New York based artist Kurt Ralske is a master of visual image manipulation. With his project "Motion-Extraction-Reanimation Series", the artist reassembles material from various commercial movies such as Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville" (1965) and isolates, processes, and animates only the motion content. Ralske treats motion in the films as
an "object or surface" where alternate perspectives of a scene are presented simultaneously to produce often ghostly-like images. In particular, the actor's motions while doing simple actions like drinking coffee are transformed into kinetic surfaces and volumes with dynamic architectural qualities. Although it might be difficult to actually make sense of the narrative progression in these clips, the effect produced is a hypnotic homage to the original filmmaker's vision.
Jonah Brucker Cohen