"I've just enjoyed a renewed acquaintance with some of Gregg Biermann's recent work. In this work he has taken head-on some of the supreme moments of classical cinema and subjected them to a dazzling transformation in the digital domain. The results are exhilarating, surprising tours de force. They also have a zany quality that shows the artist to have a witty imagination."
- Larry Gottheim, filmmaker

Happy Again, 2006, 5 minutes, video, stereo
Happy Again is a digital age motion study inspired by the "chronophotographic" work of Etienne-Jules Marey. The signature scene from the Hollywood musical "Singin' in the Rain" is split into seven layers. Each layer is moving at a different speed and is visible equally in superimposition. At the temporally central point all visual and audio elements coalesce in a single frame. The result uncovers a new cinema, music and dance that are buried within the familiar iconic sequence.

The Hills Are Alive - 2005, 7 ½ minutes, video, stereo
An iconic scene from the beloved Hollywood musical "The Sound of Music" is transformed through a contrapuntal progression of split screen effects. The resulting mosaic reveals haunting melodies and reverberating dissonance.

Spherical Coordinates 2005, 8 ½ minutes, video, stereo
Technical Assistance: Francis Schmidt, Juan Leon Spherical Coordinates is a new piece in my series of digitally animated pieces in which iconic Hollywood films are reworked. This piece introduces stunning dimensionality and perspective to the usually 2-dimensional genre of avant-garde cinema. The camera moves in a variety of ways examining the inside of a 3D animated sphere on the inside of which a scene from Psycho is wrapped.

The Waters of Casablanca 2002, 6 minutes, video, stereo
A single frame from the classic film Casablanca is transformed into six minutes of exploding and hyperactive animation. Although the process is entirely digital, it actually relates to the hand-made, or direct film tradition (which dates to the mid-1930#s) more than most computer animation.

Cinema Study 2003, 7 minutes, video, stereo
"Cinema Study" is a reworking of images and sounds taken from Orson Welles landmark film "Citizen Kane." The piece breaks the frame into multiple smaller rectangles, each with short video and audio samples from the original film. Part of the activity of the viewer seems to be the activity of keeping track of the images, which pop around the screen, and how they relate to the sounds. All of the sounds in the piece are in a precise synchronous relationship with the images on the screen. The original narrative film breaks down almost completely, and becomes an almost pure visual and musical experience. Call it Citizen Kane the re-mix.

Paradiso (Material Excess - Part 3) 2003, video, 23 minutes, stereo
Text by Sarah Markgraf and Additional Music by Ron Mazurek

Paradiso is constructed entirely out of junk food and pleasant, relaxing music. Nothing in paradise needs to have nutritional value. The only requirement is pleasure. In my best Monty Python accent a voiceover posits the question "was Jesus ever truly happy?" as gummy bears and chicklets dance on the screen in what critic Fred Camper calls a "half ironic vision of redemption." Paradiso is the final section of my three-part Material Excess (73 min, 2002-03). Material Excess is a large-scale animated movie, which borrows its structure from Dante#s The Divine Comedy. The animation is for the most part created in a digital process related to the cameraless hand-made film tradition. In a photo-editing program, scans of various objects are placed on a digital image strip without regard for individual frames. These images are translated into video sequences and the result is an exploding jumble of colors and forms. By its very nature, the animation cannot directly illustrate the various bits of narration that appear in the soundtrack. The two things simply happen simultaneously. "a remarkable achievement" - David Finkelstein, Film Threat

Hackensack Motet 2006, 5 minutes, video, stereo
Recorded on Main Street in Hackensack, New Jersey and animated in the same software that is responsible for 3D animated features like Shrek, this video transforms an ordinary street scene into a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria with stunning depth effects. The original audio composition has associations with early choral music and thus imbues the otherwise worldly imagery with sacred, almost cosmic qualities.