The Vase is an experimental video short that uses Dadaist absurdity to frame its environmental commentary. Viewers watch a hand senselessly clip off sunflower heads, wrecking havoc on a vase of crickets. This visual illusion is grounded in photographic realism. I imply cause and effect by intercutting two shots of the vessel, the upper half with sunflowers and the lower half with crickets. The Vase recalls The Secret Life of Plants (Tompkins and Bird), a book that explores plants as sentient organisms.

This video is a kinetic still life. I draw vision inward by using a centripetal strategy. Close-ups of the trapped insects reinforce the visual dominant. Unlike traditional still life paintings that present nature's bounty for human enjoyment, The Vase unsettles by suggesting that nature's exploitation is deeply ingrained in culture. The one-minute time frame requires viewers to process aesthetic material quickly, intensifying filmic tension. Brevity is facilitated by third-person identification with the lens rather than an on-screen persona.

Jeremy Newman produces both documentary and experimental videos. His documentaries examine historic subjects, the arts and countercultural figures. Newman's experimental videos mediate reality via a surrealist aesthetic. His work is frequently shown at film festivals, including the Detroit Docs International Film Festival, the Panorama of Independent Film Makers in Greece, and the Tribeca Underground Film Festival. It has also aired on PBS stations and video art platforms such as Transfera TV in Spain and AXA TV in Romania. Additionally, Newman's videos were screened at the Anthology Film Archives, the Solstice Arts Centre in Ireland and the Hunter Museum of American Art, winning "Best Documentary" in the Back Row Film Series. In 2006, his work appeared on a video reel in an exhibition featuring Nam June Paik, Gary Hill and Tony Oursler at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. It was also included on a DVD released by Castlefield Gallery in England. While he lived in Ohio, Newman was a Vail Visiting Artist at Denison University and held two Art & Technology Residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts. This summer, he was the video production supervisor at The Governor's School of the Arts in New Jersey. Newman earned an MFA in Media Arts from The Ohio State University.