The Last Volcano / Det siste utbruddet
Roderick Coover
Scott Rettberg
Citation : Coover, Roderick and Scott Rettberg. “The Last Volcano / Det siste utbruddet.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures , no. 12, 2015. doi:10.20415/hyp/012.me02
Abstract : A story of a catastrophic volcanic eruption and its aftermath is twice told by a woman before the slowly turning image of contemporary urban landscape. As the narrative cycles through a recursion, the woman’s husband attempts to interrupt, questioning the disturbing history and trying to place it in historical time. Though the story references events of the distant past, its setting and telling raise anxieties related to cycles of memory and forgetting.
The Last Volcano was filmed at docks in Bergen Norway using panoramic animation. The imagery of a peaceful and prosperous contemporary urban landscape is juxtaposed with an 18th century account of widespread death and crop-loss caused by an eruption of an Icelandic volcano. The work was filmed during the period of the 2011 eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that impacted European air and transport.
VIEW The Last Volcano / Det siste utbruddet
Credits
Direction: Roderick Coover
Writing: Scott Rettberg
Translations: Daniel Apollon, Gro Jørstad Nilsen, and Jill Walker Rettberg
Voices: Gro Jørstad Nilsen and Jan Arild Breistein
Technical: 6:30 Minutes, HD 16:9, Color, Stereo.
Available in both single-play and installation loop formats.
The Last Volcano was first released in the USA and Norway with English and Norwegian subtitles.
About
Roderick Coover
Roderick Coover b. 1967 is a filmmaker/artist. Coover is the creator or co-creator of works of digital, interactive and emergent cinema such as Toxi•City , Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project , Three Rails Live , and The Theory of Time . He is also the maker of documentary films and interactive, documentary research projects such as The Unknown Territories Project , From Verite to Virtual: Conversations On The Frontiers Of Anthropology And Documentary Film , The Language of Wine: An Anthropology of Work Wine And The Senses and Cultures In Webs: Working In Hypermedia With The Documentary Image. His works are distributed by Video Data Bank, Documentary Educational Resources, and Eastgate Systems and his book, Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts is published by University of Chicago Press. Coover is Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University and Founding Director of the MFA-PHD Dual Degree Program in Documentary Arts and Visual Research. He lives in Philadelphia. roderickcoover.com .
Scott Rettberg
Scott Rettberg is the author or coauthor of novel-length works of electronic literature including The Unknown , Kind of Blue , Implementation , Frequency and others, an author and co-producer, with Roderick Coover and other collaborators, of a number of films including The Catastrophe Trilogy , Three Rails Live , Toxi·City: A Climate Change Narrative , Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project and Penelope . His work has been exhibited both online and at art venues such as the Venice Bienalle, International Society for Electronic Arts, the Bergen International Film Festival, the Human Rights and Human Wrongs Festival, and others. Rettberg frequently publishes critical and theoretical work related to electronic literature, digital culture, and digital art, including Electronic Literature (Polity 2019), described by N. Katherine Hayles as a “significant and important book by the field’s founder that will be the definitive work on electronic literature now and for many years to come.” Rettberg was the co-founder of the Electronic Literature Organization, and led the ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice collaborative research project that ran from 2010-2013. Rettberg is professor of digital culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway and in 2023 was appointed as Director of the Center for Digital Narrative, a Norwegian Center of Research Excellence.
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7401-5075