REAL VIDEOS

I started collecting Internet videos when I was a web designer in 1996 -- days were long and boring and the only thing to do was surf the Internet. I also frequented video chat rooms (video conferencing) where thousands of people from around the world would meet for the pimary purpose of satisfying their sexual curiosities.

While surfing the web may have helped people explore their desires, video conferencing allowed them to become an active participant. Conferencing servers were clogged with men and woman from all over the world seeking an outlet for their sexuality.

At the time, working on Come Softly was more of a break from editing film but it turned into a process that changed the direction of my work. With a video camera mounted on a tripod and pointed at the monitor, I recorded my video chat sessions with various men and began weaving them together with my collection of videos from the web.

As the movie Titanic became a pop culture phenomenon in 1998, the tragic romance set against society’s blind faith in technology is the appropriated theme for Come Softly.

Internet footage of aviation disasters and pornography are strung together to form the backdrop for the throws of an intimate video conference between a young man from France and I.

In this chat session, exhibitionist and voyeur meet in a matter-of-fact routine where technology serves as a substitute for intimacy and expression.

With the promise of anonymity, the young man performs before his camera as his image travels thousands of miles to my monitor - and after his climax, disconnects.

If I Had a Hammer focuses on how some take advantage of the Internet’s reach to coerce the young to appear in amateur porn out of desperate need for money, food or drugs. Contrasting elements from amateur porn sites with materials from N’Sync fan sites is a whimsical suggestion of where the desire begins.

If I Had a Hammer is a darkly humorous and melodramatic journey through places both blaring in the spotlight and lost in the shadows of the web where the young are literally packaged and marketed for our secret desires.

As the final piece of the Real Videos trilogy, Lucky is a more whimsical look at my personal relationship with the Internet and the on-line gay community.

Elements from Come Softly and Hammer are stung together with shots of my computer and the tangled mess of wires that simultaneously connect to and isolate from rest of the world.

An abrupt shift to the Scream 2 trailer features me as the victim receiving the spooky call from an unknown psychopath and racing through a battery of imagery from the first two videos.

Lucky is more of an epilogue for a period of my work, including The Tanti-Man, The Zero Order, Chisholm and the previous two Real Videos -- all of which illustrate some sort of isolation or divide from sexual identity.

A stark black and white shot in the final scene of Lucky implies that I’ve been stabbed to death as blood pours from my mouth. I wake up, smile at the camera and taste the chocolate syrup as an AOL symbol trickles down from the top the frame.

There are more important things to worry about now.