spot healing

A wide angle install photo of a two-channel video installation along a long corridor wall with white walls and a concrete floor. Devoid of ceiling light, a cool ambient light from frosted windows sweeps through the corridor. A video still of the artist from the short film is displayed on a wall-mounted sixty inch monitor. The same image is faintly projected at a larger scale onto the wall behind the monitor. A black wire extends outwards and up from the monitor. On the other side of hallway are two black computer chairs and two pairs of black studio headphones. A staircase drenched in turquoise and orange hues is visible towards the center background.Wide-angle documentation of a two-channel video installation along a large white wall in a museum corridor. The installation includes a sixty inch wall-mounted monitor displaying a climactic handheld scene in which the camera follows a flickering-faced man as he slowly backpedals towards, and ultimately collapses on a bed. The monitor feed is echoed by a larger, fainter projection of the same video along the same wall.poster advertising the short film spot healing that reads "a tutorial gone wrong by Ryan Woodring" and includes several film festival laurels. The image is pulled from the film and includes a human posing with his fist in the sky. A 3D-modeled avatar mimics the movement right in front of him.

spot healing
2024. Variable(1-2) channel digital video. 9 mins.

A short film posing as a software tutorial from the “Image E.R.” YouTube channel in which the host undergoes a series of intense physical and emotional transformations while demonstrating how to “heal” sick images using increasingly experimental methods ranging from miming to machine learning. This metadrama plays with the intricacies of illness, diagnosis, and labor in post-AI visual culture.

Screenings:

    • West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival. Morgantown, WV
    • art+film+vienna. Vienna, AT
    • Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival. Burano, IT
    • 17 Days Festival. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI
    • Odds & Ends Film Festival. Charlottesville, VA
    • Defy Film Festival. Nashville, TN
    • Museum of the Moving Image. Astoria, NY

Trailer: spot healing. 2024.

Description: Shot to mimic a typical software tutorial, the host, played by Ryan, addresses a presumed audience of software learners from a desk in an apartment while demonstrating digital manipulation tactics on a stock image of a hunched over construction worker with his hand held to his mouth. Between full-screen graphics that collectively read “spot healing, a software tutorial about healing images, by ryan woodring,” the trailer includes multiple scenes from the host’s desktop as he is increasingly subjected to his software interventions.