Lumina Obscura is the home for the video art and experimental films of Jay Sims, a Dallas-based artist whose work engages memory, perception, and the slow erosion of images over time. The projects presented here span meditative single-channel video pieces, more film-driven experimental works, and occasional photographic series—each exploring media decay, signal noise, and the tension between presence and disappearance.
Rather than following traditional narrative structures, these pieces function as moving-image poems: contemplative, atmospheric, and rooted in the physicality of analog and digital formats. This site offers a curated selection of key works alongside an expanded index of earlier projects, providing a focused view into an ongoing practice of visual excavation.
A short film meditating on desire and the deceptive closeness of what we long for, framed through the slow transformation of ice and heat.
Experimental video work exploring memory loops, emotional residue, and the glitches that occur when we replay the past in our minds.
A cycle of single-channel video works that use repetition, layering, and reflection to examine attention, perception, and the breakdown of the image.
A brief, atmospheric video that treats motion, color, and sound as abstract elements, evoking a shifting, wind-swept landscape.
A photographic series that translates the sensibility of Sims' moving-image work into still frames, focusing on atmosphere, grain, and the quiet tension of the in-between moment.
Photographic companion work to the CONCENTRATIONS cycle, exploring reflection, fragmentation, and the material surface of the image.
Early black-and-white photographic work concerned with isolation, architectural fragments, and the quiet residue of inhabited spaces.
A selection of individual photographic works, including Every Minute of the Future is a Memory of the Past, that echo the themes of time, decay, and memory present in the video work.
Jay Sims is a video artist and experimental filmmaker whose work explores memory, perception, and the slow erosion of images over time. Working across single-channel video pieces, film-driven experimental works, and occasional photographic series, his pieces are meditative and often haunting, composed as visual poems that linger in ambiguity and texture.
Drawing from early avant-garde cinema, degraded analog formats, and the aesthetics of still photography, Sims treats the screen less as a stage for narrative than as a surface for visual excavation. Noise, interference, and media decay are not errors in his work but expressive materials, traces of an image in the process of becoming or disappearing.
Sims began making short experimental films as a teenager before gradually shifting toward more meditative, process-driven video work. Over time, his practice has become increasingly focused on mood, tone, and visual memory, a direction that eventually led to the formation of Lumina Obscura, the imprint under which he now produces and presents his work.
Sims continues to explore the threshold where images break down, where clarity dissolves, where meaning becomes unstable, and where time feels suspended. His work is intended less as narrative and more as a place to inhabit: quiet, immersive, and open to interpretation.
Date: c. 1992
Medium: 8mm Analog Video Tape recorded to VHS
Format: VHS Video Tape, 4:3 SD, color, silent, Single Edition
Duration: ~1 minute
Video Experiment 1 is a unique piece of video art that explores the mesmerizing effects of video feedback loops. This early work demonstrates Sims' interest in the materiality of video as a medium.
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No part of this website or any artwork depicted herein may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the artist, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the artist at the email address provided on this site.
