Julian H. Scaff
Julian H. Scaff is an artist, filmmaker, and designer from the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona.
He received his BA in Film and Video from Pitzer College, his MA in Film Critical Studies from UCLA, and an MFA in Public Art from the Dutch Art Institute .
As a user-interface designer he designed many large websites including GoTo.com (now called Overture), PCPortables.com, and JobTrak.com (now called MonsterTrak), in addition to designing online advertising campaigns for clients such as Apple Computers, Honda and Toyota. He has also shown his artwork and short digital movies in various galleries and film festivals around the world, and produced radio programs for ResonanceFM in London, Epsilonia Festival Radiophonique in Paris, and Voice of the People in Lebanon.
In 1997 Scaff founded and edited Strobe, which according to the UCLA Bruin was the first academic journal published exclusively on the internet. Contributions included articles by the famous film theorists Peter Wollen and Nick Browne.
Scaff also produced the first online version of the famous Walter Benjamin essay The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and Scaff's essay Art and Authenticity in the Age of Digital Reproduction has been widely referenced in cultural and media studies.
His film credits include The Cosmodrome Futurists, Genomatica, and Piles of DirtPiles of dirt (film). He also starred in the film The Many Faces of Julian H. Scaff directed by Bob Recon. His recent film Tecopa which explores the site of a Native American massacre in California is featured at the Zonderling Media Art Festival in the Netherlands and has been garnering much attention in the media there.
His landscape art/design projects have included "Water, Trees, Path, Cranes" in Enschede, Netherlands, and "Dazzled Windscape," a proposal for making the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, Massachusetts more environmentally and culturally friendly.
Scaff is a professor of fine art at Webster University in Webster Groves, Missouri, and also gives guest lectures and workshops around the world.
External links
- Julian H. Scaff listing on IMDB
- Scaff's film and media production company Zoopraxiscope
- Scaff's ecological art and design website
- Veiled digital portrait by Julian H. Scaff selected for an exhibition by Tom R. Chambers, curator for the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
- Journal Strobe
- Interview with Julian H. Scaff about the Journal Strobe in The Daily Bruin
Filmography for Julian H. Scaff
- Breukvlak: Tales of a Highway (2007)
- Tecopa (2006)
- Piles of Dirt (2006)
- Genomatica (2005) *
- Day of the Dead (2005)
- The Cosmodrome Futurists (2004)
- Desert Mosaic (2004)
- My Daily Commute (1996)
Selected publications
- Futureplexity: The Analog/Digital Architecture of Detroit Techno published in Cross-Reference Magazine, The Hague
- Quietscapes: Noise, Silence, and (Re)Designing the Public Sonosphere published in the journal Open, Rotterdam
- Sonic Notes from a Taipei Noodle Restaurant published in the journal Locus Sentio, Werkplaatstypogrfie, Arnhem, Netherlands
- Art and Authenticity in the Age of Digital Reproduction published by the Digital Arts Institute