COMPOSITION FOR POWERPOINT
x3 video projectors / x3 speakers / x3 iMac / Microsoft PowerPoint / 20 min / 3-channel video + audio / performance / 2019
Composition for Powerpoint is a 3-channel expanded cinema performance that uses Microsoft PowerPoint to animate both light and sound. At times playful, at times self-referencing, and at times brutally structuralist, Richardson re-examines the familiar tools and motifs of a PowerPoint presentation as a catalyst for new experimental animation. Utilizing slide transitions, flow charts, built-in textures and sound effects as building blocks to construct audio-video sequences. Richardson approaches the commonplace office software as a complex single-frame animation program, troubleshooting becomes performance, as technical limitations are glorified and re-examined as formal opportunities. With Composition for PowerPoint Richardson’s traditional approach to reappropriating analog video editing systems is lifted from the nostalgia of the video-era and placed within the familiarity of the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
