Oliver Hockenhull is a marked contributor to independent filmmaking in Canada. His multifaceted career encompasses roles as a filmmaker, a media and digital artist, writer, communication theorist, and educator. His early films were in glorious 16mm.
Hockenhull's work is known for its baroque analysis, sudden poetics, humour, visual play - earning recognition at various prominent venues and festivals globally. Among these are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, and the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB).
His films, such as "Determinations," "Aldous Huxley: The Gravity of Light," and "Building Heaven, Remembering Earth" exemplify his essayistic approach to documentary filmmaking. He also has a keen interest in animation, evident in works like "Hand Made Electricity" and "Robot Pavlov Sputnik."
He has shared his knowledge and expertise at institutions like the University of British Columbia, S.F.U. and Northwestern University (Evanston, Il., USA), where he taught courses on documentary film, short films, hypermedia, semiotics, and the history of cinema.
He has been involved in new media imaging and authoring technologies since the early days of personal computing and the internet. He has participated in pioneering projects at The Centre for Image and Sound Research in Vancouver and The Banff Centre for the Arts, where he experimented with virtual reality and L-Systems.
Damp: Contemporary Vancouver Media Arts, a critical hardcover book was co-edited and co-designed with Alex MacKenzie and was released by Anvil Press in 2008.
In 2013, he finished two parallel documentary feature films focusing on psychedelic medicine and science. These films have since gained international recognition available for streaming on major platforms.
His work is rooted in philosophical and social exploration, aiming to produce creations that are not only reflective of historical context but also resonate with contemporary relevance and that anticipate future movements.
History is a contest between idolatrous images and the mind's capacity for thought. Ernst Jünger
Upcoming 80 minute 4k video, a film essay delving into the essence of photography and representation in the era of AI — intrinsically incomplete, lacking, fractional.
Ultimately the film is a reflection on the act of reflection itself. It unveils the myriad dimensions of the IMAGE, illuminated through the prism of deeply personal vignettes — none more intimate than the portrayal of the artist's own mother. Here, the umbilical cord of identity converges with a burst of latent potentials, poised for their imminent emergence.
1988
HyperMedia Work
KOZMiKONIC ELECTRONICA √
A media piece utilizing Poincaré’s recurrence theorem via an imperfectly realized Arnold’s Cat Map.
{FYI — Example of a well working Cat Map: https://www.jasondavies.com/catmap/}
A NEO-FLUXUS QUANTUM-INDETERMINATE EVENT √
We have installed a REG, - a random event generator - that uses electronic noise in the form of low-amplitude voltage fluctuations to generate a constant stream of apparently random numbers. This REG is installed atop a standard white museum plinth. It is wifi'd to a computer.
The resulting information is combed by a series of statistical benchmarks and translated to provide parameters for a further algorithm that edits a collection of video and sound clips.
Conceived/Directed/Edited and Basic Jitter/Max Programming by Oliver Hockenhull
Statistical Wizardry and Technical Assistance: Peter Courtemanche/Western Front
TEXTS
- THE BINARY AS ANIMATE ART
- essay published in THE SHARPEST POINT: ANIMATION AT THE END OF CINEMA - YYZ BOOKS, 2005, Toronto
- SYNTACTICAL AND AESTHETIC ANSWERS TO INFORMATION ACCESS PROBLEMS IN HYPERMEDIA NAVIGATION: A MONTAGE BASED APPROACH _ 1990. Hockenhull
- Early cyber philosophy texts / selected for John Hopkins PostModern site and many others
These pages were early experimental hypertext essays. The original essays were commissioned by CISR – centre for sound and image research – a one time CDN centre for excellence based in Vancouver. (The pages have had different URL’s over time)
Used by educators from: The University of Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Tech-SciCulture- University of California, Santa Barbara, The University of Iowa, Victoria University (NZ), Rensselaer Tech. Institute, New York State, McGill, Montréal, U.B.C. Foundation, John Hopkins University – post modern site, The University of East London, U.K., The Institute for Social Theory at Keele University, U.K., Texas State University, Dept. of Writing, The University of Vermont, University of Illinois, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, (critical approaches to culture, communications, and hypermedia), The University of Southern California, and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Some of the more technical parts of the hypertext document work have been cited and discussed in the following journals and articles: Information Sciences Institute and The Journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Computer Society - Using Adaptive Hypermedia to Support Organizational Memory and Learning David Croasdell, David Paradice & James Courtney, Department of Business Analysis and Design, Texas A&M University, Virtue-Nets: Toward a Model for Expanding Knowledge Networks, proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Other
E V O, documentary film essay on evolution (with the eminent evolutionist — Richard Dawkins ) — as a DVD-R, multi-versioned, stochastically defined edit.
VRML Art — Site included a functioning ‘reconstruction' of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, Boulleé's Cenotaph to Newton, innovations in Java Scripting and experimental constructions using mutations in L-SYSTEMS, (morphogenetic programming).
Founding Co-Director, Curator (with Professor Thecla Schiphorst ) of "Digital Earth — Centre for Telecommunications, Interactivity & Art", a non-profit cultural society. Numerous online early art projects with “Digital Earth”, numerous artists involved. (Early 1990's)
Lecture Presentation @ Hypernation Video Conference — between McGill University, Montreal, Western Front Gallery, Vancouver.
Contributing Writer, voice over, "Restless Machine", CD-ROM on Industrial Music. (1993)
Researcher, hyper-text writer, on contract with the Multimedia, Art and Telecommunication Project of the Centre For Image and Sound Research, Vancouver, Canada.
Founding member of Webweavers, a group of computer specialists and art researchers who constructed ANIMA, Arts Network for Integrated Media Arts. This was the one of the first (if not the first) cultural web site in Canada and the second site on line in (WWW/Mosaic Browser) British Columbia - ANIMA: Home - Created Jan 15-94, Modified May 18-95, Version 1.98/5 - Visit Via The Way Back Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/19961028072819/www.anima.wis.net/ANIMAhome.html
Our Book On Vancouver Media Arts Can Be Found Here
Bibliothèque de l’Université Laval * School of The Art Institute of Chicago * Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC * Temple University Libraries * Yale University Library * University of British Columbia Library * University of Victoria Libraries * The British Library, St. Pancras * University of Washington Libraries * National Gallery of Canada Library * Portland State University * University of Miami * University of Oregon Libraries * University of Calgary Library * University of Alberta * Nova Scotia College of Art & Design Library * Harvard College Library * MIT Libraries * Medicine Hat College Library * University of California, Davis * University of Saskatchewan Library * Loyola Marymount University * University of Colorado Boulder * University of California, Irvine * University of California, San Diego * University of North Dakota * University of New Mexico-Main Campus * The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art * University of Wisconsin - Madison, General Library System * University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign * Western Michigan University * Indiana University * Rice University * Texas A&M University * University of Michigan * Cleveland Public Library * Princeton University Library * Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi * University of Guelph * University of Toronto * Vanderbilt University Library * University of Toronto Scarborough Library * Western University* Tulane University * University of Alabama * University of Pittsburgh * Auburn University. * Rutgers University Libraries * Savannah College of Art & Design * Concordia University Library * Indiana University of Pennsylvania * Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada * McGill University Library * St. Lawrence University * University of Georgia * Université d’Ottawa * Bard College * Bloomsburg University * Goddard College Library * Library of Congress * University of Maryland Libraries * University of South Carolina * University of Virginia * College of Charleston * Columbia University in the City of New York * Dartmouth Library * Fordham University * University of South Australia * RMIT University Library * Monash University Library * New York Public Library System * University of Hawaii at Manoa * Vancouver Public Library * Library and Archives Canada * Washington State University * University of Calgary Library * Simon Fraser University * Brigham Young University * University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries* Woodbury University Library * Regis University* University of California, San Diego* Oklahoma State University Library* Drury University* Northwestern University * University of Texas at Arlington* Ohio Northern University * University of Houston* Reeves Library, Moravian College * Princeton University Library * Tufts University - Tisch Library * Biblioteca Accademia Architettura (Italy) * Eindhoven University of Technology * University of Canterbury, Central Library* University of Technology, Sydney* Monash University Library* Willamette University * Missoula County Public School* Marshall Public Library* Denver Public Library* University of New Mexico-Main Campus * University of North Texas Library* Indiana University* Ohio State University Libraries* University of Baltimore Library* Willamette University* Marshall Public Library* Ohio State University Libraries* University of Miami* Edith Cowan University Library* Dickinson College Library * Fordham University * Weber State University* University of Wisconsin - Manitowoc * Trinity University, Coates Library * National Library of Medicine (USA)* University of Canterbury, Central Library (U.K.)* Boca Raton Public Library* University of Virginia * University of Maryland Libraries* University of Tasmania Library * University of Lethbridge* University of Alberta * Edmonton Public Library * University of Nevada, Reno* Sonoma County Library* Mill Valley Public Library* Palo Alto City Library* University of Wyoming * Jefferson County Public Library* University of Technology, Sydney* Emily Carr University * Palatine Library (Illinois)* Universita dell Svizzera Italiana* Vernon Public Library (USA)* Winchester Public Library (USA)* San Mateo County Libraries * Burnaby Public Library
Oliver began a meditation practice at 15, met and dialogued with Buckminster Fuller at the age of 17 and hit the road at 18.
He is an initiate of various Yogas, committed to Kriya practice since 1978, he received the darshan of Nisargadatta Ma