In recent years the production of digital cameras followed two general tendencies: improvement of image definition and reduction of the actual camera dimensions. Capturing an image that is a photocopy of reality, gives plenty of headroom to the artist to distort the image, maintaining the advantages of the high definition. That is because the artist doesn’t actually distort the definition but rather distorts the information that the high definition carries with it. The result of this distortion is moving images that resemble reality but actually they are not; they are moving images that blur the boundary between macro and micro. The reduced dimension of a high definition camera adds another layer to this process. Using a compact high definition camera allows the artist to locate it in places that were unthinkable before. It widens the point of view that the viewer can be associated with, challenging his/her perception. There is a big difference between placing a camera in a way that represents the point of view of a human being and placing the camera in a way that represents the point of view of a pebble. Actually the camera can assume not only the point of view of a pebble that is hit by a wave, but also its physical movement when that occurs. Water is a key element that dictates not only the rhythm of every camera movement but also the sound design which constitutes a direct translation of underwater noise into a sonic dreamscape.
About the artist
Vasilios Papaioannu (born 1978, Greece) is a filmmaker based in the State of New York (Syracuse, New York City), USA. Although Papaioannu was born in Greece, in his late teens he moved to Siena, Italy to pursue a BA and an MA in Communication/Text Semiotics at the University of Siena, studying with renowned semioticians like Omar Calabrese, Giovanni Manetti and Tarcisio Lancioni. He completed his degree with an experimental final thesis on the Contrast between Nature and Culture in the combined music video works of Michel Gondry and Bjork, supervised by Tarcisio Lancioni. During that time he also produced a series of Super 8 and HI8 films, in collaboration with the Humanities Cinema Group at the University of Siena, that showcased the work of artists located in the Tuscany region. In conjunction with his filmmaking activity he is also a mixed media visual artist, combining painting, vector art and photography. In 2009 he was accepted with a Full Time Teaching Assistantship by the Department of Transmedia in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, New York to complete an MFA in Film. In 2012 he concluded his studies receiving the 2012 Masters Prize Award by the university faculty for his outstanding work as an artist and scholar during the time spent in Syracuse, NY. Papaioannu has exhibited his work, in a variety of film, video art and new media festivals all over the world. He is in the process of completing Shells, an experimental short about Isabelle, an 11 year old sea shell collector who loses the most beautiful sea shell in the whole world and releasing N.1368597069 a six minutes avant-garde visual extravaganza dictated sonically by a dreamy soundscape. He is as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Transmedia, Film, in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, NY.
http://www.vasiliospapaioannu.com