, doubled, and overlayed upon itself. The second layer was then trimmed (ever so slightly), so upon repetition, it would fall out of phase with the first. The result is a weird, profoundly cute and oddly haunting visual of a dancer chasing herself through a corridor. Time seems to circle itself, orbit itself, but our dancer never tires, nor does she find what she is looking for.

By Ali Rahman
2007

Probably not the best item to post on a client-facing blog, but alas. This video was shot using the built-in Apple iSight camera fixed on my desk in my semi-private cubicle. On this particular dull afternoon, I was endlessly awaiting proofs from my designer. Being impatient and bored, I rolled camera and hacked this thing together between angry phone calls to said graphic designer.

By Ali Rahman
2005

In art school, one is generally expected to privilege symbolism over narrative, medium over message and circular over linear. In art school, the term “abstract” is often perverted not to mean “essential” but to mean “ephemeral”. This video was a reaction to a particularly frustrating art class. Rahman decided to buck convention and make a relatively convential video. It was originally projected on three-screens synched to a single soudtrack. The framing, editing and rapid-fire narrative all demonstrate Rahman’s comfort with the medium and with himself as subject. Even if the content seems a little
puerile now. Chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.

October 25th, 2007
E-Art

Digital excursions
Ali Rahman

The Fondation Langlois makes the MMFA a site for e-adventures

I was 19 when I saw a Bill Viola retrospective at the Whitney in New York. Stoned, alone and young as I was, it represented the pinnacle of a pure aesthetic experience for me. I was not left with memories of the pieces, but impressions juxtaposed upon television reflections, scattered and meaningful white noise. Pieces of the pieces. All I remembered when I left was that, at the moment I was there, I understood something.

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November 1st, 2007
Wasted-Growing-Space

Civic Honda
Ali Rahman

Emi Honda’s post-urban intervention is no waste of space

Urban Detroit is overgrown. After decades of decay the inner city is experiencing something of an eco-renaissance. Vacant lots have been converted into community gardens, vines creep up through derelict buildings, small forests are pushing their way through deserted industrial parks. Artist Emi Honda would perhaps be at home in post-industrial Detroit.

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March 2nd, 2006
Art Matters

Putting the art in party
Ali Rahman

Midway through the preview screening of her video Probably Better Than Bonham, artist Bridget A. Moser pauses the tape and looks quizzically at the gathered few.

“Did I cut off a piece of my own hair and tape it to my face to make my handlebar moustache? Yes I did.”

The video pits the artist against the spirit of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham as she attempts to prove that she is the superior musician. The piece fits uncomfortably in the tradition of early Dadaism, minus the conscious attack on the institution. When asked about her motives, the cryptic Moser offers: “I wanted a platform to showcase my preternatural talent. That is all.”

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