Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Film Making Today is...
Film today is the most recent media anachronism, it just has yet to be fully replaced by a popular medium.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
An Archive of Racisms, On "Programmed Visions" By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and designed by Raegan Kelly
"You are the mouse, assemble and read the archive," is the charge given to users of "Programmed Visions", an associative collection of texts discussing or illustrating racism in the current issue of Vectors. The user is guided through the articles (never cited or annotated or titled) by clicking portions of the text that lead to another article or portion of an article. The user decides how much of each text to read before clicking on any number of links associated with a specific part of the article. The arguments range from quantifying the social roles Italian immigrants based on region of emigration to the necessity of eugenics. Though the content of this archive is determined by the author and its presentation by the designer, the user dictates the order and extent to which the information presented is read. All archives operate this way, however, "Programmed Visions" makes a point about the way archives are used and experienced: The user is able to click away from the texts at hand to view a map of the archive and where s/he has already visited. Any text may be revisited through this map. But, there is no linearity to the archive, so the user must trace her/his steps by words that are associated with each text. Race is simply a subject matter chosen as an entry point into a discussion about archives and interactive databases.
Depending on how much of each article the user reads the next article in succession will be different or an article may be happened upon multiple times. A most thorough user of "Programmed Visions" will still be frustrated by these events. A user's opinion of racism will certainly be shaped by the order in which the texts are read. The author's opinion of racism is not evident here, but her opinion of archives is clear. Opinions based on research is incomplete, is the argument Hui Kyong Chun is making. Though the database provides a diverse and subtle representation of writings on the topic of racism, it is not a complete archive: It was selected and arranged by individuals who understood that their work would be read by others. None of the articles are objective, therefore, no archive could ever be objective. A user will most likely finish the piece having her/his opinions validated, mostly, by the texts encountered. This is both the strength and flaw of an archive.
This is the same paradox that makes Vectors a challenging and frustrating journal to follow. The pieces are all thorough, but because of their interactive nature take quite sometime to fully navigate and even longer to digest, let alone comprehend. The nature of the interactive database, a medium that many of the texts fall into, is one that complicates the agruments at hand by not manipulating the user's order of experience of the texts. In such pieces as "Blue Velvet" the argument is plainly drawn, however, "Killer Entertainments" presents an information set that the user must navigate and form ideas of her/his own. The topic of racism is inflammatory, and the pieces here seem intended to inflame. One piece suggests that America has just under 1,000,000 "degenerates" born every year (the piece is dated only by the statistics that the globabl population is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 billion); another suggests that all "Liberal" studies that are run by white instructors to white students that feature writings by black artists only breed a further subconscious racism. This presentation is often viewed among media producers as being subjective: Give a reader enough information to sort through at His convenience and He will form His own Objective opinion. This writer's frustration with the interactive database is made concrete by Hui Kyong Chun in "Programmed Visions" by presenting a hyper-charged topic in a format that is intrinsically manipulative and flawed.
That does not, however, mean that the writer finds Vectors or any of its presentations to be discredited by this piece. All journalism is just as subjective as Vectors, but this journal has recognised it by publishing a piece that illuminates the flaws in two of its main topics of focus: technology and race.
Depending on how much of each article the user reads the next article in succession will be different or an article may be happened upon multiple times. A most thorough user of "Programmed Visions" will still be frustrated by these events. A user's opinion of racism will certainly be shaped by the order in which the texts are read. The author's opinion of racism is not evident here, but her opinion of archives is clear. Opinions based on research is incomplete, is the argument Hui Kyong Chun is making. Though the database provides a diverse and subtle representation of writings on the topic of racism, it is not a complete archive: It was selected and arranged by individuals who understood that their work would be read by others. None of the articles are objective, therefore, no archive could ever be objective. A user will most likely finish the piece having her/his opinions validated, mostly, by the texts encountered. This is both the strength and flaw of an archive.
This is the same paradox that makes Vectors a challenging and frustrating journal to follow. The pieces are all thorough, but because of their interactive nature take quite sometime to fully navigate and even longer to digest, let alone comprehend. The nature of the interactive database, a medium that many of the texts fall into, is one that complicates the agruments at hand by not manipulating the user's order of experience of the texts. In such pieces as "Blue Velvet" the argument is plainly drawn, however, "Killer Entertainments" presents an information set that the user must navigate and form ideas of her/his own. The topic of racism is inflammatory, and the pieces here seem intended to inflame. One piece suggests that America has just under 1,000,000 "degenerates" born every year (the piece is dated only by the statistics that the globabl population is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 billion); another suggests that all "Liberal" studies that are run by white instructors to white students that feature writings by black artists only breed a further subconscious racism. This presentation is often viewed among media producers as being subjective: Give a reader enough information to sort through at His convenience and He will form His own Objective opinion. This writer's frustration with the interactive database is made concrete by Hui Kyong Chun in "Programmed Visions" by presenting a hyper-charged topic in a format that is intrinsically manipulative and flawed.
That does not, however, mean that the writer finds Vectors or any of its presentations to be discredited by this piece. All journalism is just as subjective as Vectors, but this journal has recognised it by publishing a piece that illuminates the flaws in two of its main topics of focus: technology and race.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Three of a Kind or the Subtlety of Silence, on "Three Songs" by Nathaniel Dorsky
Song and Solitude. There are grasses in extreme close-up. There are ripples in a pond and doors opening. There are cityscapes or humanscapes, but mostly both; however, this is the case when there isn't landscape. One thing the writer is sure of, there is lots of sound, it was just hiding behind Dorsky's soundtrack career choice: silence. There should have been the sotto melody carried on the breeze through the grasses, the secrect passed among the ripples in the pond, the tenured complaints of the door hinges, the mechanical longing of cars passing. The negative space created by the idle speakers hangs around the images like cigar smoke in the rain; the Union theatre was draped in a velvet emptiness that drew the eye to screen, held it there, absorbed it.
The absence of a soundtrack laid the laurels of the filmic experience entirely on the shoulders of image. The images shifted silently, sometimes unnoticed by the writer, between spaces and times and lighting conditions and subjects. Where a softly focused tree branch would be unrecognizeable beyond slashes of darkness across a dim frame, the film would quietly progress through other images of nature in the city before returning to the same image only more focused or the same subject but pulled back. Like the music form suggested by the first noun of the title, Song and Solitude returns to visual, same or similar shots, before shooting off to explore other ideas related to the refrain. Where the rippling pond or the blurred, dead branches anchored the film, the city scapes or other nature shots explored the reaches of their silent world. This structure of verses and refrain created a meditative atmosphere, induced a meditative state in the writer, the viewers. The images, striking, were given a new light as the viewer was asked to block all audio and simply look. Even those bustling city shots of patrons entering and leaving a coffee bar, cars sitting at a stop light were given a gravity of isolation. The solitude of the title is one of peacefulness: The viewer is alone in the theatre but far from lonely.
Winter. Winter in Dorsky's San Fransico is not the winter of the writer's Milwaukee: A heavy icing frosts the city; flakes of snow dance and spin around the corners of buildings; wind howls at the University, causing students to step lightly across the frozen sidewalks and brown, slushy intersections. Dorsky's Winter is quiet, despite the silence of the soundtrack. A thundercloud in silhouette, framed by two buildings of SF's skyline, is not dramatic or imposing. It is impressing and comforting. When the rain of this winter comes as it must, there is little falling beside the physical action. The droplets seem to hang in the frame, the viewer's mind. The silence does let let this rain, this winter, become frantic or isolating.
However, it is not the physical, actual, silence that comforts the audience into a state of contemplation and rapt. But, the artist's projection choice of silent speed, 18 f/p/s, when the footage was all shot at 24 f/p/s, causes an imperceptible floating. Each of the images in this and all of Dorsky's work (all shot and projected at the aforementioned speeds, respectively) has a gravity to it, as the event or movement of the shot unfolds at a speed fractionally-slower-than-real time. Those shots that are familiar from the first piece, or foreshadow the refrains of the third, carry with each the atmosphere of silence and a slow-motion flicker. However, that gravitational pull one feels toward Winter is not unique, neither are the images, nor the editing. Indeed, both the technical and contextual elements of Winter are exactly the same as those found in Song and Solitude and Sarabande, as well as those found in the Alaya or Triste.
Sarabande. A traditional Latin-via-Baroque dance lends its name to the third film in this trilogy. The latin version of this is a triple time performance that blends the 3 and 4 beats of a measure to cause a rhythm unique to the dance. European culture adopted this technical anomaly, slowed it down to revel in the beauty that one variation to a typical dance can birth. And Sarabande similarily is slow and revelatory. Again, many of the images are shared with the previous two pieces, but there is a technical variation. The editing puts the images, whether of nature or of civilization, in different orders, causing the content of each to interact differently. These pieces both draw on and illustrate Eisenstein's montage theory: the content of each shot contains an individual meaning, but the points at which each is conjoined creates a larger meaning.
Every shot in this program, Three Songs, could stand alone and have a resonance and specific meaning. But, Nathaniel Dorsky has put these images into very different orders, causing their edited associations to arouse in the viewer a understanding of his/her world that could not have been achieved in any other way. These three films were made at different points in the artist's life, giving each a unique meaning. Sarabande is a very different portrait of a place in time from that of Song and Solitude, even though it shares technical and content elements. This is the power of cinema, the pairing of such concrete things as images and technical strategies to create such personal and subjective experiences. This is a power that is not fully understood until the final piece has spun through its tail. The cumulative effect is of three pieces so frustratingly similar that they could not be more dissimilar. As an argument about this power of cinema, a soundtrack could only have felt contrived and manipulative.
The absence of a soundtrack laid the laurels of the filmic experience entirely on the shoulders of image. The images shifted silently, sometimes unnoticed by the writer, between spaces and times and lighting conditions and subjects. Where a softly focused tree branch would be unrecognizeable beyond slashes of darkness across a dim frame, the film would quietly progress through other images of nature in the city before returning to the same image only more focused or the same subject but pulled back. Like the music form suggested by the first noun of the title, Song and Solitude returns to visual, same or similar shots, before shooting off to explore other ideas related to the refrain. Where the rippling pond or the blurred, dead branches anchored the film, the city scapes or other nature shots explored the reaches of their silent world. This structure of verses and refrain created a meditative atmosphere, induced a meditative state in the writer, the viewers. The images, striking, were given a new light as the viewer was asked to block all audio and simply look. Even those bustling city shots of patrons entering and leaving a coffee bar, cars sitting at a stop light were given a gravity of isolation. The solitude of the title is one of peacefulness: The viewer is alone in the theatre but far from lonely.
Winter. Winter in Dorsky's San Fransico is not the winter of the writer's Milwaukee: A heavy icing frosts the city; flakes of snow dance and spin around the corners of buildings; wind howls at the University, causing students to step lightly across the frozen sidewalks and brown, slushy intersections. Dorsky's Winter is quiet, despite the silence of the soundtrack. A thundercloud in silhouette, framed by two buildings of SF's skyline, is not dramatic or imposing. It is impressing and comforting. When the rain of this winter comes as it must, there is little falling beside the physical action. The droplets seem to hang in the frame, the viewer's mind. The silence does let let this rain, this winter, become frantic or isolating.
However, it is not the physical, actual, silence that comforts the audience into a state of contemplation and rapt. But, the artist's projection choice of silent speed, 18 f/p/s, when the footage was all shot at 24 f/p/s, causes an imperceptible floating. Each of the images in this and all of Dorsky's work (all shot and projected at the aforementioned speeds, respectively) has a gravity to it, as the event or movement of the shot unfolds at a speed fractionally-slower-than-real time. Those shots that are familiar from the first piece, or foreshadow the refrains of the third, carry with each the atmosphere of silence and a slow-motion flicker. However, that gravitational pull one feels toward Winter is not unique, neither are the images, nor the editing. Indeed, both the technical and contextual elements of Winter are exactly the same as those found in Song and Solitude and Sarabande, as well as those found in the Alaya or Triste.
Sarabande. A traditional Latin-via-Baroque dance lends its name to the third film in this trilogy. The latin version of this is a triple time performance that blends the 3 and 4 beats of a measure to cause a rhythm unique to the dance. European culture adopted this technical anomaly, slowed it down to revel in the beauty that one variation to a typical dance can birth. And Sarabande similarily is slow and revelatory. Again, many of the images are shared with the previous two pieces, but there is a technical variation. The editing puts the images, whether of nature or of civilization, in different orders, causing the content of each to interact differently. These pieces both draw on and illustrate Eisenstein's montage theory: the content of each shot contains an individual meaning, but the points at which each is conjoined creates a larger meaning.
Every shot in this program, Three Songs, could stand alone and have a resonance and specific meaning. But, Nathaniel Dorsky has put these images into very different orders, causing their edited associations to arouse in the viewer a understanding of his/her world that could not have been achieved in any other way. These three films were made at different points in the artist's life, giving each a unique meaning. Sarabande is a very different portrait of a place in time from that of Song and Solitude, even though it shares technical and content elements. This is the power of cinema, the pairing of such concrete things as images and technical strategies to create such personal and subjective experiences. This is a power that is not fully understood until the final piece has spun through its tail. The cumulative effect is of three pieces so frustratingly similar that they could not be more dissimilar. As an argument about this power of cinema, a soundtrack could only have felt contrived and manipulative.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Do Octopi Hear Electric Emmylous or Every Novel is a Sequel; On "Electric Sheep" by Amy Globus
"Every novel is a sequel," writes acclaimed novelist Michael Chabon in his thesis on popular culture, Maps and Legends. The future cannot exist with out being firmly rooted in the present and past. Everything that will happen does so in response to something that has happened or is happening. This is the basis for Amy Globus's "Electric Sheep". By referencing Phillip K. Dick's sci-fi opus, Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep, she is engaging in the same conversation as Dick and Chabon, but in her own voice, from her own time and perspective. The Dick novel details the exploits of individuals who are targeting robots, a malicious but necessary member of their society. Globus chooses the octopus as the misunderstood creature of fear, one that is relatively benign is the present world. The soundtrack is a mostly forgotten pop-country ballad by Emmylou Harris run through digital audio processors. This gives the video an echoey, faux-space feel, that engages both with Dick's novel as a projection of the future and engagement with the past.
The visuals force viewers to reassess in a disturbing light an animal that rarely crosses the thought of contemporary American culture: The Octopus. The creature is shown in extremity, squeezing through glass tubes, contorting like a body artist warning against apocalypse. The majority of the shots are close- to extreme-close ups. It is easy to forget that one is watching an octopus as the frame is filled with pink and orange folds of flesh, the suction cups pulling the subject through the frame. This intimacy with the viscera of the octopus is disturbing; the animal seems to to ebb and and flow, expand and compress, a gelatinous part of the water.Because the octopus is relatively foreign to the quotidian aspects of the daily life, these images are arresting, disturbing. The octopus is isolated from the water or any oceanic environment; it is enclosed in a sterile environment for the purpose of the video frame. By abstracting the octopus from any recognizable surroundings the viewer is only given portions of the animal's anatomy to consider, creating a sort of alienation of the subject with in the viewer's world. But, the viewer is also alienated with in the world of the video, these images would not be nearly as disturbing if given a context such as a PBS Nature special. There is nothing to connect the viewer to the contemporary world, and so, these pictures, video technology aside, could have been from any time, there is no context for these images. However, like Dick's novel and Chabon's thesis, the octopus exists here and now, but when given prominent light, out the safe context of scientific study, it seems unnatural, threatening, and futuristic.
Where the images are disturbing and abstract, Emmy Lou Harris's "Wrecking Ball" stirs that sleeping part of the brain where nostalgia lay, best left alone. The digital effects applied to the track are simple: reverberation and and delay, along with a few awkward mechanical groans. The tinny, empty sound that (in this piece) alter this late-career hit for a country legend, invokes many of the half-assed science fiction movies that purport that outer-space is an endless nothing of echoes and vaguely mechanical noise-scapes. Many will recognize "Wrecking Ball" and will be confused (much as this writer was) by the Garage Band effects applied to the piece. However, the choice to use this semi-forgotten song with cheap digital effects causes the viewer (experniencer?) to wonder if the present trend (in popular music) to use sampled chord structures and drum loops lends itself to a future of a minimally altered past. In an era when so many "legendary" artists and bands from 30 yrs. ago are touring just to capitalize on their status as "legends" it is necessary to wonder what the future of culture will offer. The answer, according to Amy Globus, is one of the past filtered through technology. The effects applied to "Wrecking Ball" are such that anyone could have applied them with their trendy iMac. These effects sound cheesy and outdated to the contemporary ear, even though they are current in consumer technology. The soundtrack suggests that the future will be recongnizable as a relic of the past, but filtered through a digital medium.
These visual and audio elements combined cause a thesis on a contemporary world moving toward a strange and disturbing future that is undeniably rooted in what we are comfortable with today. The piece ultimately warns viewers thatt though the future may be frightening (the octopus) or cheesy (Emmylou remixed), it is a concept that is only reassessing the ignored portions of the present. Like Dick's robots which are grown out of the labor-saving devices that are currently taken for granted or the hit songs of yesterday that we've forgotten about until they are again staring us in the face. These very specific examples of a future rooted in the past, become a metaphor for something much larger. The distopian worlds of Phillip K. Dick or the wasteland of Cormac McCarthy's the road all have a back stroy that relate to a forgotten factoid that blow up into an undesirable future. The piece warns that, like an octopus, a politician, if left unconsidered, can turn into something disturbing and threatening.
The visuals force viewers to reassess in a disturbing light an animal that rarely crosses the thought of contemporary American culture: The Octopus. The creature is shown in extremity, squeezing through glass tubes, contorting like a body artist warning against apocalypse. The majority of the shots are close- to extreme-close ups. It is easy to forget that one is watching an octopus as the frame is filled with pink and orange folds of flesh, the suction cups pulling the subject through the frame. This intimacy with the viscera of the octopus is disturbing; the animal seems to to ebb and and flow, expand and compress, a gelatinous part of the water.Because the octopus is relatively foreign to the quotidian aspects of the daily life, these images are arresting, disturbing. The octopus is isolated from the water or any oceanic environment; it is enclosed in a sterile environment for the purpose of the video frame. By abstracting the octopus from any recognizable surroundings the viewer is only given portions of the animal's anatomy to consider, creating a sort of alienation of the subject with in the viewer's world. But, the viewer is also alienated with in the world of the video, these images would not be nearly as disturbing if given a context such as a PBS Nature special. There is nothing to connect the viewer to the contemporary world, and so, these pictures, video technology aside, could have been from any time, there is no context for these images. However, like Dick's novel and Chabon's thesis, the octopus exists here and now, but when given prominent light, out the safe context of scientific study, it seems unnatural, threatening, and futuristic.
Where the images are disturbing and abstract, Emmy Lou Harris's "Wrecking Ball" stirs that sleeping part of the brain where nostalgia lay, best left alone. The digital effects applied to the track are simple: reverberation and and delay, along with a few awkward mechanical groans. The tinny, empty sound that (in this piece) alter this late-career hit for a country legend, invokes many of the half-assed science fiction movies that purport that outer-space is an endless nothing of echoes and vaguely mechanical noise-scapes. Many will recognize "Wrecking Ball" and will be confused (much as this writer was) by the Garage Band effects applied to the piece. However, the choice to use this semi-forgotten song with cheap digital effects causes the viewer (experniencer?) to wonder if the present trend (in popular music) to use sampled chord structures and drum loops lends itself to a future of a minimally altered past. In an era when so many "legendary" artists and bands from 30 yrs. ago are touring just to capitalize on their status as "legends" it is necessary to wonder what the future of culture will offer. The answer, according to Amy Globus, is one of the past filtered through technology. The effects applied to "Wrecking Ball" are such that anyone could have applied them with their trendy iMac. These effects sound cheesy and outdated to the contemporary ear, even though they are current in consumer technology. The soundtrack suggests that the future will be recongnizable as a relic of the past, but filtered through a digital medium.
These visual and audio elements combined cause a thesis on a contemporary world moving toward a strange and disturbing future that is undeniably rooted in what we are comfortable with today. The piece ultimately warns viewers thatt though the future may be frightening (the octopus) or cheesy (Emmylou remixed), it is a concept that is only reassessing the ignored portions of the present. Like Dick's robots which are grown out of the labor-saving devices that are currently taken for granted or the hit songs of yesterday that we've forgotten about until they are again staring us in the face. These very specific examples of a future rooted in the past, become a metaphor for something much larger. The distopian worlds of Phillip K. Dick or the wasteland of Cormac McCarthy's the road all have a back stroy that relate to a forgotten factoid that blow up into an undesirable future. The piece warns that, like an octopus, a politician, if left unconsidered, can turn into something disturbing and threatening.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
On New Orleans, Racism and Blues; And Iraq, Entertainment and Efficiency
The Vectors online journal is a magazine that discusses world and domestic events that have contemporary resonance with issues of art and technology. The journal's title does an excellent job in explaining the format for the arguments. Though strait-forward texts preface each of the articles with an Editor's Introduction and an Artist's Statement, each of the essays is in a relatively interactive multimedia format that best illustrates and delineates the points and the material. "Blue Velvet" directs the user through a series of arguments that are separated by an interlude of falling words, however, the user has no control of the order in which these arguments are read. "Killer Entertainments", however, presents a series of videos that are presented in three screens and though each screen has videos in succession, the user may watch any of the screens in any order as well as cycling through the videos at her/his leisure; each video has text that, by a vector, is suggested reading.
New Orleans was, prior to Katrina, a predominantly Black city; women also outnumbered the men. It was seen as a quintessentially American city, a bohemian one: a city that produced jazz, birthed the Delta Blues, and made much of America cringe. However, the Contemporary New Orleans, our New Orleans, is home to a majorities of Caucasians and Men, unlikely to produce any new art, unlikely to embarrass the rest of the country. The essay, designed by Erik Loyer, is set-up with a floating, swaying, drifting city/seascape that has words, words like delimitation or covenants, cascading upon it. Some words can be clicked, these are the titles of each of the twenty-four chapters. As the chapter title is clicked, the user is plunged beneath the the surface of the city/seascape into the depths of the argument, of the problem; alongside, the audio that is paired with the image is shifted from an uneasy water world into a roiling drum loop. The prose, written by David Theo Goldberg and Stefka Hristova, has the feel of a playful lamentation, like David Foster Wallace on a cheerful day. They use complicated phrasing ripe with adjectives as nouns and switch their adjectives and nouns to change the meaning of the phrase and deepen the meaning the chosen words. They reference Salmon Rushdie, Lucinda Williams, and Albert King among those cited. They use blues phrasing and rhyming, they begin with a breif portrait of the city and 24 chapters along end by re-dressing it. The city's Blue Velvet, "too soft to touch," is replaced by a Homogenous, prescribed whiteness, blankness. The words themselves are not always printed in uniform size and format: they sometimes jump across lines or break off at phrases or schew into one another or drift toward the top of the screen, partially obscured. Though the delivery is playful, the subject is grave. Racism, Goldberg and Hristova argue, is at fault for the Catastrophe that cast Katrina, a hurricane, as the enemy. The Catastrophe is not just a natural disaster or a social crisis but a complication of both by timing. Racism, though not as public as the days of Jim Crow, is a product of corporate redlining that uses business statistics to racially profile and discriminate inidividuals as investment risks. The essay is about racism and Neo-Liberalism, the writers's word for Bush-ite privitization, but uses the city's former disposition to the artistic as a vehicle for this essay, which in itself is a sort of Blues.
"Killer Entertainments" on the other hand is directly about a technology, its wartime uses and the technology spawned from those uses. The user is directed through a series of videos shot by soldiers in Iraq, each video is linked to texts that describe the geographical area shown in the movie and describe a concern that is depicted or raised by the movie. The user is control, though. S/he may watch the movies in any order and read the texts with the suggested video or at any interval. The videos are taken from weapon-, helmet-, vehicle-, and hand-held cameras; some are taken from terrorist websites, some are used as models for video games. Words are flown over the video players and the user can click on them to be expanded or just wait until they fly off again, the wrds are fleeting. Sometimes these words are breif excerpts of dialogue from the video, "fuck these bitches up," sometimes an explanation of how the video was edited to look less haldheld and boringly linear, "B-Roll." The final argument here is much more complex and than that of "Blue Velvet," the user is not directed toward a specific conclusion but is given an information set about a technology using various technologies, sources, and media. A conclusion maybe drawn during the reading of one text but over turned by the issues raised by the next video. Perhaps the inclusion of an anecdote about a 60 Minutes interview will shape the user's opinion of the use of video and media in War, perhaps it won't. The goal seems less about persauding than about informing, the user is left with an impression of the uses for these videos, but the opinion about whether it is ultimately good or bad is entirely up to her/him.
New Orleans was, prior to Katrina, a predominantly Black city; women also outnumbered the men. It was seen as a quintessentially American city, a bohemian one: a city that produced jazz, birthed the Delta Blues, and made much of America cringe. However, the Contemporary New Orleans, our New Orleans, is home to a majorities of Caucasians and Men, unlikely to produce any new art, unlikely to embarrass the rest of the country. The essay, designed by Erik Loyer, is set-up with a floating, swaying, drifting city/seascape that has words, words like delimitation or covenants, cascading upon it. Some words can be clicked, these are the titles of each of the twenty-four chapters. As the chapter title is clicked, the user is plunged beneath the the surface of the city/seascape into the depths of the argument, of the problem; alongside, the audio that is paired with the image is shifted from an uneasy water world into a roiling drum loop. The prose, written by David Theo Goldberg and Stefka Hristova, has the feel of a playful lamentation, like David Foster Wallace on a cheerful day. They use complicated phrasing ripe with adjectives as nouns and switch their adjectives and nouns to change the meaning of the phrase and deepen the meaning the chosen words. They reference Salmon Rushdie, Lucinda Williams, and Albert King among those cited. They use blues phrasing and rhyming, they begin with a breif portrait of the city and 24 chapters along end by re-dressing it. The city's Blue Velvet, "too soft to touch," is replaced by a Homogenous, prescribed whiteness, blankness. The words themselves are not always printed in uniform size and format: they sometimes jump across lines or break off at phrases or schew into one another or drift toward the top of the screen, partially obscured. Though the delivery is playful, the subject is grave. Racism, Goldberg and Hristova argue, is at fault for the Catastrophe that cast Katrina, a hurricane, as the enemy. The Catastrophe is not just a natural disaster or a social crisis but a complication of both by timing. Racism, though not as public as the days of Jim Crow, is a product of corporate redlining that uses business statistics to racially profile and discriminate inidividuals as investment risks. The essay is about racism and Neo-Liberalism, the writers's word for Bush-ite privitization, but uses the city's former disposition to the artistic as a vehicle for this essay, which in itself is a sort of Blues.
"Killer Entertainments" on the other hand is directly about a technology, its wartime uses and the technology spawned from those uses. The user is directed through a series of videos shot by soldiers in Iraq, each video is linked to texts that describe the geographical area shown in the movie and describe a concern that is depicted or raised by the movie. The user is control, though. S/he may watch the movies in any order and read the texts with the suggested video or at any interval. The videos are taken from weapon-, helmet-, vehicle-, and hand-held cameras; some are taken from terrorist websites, some are used as models for video games. Words are flown over the video players and the user can click on them to be expanded or just wait until they fly off again, the wrds are fleeting. Sometimes these words are breif excerpts of dialogue from the video, "fuck these bitches up," sometimes an explanation of how the video was edited to look less haldheld and boringly linear, "B-Roll." The final argument here is much more complex and than that of "Blue Velvet," the user is not directed toward a specific conclusion but is given an information set about a technology using various technologies, sources, and media. A conclusion maybe drawn during the reading of one text but over turned by the issues raised by the next video. Perhaps the inclusion of an anecdote about a 60 Minutes interview will shape the user's opinion of the use of video and media in War, perhaps it won't. The goal seems less about persauding than about informing, the user is left with an impression of the uses for these videos, but the opinion about whether it is ultimately good or bad is entirely up to her/him.
On ACT/REACT or Why I don't Chew Gum (Normally)
Milwaukee Art Museum's ACT/REACT exhibit offers a glimpse of the art that may be on a quickly approaching horizon, interactive installations. These pieces all engage with technology and question the roles of the artist and observer, as per John McKinnon's point. Where Marcel Duchamp's work, and many of the pieces by other artists in the Sensory Overload exhibit, deal with these questions by creating art that was ordered and assembled in a shop, or asks the observer to bring their own experiences of life and art museums to a piece. Like those pieces, the ACT/REACT exhibit demands the same of visitors, only in a more physical manner; Camille Utterback's Untitled series and Janet Cardiff's To Touch especially engage these specific questions.
Utterback's work uses a computer program and sensor matrix to project a "painting" based on the broad and subtle movements of an observer. The images are abstract and shifting, allowing an observer to engage with the visual contributions of the previous one. This is entertaining and novel, especially in an art gallery. Where interactive art is common place within the popular culture in the form of the video game, Art Museums have been slow on the uptake. ACT/REACT replaces a Wii-mote with cameras and sensor matrixes, creating complicated computer programs that interpret an observer's image or movements. These installations creatively engage a viewer for a short-time, but unlike a story-based video-game or many of the pieces in Sensory Overload, they fail to engage the viewer for a lengthy period of time. Unlike video games, Utterback's work is to let the observer actually create an image; however, the actual work of art is the computing program and installation, the projection is a sort of by-product of the craftsmanship to engage an audience. Though more complicated than the programs of Snow Mirror or Healing #1, Utterback's work is similar to the paintings of Jacques Louis David, impressive in the technical realm, but not very interesting. Also like David's work, Utterback's work is most profound within the context of art history as a step to an interactive art that is ultimately more engaging and satisfying.
The one exception to this is Cardiff's To Touch. This piece connects two artistic elements through the observer's touch: a weathered wooden table and audio. The table, alone in a room, stands alone as sculpture, the observer reaches across normal boundaries of acceptability when viewing sculpture and touches it. That act then transforms the piece by introducing the audio element. Intimate voices, swelling music and other soundbites become tied to portions of the table through the visitor. The pocked and cracked surface of the table pairs a specific feel (a sense very often neglected by the fine arts) with these sounds; it feels as if the visitor is brushing these sounds out of the textured wood. Had this piece been just the table, it would have engaged the observer with many of the same questions of appropriation and technology that Duchamp did. The audio alone as an installation would have questioned the need for an image and quotidian nature of hearing. And an audio collage that is based on movements of an observer would have been uninterestingly similar to David Rokeby's Very Nervous System (most of the ACT/REACT exhibit seem to be banal, visual variations of Rokeby's work, Utterback's the most so). But, when these elements are paired through the physical act, the Visitor creates connections between sensory experience of touching, the visual impact of the table, and the shifting soundscapes they are eliciting. The subtlety and complexity of To Touch engage art history and the arguments of McKinnon in a much more meaningful way than the rest of the exhibit.
The other pieces, like Healing #1, Deep Walls, and Echo Evolution, engage the visitor and the questions of art and interactivity in relation to art in much less interesting or memorable ways. The greatest strength of these and the other pieces in the show is novelty. Viewers' certainly enjoy themselves when walking through, past and over the various exhibits, but the experience is quickly lost as s/he moves onto the next piece of technological wizardry. Like a paint by numbers kit that is in the style of Van Gogh or the tasted pleasure of chewing gum, there is little lasting effect of ACT/REACT, aside from To Touch.
Utterback's work uses a computer program and sensor matrix to project a "painting" based on the broad and subtle movements of an observer. The images are abstract and shifting, allowing an observer to engage with the visual contributions of the previous one. This is entertaining and novel, especially in an art gallery. Where interactive art is common place within the popular culture in the form of the video game, Art Museums have been slow on the uptake. ACT/REACT replaces a Wii-mote with cameras and sensor matrixes, creating complicated computer programs that interpret an observer's image or movements. These installations creatively engage a viewer for a short-time, but unlike a story-based video-game or many of the pieces in Sensory Overload, they fail to engage the viewer for a lengthy period of time. Unlike video games, Utterback's work is to let the observer actually create an image; however, the actual work of art is the computing program and installation, the projection is a sort of by-product of the craftsmanship to engage an audience. Though more complicated than the programs of Snow Mirror or Healing #1, Utterback's work is similar to the paintings of Jacques Louis David, impressive in the technical realm, but not very interesting. Also like David's work, Utterback's work is most profound within the context of art history as a step to an interactive art that is ultimately more engaging and satisfying.
The one exception to this is Cardiff's To Touch. This piece connects two artistic elements through the observer's touch: a weathered wooden table and audio. The table, alone in a room, stands alone as sculpture, the observer reaches across normal boundaries of acceptability when viewing sculpture and touches it. That act then transforms the piece by introducing the audio element. Intimate voices, swelling music and other soundbites become tied to portions of the table through the visitor. The pocked and cracked surface of the table pairs a specific feel (a sense very often neglected by the fine arts) with these sounds; it feels as if the visitor is brushing these sounds out of the textured wood. Had this piece been just the table, it would have engaged the observer with many of the same questions of appropriation and technology that Duchamp did. The audio alone as an installation would have questioned the need for an image and quotidian nature of hearing. And an audio collage that is based on movements of an observer would have been uninterestingly similar to David Rokeby's Very Nervous System (most of the ACT/REACT exhibit seem to be banal, visual variations of Rokeby's work, Utterback's the most so). But, when these elements are paired through the physical act, the Visitor creates connections between sensory experience of touching, the visual impact of the table, and the shifting soundscapes they are eliciting. The subtlety and complexity of To Touch engage art history and the arguments of McKinnon in a much more meaningful way than the rest of the exhibit.
The other pieces, like Healing #1, Deep Walls, and Echo Evolution, engage the visitor and the questions of art and interactivity in relation to art in much less interesting or memorable ways. The greatest strength of these and the other pieces in the show is novelty. Viewers' certainly enjoy themselves when walking through, past and over the various exhibits, but the experience is quickly lost as s/he moves onto the next piece of technological wizardry. Like a paint by numbers kit that is in the style of Van Gogh or the tasted pleasure of chewing gum, there is little lasting effect of ACT/REACT, aside from To Touch.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
On Everson's The Golden Age of Fish, the soundtrack inparticular
"Fragmented" is, perhaps, the best descriptor for The Golden Age of Fish. Images of a protagonist speaking of cleaning products, catching footballs, and falling, presumably of murder, are the major visual refrains of Kevin Jerome Everson's The Age of Fish. Voice-overs tell viewers of the hazards of the cleaning products, the history of Cleveland shale, and a murder suicide case. The soundtrack is similarly fragmented: it clicks and hisses with technical failure, it hums and pulses with angst and tension, it swells and falls with sadness. In his introduction to the film Everson called the piece the experience of viewing a landscape from a distance.
Unlike the goals of most soundtracks, Everson's purposely draws the viewers attention to its own artifice, not allowing viewers into the world of the fragmented narrative. Everson seems to assume that the repetition of images, multiple film stocks, and other experimental strategies are not enough to keep the viewer from becoming immersed in the story, the place. The keep the distance of the viewer as his own childhood viewing Cleveland from a small, safe, town, he uses a musical score that eschews any song structures and utilizes little tonality. Just when a a recognizeable chord would make itself whole, full of longing, a sharp electronic pop of an amp cable being pulled would break it up and a new set of creaks and whistles would begin to build.
Other sequences would just use synchronous sound as the protagonist walks down a street. The recording device was tinny and harsh, so the city symphony of passing cars and construction work became an unbearable din of urban pollution and consumption.
Everson mentioned that wanted to shoot the Cleveland landscape as if it was, in and of itself, a suspect in the crimes the film's outline. His grainy rendering of billboards, storefronts, and alleyways certainly put the viewer into a place of suspicion toward the landscape. However, it is this tuneless, grating sound that invokes a certain righteous anger toward the content of these images.
Some sequences contain little or no soundtrack outside of a voiceover speaking about shale. This sterile, facutal reading over certain images fails to create any sense of peace with in the viewer (this viewer, specifically). Instead, geology becomes a bone of contention. Science itself is a suspect in a cosmic conspiracy against a Woman and her maniacal lover. When the soundtrack kicks back in with the disquieting noises the viewers are even more likely to suspect the city and its geology.
Unlike the goals of most soundtracks, Everson's purposely draws the viewers attention to its own artifice, not allowing viewers into the world of the fragmented narrative. Everson seems to assume that the repetition of images, multiple film stocks, and other experimental strategies are not enough to keep the viewer from becoming immersed in the story, the place. The keep the distance of the viewer as his own childhood viewing Cleveland from a small, safe, town, he uses a musical score that eschews any song structures and utilizes little tonality. Just when a a recognizeable chord would make itself whole, full of longing, a sharp electronic pop of an amp cable being pulled would break it up and a new set of creaks and whistles would begin to build.
Other sequences would just use synchronous sound as the protagonist walks down a street. The recording device was tinny and harsh, so the city symphony of passing cars and construction work became an unbearable din of urban pollution and consumption.
Everson mentioned that wanted to shoot the Cleveland landscape as if it was, in and of itself, a suspect in the crimes the film's outline. His grainy rendering of billboards, storefronts, and alleyways certainly put the viewer into a place of suspicion toward the landscape. However, it is this tuneless, grating sound that invokes a certain righteous anger toward the content of these images.
Some sequences contain little or no soundtrack outside of a voiceover speaking about shale. This sterile, facutal reading over certain images fails to create any sense of peace with in the viewer (this viewer, specifically). Instead, geology becomes a bone of contention. Science itself is a suspect in a cosmic conspiracy against a Woman and her maniacal lover. When the soundtrack kicks back in with the disquieting noises the viewers are even more likely to suspect the city and its geology.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
4/30, On What Happens Next
Nearly all narrative film critics and theorists agree that Story is a series of events that keeps the viewers wondering "What happens next?" The causality of these events should be clear and drives each subsequent event. The Way Things Go strips the narrative form to its barest necessities of cause and effect; however, Duck Soup bloats the narrative with dialog, sight gags, musical numbers, and slapstick comedy so far that the linearity of story is all but completely lost. The two pieces, though both narrative, stretch the popular film form to its diametric extremes.
Driven by the strict confines of cause and effect, Fischli and Weiss followed a series of events to make Rube Goldberg proud through explosions, fires, collisions, projectiles, combustions, and tires climbing up hills. For the duration of the piece I found myself held in extreme suspense wondering, as any good narrative should inspire a viewer to wonder, "What's going to happen next?" I held my breath as each stunt was set up by the previous event. This narrative, however, didn't assume any pretense. There was no character study, thinly veiled social metaphors. Only causes and effects. Tire hits soda bottle that fills the cup of a lever that in turn lifts a candle to a fuse that will blow another tire into motion. This thrill with narrative is very basic, childlike.
A similar childlike place is exploited by the Marx Brothers in their Duck Soup. The story is hidden under layers of playful dialog and action. The narrative is structured in a very conventional three act structure; although, Duck Soup's three acts can be summarized by only three events of cause and effect: Freedonia appoints Firefly leader; Firefly and Trentino declare war; War erupts between Freedonia and Sylvania. These three scenarios, however, are enough to carry the weight of Groucho's quick quips, Chico's lingual confusion, and Harpo's silent shenanigans.
The two films intervene into the narrative structures of filmmaking in very different ways. The Way Things Go forces the viewers to become involved with the action, denying any traditional elements of emotional attachment. Duck Soup similarly demands of the audience a leap of faith through intervention: it is all character, action, music, no events that propel a thin plot toward a logical conclusion. Where the former denies the audience a conclusion, the latter forces it on the viewers.
Driven by the strict confines of cause and effect, Fischli and Weiss followed a series of events to make Rube Goldberg proud through explosions, fires, collisions, projectiles, combustions, and tires climbing up hills. For the duration of the piece I found myself held in extreme suspense wondering, as any good narrative should inspire a viewer to wonder, "What's going to happen next?" I held my breath as each stunt was set up by the previous event. This narrative, however, didn't assume any pretense. There was no character study, thinly veiled social metaphors. Only causes and effects. Tire hits soda bottle that fills the cup of a lever that in turn lifts a candle to a fuse that will blow another tire into motion. This thrill with narrative is very basic, childlike.
A similar childlike place is exploited by the Marx Brothers in their Duck Soup. The story is hidden under layers of playful dialog and action. The narrative is structured in a very conventional three act structure; although, Duck Soup's three acts can be summarized by only three events of cause and effect: Freedonia appoints Firefly leader; Firefly and Trentino declare war; War erupts between Freedonia and Sylvania. These three scenarios, however, are enough to carry the weight of Groucho's quick quips, Chico's lingual confusion, and Harpo's silent shenanigans.
The two films intervene into the narrative structures of filmmaking in very different ways. The Way Things Go forces the viewers to become involved with the action, denying any traditional elements of emotional attachment. Duck Soup similarly demands of the audience a leap of faith through intervention: it is all character, action, music, no events that propel a thin plot toward a logical conclusion. Where the former denies the audience a conclusion, the latter forces it on the viewers.
Monday, April 21, 2008
4/21, The President is Dead: "Somebody will have to piece me together"
Don DeLillo's Libra presents a life of Lee Harvey Oswald, filling the historical ellipses with fiction. Oswald, like nearly every character in the book, spends the duration trying desperately to make sense of a world that seems to be conspiring against him; DeLillo seems likewise to be desperately trying to make sense of the world that could produce Oswald.
Bruce Conner with Report is similarly desperate for meaning. Rather than constructing meaning in the holes of the Warren Commission Report, Conner reconstructs the emotion living in those holes of knowledge. Starting with the news footage of the Dallas motorcade Conner establishes the visual space of Dealey plaza, 1963. As the motorcade stops and the soundtrack narrator slips into a tone of confusion, the image on the screen vanishes into visual white noise. The flicker increases with the panic of the narrator's voice. While watching this lengthy section of blankness my mind wanted to resolve the voided image with the disturbing audio; therefore, the flicker became something of a motion picture Rorschach card. I started to project images of Jack and Jackie, Oswald and Ruby on the screen. I became so desperate to see the image of this icon that when the second portion of the film began with the footage of the bullfight I recoiled. The images felt irreverent, out of place, and blasphemous.
When the film had finished, after introducing the breaking of lightbulbs and a commercial for a refrigerator, I realized that the montage, with very few images of Kennedy, was both an appropriate rendering of eye-witness emotions, but it was also the only way to resolve the anxiety of the blank screen. After allowing the effect of the film to mull around in my head after lecture, I began thinking of my own emotions and "blank screen anxiety" on 9/11/01 after hearing about two planes crashing into the World Trade Center but not being allowed to watch any news cast footage.
As a teenager I spent a substantial amount of time studying the Kennedy assassination, but my interest always had a certain romantic aura. I had no idea of the power such an event could hold over a generation of individuals. I was interested in conspiracy theory, in political watershed, and in cynicism. Report made concrete the chaos, the emotion, the blankness that could only have come from witnessing the assassination. Though I can never truly experience those things in relationship to the event, the film gave a deeper insight to the event. Where Libra helped to understand the event as a result of personal and cultural flaws Report made the assassination personal to someone whose was born over 20 yrs. later.
Bruce Conner with Report is similarly desperate for meaning. Rather than constructing meaning in the holes of the Warren Commission Report, Conner reconstructs the emotion living in those holes of knowledge. Starting with the news footage of the Dallas motorcade Conner establishes the visual space of Dealey plaza, 1963. As the motorcade stops and the soundtrack narrator slips into a tone of confusion, the image on the screen vanishes into visual white noise. The flicker increases with the panic of the narrator's voice. While watching this lengthy section of blankness my mind wanted to resolve the voided image with the disturbing audio; therefore, the flicker became something of a motion picture Rorschach card. I started to project images of Jack and Jackie, Oswald and Ruby on the screen. I became so desperate to see the image of this icon that when the second portion of the film began with the footage of the bullfight I recoiled. The images felt irreverent, out of place, and blasphemous.
When the film had finished, after introducing the breaking of lightbulbs and a commercial for a refrigerator, I realized that the montage, with very few images of Kennedy, was both an appropriate rendering of eye-witness emotions, but it was also the only way to resolve the anxiety of the blank screen. After allowing the effect of the film to mull around in my head after lecture, I began thinking of my own emotions and "blank screen anxiety" on 9/11/01 after hearing about two planes crashing into the World Trade Center but not being allowed to watch any news cast footage.
As a teenager I spent a substantial amount of time studying the Kennedy assassination, but my interest always had a certain romantic aura. I had no idea of the power such an event could hold over a generation of individuals. I was interested in conspiracy theory, in political watershed, and in cynicism. Report made concrete the chaos, the emotion, the blankness that could only have come from witnessing the assassination. Though I can never truly experience those things in relationship to the event, the film gave a deeper insight to the event. Where Libra helped to understand the event as a result of personal and cultural flaws Report made the assassination personal to someone whose was born over 20 yrs. later.
Friday, April 18, 2008
4/17, When Creativity met Copyright, On Negativland
Negativland's line-up, according to the wikipedia entry on the band, is "considered rather irrelevant, in the usual sense of band personnel, and [the] list may be inaccurate or false." Unconcerned with any of the politics of most western pop bands, Negativland is an idea of cultural criticism rather than the ideas formed from a specific group of minds. Using musical samples, found sound collages and other copyrighted materials Negativland faces more drama from the legal system than from personality conflict. Their records, all originally recorded on reel-to-reel 1/4 inch tape, reflect a hands on approach to criticism of a pre-fabricated world where even irony can be stupid.
Fact 1) They use[d] tape samples
Fact 2) They tell us how crazy the world of marketing is (turning down the spot because of Burroughs)
Fact 3) Though critical, they seem to revel in many of the sound bytes and images of mass communication culuture (DisPepsi)
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
4/7, Frampton on Dorsky
Frampton's assessment that a film is what most appears in it, at first, seemed accurate and nearly revelatory. Saying that Love's Refrain is about shadows because, upon first viewing, I paid most attention to those, is quite shallow. Frampton's illustration that Lana Turner is the subject of a film because she appears most could very easily be argued that the film is not about her, but her breasts. Even though an adolescent boy may have paid attention to little else, does not completely eliminate the other elements of the frame, even if it is just Lana Turner's plastic smile. I am quite sure that Love's Refrain had more going on than portions of the frame that had the sunlight blocked. To say that shadows is the meaning of the film would give a reader the sense that the film is rather glum, perhaps shallowly, but glum none the less. The glance shared by an elderly couple who observe the world we see as reflections on the sandwich shoppe window is ignored in favor of the shadow they cast on the counter. The film is about the shadow cast by a tree branch and not the movement of the tree branch just because, as an easily distracted viewer, I noticed a shadow in an earlier shot and so ignored any movement? It would save me, as a student and art audience member, alot of brain-time to be able to plug a movie into this equation, giving me more time to think about the Drew Carey Show. Frampton also spent great length discussing that film making is about subtracting from the white rectangle, not adding to it. If a film were to be about Lana Turner, surely, the filmmakers should not include her in any shot. Frampton's Lemon is about a lemon, that's all. Love's Refrain, I hope, is not just about shadows because my lazy and subjective eyes sought out the shadows of the compositions.
Monday, March 31, 2008
4/1, On J. Benning: Know the Problem
All art, narrative or not, sculpture or film, confronts a problem. Hollywood movies begin a film with an event which will cause the protagonist to make choices that work to overcome the problem presented. A portrait, before the photograph, preserved the image of a family patriarch for future generations. There are, of course, many different ways to solve each problem. French minimalist movies let the protagonists solve a problem while quietly contemplating each choice in a tight close up on her anguished face. Cubists and other Modern-era painters used abstract imagery to represent people, rather than physical similarities.
James Benning's lecture on 4/1 used mathematics as a metaphor for the problems faced by artists in creating a marriage between simplicity and elegances. Most artistic conventions, especially in American narrative film, are built around elements of functionality and clarity. In math, as Benning illustrated, all number sets and functions are built around a need for counting and accuracy. Sheep need to be counted, the circumference of a circle needs to be measured. A mathematical proof can very often be long, confusing, incomprehensible to the layman. However, Benning offered simple, surprising proofs and explanations for some (for a filmmaking major) complicated math concepts.
In Casting a Glance Benning created an impressive and timely document of Spiral Jetty through images that follow nearly every composition guideline for the duration. But the film understands, like good mathematicians and artists, that guidelines, rules, and conventions are open to interpretation and negotiation. Every sound in the film was recorded on sight by Benning, except for two: a recorded interview of the Jetty's artist, Robert Smithson, and a cover of "Love Hurts" by Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris. The voice of Smithson is laid over images of the Jetty being explored by three or four people. The song replaced replaced any diegetic sounds, but was edited to have varied levels of volume and quality, like the lake recordings.
The film was structured to portray the Jetty over the course of nearly 40 years. However, Benning only shot between 2005 and 2007. He used historical records and current information on water levels and weather to cut the film so that each segment of the film represented a period in the history of the Jetty. Benning's problem: not having the time to shoot for 40 years or the technology to time travel. Bennings solution: use math, history, and cinematic technique to recreate for the viewer the past of an art work few will see in person.
Fully understanding the problem, Benning, took simple and elegant approaches to finish a fine piece of visual, time-based art. His lecture challenged us to both fully understand the conventions we use and the problem we are attempting to solve.
James Benning's lecture on 4/1 used mathematics as a metaphor for the problems faced by artists in creating a marriage between simplicity and elegances. Most artistic conventions, especially in American narrative film, are built around elements of functionality and clarity. In math, as Benning illustrated, all number sets and functions are built around a need for counting and accuracy. Sheep need to be counted, the circumference of a circle needs to be measured. A mathematical proof can very often be long, confusing, incomprehensible to the layman. However, Benning offered simple, surprising proofs and explanations for some (for a filmmaking major) complicated math concepts.
In Casting a Glance Benning created an impressive and timely document of Spiral Jetty through images that follow nearly every composition guideline for the duration. But the film understands, like good mathematicians and artists, that guidelines, rules, and conventions are open to interpretation and negotiation. Every sound in the film was recorded on sight by Benning, except for two: a recorded interview of the Jetty's artist, Robert Smithson, and a cover of "Love Hurts" by Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris. The voice of Smithson is laid over images of the Jetty being explored by three or four people. The song replaced replaced any diegetic sounds, but was edited to have varied levels of volume and quality, like the lake recordings.
The film was structured to portray the Jetty over the course of nearly 40 years. However, Benning only shot between 2005 and 2007. He used historical records and current information on water levels and weather to cut the film so that each segment of the film represented a period in the history of the Jetty. Benning's problem: not having the time to shoot for 40 years or the technology to time travel. Bennings solution: use math, history, and cinematic technique to recreate for the viewer the past of an art work few will see in person.
Fully understanding the problem, Benning, took simple and elegant approaches to finish a fine piece of visual, time-based art. His lecture challenged us to both fully understand the conventions we use and the problem we are attempting to solve.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
On Salt and Cellphone
The project is a compromise between the concrete and the abstract: an exploration of the space standing between them. Perhaps the mirror and salt have some specific representations; and perhaps the cell phone soundtrack some metaphors swimming beneath the words. I was most interested in the two elements begging of each other "Who are you?" I found little interesting in creating a piece that tried to blend the personal and the cosmic. However, by distilling the text from the subtext the piece became infinitely more interesting. Each supertext took on a life of its own. The cellphone confessional becomes more intimate, embarrassing, and performed. The obscuring of the mirror is freed from representation. The camera captures a dialog, not a lecture. The viewer is asked to join, not absorb.
The space, the process, and the performance of this video seemed to dictate exactly what needed be done with my piece. The physical confines of the space could be manipulated in anyway, however, by leaving it stark, a sense of claustrophobia pervades. In developing the piece, time was a huge factor, a fourth dimensional wall; I left the back end of the video empty of cellphone message to let both the time and space collapse on each other as the last grains of salt trickled into place. The performance itself was dictated by the constraints of time and space. Having a piece of technology relay the confessional was both a necessity for consistent performance, also a choice for self-reflexivity in the piece, the hands are seen initiating the message but let the machine speak for them. The voice is static in space and time, captured on a medium for communication, talking about the passage of time; however, the salt traveled through space and time to mark and build upon a single moment. This tension, contradiction speaks both for the project and for this piece.
The space, the process, and the performance of this video seemed to dictate exactly what needed be done with my piece. The physical confines of the space could be manipulated in anyway, however, by leaving it stark, a sense of claustrophobia pervades. In developing the piece, time was a huge factor, a fourth dimensional wall; I left the back end of the video empty of cellphone message to let both the time and space collapse on each other as the last grains of salt trickled into place. The performance itself was dictated by the constraints of time and space. Having a piece of technology relay the confessional was both a necessity for consistent performance, also a choice for self-reflexivity in the piece, the hands are seen initiating the message but let the machine speak for them. The voice is static in space and time, captured on a medium for communication, talking about the passage of time; however, the salt traveled through space and time to mark and build upon a single moment. This tension, contradiction speaks both for the project and for this piece.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
2/25, The producer and the performer
Marcel Duchamp confused for the world the concept of worthiness of art. Vito Acconci furthered the discussion by confusing the spaces in which art was exhibited. The four films viewed in succession on Monday 25 February, especially Tree, ask the question of authorship and artist's participation. The Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher site Learning to love you more, begs to ask the questions: "who is the artist? what is the art?"
In Tree the performer is a part of the landscape that is being filmed. The tree dances whenever there is wind, by holding the camera, swinging it gently, surveying the landscape as only a member of that landscape can, the tree is offering its unique perspective through the camera as provided by Chris Welsby, author. Despite the performance of a tree dancing in the wind regardless, Welsby, less writer or director, stepped into the role of producer to make the technical elements coincide with the performance. Welsby enabled the film with out writing, directing or even operating the camera.
However, July and Fletcher have put their names to the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com which is maintained by a third party, and all of the content is provided by users, consumers, those who do not identify as artists. All of the art is created off of prompts issued to the users by the cite. Whether July and Fletcher personally come up with the assignments is unclear, however, they certainly put all of the pieces in place on line for this "consumer created art" to be created and displayed. If July and Fletcher we're viewed as the "authors" of this site, it would be easy to fault them for being exploitative. However, they choose not to inflect the project with any possible interpretations. They simply provide the venue and prompts, each of the participants is so by his or her own will. The project is produced by the artists, the art is made by what would traditionally be called the audience.
In Tree the performer is a part of the landscape that is being filmed. The tree dances whenever there is wind, by holding the camera, swinging it gently, surveying the landscape as only a member of that landscape can, the tree is offering its unique perspective through the camera as provided by Chris Welsby, author. Despite the performance of a tree dancing in the wind regardless, Welsby, less writer or director, stepped into the role of producer to make the technical elements coincide with the performance. Welsby enabled the film with out writing, directing or even operating the camera.
However, July and Fletcher have put their names to the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com which is maintained by a third party, and all of the content is provided by users, consumers, those who do not identify as artists. All of the art is created off of prompts issued to the users by the cite. Whether July and Fletcher personally come up with the assignments is unclear, however, they certainly put all of the pieces in place on line for this "consumer created art" to be created and displayed. If July and Fletcher we're viewed as the "authors" of this site, it would be easy to fault them for being exploitative. However, they choose not to inflect the project with any possible interpretations. They simply provide the venue and prompts, each of the participants is so by his or her own will. The project is produced by the artists, the art is made by what would traditionally be called the audience.
Monday, February 11, 2008
2/11, On art in the everyday
Vito Acconci elevated what amounted to little more than morning exercises in his apartment to the realm of performance art. However, he kept it separate from simple calisthenics by only performing during alternating months. The distribution of fliers as invitation and instruction on the performances, as Helen Molesworth pointed out, moved Acconci into the role of manager and curator. He was, indeed, the manager and curator of his studio and gallery space, which also happened to overlap with his living space. This expansion of the art world to include an artist's apartment, and the expansion art to include a man stepping on to a stool every morning poses the question of "What cannot be art and where cannot art take place?"
Robert Morris seemed to be occupied with a similar question when he made his 1969 film Mirror. As an agent of artwork Morris seems to have felt that, like Acconci, he directed what we see. His artistic choice, again like Acconci, is not to show us a carefully crafted and composed image but a simple reflection. Indeed, Mirror shows a very literal interpretation of that choice: the artist is holding the mirror that haphazardly reflects the landscape, and a few occasions reveals the camera and Morris holding the mirror. The piece seems to be a declaration of what Morris feels art should be and do. Just as Acconci could have chosen to perform any physical act in any venue, Morris chose to raise a metaphoric middle finger to established art by documenting a landscape as seen by a mirror he arbitrarily controls.
Robert Morris seemed to be occupied with a similar question when he made his 1969 film Mirror. As an agent of artwork Morris seems to have felt that, like Acconci, he directed what we see. His artistic choice, again like Acconci, is not to show us a carefully crafted and composed image but a simple reflection. Indeed, Mirror shows a very literal interpretation of that choice: the artist is holding the mirror that haphazardly reflects the landscape, and a few occasions reveals the camera and Morris holding the mirror. The piece seems to be a declaration of what Morris feels art should be and do. Just as Acconci could have chosen to perform any physical act in any venue, Morris chose to raise a metaphoric middle finger to established art by documenting a landscape as seen by a mirror he arbitrarily controls.
Monday, February 4, 2008
2/4, Cohl and Deren on the absurdity of movement
Maya Deren writes that the concern of the motion photographer lies with a body in motion through time. Still photography, she argues, has claim on the capturing of a body in an instant, frozen. The movie camera should explore its own strengths. One of its strengths is its ability to create the illusion of continuity.
Emil Cohl explored this relationship of movement through time and space in his "trick" movie The Great Pumpkin Race. As a cart load of pumpkins began rolling down a hill, there seems to be little spectacle in the employment of gravity. However, these particular renegade pumpkins have little regard for any laws of nature. They chase each other, run over innocent pedestrians, and escape a mob of people trying to restore order: even when the escape required rolling uphill, jumping over obstacles and climbing through chimneys. The bodies in motion that Cohl concerns himself with are not human, as Deren mainly did, but are traditionally inanimate. The pumpkins behave as humans and even interact with them, outsmart them.
A still photograph could not capture the absurdity and humor of watching the pumpkins move of their own accord. If the pumpkin was immobile in mid air, the viewer would rationalize that it was under the influence of gravity or propelled by an intervening party. Only the medium of moving pictures can illustrate the thought that pumpkins could flee under no influence but their own.
Emil Cohl explored this relationship of movement through time and space in his "trick" movie The Great Pumpkin Race. As a cart load of pumpkins began rolling down a hill, there seems to be little spectacle in the employment of gravity. However, these particular renegade pumpkins have little regard for any laws of nature. They chase each other, run over innocent pedestrians, and escape a mob of people trying to restore order: even when the escape required rolling uphill, jumping over obstacles and climbing through chimneys. The bodies in motion that Cohl concerns himself with are not human, as Deren mainly did, but are traditionally inanimate. The pumpkins behave as humans and even interact with them, outsmart them.
A still photograph could not capture the absurdity and humor of watching the pumpkins move of their own accord. If the pumpkin was immobile in mid air, the viewer would rationalize that it was under the influence of gravity or propelled by an intervening party. Only the medium of moving pictures can illustrate the thought that pumpkins could flee under no influence but their own.
Monday, January 28, 2008
1/28, On July and Bergson, a joke
The manipulated angles and lighting of most narrative film leads the audience to specific emotions they might otherwise have never felt toward a particular character or situation. Miranda July avoids such conventions in "The Amateurist," opting instead for static camera shots and functional lighting. Much of the film is seen through a medium eye-level portrait shot containing a monitor with surveillance footage. Both of these shot choices suggest documentary or truthful styling. The audience is forced to consider the content with out suggestive production techniques. The initial reaction to the piece is one of discomfort: Without knowing how to feel about the characters, viewers must watch helplessly the entirety of the film, listening and viewing the accounts of unreliable characters. However, as the video unfolds the viewer must, for his or her self, process the information being presented. This process leads the viewer to a single point of understanding with the movie, laughter.
Henri Bergson argues in "Laughter" that humor appeals to the intellectual rather than the emotional. By staying coolly disconnected from the characters and situations of the film, July allows the base absurdity that drives all human endeavors to become apparent. Bergson illustrates this point by stating that "It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous." A woman rambling on about her professionalism inspires pity through absurdity. The only reaction that deals with the discomfort inspired by the truthy nature of the presentation is laughter.
Henri Bergson argues in "Laughter" that humor appeals to the intellectual rather than the emotional. By staying coolly disconnected from the characters and situations of the film, July allows the base absurdity that drives all human endeavors to become apparent. Bergson illustrates this point by stating that "It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous." A woman rambling on about her professionalism inspires pity through absurdity. The only reaction that deals with the discomfort inspired by the truthy nature of the presentation is laughter.
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