Christian Nicolay
Studies in Amplification
Boom and Bust 澎呀派
Single channel video
02:00 min
2013
Christian Nicolay & Ya-chu Kang
Economic markets, financial institutions and the global economy are unpredictable and in constant flux. Boom and Bust 澎呀派 examines the fragility of interconnected global market systems and their relationship to the balance of opposing forces by literally bursting the bubble. Boom and Bust 澎呀派 depicts a world in which rational and irrational co-exist situated between absurdity and reality, familiar and unfamiliar, the vulnerable and invulnerable.
A Special Thank You goes out to all the participants who collaborated with us on this project. The best of the unexpected.
Link to other collaborative videos:
Blind Faith
Single channel video
02:42 min
2009
Remastered and edited 2012
Camera: Clayton Holmes
We all Fall Down
Single channel video
04:10 min
2007
Every child has happily joined hands with friends and recited the familiar nursery rhyme, "Ring around a rosie, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." Few people realize to what this seemingly happy little nursery rhyme actually refers.
A popular interpretation alleges that the rhyme is connected with the Great Plague of London in 1665, or perhaps earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England around the 14th Century. The 'falling down' has always involved dropping to the ground as the rhyme is recited, evoking the death from the plague.
I constructed the video using old film footage and scored the sounds using low-tech analogue equipment. The juxtaposition of children happily singing "Ring around the Rosie" with the harsh realities of death associated with the Rhyme aim to create a paradoxical contrast to a common ritual that has been performed for over a Century.
Musical Composition for a Sneeze
Single channel video
01:31 min
2007
The sound of several sneezes deconstructed and composed into a musical composition.