Progress with final

The stop animation take FOREVER!! but the results are gorgeous. Finishing up with finaling touches. Enjoy the screenshots. :)

some screen shots

Final project: ritual and time

There are many symbols of time in my piece. Besides that fact that everything depicted is terminal (we all eventually run out of time) the main symbols of time are the fire and the time-span of the creatures life. The Indian legend I am basing my piece a bit loosely on is about a young girl, an older woman and a little boy, cut off from their tribe and isolated in the forest. The girl became pregnant and the woman angry at her daughter and unable to support another child, she threw the baby in the water to drown in. the baby was in her daughters arms the next day. she then threw the baby into a great blazing fire. the next day the daughter still had it, young and healthy in her arms. The mother then buried it alive in a deep hole in the forest. When the next day it was in her daughters arms, healthy and alive. She figured they were blessed and this child was the Spirit Child. Kind of like the Jesus and Mary story.

What i find interesting in this story is a)the immortality and 'timeless' baby and b) the visual image in the head the story created it of it being thrown into the fire.

What I have taken from this story is a type of twisted infant resurrection. What if the baby did burn in the fire and the daughter distraught tried to bring it back to life. I created this ominous setting of the girl at night. Dragging a palm to make the fire to carry out the ceremony. My choice of outfit and character is meant to compliment the firelight and add the other worldliness of the piece. I don't want it deeply rooted by Indian Folklore rather influenced by it.

By an unfortunate turn, my previous plan of filming her part in HD then the zombie baby in stop animation has turned into an entire stop animation. So to adapt I'm making her part more abstract than literal. Hopefully viewer will understand what it going on. I might use text to aid them in discerning events.

Haunted Critque and My ideas

My inspiration.

I'm sorry to keep doing this. I live in Sledd and I barely get internet, I usually have to walk my laptop away to the common area-downstairs and through the hall- to get internet, cause we live on the end. My battery life doesn't last long... ANYWAY. As i said in class, i wanted to do an abstracted piece where the visual and physical parts of the elevator were transformed into sound, as well as the sound an elevator makes. I was inspired by the cinematic and I guess took a page from Disney (bleh) and it turned out to be like a R rated tower of terror or somthing. (maybe PG-13) I wanted a very abstracted almost anti-musical piece like the fluxus people do. I think my loop pertained more when it was by the elevator, but it evoked more of the intended feelings I had hoped for in the dark haunted hallway. The hysteria of the ghost girl probably added to it too.

Critiques

Ryan's was okay. His intention conflicted with his piece and hit set-up of the viewers. It sounded just like my car when I search for radio stations with all the mainstream music. It was pretty musically based.

Emily's stuck the truest to her original score, it did evoke an almost claustrophobic, unbearable feeling which is good if intended. The hallway was good acoustics for it, and i loved how it sped up and that strange clown fart noise was interestingly odd. it got a lil repetitive but it looped seamlessly.

In Will's i was lost at first but then i gathered a narrative feel. As if someone put a microphone by a boy and recorded the sounds of his day.

The twilight zone was good, it fit the hallway nicely. The totally random if I'm Alive was awesome and I wish you could've expounded on that, idk make the main stream artist zombified and twisted.

Gaby's had a lot of really good seamless transitions between songs. I really liked hers. The phonograph sounded like dragging bodies and make me feel a bit unconformable. It was sweet.

Leslie's piece was very abstracted and nice. Those mechanical noises were intense and mimicked the elevator very nicely. I didn't get the sun exploding, but that's because i was relating it to the elevator and not her previous piece about the sun.

KT's piece was soothing and nice with the random slot machine pieces, it would lull me into a stupor then yank me outta it. I really liked how she broke down the opera song in the end.

Rest of Sound Critque

Olga: Musical, most peoples are musical, its cool how the poem goes with the tempo of the music. The second one makes me sleepy , very ambient and relaxing with the birds and waves. I like how the volume went up and the ringing and chaos entered. Something peaceful like birds and waves becoming threatening, it was a nice touch.

Melissa: interesting, the french one seemed a little better. it was stranger that's probably why i liked it. the German one was a bit scattered but still neat.

Will: musical, beat-boxy. a very good remix, it seems like you've done this before. I like the second one, I'm glad you used an old speech in your work.

Anthony: wasn't here

Somthing Cool

http://www.artshow.com/

Moment-Forming and Momente reading

First off I found the lecture quite hard to digest. I flipped to parts multiple times and this is what I got from it. Stockhausen’s Momente is a type of organized randomness composition. Organized is an understatement. He devised a system that’s divided into 3 main parts the M, D, I and K moments. Which represent, instrumental randomness, durations, pure randomness and vocal randomness(?). The these 3 main combined branches slit and divide more intricate creating sub branches of each other like K(m) moment. This seemed like a type of equation to me. As if Stockhausen had a formula he was following. It became clearer when he gave examples to what these variables he labeled represented. These moments follow specific rules of order and sequence. The result from this is an intended random discord that follows, that once the guidelines are set in place, Stockhausen lets them go where they will.

The heterophonic event was a bit confusing. I think he was trying to create the opposite of a symphonic event? Where the instruments and vocals do not harmonize or synchronize rather repel and create discord? For instance he gave the each male in the choir certain sounds like Oh! Pooh! and others to randomly say during their time, as well as specified pitches to do them at. I like the fact that he gives them a choice here. In a way by adding this human element of choice in his composition, they too are collaborating with Stockhausen to create and carry out his composition.

Another part that confused my was the pure K moments, where Stockhausen says give and take the least, but also give and take the most. He also quotes that he wants the moments to have as little in common as possible and makes an effort to see this through. Also his large M-components of “statistical randomness” went over my head.

I enjoyed his anecdote in the end and his detailed description of the score. It really makes me want to hear it in person.

Fragmented Critques

Emily: pretty trippy, im not sure i like the steady beat of the drums and the techno-like music in the beginning. i love the sped up voice, so weird! lol just enough of it.... i can't believe that song was on the prelinger archives. i like this one better, i like how the horn in Empire is repeated.

Ryan: so far pretty musical, you did a very good job making music out of different song clips. very mellow piece, not a head ache. I like the voices a lot, I wish they faded out a lil better and didn't abruptly go out. the first was a bit rocky but the second was smooth. Nice looping, goes and ends seamlessly.

Joel: very musical, im glad it breaks down cause i 1st i was thinking of a techno song. Ah loved the 2nd, it really hearkens back to an era. the bongos seem really random, i like it. where in the in the original score i wonder?

Lesley: The Sun is going to blow up was really funny, bc of the its gonna rain/ pretty techno like but it was funny. I really like the second with the rainstorm or whatever that is, it sound like something rolling or exploding i like it, its very abstract. ahh windshield wipers, i was off. lol

I really like the Twitter one, i almost want to hear the "urr" in twitturr that they annunciation so profoundly. Omg obsessed with the Snow Storm one with the chorus in the back, ob-sessed. I really like these two alot.

Jim: its really good i like the juxtaposition but at the same time, the English person is referring to the eastern ppl's chants. awesome. the voices were intense. C.S. Lewis's Jabberwoki poem. awesome, i like how the poem flows in and out. i almost wished you didn't tell people it was that poem, but the random lady telling ppl its in the public domain is funny.

Kirstin: techno, very techno disco musical. very relaxing hawiian music typre.

KT: i'm such a sucker for the opera pieces, but i like the inverted quality you've given the voices and music. i love the arrangement you did. the fart noices or whatever those art. this one's very abtract, i love it. the voice is very calm too, i love the storm. this one was one of the best i think, very good!

Gabby: I love betty boop and totally forgot. but i loved the idea of a broken record kinda like i did. your second is very ominous i wonder what he is saying. the repetition is nice, you lost me a little bit when you combined the fast and slow voice but i liked when the music tied it in the end.

Sara: I really get the heartbeat feel with your sound piece. I like this one much better than the 1st only bc you can barely distinguish whats going on. i like how you abstracted and alienated the sound.

Loop inspirations

I felt very limited as an artist to mimic another artist style, so the manatory loop is the lesser favorite of the two i made. I drew from my love of retro movies and theatre, using a radio theatre creation of a Humphrey Bogart movie. I'm love with the time period, the references and sayings, the currency value at the time, everything. I chose for the first to focus on the advertizement of that time Lux Plates, which apperently cleans stalkings quite nicely. the advertizing also said alot about who was listening to these radio shows at the time. i switched it up the second time with 4 repeated seconds of Chopin, mixed with sounds still from the previous advertizments.

My second one I enjoyed doing so much more. I played with the idea of languages and where they break down and build up. a digeridoo is the steady keeper, which for the aboriginees is a language of itself. there is also a spanish liberal saying thing, no filters on that i found it that way, a a capello japapnese version of A Whole New World, which sped itself up when i copy and pasted it to its own track, and 3 words from a wrap about freedom from oppression of goveremnt. I find this one funny but also ominus. it was a lot of fun making this loop. i loved it! but i also loved the old music and voices and sound quality of the other too.

Sound Project

I'm thinking of something rhythmic and tribal. the stereo one will be much more complicated but more fun to work with. One will be mono, nm lol both model. i much prefer Chopin, Ill think ill do the first one.

More Video artist project

Anthony, Errol Morris "The Little Grey Man"
Different style, looks like first person interview. viewer is more involved. interesting device, web cam like technology. the way the person is talking right TO YOU, it is really intense. A lot of angles tho, that's a bit annoying. actualy no, i can't even focus on what he's saying. I don't much care for the music either.

The next one is MINE!! yay :D

More Video Art presenation

KT Stemper, Piolotti Rush

A weird video, lots of synbolism, flowers, blue dress and red shoes, metal flowers to break windows. Pop-culture influences, color enhancements and humor put us in a dream like state

Ryan. Semiotics of the Kitchen

Feminist video created by a first generation feminist Martha Rosler. This is a darkly humorous piece about the tools of the kitchen. She holds the title ridiculously long in the entire piece. Huh, he does goe through the alphabet, i didn't catch that the last couple times i've seen the video. Her use of the tools is strange. ahh, lol her face kills me, its so deadpan. Her tossing the 'liquid' violently out of the label is very poignant to her message. This is all one take, she couldn't mess up. The end shrug is awesome. It's a big "what are you gonna do about it."

TBM Project opinons

Bill Viola by Sara

White noise, adds to meditating. Subtle details. Bill is old been around since the dawn of video art. Watching it now: i find the plane disconcerting, plane circling, lots of tension, him floating is rly weird. the pool is weirdly calming, subtle thing secure it, like the leaves falling, intentional strange cuts of scenes in the same angle people in the water. reversing some ripples, darkening it, manipulating it, weird... i love it, him getting out naked it a cool twist. is this a memory of him in the pool? cool... how did he do that? easily?

Spike Lee by William

Tackles controversial topics, lighting and dialogue to get that 'in your face' aspect of the film. shows emotion of New York at the time, Edward Norton is AMAZING!! but he really plays the same role a lot, messed up troubled male out of touch. patriotic imagery, to tying in subtly 9/11 an people's diverseness. dramtic lighting, i love the steady cam when the girl enters. i liket he different colors used in the lighting, i love this floating allusion.

Paul McCarthy

Rly rly weird video, cliche help video about family abuse, i guess. Dream like and Freudian undertones. Hereditaty passing down of beliefs, Oedipus Complex... video like a dream, childlike state. wtffffff. whole video based on 'interjection' when ppl take on the traits of another, depiction of institutional abuse. danger of projecting ideas onto your children. father-son relationship prevalent.

Mitchel Gondry

Diagetic sound, ppl are aware of the sounds, cuts of many of the same shot. Panning, short transition and colored light go into the song. Graphic relationship allows the viewer to make connections between characters and the visual tricks like the dudes head in the speaker. Humor in stationary camera and the actors moving toward and away, cheezy transitions to add the humor. The penis disco balls draws attention to the lyrics. Repetition of color, in lights and tile.

90 Minute Fluxus Inspired Performance

I found the expierence to be intresting, looking over the video things actually did look like art pieces to me. When I get a moment Ill post some videos up on the blog, but not the entire file since its gigantic. It was intresting how different's peoples reacted, whether good or bad. It defiantely helps me in deciding what our next project's going to be like.

FLUXUS

It was a movement started in 1962 that defined a people, body of works, groups, and thoughts. The goal of Fluxus was to get rid of the division of art and life. I read an essay once that said that because we as a society describe our lives somtimes as if from scenes in movies, therefore we see and live our lives as works of art.

The definitions from fluxus.

1. Globalism: embraces the idea that we live on a single world, a world in which the boundaries of political states are not identical with the boundaries of nature or of culture.
2. Unity of Art and Life: when Fluxus was established, the conscious goal was to erase the boundaries between art and life, the sort of language appropriate to the time of pop art and of happening.
3. Intermedia: idea that Fluxus was an art form appropriate to people who say there can be no artificial boundaries between art and life. Without those boundaries, there can be no boundaries between art form and art form.
4. Experimentalism: trying new things and assessing the results. Experiments that yield useful results cease being experiments and become usable tools.
5. Research Orientation: applies not only to the experimental method, but to the ways in which research is conducted.
6. Chance: in the sense of aleatory or random chance, is a tradition with a legacy. Random chance, a way to break the bonds. Evolutionary chance engages a certain element of the random. Genetic changes occur as well in a process that is known as random selection.
7. Playfulness: the play of ideas, the playfulness of free experimentation, the playfulness of free association and the play of paradigm shifting that are as common to scientific experiment as to pranks.
8. Simplicity: refer to the relationship of truth and beauty, and related to the term elegance.
9. Parsimony: refer to the relationship of truth and beauty, and related to the term elegance.
10. Implicativeness: an ideal Fluxus work implies many works. This notion is close to and grows out of the notion of elegance and parsimony.
11. Exemplativism: the quality of a work exemplifying the theory and meaning of its construction.
12. Specificity: has to do with the tendency of a work to be specific, self contained, and to embody all its own parts.

Now an days its not as organized as it used to be but its still alive in music, such as scores, and in ideas.

Problem Solving and Problem Seeking

1. Go find a problem
2. you solution
3. past solutions
4. tansformed and renewed solution, ie like the Eames chair.
-taking the surrounds and making them intresting, like from nature or museums

"Good Problems"
Have: Signifigance, consequences (socially responsible, eco art), understanding your problem, expirimentation, ambitious but reasonable, authentic, unique perspective.

"Strategies"
convergent thinking: pursueing a predetemined goal.
1. define
2. research
3. determine objective
4. stratgey
5. execute
6. evaluate (repeat if nessesary)
like the sciencetific method. remember to set a reasonable deadline.

divergent thingking:means determine the end, open ended, results are difficult to predict. requires expansive and unfocused research. Its seen as more inventive, while convergent is more effiecient.
brainstorming:making lists and exploring ideas. using reasearch, a thesaurus, ect. KINDS>EFFECTS>CAUSES, use to see where things lead.
Use maps! I love these. They help you explore and make connections.
VISUAL research such as sketch thumbnails and 3-d mock-ups are very helpful. Like little prototypes.

Series are variation of a theme.

"Methaphorical Thinking"
"my love is like a red rose." its not really, but it sounds beautiful that way. ie, by abstracting Guernica, Picasso focused more on the emotions and meaning of the event rather than its apprearence.
Being well rounded, like a rennissance man, is helpful. well versed in Chem, bio, math, ect.

My opinion? We're starting to delve deeper into the less obivous of things. metaphorical meaning for me was the most difficult to understand, but by connecting it to the english equivilent of poety, i can't make that transition from written metaphors to visual metaphors. the organiztion thing was obivous. but i really did enjoy the story about the Eames chair, I see that thing everywhere, its so 's commonplace, but I didn't know it was recently made in the 40s and it was a huge deal. I really enjoy making visual sketched of things before I make them, so I totally agreed with that part, and the scienctific method was old news, I know how to do that. but it was intresting to apply those same principles to my art making process.

Aspects and Elements

WARNING: WRONG CHAPTER READ. (If this doesn't make any sense.)

Basically it said we need to understand the purpose of our art. A burning question every art student needs to face. function and beauty is key as well as form. There's all kinds of work, 3-d, 2-d. lines are very important. how much volume the art takes up. Art has texture, color and dimension, and the way we present it with lights and display slant its meaning also.

This is important for our art because as budding students we need to know, why we create our art, the choices we make in the creation, working process and finishing touches all affect it. Especially presentation. For photo or video when you present something, does it hang in the air? project onto another textured surface? come from a TV? all mediums digital artists must consider. There is so much to keep track of while creating your art, thats why we must keep orgainzed!

The Orginaztion chpt. of Launching the Imagination

This was a very appropriate chapter for our first reading in Time Based Media class. Basically through the entire chapter, they discussed how to be organized and not to bog yourself down. Creativity cannot be manifested at a moments notice, but it can be cultivated. One must try to find the balance between being super safe, and risk taking, outgoing but introverted, open to new ideas, but able to be closed and focus to your own. All were very helpful in drawing attention to the kinds of traits I need to be an accomplished artist. It went on to give a way to find out what kind of artist you are and how to categorize and organize your goals through post-it notes. The method included making four categories and putting your post it notes into them. The end of the chapter went on to discuss collaboration and how artist must discuss ideas with each other and cooperate well with each other to create lets say 20 ft pieces of transitioning drawings.

I found the post it note thing very helpful and new. It was definitely not something I had thought of before. And the collaboration thing too seemed helpful. Its imperative we learn to communicate ideas well, because out in the real world that's all we'll be doing is talking back and forth about our work, fixing it, changing it realizing it in full form. I also liked the circle-graphs that lead to improved self-confidence- it definitely looked like a Disney influence "confidence builder" thing.

My question; While I though the post-it note idea was great. It was a way to relieve stress and set reasonable goals. BUUUT it seemed like it required too much of my time to do. I don't think I have enough time or space to have that anywhere. It's too structured and unstructured at the same time. Would there be better alternative?

Shoes Idea

There's more photos to come. My internet connection couldn't handle any photos bigger than this. :/

Stop motion videos the cheerful, and then the not-so cheerful

Out of the videos we watched today, the Quay Brothers were definately the strangest. They left me in a wierd funk after I left. I can't get those creepy doll things outta my head. Their movement clothes appearence, all of fasinately distrubing. The point of it was definately confusing, something like that city was as dry as crocodiles... The use of light was important to direct the viewers attention, and to create an eerie darkness around most of the others pieces in the set. The quick moving camera angles when they would move from place to place was so very clever. Not to mention their memorable characters, like those dolls, the hero (im assuming) the little boy, lightbulb guy and statues of women fondeling themselves. It was definately wierd.

The Whitestrips music video was also pretty cool, especially with the repition of the drum beat and the instruments they played. You can tell a lot of work went into that video. And a lot of money, since I'm assuming they bought all those copies of those drums. Which actually was a thought that started to bother me near the middle, "What are they going to do with all those extra drums they made especially for thi video?" The repition of certian pictures was helpful too and it was trippy when the girl changed herself around each of the drum sets. Another AMAZING thing though about that video was the syncing. That was very impressive.

Automatic Writing by William Kentridge was also very cool to watch. The way he just layered each thing on top of or out of the previous drawings was magnificent. His work seemed very poetic and romantic. For his interview I can't believe the fact he was just an artist because he was buing his time. I loved how the forms of the letters formed into body parts and buildings through out the piece.

About Me

I'm a second year photography major. I love video, watching and recording. Somthing I like to do is to mesh the careful thought and composition that goes into photo and put it into film. I enjoy the thought of taking something beautiful from a photo and adding that 4th dimension of time. This runs along the lines of things like Sunrise Earth and Planet Earth, both funded by Discovery. Those films and that footage I consider art. Even though I am intrigued with things of that subject matter, I mostly dabble in satirical and sarcastic videos. I'm excited to hone my skills this year!

First day of class blog about videos

My favorite out of the two we watched was "Le Voyage la lune." I'm just a sucker for old movies, the clothes, the misconceptions of the time, the architecture and the way they are filmed and produced. The best part is when they just 'fell' off the 'edge' of the moon. I'm not positive of technology at the time, but I'm sure they knew gravity wasn't in space. Well, whose knows. The camera never moved, it makes sense. The camera is frequentlt called an 'eye.' Which makes sense since it records what our eyes see. So naturally when recording somthing in the early 1900's they were going to record it the same way they had been viewing it, straight on from a chair, no close ups or movement or cut and pasted scenes. Despite the fixed position I still enjoyed watching the work of a pioneer of film.

The other video, the mash-up of other's works, whose title escapes me, was a little less enjoyable to me, probably because it was a little closer to home that the much older film was. To me the effects appeared cliche, but I know that at the time those were mind blowing effectss... just grossly overused. The theme though of global television, and this oncrop of mass media was well predicted. The chinese woman dancing in front of obvious United States icons came across more easily than other scenes. There was also a lot of dancing, I guessed they loved dancing at the time. Or were they identifying it as a uniting factor? The colors were very groovy as was the music. Nam June Paik, one of the first world famous artist, created a lot of very strange, thought-provoking commentaries on mass media, from sculptures of Budha sitting watching TV, to a TV cello that sounds horrible. I liked parts of the piece, especially those that made two different songs one in the same. It was cool. period.

First Day of Classes

First day of class, freezing cold outside. Found out my English teacher may be possibly brilliantly insane. Pretty good day.