This film was only available during the Computer Baroque online exhibition, which ran from 14 April-14 July 2009.

A film by Peter Callas
Music Stephen Vitiello and John Zorn
CMX Editor Rick Feist
Playback Joe de Pierro and Marshall Reese
Produced with the Assistance of the Australian Film Commission

The title makes a veiled reference to the New World and what America has made of it. Many American territories were originally called ‘purchases’, bought as they were from other Western colonial powers (France, Spain, Russia).

Video artist Peter Callas took every conceivable sign, symbol and icon in the history of American culture and then skilfully used the computer to compress them into a single stream of screaming visual excess.

Peter Callas has utilised a wide variety of electronic and digital media to create an ongoing series of cultural 'portraits', making work from varied locations, often during sustained periods of residence, in locations such as Papua New Guinea, Japan, the United States, Germany, Brazil, and India as well as Australia.

Callas' video works have won numerous awards including First Prize, Bonn Videonale; Golden Switchblade Award, New York International Video Festival; Grand Prix, International Festival of Video Art, Locarno; and Best Computer Art, Videobrasil, São Paulo. He is also a recipient of the New Horizons Award for Innovation in New Media, International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, Berkeley, USA.

Callas has held retrospective screenings of his video works at the Kunstverein, Cologne; the ICA, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Berlin Film Festival. His videos have been screened frequently on television stations worldwide, including BBC2, London; Canal +, Paris; SAT1, Cologne; WGBH, Boston; NHK Satellite, Tokyo; and Television Española, Madrid.

In 2003-2005 Peter Callas was an Australia Council Fellow. His fellowship project, Il Trionfo della Morte, is an animated interpretation of a 14th century in Pisa, commissioned by Ondavideo, Pisa.

Image courtesy of Heure Exquise