Barrow is stationed behind an Amiga computer, repurposing an antiquated animation program to tell the story of Melania Trump’s pandemic era birthday party. In an effort to engage purposefully with a live audience, Barrow asked people registering for the performance to participate in “drawing quizzes”. iPhone users to use the IMessage “sketch” function to respond to simple artful tasks which obliquely addressed distressing predicaments of the day. In the “manually animated” performance, Melania makes her own cake, wraps her own gifts, and cleans up after herself. Each scene acts as a showcase for the audiences’ IMessage drawings, which have been narratively recontextualized by Barrow’s fictional monologue. “Beauty’s Rules” was created in a time of overwhelming anxiety, when we were required to endure everything in isolation. We are united by our collective problems, and yet each of us must individually confront the elastic nature of being alone/together, having/not having family, having/not having security, having/not having physical well-being, safety and freedom.

Dominic the Reading Wand is an imaginary piece of AI technology with multiple language capabilities. When the tip of the wand is moved across a line of text, the animatronic head reads the text aloud. The reading wand also translates foreign languages, reads to the blind, and corrects spelling and grammar mistakes. In this Deluxe Paint 4 “manual animation” (or ‘digital puppet show”) Barrow tells the story of a sexually anorexic teen who becomes fascinated with the wand’s inability to speak, read, or comprehend profane language. The teen sets about a series of experiments designed to force the reading stylus to recite perverse limericks.

Barrow is stationed behind an Amiga computer, repurposing an antiquated animation program as a kind of Power Point software, to present a series of sequenced digital, minimally animated slides. The story takes place in the picture galleries of a public museum. A pubescent teen with a fetish for historical portraits with eyes that follow them from one end of the gallery to the other, falls in love with an enchanted painting of a sad clown.

The criminal from The Thief of Mirrors is a jewel thief wears the mask of a sad clown. The weeping expression of his mask is activated and delicately moderated by the criminal’s emotive eyes. The resulting facial expression is so powerfully evocative that it possesses supernatural powers. Mirrors, specifically, are so enamored by the thief’s expression that when he gazes into his reflection, the mirror etches itself permanently with his image.

“Daniel Barrow has developed an intimate mode of ‘manual animation’ using the antiquated technology of an overhead projector. From a position amongst the audience, he recites live narration while manipulating layers of transparencies. Accentuated by interference patterns and sleight-of-hand trickery, Barrow’s hand-drawn images contrive an absorbing tale of comic book grotesques. Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry is a bizarre confessional detailing the grand but hopeless scheme of an estranged garbage collector and failed art student. Unloved and rejected by society, the protagonist begins a universal art project in the form of a telephone directory of ‘profound and intimate insights’ to chronicle the lives of those around him. As he snoops through the windows and waste bins of fellow citizens, his survey is rendered futile by a maniacal killer who follows in his wake, picking off subjects one by one. Invoking introspection, pathos and dark humour, this award-winning performance piece is accompanied by an unassuming Beach Boys-inflected score recorded by Amy Linton of The Aislers Set.” – Mark Webber, Curator for BFI’s London Film Festival.

When SHAW cable purchased Winnipeg’s local cable station VPW, a rumour was circulated that SHAW had destroyed the public access television archives and were systematically dismantling the public access services. Shortly thereafter, Daniel Barrow began researching, compiling and archiving a history of independently produced television in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In the late ’70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a “golden age” of public access television. Anyone with a creative dream, concept or politic would be endowed with airtime and professional production services. Winnipeg Babysitter traces unique vignettes from a brief synapse in broadcasting history when Winnipeg cable companies were mandated to provide public access as a condition of their broadcasting license. Because, the local public access archives were destroyed programs could only be found in the VHS collections of the original producers. In cases when these producers did not save their own work, Barrow had to rely on television collectors, fans and enthusiasts. In this regard, Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history. Daniel Barrow travels to each screening providing an overhead projected commentary/context, tracing the histories of public access television in Manitoba, and describing the various and outrageous biographies of each television producer and personality.

The Face of Everything is a “manual animation” that tells a story based very loosely on the life experiences of some of Liberace’s most notorious boyfriend. “Hillbilly” is a poor, dejected teenager, who travels to the “big city” (mid-1970s Las Vegas) to discover love, vision and identity in a much older, outrageously superficial nightclub entertainer.

Daniel Barrow’s 2000 “manual animation” tells the story of a foppish man, of nebulous age, who leaves the farm and moves to the city (ostensibly Winnipeg) and begins a committed and confused pursuit of love, sex and artistic success. A local Winnipeg gay cruising park (“the hill”) provides the setting and inspiration for his first exhibition of portraits.