Brandon John Barnard

  For my film  diaDOGue , I wanted to continue my investigation into non-human agency like I did with  Doggy Style  and  Tinguely Feeling . For both of those previous productions, I tried to embrace chance by recording the subjects (dogs/robots) and having agency in the editing process through the selection of footage and its use in the editing process. I wanted to twist the format this time around. My plan was to film Toffee and Noodle and then use the selected footage to form a narrative. For example, if they looked concerned, I would write a piece of dialogue where they sounded concerned, and so on. So, I spent a few hours on the first day filming the dogs. They got tired pretty quickly, so I thought to myself “okay, so this will take a few days. No problem.” “Stop filming me” When I woke the next day, I found that Noodle had absolutely decimated my toy plesiosaurus (my favourite dinosaur). It was completely my fault because, one, she is a dog and knows no be...

Tinguely Feeling  was one of the most complicated projects I have done so far. The seed of this idea was originally planted in June of 2024, when I started reading into  Nouveau réalisme . Jumping down rabbit hole after rabbit hole eventually dropped me onto a page about  Jean Tinguely  and  Métamatics . Métamatics was a series of works started in the 1950s which used robots and automation to create works of art. Often, these works would use chance elements, meaning that each work created by these machines was unique in some capacity, with interesting results being churned out. That really simplifies it, though. There were pieces that exploded, many water fountains, and pieces that evoked many of the themes that Duchamp’s readymades did as well. I really recommend reading further into the topic yourself. At this point, I was still on a DADA high, so the similarities between the areas was compelling to me too. I was really drawn in by many of the points made with...