Paul Schrank

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1964. My Dad brought home an 8mm film camera from his Navy tour in Japan. He let me use it and I started making my own films at age 11. This is my genesis piece, OG analog glitch, made in 1975.

In High School I started a band. We recorded an EP and got some airplay on the local college radio station. I ripped off the bass line for this song from "Twilight Zone". I've always been a prolific appropriator. I'm the guy with the cowboy boots.

I went to college and continued making films. I used to talk my friends into shooting their projects so I could shoot film without having to pay for it. I loved making abstract textures with the camera.

After college I went into graphic design. In 1995 I made a prototype for a touch screen shopping mall map using Macromedia Director, scripting in Lingo. My mind was blown, I started making interactive art pieces in Director and uploading them to a group on America Online.

I was blown away that people were downloading them and interacting with them. My top download was 79. I couldn't believe it. Then I saw HTML and the World Wide Web and I dove in headfirst. I moved to Denver and started SpireMedia. We hit the boom and the bust. In 2002 I left.

I made enough money to take time off, travel and make art. This was a really prolific time. I captured footage from all over the world and I came back and got into generative art with Isadora, amazing software designed for a dance troupe in NYC.

Isadora is a virtual patch bay for video and music. This patch remixed movies to the song playing live by triggering the cuts with the high frequency audio peaks and setting the playback speed relative to the overall volume. Here it created a Beatles/Zero 7 mashup.

I had the opportunity to jump in a van with two comedians and film their tour of the Midwest. Strip clubs, Holiday Inns, highs, lows and snow. I learned how to find a story and create an arc. This clip is the triumphant return to the hometown crowd at the end of the tour.

I wanted to shoot and edit, a lot, so I started doing wedding videos. In 2005 I moved to Mexico to shoot weddings on the beach. This clip features music from GodDamn Electric Bill.

We closed our wedding photo/video company in 2019. My family has planted our roots here in Mexico, we love it. These days I do Print On Demand, Freelance Editing and Stock Video.

You can find my NFT art gallery here.