Luke Fischbeck

Air Quality (2012)

Air Quality examines transparency, filtering, and the double image—playfully returning to age-old questions: is it possible to think two thoughts at once? Is time symmetrical? Is fire alive?

The video is an array of interwoven images: transparent stripes spiral in California sun, a burning candle displaces time, a toxic red hand spins a circular stone, colored smoke explodes against a hot pink backdrop… Air Quality studies how filters both organize and scatter light, connecting this physical process to the clear / unclear transfer of information.

Single channel video, 2012
Duration: 14 minutes 16 seconds
Sound by Luke Fischbeck

Border Film

“Border Film” —currently in progress— is an encyclopedic document of the infrastructure of border towns and border-crossings, as well as an open-ended meditation on the passage across the political threshold between the United States and Mexico. Produced while traveling repeatedly across the United States-Mexico border, each frame of the film is exposed in both countries to produce a double-image of a landscape suspended between two places. This method of filming—exposing the film twice from points symmetrical on either side of the border—produces a complex wealth of images capturing an array of architectural histories designed to open conversation around foundational issues such as the distribution of wealth and natural resources, transit and trade infrastructure, and immigration. “Border Film” studies how suburban development, population density, commerce and infrastructure intersect with open landscape preserves along the US-Mexico border, while exploring the specific power of an image to render and preserve coincidence between neighboring ecologies.

Possible Chronicle (2014)

THE POSSIBLE CHRONICLE (2014)
16mm film transferred to HD video, duration variable.

The Possible Chronicle is a series of short films that examine the making of The Possible at the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, CA. Keeping time through observation, each of The Possible Chronicles presents a poetic eyewitness account gathered from within and without the museum. The Possible Chronicle pays attention to people, processes, and communication. A work in progress about works in progress, Possible Chronicles were released periodically over the course of the exhibition.

Edge Of Color

Goethe’s observations were made in his garden, in the moonlight, and by candlelight rather than in laboratory settings. In his color charts, Goethe refers to the magenta region of the spectrum as “peach blossom.”

The “Edge of Color” flags are derived from the test cards that Goethe produced in order to demonstrate edge color phenomena to friends and colleagues. For Goethe, color could not be separated from the environment. Goethe’s Theory of Color is really a theory of perception, qualia, or “raw feels”.

These flags as color-test-cards demonstrate edge-colors that radiate from boundaries between light and dark shapes when viewed through a prism in daylight.

ALIAS

ALIAS (2018, 17:49)

ALIAS focuses on a characteristic distortion of sampled images—Aliasing—where one grid fails to cleanly capture another, and separate entities become indistinguishable. One form ingesting another, a parasite larger than its host: ALIAS is a story about solar energy, ruined by observation.

solar rays reached the surface without meaning

depending on the day
the observer melts exactly where the sun rises

the heavy sun tethers to hangers-on
throws them counter-clockwise

the northern axis points in the direction
no one yields

colors de-saturate in the dark

a cylindrical projection graphs the sun
rolled for an eye to look through

feel what happened to the horizon after the fires

we need to take all that we can, read the azimuth, and run

when the sun flickers, time abolishes pleasing positions

The Pollinators

The Pollinators focuses on the insects, birds, animals, and vectors that pollinate flowers. Filmed against brightly colored backgrounds that both attract and distract pollinators, the video explores wild color spaces, modeling the ultraviolet-rich color range perceived by insects that extends beyond human vision and the RGB colorspace of video.

The Pollinators was filmed over the course of a full calendar year to document a complete annual cycle of flowering.

with sound by Luke Fischbeck and custom seating produced in collaboration with Anzfer Farms

Runtime 65 minutes

This project is funded in part by a generous award from the Harpo Foundation

Special thanks to the following people and organizations who provided research support and access to pollinator habitats for filming:
UC Berkeley Botanical Garden
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Fritz Haeg’s Wildflowering LA presented by LAND
Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden
The Growing Home

“Sarah Rara’s The Pollinators is a contemplative video projection of bees doing their thing on flowers, all in bright, saturated hues that feel at once lush and synthetic, beautiful and counterfeit.” – Los Angeles Times