David Hoffos
David Hoffos was recently a guest speaker here at Emily Carr and I had the privilege of attending and listening to the ideas and concepts that fuel his work as well as the technical means he employs to bring them to life. As far as ‘Digital Art’ goes I find Hoffos’ work very accessible. Though he confessed early on in his talk that he started working with low tech means because of his low budget, I find it interesting how he’s stuck with these methods to a point where the mirrors and old TV monitors are as much a part of the aesthetic and concept as they are a part of his budget management. I’m not very digitally inclined and I felt I was really able to appreciate the way the entire process plays out for the viewer, from the way he combines very tactile hand crafted settings to the low tech video and projection work. Where as some digital work whose means of creation I can’t grasp with my little knowledge can come across as ‘smoke and mirrors’ to my eye, I feel that Hoffos employs his techniques in a very simple and clear way that is meant to be obvious and easily figured out as a part of the concept. He works with such themes as the apocalypse, dreams, nostalgia, and he seems to be drawn in and inspired by film. My favorite work of his was his graduate work, unfortunately the name of which I didn’t write down. Hoffos had projected the image of an old man at a work space crafting something out of wood onto a large piece of plywood. Hoffos then traced the different picture plains onto the plywood to cut them out and put them back together to create a low relief screen for the projected video to play against. The man’s face and hands moved subtly over the edges of the handcrafted screen which served to repeatedly shatter the brief seconds where he became almost believable as a three dimensional hologram. I find the work really engaging, my eyes are frozen trying to catch these brief seconds between illusion and reality.
One of the things I found most interesting during the talk was his admission to the fact that he’s actually reverted to using lower and lower quality technology to highlight the fact that his illusions were in fact illusions and not the real thing. Hoffos had created some viewers within the gallery space of his own shows by creating cutouts for projections of people who were meant to look as though they too were contemplating the work. Unfortunately they were so well crafted that people were walking right by them as though they were actual viewers and so at times they went unnoticed. It’s interesting to me that he was unpleased as an artist with the visual deception that he’d created. I imagine that if I was able to so fool the masses with my skill that I would sit in a darkened gallery corner and giggle to myself as one after the other the gallery patrons were tricked. The idea that the viewer has to realize immediately that someone is trying to fool them in order for their interest to be peaked and held seems in itself foolish, but it’s probably also the very reason that I found myself so drawn in by his graduate work.
chris ethier
postscript: Hoffas has seen bigfoot!
