MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA

MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA
Channel Surfing Through Martian Television

“In an age of increasingly realistic CGI, my rough and clunky animation suggests that maybe the future isn’t so great.“ - Mike Heynes

Mike Heynes is a Wellington-based animator. Using children’s toys he has created MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA; a video installation ridiculing the popular concept of the future as an age of enlightenment and progress.

The notion of ‘the future’ was something Heynes first imagined as a youth via BBC television and Hollywood movies. In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the young Heynes watched the human race travel to other worlds in computer-driven spaceships. Inside, we enjoyed sleek, ultra-modernist interiors. Food gave way to brightly coloured nutritional paste and there was no need for physical labour.

Having lived beyond 2001, Heynes sees not a sophisticated human society, but one driven by profit and exploitation. “Now the future is here”, he says, “people are freaking out about cellphones causing brain cancer and technological waste poisoning the planet.”

MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA is based around a collection of stop-motion videos. The stars are Heynes’ collection of toy ‘Martians’, who, instead of representing a higher human ideal, resemble nothing more than toothless 'white trash' in space.

“I‘ve taken out any references to laser guns as I don’t see aliens as a threat to earth. My Martians are merely tourists stopping for a burger on the way to somewhere better. At worst they could be annoying bogans on a joyride.”

In an affectionate nod to the laboured special effects of early Dr. Who, Heynes ‘Martian spaceships’ travel to Earth via Chroma key compositing, an animation technique where one image can be superimposed over another, such as a spaceship flying over a landscape.

Unlike Avatar it is quite obviously a 'special effect' deliberately employed to fool no-one in 2010. Instead, the use of redundant technologies signals Heynes’ rejection of Hollywood illusionism, its narratives of Good vs Evil, Success and Failure and its related merchandise. “I am cynical about the motivations of the commercial movie industry. My work is a kind of cheap shot, a dodgy expose of 'movie magic'. It's essentially a simulacra, a rip-off.”

Heynes’ aesthetic is a product of growing up in the late 1970s and early ‘80s where the DIY gore of horror movies such as Evil Dead (1981) and Basket Case (1982) equated to the energy and thrill of punk rock. He credits the films of Sadie Benning, (shot on a Pixel Vision toy camera) for legitimising the use of cheap technologies.

The use of mass-produced toys to represent flawed characters was a device also used by the American film maker Todd Haynes in 1987, when he released Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Haynes’ film chronicles Karen Carpenter's fall from pop stardom to anorexia. The cast, including Carpenter, her family and record company boss, were represented by Barbie dolls. Throughout the film Haynes whittled down the face and arms of 'Barbie Karen' from a factory ideal into a figure of neurosis and death.

Mike Heynes’ shares this interest in stripping away the glamour of the Hollywood ideal. However, his choice of props adds another level of critique.

“I never use big name toy brands or recognizable figures from movies. I search for the fake version in bargain stores a few months later. I used to get a lot of props from the $2 Shop because I liked the shock value of its dodgy politics.” In a similar spirit, the soundtrack to MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA is based on “a bunch of royalty-free sound effects” by local musician Menno Huibers.

Despite MARTIAN CHANNEL CHROMA being set in space, Heynes’ concerns are earth-bound. His work not only reflects his distaste for Hollywood, but a general despair in the human ability to deal with the problems of the present.

He asks, Would aliens really be any more advanced than we are? Would they still have the same problems of greed and waste? And would they have a thousand TV channels with nothing worth watching?

This exhibition ran at the Film Archive, Pelorus Trust mediagallery in 2010, April 7 - Sat May 22 .