Joe Hamilton

Trouble in Utopia and Survey are two recent good works by Joe Hamilton. Both projects work under the disorientation and hyper-reality created by Joe working through animated collage, numerous layers, transitions and different perspectives. The first one was created for BYOB Melbourne 2013 which took place at the new RMIT design Hub building designed by Sean Godsell in Melbourne. As Joe Hamilton told us; "the video work Trouble in Utopia is about the building. The building is quite brutal and moderist which really appeals to my taste but at the same time the starkness of the concrete and metal surfaces is quite dystopian. The piece is about these contradicting thoughts about the building. The title for the piece was taken from an episode of the documentary series shock of the new by recently deceased art critic Robert Hughes. The episode is about modernism's failure to bring about the utopian city through architecture." (Into the post you can see the video but I recommend to see it at the project page as the video works together and synchronized with several backgrounds which makes the entire piece.)

The second piece into the post titled Survey is quite crazy, this time Joe has used real video footage and did an excellent exercise of tracking, by attaching onto the building and its outdoor another imagery source. I also like how he complemented the perspectives and structures with flat green plans which fit perfect but at the same time make a big contrast with the high presence of vegetation. See more;