MEDIA ARTIST

Colby Richardson is a media artist and experimental filmmaker currently based in Toronto ON, Canada. Driven by a fascination with underused media technologies and by the way we interact with and value the technology at our disposal, Richardson’s work examines the artistic capabilities of tools and devices often unconsidered and dismissed.



→ COLBY RICHARDSON     MEDIA ARTIST


Doppelganger - Naomi Klein

Directed by Colby Richardson.

Commissioned by non-fiction author Naomi Klein, this film propels the viewer into an hypnotic exploration of the ideas within her upcoming book ‘Doppelganger’.

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2023
Film


Embody

Sheridan Riley + Colby Richardson

Banal moments of living are caught and compounded into a chaotic portrait of life and city.

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2022
Film / Video


Unstable Connection
New Performance Works on Disconnectivity

Unstable Connection is a two year research and creation project which aims to examine the unintentional aesthetics of digital connectivity, and explore unique artistic opportunities offered by the inherent imperfections, limitations, and defects found within the rapidly developing technologies that connect us and our devices.

Support provided by the Canada Council for the Arts Research + Creation Grant.

2021-2023
Performance Series



Performance for Aging Apple Devices

Performance for aging Apple devices is a audio and video composition and performance which uses facetime video calls between damaged and discarded iPads, iPhones, and iMacs - and the nuances and limitations they produce - as a catalyst for new expanded cinema.

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2020, 2021A/V Performance



DIMMER SWITCH

DIMMER SWITCH is a performance for sound (and light) which takes advantage of the inability of compact fluorescent light bulbs to properly dim. The electrical bursts are sonified into a syncopated and percussive barrage.

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2019, 2020, 2021
A/V Performance




Composition for PowerPoint

Composition for Powerpoint is a 3-channel expanded cinema performance that uses Microsoft PowerPoint to animate both light and sound. At times playful, at times self-referencing, and at times brutally structuralist, Richardson re-examines the familiar tools and motifs of a PowerPoint presentation as a instrument for new experimental animation.

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2019
3-Channel
A/V Performance




HEAD

Filmed on super 8 in an underground concourse located directly beneath Winnipeg's famous Portage and Main intersection. HEAD takes a structualist examination of the often overlooked 360 degree concrete relief mural that spans the entirety of the underground passageway.

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2019
Super8 Film




DE/GEN

DE/GEN is an audio-visual performance which uses analog-video feedback, and video>as>audio to create tones directly from a video signal. At times playful and at times jarring, the piece undulates between rhythm and noise, beat and shriek, generating and degenerating a constantly mutating soundscape.

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2018, 2019
A/V Performance






Smear

Smear is a performance which uses finger grease and accidental pocket recordings to animate and transform the idiosyncrasies of smart devices and their pitfalls.

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2019
Performance




Poolside Hybrid Artist Residency Video Pool Media Arts Centre 

Utilizing Video Pool’s largely unused legacy video equipment and Amiga consoles, the gallery space was transformed into a hybrid Analog-Digital video production studio and experimental laboratory for the month long duration of the residency. Focussing on the functions of the once cutting-edge Video Toaster 4000, I aimed to deconstruct the comparatively ‘primitive’ digital effects, transitions, and 3D renderer.

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2019
Residency



MELLOTRAUMA

Mellotrauma is an audio/visual collaboration with experimental musician and artist Jon Vaughn. Richardson and Vaughn utilize audio and video feedback and no-input mixing to blur the lines between between the two mediums and while both overwhelming and subduing the senses.

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2016, 2017 A/V Collaboration Performance



Convolve 

Shot on Super 8 using in-camera edits and single-frame animation, Convolve transforms pages from Greg Bright’s ‘Fontana Mazes’ into a convoluted passage, using prisms, water refractions and warped chrome to obscure the already concealed path of The Maze.

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2016
Super8 Film



Innervision

Innervision is an re-occuring project utilizing a variety of CRT monitors in various arrangments with monitor-specific video works portraying an introspective purgatory for the cathode ray tube television.

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2016, 2017, 2018
Installation



Channelers 

Channelers' is a series of video-sculptures that act as a medium between the living observer and the dead radio waves left behind by the abandonment of analog television broadcasting.

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2017 Installation /
Video Sculpture




Portal Voyager
 
Portal Voyager is a meditation on technological progress, which uses obsolete consumer electronics and low-tech optics, to simulate the act of traveling through a wormhole.

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2017 Interactive Video Sculpture



Peter Grier + Pulsewidth + Colby Richardson
LUGO 2016

An audio improvisation between Peter Grier and Pulsewidth (Ernie Dulanowsky) with live camera and analog video manipulation by Colby Richardson.

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2017
A/V Collaboration



Infinity Rift

Utilizing Video Pool’s largely unused legacy video equipment and Amiga consoles, the gallery space was transformed into a hybrid Analog-Digital video production studio and experimental laboratory for the month long duration of the residency. Focussing on the functions of the once cutting-edge Video Toaster 4000, I aimed to deconstruct the comparatively ‘primitive’ digital effects, transitions, and 3D renderer.

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2015, 2016
Interactive Video Sculp


Warp Hole 

'Warp Hole' is a vague simulation of a wormhole. Created through live analog video feedback, Warp Hole generated a dynamic, evolving, image. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the patterns of light were burned into the television screen, picked up by the camera, and reincorporated into the feedback.

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2015
Installation




PHOMOHOBES

Phomohobes are Jason Cawood and Colby Richardson, collaborating primarily in the medium of paper collage since 2012.

When combined together as collages, the cut-out images present an ambiguous, cryptic agenda, but they do so assertively. The collages often take shape as garish, ornate and perverse juxtapositions of mid-20th century interiors, ancient Egypt, astronomy, dated glamour, beauty products, decontextualized body parts, and hypermasculinity.

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2012 - PresentCollage
© 2022 - Colby Richardson