EXIT by Christopher Musgrave (San Francisco) exudes a visual reverence and calm presence that too often eludes digital-media artists in their frantic rush to exploit the onslaught of fleeting technologies. Using the digital process as a filmmaker would an optical printer, Musgrave’s remarkably organic approach retains the integrity of the image in spite of EXIT’s visibly fractured and elusive space, and plumbs its depths where most can only isolate the surface. Reminiscent of the “pure realms of phenomena” present in American experimental
filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky’s films, EXIT’s images pulse kaleidoscopic in lyrical abstraction amidst a shadowy gauze, as decadent golds, vivid fuchsias, and brilliant blues mutate into luscious purples, florid greens, and shimmering coral. By engaging with these “ephemeral peripheries” that flicker in the ebb and flow off
sculpted light, Musgrave captures a prismatic view of a world implied, and much like Plato’s “allegory of the cave” to which the piece’s title alludes, he then ends us into the light. Xopher Davidson’s (San Francisco) mystical electronic drone serves to set the pace with its sonic stained-glass filter, reaching an aural epiphany amidst an explosion of color. Like a flash in the night… (Christine Metropoulos)