Scandinavia – December 2004 from Jason Hardy on Vimeo.
In December of 2004 a friend of mine, Dan Schrieber, was living in Sweden in a small town a few hours North of Stockholm. Justin Kemerling and I decided that we wanted to visit Dan and what better time to see Scandinavia that in the dead of winter?
There is a constant, nagging little voice in the back of my head that is always saying the same thing:
“Make something.”
As often as I can, I oblige. It keeps me inspired, it helps me find new techniques and explore new ideas, it gets that voice out of my head for at least a short time. The results aren’t always great. In fact, rarely are they great, but I keep doing it for the simple reason that making is part of things. It just needs to be there.
In the spirit of unfiltered, random creation, I’ve put together the Unender Visual Stream, which is basically a place for me to post things that I’ve made, which have no other purpose than to simply exist. A lot of them are photos I’ve taken with different cameras, some are hand-made, some are techniques I’m exploring in Photoshop. I’ve been doing it for a month or so now, and here are some of my favorite bits of creative ephemera.
“The Sprinter” by Justin Kemerling and Jason Hardy.
A number of years ago (circa 2002-ish) my friend Justin Kemerling and I set out to create something together. What we settled on was the creating of a short film. It was (and still is) called “The Sprinter” and it had a profound effect on me.This is the first in a series of posts about “The Sprinter.” The idea here being to remember and share this project with everyone. The how and what and why of it all. For me, personally, to relive those days and revel in the messes we made. But ultimately, my hope is that this story inspires you. Either way, this is “The Sprinter”, take from it what you will.
“The Sprinter” is 15 minutes long and intentionally challenges attention spans. There is repetition with subtle change until a final burst of action breaks the cycle. Without the storm there can be no calm (and vice-versa).
“The Sprinter” best seen in the dark basement of an art supply store in Lincoln Nebraska, while standing on the dirt floor viewing the film being projected onto a white sheet with an old grade school overhead projector that is somehow hooked up to a VCR with sound coming out of an old boombox. But, since we don’t have access to that setup anymore, the internet will have to suffice. Clicking on Vimeo’s little expand icon and watching it surrounded by a dark screen might help achieve that projected basement feeling.
Over the next series of posts I’ll talk about how the idea came about, how we filmed and edited “The Sprinter”, where the music came from and how we put together the DVD.
It started innocently enough. I live in a small apartment in Chicago and the stand for my television doubles as a shelf for my cameras. One day, whilst watching a movie I noticed my Polaroid™ sitting next to the tele and I had an idea. I picked it up, got in real close to the TV screen, turned off the flash and took a shot. The result is my newest obsession. Abstract Polaroids™ of my television. I enjoy taking them because its a challenge to compose a shot of something that changes so quickly (depending on what I’m watching) and it is also a challenge to make an interesting image from something so simple (I don’t always succeed here). Either way, I like challenges.
The images above and below are a couple of my favorites so far. Click Here to view a Flickr set that I started (and am already behind in updating). Below are a few more.