Using traditional research methods (reading old books) and non-traditional film processes (boiling old books) Gatten's films trace the contours of private lives and public histories, combining philosophy, biography, and poetry with
experiments in cinematic forms and narrative structures.
The path forward
in art - historical terms was split between those artistic movements more aligned with deeper investigations into the increasingly essential properties of a particular medium or reductive practices (e.g., Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Minimalism) and those movements that actively sought an expansion of the arts into a plurality of new
forms, hybrid media, and interactive experience (e.g., expanded cinema, intermedia, installation art, performance).13 Of these choices, hippie modernism would follow the latter course through
experiments that drew upon the theatrical qualities and the participatory actions of the Happening, embraced Fluxus's democratic spirit
in its everyone - is - an - artist philosophy, explored the work of experimental filmmakers seeking to expand
cinematic experience, and
experimented with the fluid nature of light and sound as well as the interactive qualities of kinetic art.