Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

Archive for January, 2016

Morning Tequila, Nachos and Tacos

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Denver-based artist Tony Ortega shared recent videos montages incorporating a sequence of rotoscope animation that he created in a workshop that I taught last summer. The montages are so much fun that I felt the urge to share. The sequences are well selected and the timing is excellent, nice way to kick off a Tuesday morning!

Chicano Western from Tony Ortega on Vimeo.

Puro Party from Tony Ortega on Vimeo.

Tony states:

I created the art video Puro Party to explore my interest in identity and hybridity. I am using a variety of I pad apps, rotoscoping animation, appropriated gifs and appropriated music. In creating these videos, I am using grids to organize the composition and I incorporate pattern and repetition. In my creative process I use distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. My work interweaves, juxtaposes unlikely images from American, Mexican and Chicano cultures that include icons, symbols, history, humor and the contemporary world to foster opportunities for the bending of meaning.

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January 26th, 2016 at 7:08 am

Downstairs Neighbor

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My wife emailed me the video below and dared me to send it to our downstairs neighbor (we live in a six story 1920s art deco Brooklyn coop building). The video captures our neighbor’s perception of us. Following his complaint to our coop board for our walking, we met with the building’s head of management who served as the mediator. At the meeting our neighbor stomped around, pounding the floor as hard as he could to illustrate the manner that we walk in our apartment. And he claimed that we walk this way to intentionally abuse him! This man actually thinks we walk in our apartment with him in mind, because we are bent on torturing him at all times. In his mind, we are the upstairs couple in this video:

Unlike the video above, our neighbor has anger issues and has twice slammed on our door to yell at us, once for bouncing a nerf ball with a toddler and the second time for allowing our 3 year old to run in the apartment (we didn’t allow him, but he was three). This is following three years of this neighbor telling us how great we were (we moved in just before our son was born). We went from being great neighbors to intentionally stomping on our floor to torture the man. My kid is now seven, so the years of nastiness now out-number the friendly years… It’s a bit nuts as we do not wear shoes in the house, throw parties, stay up late or even play music loudly (we listen to WNYC).

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January 20th, 2016 at 10:37 pm

Posted in New York

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Even God Recycles

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This past fall, I entered in to a conversation with a man named Jerry who sat near me on a downtown Brooklyn bench. Jerry was very interested in what I do for a living and asked me to teach him any skills I may have. I told him that I’d be happy to, gave him my card, but told him that he’d have to show up sober. I haven’t heard back from Jerry yet. Some weeks later, I photographed people recycling in the Lower East Side during an afternoon walk about a week before Christmas 2015. There was no particular reason to take the photo other than I liked the composition. Here is the photograph as an animated illustration and a small portion of Jerry talking about the social contract in U.S. culture… According to Jerry, we all play a role in the project that is this country and he wants to play a larger role.

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January 14th, 2016 at 9:51 am