Elia Vargas
grass wool signal scan: an adaptation of NZ is Terrible

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"grass wool signal scan" is a single channel video adaptation of the travelogue zine "NZ is Terrible", a series of fake Facebook posts written by Marie Hoff and compiled into a short story while doing research on wool in New Zealand. The video is a multi-signal path short video using different analog and digital techniques, shot on location of Marie's sheep grazing in West Sonoma County. The video is a meditation on symbolic and material links between grazing land in California and New Zealand, and relationships between grass, wool, and the fabric of information signal.

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As a project that adapts the narrative device of social media and public digital space, "grass wool signal scan" is a contemporary homage to early experimental narrative structures such as "Window Water Baby Moving" by Stan Brakhage and "Sans Soleil" by Chris Marker, while focusing on a multi-species materialism that de-centers the human, gender binaries, and the nature-culture divide.