Mark Nugent

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Mark Nugent was a prolific British and Canadian filmmaker, digital artist and writer. [1]

Contents

Early life

He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Nugent emigrated to Canada with his family when he was seven.

Education

Nugent received a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. He went on to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on scholarship and obtained a Master's in Fine Arts for Film Production.

Career

Nugent collaborated with a number of musicians (including Download, Dead Voices on Air, [2] Coil, FAT, Nimrod, Hafler Trio, Bruce Gilbert, Vent du Mont Scharr and Elliott Sharp) to create experimental films and live presentations. He founded and toured with Roughage, a Montreal-based mixed-media performance group, and briefly worked for Chicago's H-Gun, producing commercial music videos. Until recently, his art was part of a genre that rarely attracted critical attention from anyone other than his peers. [3]

1980s

In the late 1980s, Nugent travelled with the band FAT to Morocco and collected Super-8 footage that he would later use in his 1989 video "Inverse Proportions" on YouTube for the Elliott Sharp-led ensemble Carbon, and in his 1992 "Dark River" video on YouTube for the band Coil. [4]

1990s

Nugent produced a large number of hallucinatory films in the early nineties, combining his acute ability to optically process seemingly abstract images and colours, with super 8 footage and film. In the tradition of William S. Burroughs, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, Stan Brakhage, and David Bohm, Nugent used a variety of media to explore his fascinations: the realms of consciousness, perception, alchemy, mysticism and quantum physics.

Nugent created films for a number of post-industrial bands and projected his work live, to great effect on the Download tour of Europe in 1996. [5] In 1997, Nugent founded the website Psilence Image Environments to showcase his digital image work. [6]

2000s

For ten years Nugent worked on numerous digital images and cut-up writings, collaborating on a number of projects including the film Alchemical Conversations (2003), and developing websites and commercial CD releases. Most recently, he collaborated on a series of images with Aaron Campbell.

Death

Nugent died on 16 December 2009 of a heart attack aged 48. [7] His funeral was held on 9 January 2010 in Montreal. Nugent's preserved video work is to be included in a collection housed in museums around the world.

Film and video

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References

  1. "Interview: Hannigan Chats about Cork Film Fest 2010" (Article). The Irish Film & Television Network. The Irish Film & Television Network. 4 November 2010. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
  2. destruKt (July 1997). "Mark Spybey Of Dead Voices on Air". Last Sigh Magazine. Last Sigh Magazine. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
  3. Don O Mahony (2010). "Mark Nugent". Experimental Conversations, Issue 6, Winter 2010. Experimental Conversations. Archived from the original (Article) on 22 January 2013. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  4. Mark Spybey; Meghan Dufresne; John C McDaniel; Zev Asher (9 January 2010). "Mark Nugent obituary". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  5. "Narratives: Interview with Mark Nugent". Dead Voices on Air. Archived from the original on 4 September 2014. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  6. "About Psilence Image Environments". Mark Nugent. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
  7. Mark Spybey; Meghan Dufresne; John C McDaniel; Zev Asher (10 January 2010). "Mark Nugent obituary" (Article). The Guardian home. Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 12 May 2012.