Julie Simon

Statement

In many ways, I feel I’ve rejected elements of my formal training in photography and film. I spend a lot of time teaching the rules in both media. Yet, I pay very little attention to any of them when creating my own work. I’ve adapted a non-representational style where elements of color, texture, and form are abstracted and woven together. While many of the photographic/video layers begin as recognizable objects, these source images are rarely discernible in the end. My work is intended to evoke fleeting impressions that viewers can interpret, and reinterpret, for themselves. Julie Simon has been working with lens-based media for more than 30 years. She has been exhibited on television, film festivals, in art galleries/museums and on the web winning a number of prestigious awards for a wide range of media projects. She is on the faculty and directs the B.A. degree in Digital Communication at the University of Baltimore.

Films

Multiplication tables and art don’t necessarily seem to go together. However, the relationship, rhythm, and patterns found in math are artistic at their core. “Four Times in Cmaj” explores the 4 times table, in abstraction, over time. What inspired me to create this piece is the mathematical structure of multiplication, for example 4x1=4. Video is made from individual frames, 30 frames in each second. I looked at what would happen if I edited 4 frames of one source, and then 1 frame of a second source, resulting in 4 frames of a third source. I carried that through 4x14, in a master layer. Then, using time based segments based on multiples of the original number 4, layered and abstracted the master layer over time. The sound was produced independently using elements of the Cmaj chord, layered and abstracted in the same manner.