Forced Montage

An Artist Manifesto

Forced Montage : the juxtaposition and presentation of random non referential images or video to create a montage that forces the viewer to decide the meaning. It is a derivative of video art / vjing that stems from visual music and scratch video.

In Practice : This attempts to remove the original meaning of the content buy stripping out key element of production which is commonly done for remixing purposes.

Examples of key element of production removed in remixing: ( but not limited to )
the audio,
pace of editing,
sequence of images.
playback speed and direction

However unlike other forms of remixing this idea doesn't create a cohesive narrative but favors no narrative. This forces the user to deiced what is and is not important about the story in relation to the audio.

In the examples below the use of fast and musically syncopated edits are used to fracture and break up the content from a video source in so that little meaning is left form the source material. Mixed with another similarly edited video source with a use of a video switcher or crossfader, the movement between the images creates a montage of two different stories which didn't originally reference them selves. This creates a Forced Montage with no cohesive story tying them together outside of what the viewer thinks.





Moving from moments of visual consonances to visual dissonances the Force Montage generate interest excitement much in the same way tonal music does, form the movement between these moments of consonances and dissonances. It is because of this principal content should be chosen for it visual composition and not its story content.

For more examples of this please visit my youtube page : http://www.youtube.com/abstractmotion2010