The video takes its inspiration from the song “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”, released by the British rock group Genesis in 1971. The song warns of the apocalyptic spread of the poisonous plant Heracleum mantegazzianum (giant hogweed) after it was “captured” in the hills of the Russian Empire and brought to Britain by Victorian botanists. The lyrics of the songs are filled with ironic humor and describe an anthropomorphized plant that is on a mission to destroy the human race. The video “The Return of the Return of the Giant Hogweed” is an updated version of the story told in the Russian language, looking at the Cold War era half a century later from the viewpoint of the giant hogweed itself, telling the story of its fall.

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2-5. Alexandra Lerman, The Return of the Return of the Giant Hogweed 2

2-5. Alexandra Lerman, The Return of the Return of the Giant Hogweed

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DRIFT is web-based art that tells the story of a walk I took in March, 2020, along the North Shore of Staten Island, NY, just as it was beginning to dawn on people that leisurely strolls might be a bad idea at the present moment. DRIFT was created using basic HTML/CSS coding. The images are shots I took with an iPhone. I have a lot on my mind as I take a final stroll through favorite parts of my neighborhood before sheltering in place – rambling thoughts accompany a rambling walking tour.

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Shanidar, Safe Return is an interactive story that places a young Neanderthal woman named Haizea in the center of a community’s struggle for survival, as the Cro-Magnins (Homo sapiens) migrate to their once-peaceful territories. Haizea and her band of mixed – Neanderthal and Cro-Magnin – travelers must walk the distance from danger in what is now southern France to safety in their old refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, a place called Shanidar. They meet a group of Denisovans on the way, and receive guidance from the old H. heidelbergensis shaman, Bihotz.

Created in Twine.

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This is a story about human life in pre-history. The direction the story takes is up to you. Play the story like a game. If you want more of the story, use the back and forward arrows to make more choices. The more choices you make, the fuller the story becomes. This story is speculative fiction, so chronological accuracy, archeological exactness, and anthropological certainty may not always be in effect…

Act I:
A group returns from foraging and hunting. 

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DEEP SEE is a metaphysical short video. The work engages cognitive recursion as a poetic device via forms of blended perception with a disembodied 4ft blonde pony-tail prop boxed inside a complex, oceanic dream. The video merges internal and external reflections. DEEP SEE deploys simultaneous sensorial strategies of visual, auditory and linguistic looping to incite “double-meanings” and to build a dream inside a dream. “Once I dreamt my mind was an ocean box and my ponytail was inside it. Even though my ponytail is mine, I can never fully see it as it grows from the back of my head. So, I built it real: I sea swam with a 4ft surrogate. I wanted to see my ponytail swim detached from me in the sea. And to see the sea as a box on a screen. And when I filmed it I was also inside the ocean and the box on the screen. I made a psychic echo by drilling into my dream; I can now deep see,” VLM, 2019.

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Drawing from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s timely and relevant book from his Incerto Series, “Antifragile,” and the notion that individuals can gain from the impact of highly improbable events, this triptych and evocative soundscape offer three meditations on a selection of black swan events, including 911 and its aftermath, the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and collapse of the global financial market, the sinking of the Titanic, and the recent rise of ChatGPT. The score in particular explores perceived randomness and variability through algorithmic electroacoustic composition and granular synthesis. 

Adam Hogan 

Adam Hogan is a media artist, cinematographer, composer, researcher, and advocate for film and media preservation. His work engages experimental approaches to moving image and sound by using the mediums themselves through production and development to explore how media technologies shape our perception and relationships to spaces and histories. His work and collaborations have been featured in numerous national and international festivals, exhibitions and collections including: Ars Electronica, International Symposium on Electronic Art, CYFEST-13, Smithsonian Institution, Berlinale, Athens Digital Arts Festival, and more. Hogan holds a Ph.D. in Digital Arts and Experimental Media from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. 

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Surmatants – Mars Rising is an elegiacally visceral response to the CV-19 pandemic, in three acts — grounded in the Sci-Fi genre and informed by Pittsburg’s Slavic immigrant labor history, and bubonic plague imagery of Bernt Notke’s Surmatans, painting (1633), of the dance macabre. Following an abstract narrative that weaves in tenants of Russian Cosmism, a transcendence is evoked through Jesse Gelaznik’s musical compositions, paired with renowned choreographer- Željko Jergan and John Harbist’s dances choreographies performed by the Tamburitzans. The narrative follows an ascent to Mars as a result of the dance, lead by a pale rider on a white horse disguised as a beguiling female Slavic dancer and accompanied by a chorus of female singers who transform into human Motanka dolls (a benevolent kind of Slavic voodoo doll — until the ribbons come off of the face). The third finds the dancers resurrected on Mars — transmitting a human resurrection on Mars from the future. Cosmism and transcendence are evoked through Jesse Gelaznik’s musical compositions, paired with dances by John Harbist and renowned choreographer Zeljko Jergan and performed by the Tamburitzans.

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