Charles G. Miller
/ Selected Projects
- HOME
- How To A Thick Surface, in the idiom of a tutorial video (For Capital) DRAFT 2015
- a city in the southwest of the united states IN PROGRESS 2014
- Hidden In Plain Sight: La Jolla / UTC Annex, An-Edge City 2013
- Building Blocks: Investigating the Prohibitive / Potential Scale of Redevelopment 2012
- Drone Readymade: Fine Military Detritus 2011
- The Periscope Project 2010 - 2013
- Untitled (LA Auto-Space) 2008
- Master Narrative: Toward "Autonomy" / Negative Space ... 2006
How To A Thick Surface, in the idiom of a tutorial video (For Capital) OR, How to conceptualize a z-axis extrusion in a material / geographic vector plain in the early part of the 21st century (5 over 1 mixed-use development)
2015 - DRAFT
1080p, 14 min
An essay video in the idiom of a Youtube tutorial that outlines the organization of geographic space to necessitate its conversion into capital, as if it were an abstract, geometric process. As a case study, the video focuses on a multi-unit, full-block residential typology that comprises the majority of recent development in Downtown San Diego. Draft Version. Full development will incorporate into a city in the southwest... project.
a city in the southwest of the united states
2014 - In Progress
1080p
A serial video essay that works to re-present San Diego as a case study for the landscape artifacts of present geopolitical crises via reflexive applications of contemporary modes of image production. The project's conceptual premise is to never name San Diego directly, such that the issues broached can circumnavigate the cultural stereotypes of "place" per se.
Download "script" Pamphlet of Untitled (Oceanside Envisioned)
Hidden In Plain Sight:
La Jolla / UTC Annex; An-Edge City - 2010-2014
1080p, 55 min
A video essay culminating a series of pedestrian experiments that investigate La Jolla / University Towne Center, the prominent "Edge City" adjacent to the UCSD campus. Enactments serve as both active engagements, and fodder for documentation, producing a self-reflexive cross-section of the post-industrial landscape in North America.
Building Blocks:
Investigating the Prohibitive / Potential Scale of Redevelopment - 2012
1080p, 24 min
Co-produced with James Enos, Molly Enos, and The Periscope Project
A documentary project developed for art and educational contexts, augmented by an installation in its premiere. Part of larger "urban literacy" initiative, the project attempts to reveal and simplify the way urban "redevelopment" functions, as it has been cast into question after California's disbanding of redevelopment agencies in 2012. A technocratic politics of "master planning" progressively reveals itself in the video's subtext.
Drone Readymade: Fine Military Detritus - 2011
1080p, 12 min
Co-produced with The Periscope Project
Video essay documenting the placement of an MQ-1 Predator "drone" logistical container, modified as a mobile living unit, in public space adjacent to various military industrial sites throughout the San Diego region. The container was found on San Diego craigslist as military surplus, and the aircraft it was designed to house are manufactured in Poway, California, a northern suburb of San Diego.
The Periscope Project 2010 - 2013
With James Enos, Molly Enos, et al.
An experiment in alternative urban development, provisional facilities (housed in intermodal shipping containers) on a sliver lot in San Diego's East Village, were utilized and leveraged to form a non-profit organization. The space and cooperative works to active a nexus of art, architecture and urbanism toward pedagogy, advocacy, cultural amenities and interventionist projects.
The People's Drinking Straw: A Comprehensive Guide to Southern California's Water Delivery Infrastructure - 2009
480i, 4 min
A brief video that accompanies a pamphlet intervention explicitly addressing the water-delivery infrastructure of Southern California, and implicitly calling attention to major 20th century urban-geographic anomalies, their capacity for political contention, and the possibility of infrastructural disaster. The pamphlet and video combine and aggregate multiple sources of municipal and bureaucratic text, none of which is intrinsically altered.
Untitled (LA Auto-Space) - 2008
Anamorphic 480i, 3 channels, 60 min
A 3-channel video (originally screened as part of an installation) that documents and temporally measures the commutes of multiple Los Angeles residents. Beginning at a given commute's point of origin, I then walked along the same route for an equivalent amount of time. The significance of the original destination and walked destination were photographically conflated. A parallel narrative weaves together interviews with transportation advocates and urban scholars based in Los Angeles.
HOLLYWOOD SHOWER - 2008
480p, Multi-channel, 9 min
HOLLYWOOD SHOWER comprises a small series of videos whose production is a logistical complication of a mundane task or activity (e.g. a shower, a weekend camping get-away). This complication functions to visualize and spatialize the resources consumed during the production's undertaking. As living diagrams, the landscape and context where the videos were produced becomes an important background element.
MASTER NARRATIVE:
Toward "Autonomy" / Negative Space... - 2006
480i, 46 min
Master Narrative . . . is a video essay that comprises a reflexive, modern-art-historical deconstruction of the hermetic condition of attending an artist's residency. The video documents an ad hoc attempt to [representationally] reduce one's self and surroundings to nothing more than undifferentiated spatial and consumptive units. Completed while attending the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the spring of 2006.
Early Projects 2003 - 2006
These early projects establish a foundation for speculative visualizations and performative engagement with various implications of bodily existence and perceptual cognition in urban space. "TOWERBLOCK" is an ad hoc contemporary archeology of Baltimore based on the prominence and visibility of modern high-rise apartment blocks. "Helm . . ." was a platform adapted to a festival context that highlights otherwise insignificant sight-lines from its position. "New Uaxactún" is a reverse-apportionment of Washington DC modeled after a Mayan architectural observatory in Uaxactún, Guatemala. Plein Air / Flag / The Black H2 Index is an attempt to create a public exposé of excessive personal consumption (as embodied by SUVs), that incorporates its own architectural and performative consequences. "Shortcuts . . ." is a counter-urban-planning appendix, that attempts to measure the active use of gaps in the urban fabric (diagonal paths through empty lots) of Baltimore.