Malcolm Le Grice was born in 1940 in Plymouth, Devon. He studied Painting in London during the so-called swinging sixties –a period of strong political activity, changes in fashion and life-style, and the breaking of artistic boundaries. He started to make film in 1965. Though he continued to paint, film became his main medium together with experiments with computers and other technologies. He describes his earliest 16mm film, Castle 1, as a pre-punk attack on cinema with a live, continually flashing light bulb before the screen. From this point he constructed his own film printing and developing system – later installing a professional printer at the London Filmmakers Co-op. Concern with the physical conditions of film and image transformation in printing dominated his early ‘materialist’ work. This ran parallel to exploring multi-projection, live performance and installation, and underpinned his later move to digital video.

 

He has continuously published theoretical and historical work including a history of experimental cinema, Abstract Film and Beyond in 1977. A number of his theoretical essays have been collected in Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age in 2001. This publication reviews various implications for the art of cinema as digital systems have come to challenge the theoretical dominance of film.

 

His Master Class presentation will include a number of video clips that trace the range of his exploration with various media technologies. This will cover film transformation, early digital experiments, performance works, large scale multi-screen installation and the exploration of 3D. He will discuss how this range of practical exploration relates to theoretical concepts and problems.

 

Thursday 06/06 | 1:00 pm | CGAI