Robert Arnold: The Morphology of Desire and Other Loop Videos

February 7 - May 8, 2004

---

Robert Arnold explores the concept of "continuous loop" video in works such as The Morphology of Desire (1999), which explores romantic love in popular culture illustrated on the covers of dime-store, romance novels. This work has won numerous awards, including the Best Animated/Experiment Film, Boston Underground Film Festival (2002); Grand Prix, Video forms International Video & Multimedia Festival, France (2000); Best Experimental Film, Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Sweden (1999). In addition to The Morphology of Desire, two other loop videos will be presented: Zeno's Paradox and Echolalia (both 2003). Zeno's Paradox was inspired by the paradoxes about motion written by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (born c. 490 BC). Zeno's view of the universe was that it was static and unchanging. His mathematical approach to theories of motion in time and space formed the basis of his paradoxes such as the Racecourse. Here, Zeno's theorizes that it is not possible for a runner to finish a race within a specific time frame because he must always reach half the distance to which he is traveling, ad infinitum. Zeno's Paradox won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Split International Festival of New Film in Croatia. Echolalia, a term referring to an autistic inclination to repeat a phrase, is a collage of the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" taken from television news media. The resulting video speaks to the power of mass media in our age of global communication. Arnold is an associate professor of film in the Department of Film & Television, College of Communication, Boston University.

 

Images:

 

Left: The Morphology of Desire, still, loop video, 1999

Center: Echolalia, still, loop video, 2003

Right: Zeno's Paradox, still, loop video, 2003