Assignment 3: Anti-Video

Rose Colored Glasses

When I did my video observation, I found that mainstream videos today share many common themes. They all seem to be very “human-centric”, with most of the footage being of people, like hosts and characters. When I closed my eyes and listened to the sound being played with the videos, it was almost entirely human voices, like narration and people talking. The footage was taken from the familiar perspective of human eye level. We like to watch other people talking about things. In lecture we learned that films almost exclusively have plots that are easy to follow and have logical conclusions, and are made to be passively consumable.

           

In this assignment, we were asked to make an “anti-video”, which goes against the conventions of videos in popular media. I did not include any footage of people in my video, although most of the footage was taken from typical human vantage points. I did use some upside-down footage of empty hallways for a non-human perspective, and I like that it can take a moment to realize that our familiar hallways are upside down. I think that I expect that the footage I watch is going to be from the standard human perspective, and I don’t seem to put much effort into confirming whether it actually is or not, so the upside-down hallways create an interesting illusion to me. I did also use human voice in this video because it really seems to demand our attention, and I thought it would be useful in making the video more surreal. I called my poor brother on the phone and silently recorded his answer, and he very kindly gave me permission to use the recordings when I later explained what I had been doing. I think that his “hellos” feel like they should have a meaning or purpose in this video, even though they have none.

I find it interesting that we seem to want to make sense of what’s going on in a video, and so in a random assembly of footage and sound we’re still trying to piece together a plot, even if there is none. To make this video, I used my brother’s voice and sounds of a string trimmer and frying eggs, along with footage of upside-down hallways, cracking eggs, an online textbook, tree tops, a hollow log, and some footage of a field taken through a rose-colored glass casserole dish lid. The pieces have nothing more in common than that they were the things I had access to in a typical week, but I like that it appears as though they have some collective meaning when placed together in the finished video. My anti-video is fairly strange, but I think it does accomplish the goal of going against standard media conventions.

Review of "Love Stories" by artist Nichola Kinch

                Artist Nichola Kinch’s spring 2016 exhibition Love Stories is uncluttered and elegant, with the gallery emptied to clean, bare walls in order to showcase her work. In front of the gallery’s large windows overlooking the woods, Kinch has hung a forest of two-dimensional, identical, cut-out images of tree trunks reaching from floor to ceiling. When viewed from the front of the room the piece looks like a group of cloned shapes in a “photoshopped” image, but the paper thin trunks give the illusion of disappearing when one walks between them.

                Kinch’s zoetrope-like machine is displayed in front of the tree trunks. Modeled after old moving image toys used before the availability of film, the interactive piece requires an audience member to look through slots on one wheel while turning a hand crank in order to view a moving image of the phases of the moon. The piece is equally impressive when viewed from a distance, because the disc displaying the moon phases is in the open and illuminated from behind. Kinch explained that the images of the moons are created by carving into the disk to allow light to shine through the thinned areas, and that no images appear when the light is turned off.

                Kinch explained that the exhibition is meant to explore optical illusions and pre-photography technology, and she has captured an atmosphere of almost fairytale-like wonder with the illusions and glowing moons displayed in the space. “Riding the line between illusion and fantasy,” as she explained, her tree trunks are only pretending to be trees. Love Stories also incorporates the passage of time in many ways. In the gallery, light shining in through the windows changes throughout the day and can distort and conceal the illuminated moon phases at times. Kinch’s work is also modeled after old technology, but made with the use of new technology. A carving drill guided by a computer was used to create the disk of moon phases, and the tree trunks, displayed in pairing with the old technology of the moving image machine, are a reference to the iconic “cloning” of cut-out images made popular by modern Photoshop software. The moon phases also directly address time, as the turning of the hand crank models the passage of month, “[representing] time and illusion”, as Kinch explained.

                The opportunity to hear Kinch speak about her work was valuable in understanding her exhibition. Kinch described her work as having a hands-on quality that relates to her background in ceramics, and she shared her delight in creating layers of illusions in the gallery space. In this exhibition, there is no agenda or deeper meaning, but rather a place meant just to be explored and enjoyed. Many exhibitions offer complicated social critiques, requiring thought and research to understand properly, and Kinch's descriptions reinforce that this exhibition is meant for “play.” 

Video Observation

For our Video Observation homework assignment, we were asked to spend one day “pay[ing] special attention to the video” we “see on television, computer, phone, and movie screens.” I do not have television, so on the day of my observations I took the excuse to watch a lot of media online. I watched some of the videos embedded in news article pages, a few episodes of a BBC expedition documentary/nature show on Netflix, and also spent some time on YouTube watching a sample of the front page recommendations. 

                I found that the shorter videos, such as commercials and those on news websites and YouTube, were usually fast paced and attention grabbing. The footage was cut and put together very tightly, so that there was very little excess time between the points of most interest. Videos with informative content were primarily shots of a person facing and speaking to the camera, peppered with illustrative photographs or animations. It seemed that the content of most of the videos was constructed to satisfy the viewers’ curiosity about something, whether about the subject matter or a tempting title. Some video could be rough, or shaky, or poorly angled or lit. Songs and sound effects had been added over some of the video, especially in commercials. 

I found that the footage I watched was generally very human-centric, having been taken at a human height, from a human perspective, in order to document something that a person was doing or experiencing. In the nature documentary, some footage was taken high up in trees or low on the forest floor, but still from the perspective of the people who had reached those places at the time, as opposed to footage taken by a drone with a camera, for example. If I closed my eyes and just listened, there was always the sound of humans talking or narrating. Any other sounds were typically much quieter than the sounds of the voices. Footage in commercials was typically of an actor or actress speaking. The majority of people visible in the video I watched were white, especially in the leading roles. Visually, male and female hosts seemed to be evenly portrayed in videos, while the majority of hosts in commercials seemed to be female, although there wasn’t any discussion of gender in that day’s sample of videos. Interestingly, almost every person in the various footage I saw was in the age range of maybe about 25 – 60, except for a few children in the background of the BBC documentary.

The more professional the context of the footage, the more it generally had bright colors and entertaining camera angles. I think that I should have watched some fictional shows on the day of my observations, because I remember a lot of interesting perspectives in TV shows like Breaking Bad. I think that the short, non-fiction videos I watched on the internet were all fairly similar to one another. 

Assignment 2: Sound

Assignment 2: Sound

We have learned that the sound artist John Cage believed that all sounds are musical and worth paying attention to. After completing the listening exercise and learning about John Cage’s work, I think that I really have become more aware of the beauty in everyday sounds. When I was gathering sound recordings for this project, I noticed that I very frequently hear the sounds of doors opening and closing. Every door makes a unique sound with it's own combination of metal clicks and bumps and vibrations. When you hear something in real life, there is no loss of quality from a recording or a speaker. There really is a musical quality to even the most mundane, everyday sounds.

I gathered sounds over the weekend by taking my phone out to record anything that stood out to me during the day, like birds calling and doors closing. I also specifically sought and created a lot of destructive sounds like popping and crunching, the sound of my hand saw cutting down a dead ash sapling, and paper ripping. I enjoyed listening to the isolation of each sound in the recordings. It was like taking photographs, except that the sound is less contextually expressive and more descriptive of time as it passes.

 When it came time to put all of the sounds together, I found that I had no plan for them. I distorted some sounds, although it’s very hard to hear in the finished composition, and I layered many of them on top of each other. Each one had a specific order and place in the composition, but what I came up with was a cacophony, and I was fairly displeased at first. I have taken some time to think about it, and I think what happened was that once again I approached making a piece without a plan, and what came through was how I felt at the time. Sometimes in a comic an artist will give a character a thought bubble with only an angry scribble in it to describe how the character feels. This sound composition might be somewhat of an auditory version of that scribble. Maybe the chaos will convey that mood, of being fatigued, and stressed about school and how many things are happening at once; doors opening, and doors closing.

A Practice Soundscape

We we did practice exercises in class today!

"Ai Weiwei poses as drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdi in photograph"

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/01/arts/ai-weiwei-alan-kurdi-syria/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obinsite

Listening Exercise

The bench

In this listening exercise, we were asked to select a familiar place in which to sit with a notebook for ten minutes and “closely observe the sounds around [us].” I chose the bench on the back porch of our house. I walk past that bench many times every day and I’ve never taken the time to just sit on it before. In the ten minutes of this listening exercise, I learned that I have been ignoring a lot more than just the bench.

                The first thing I noticed after I started my timer was the sound of the warm wind blowing through the neighbors’ white pine trees. The sound was long, smooth, and gentle, but also fairly loud in volume, and its constant undulation prevented it from blending into the background. It was enveloping, filling spaces both near and far, and overarched all of my continued observations.

                Beneath the wind, the ducks were murmuring to me from a distance. The sound is very deep in pitch. A few birds were sending out shrill calls from above. I heard the neighbor’s dog barking from farther away and to the east; a sound that I usually try to tune out. Then I heard the light, hollow melody from the bamboo wind chime hanging in a tree in the back yard. It has been hanging there for many years, perhaps a minimum of five, and I never register the sound anymore. It was strange to actually listen to it. It’s a pleasant, rhythmic sound.

                I could hear things at different distances relative to me. Cars were going by on the road. I never notice those either. Their sound was similar to, and almost blended in with, the wind. A few dry leaves were rustling. I could hear clinking from the gate latch, and the high pitched, somewhat alarming call of tree fibers squeaking in the wind. There was the sound of branches high in the canopy clinking against each other. These are all the normal, “everything is right with the world” ambient sounds in the yard.

Evidently I had good timing with my listening exercise, because the train came by. It has rolled by at all hours of the day and night, at just enough distance as to not be overbearing, for all of the twenty years I have spent in this house. I grew up listening to it, and I really do have this sound completely tuned out. Sometimes, as a child, friends that I had over to play would ask me, “what’s that sound?” and I wouldn’t know what sound they were talking about. It would be the train.

                I sat there on the bench and listened to the train. I know every sound, but I never really listen to it. The deep and steady rumble on the tracks is low and distant and powerfully resonant. I would describe it as calming, a kind of reassuring background company, like the sound of children playing in a neighbor’s yard. The horn blew in clusters, a long, blaring, drawn out musical chord.That's the sound of sleeping with the window open on a warm summer night. The sound of the train is not so much a measure of time passing as it is time standing still.

                Finally, I noticed that the most audibly prominent sound of all was that of my pencil on the paper as I took notes. Somehow this most obvious sound of all did not even occur to me until the ten minutes were almost over. Once I had noticed it, the pencil was clearly the loudest sound around me at the time. It made a hollow tapping noise when the pencil met the paper, and a rhythmic swishing as I wrote. This is a sound that I hear every day, and it didn’t even register while I was deliberately listening to things!

                I have learned, in ten short minutes, that my attention is apparently very selective.

"Kitchen Counter"

Assignment 1: Motion, "Kitchen Counter"

When I receive a new art assignment, I like to brainstorm and plan the project before I begin. It has become a habit, so when we were given this assignment I found myself picturing storylines for the animation right away. This assignment required that we work intuitively, so I had to consciously cast those ideas aside, and I think it was good for me.

I set up a tripod in the kitchen and tried to make a set that I could go in different directions with.  I assembled the box of recycling and a bowl of apples, and left the countertop egg basket in the frame. I inserted a few electrical wires under the outer layer of the kitchen sponge to make it posable. After that, I tried to do things as they came to me and be spontaneous. An interesting result of that spontaneity is that I think the animation ended up reflecting heavily on what was most prominent in my mind at the time. I really wanted to eat one of the apples, and I had just been watching some David Attenborough nature documentaries! The bowl of apples became a watering hole, and the empty cans and containers part of a rough-and-tumble food chain on the African Savannah. I don’t think there is any deeper message in this piece. I probably would have needed a plan to do that!

There were a couple of “stories” going on at the same time in this animation, but when I watch the finished video, I find that my eye only follows what’s in the center of the frame and I don’t notice everything that’s going on. For example, if you watch only the sardine cans, you’ll find that they overturn the egg basket to chase down and eat some of the eggs. I find that I don’t notice them at all if I don’t try to.

I was also influenced by the captivating stop motion animations of PEZ and Jan Svankmajer. I had their animations’ surreal moods and materials in mind, but their perfectly timed sound effects are especially nice, so I tried to make some of my own. I recorded a few sounds in the kitchen with my cell phone and added them to the animation in Photoshop. My favorite recording was of the faucet, which was dripping into a bowl of water in the sink behind me while I worked on the project. The mood in my finished animation became a bit chaotic, especially with the sound of the rattling cans, and I tried to use the water drops to tone that down.

a view of the "set" used for Assignment 1

Response to Jared Thorne's Exhibition "Black & Blue"

In his exhibition Black & Blue, artist and faculty member Jared Thorne examines the experience of an African American living in a white-majority area on a personal level. Although the subject matter is serious, the gallery space maintains a lighthearted ambiance, with a Malcolm  "Message to the Grass Roots" speech playing from a record player in the corner, which somehow manages a soothing tone despite its content. Thorne’s exhibition consists primarily of many large prints of elementary school class photographs, which are eye catching in their isolation, hung on the unembellished white walls. Upon inspection, one will find that nearly all of the children in the photographs are white. Before learning more about the pieces, I had observed that the children all looked very similar, with the brown hair and European features common in many small towns in Ohio. I did not realize the significance of the few black children in the pictures, however, until Thorne provided external information in his talk about the exhibition. Thorne explained that he grew up as a black child in a predominantly white suburb, and experienced cultural isolation. This situation, a kind of incidental “tokenism,” made it difficult to connect well with other people. The repurposed class portraits illustrate the few black children in predominantly white classrooms, who dealt with the same problem that Thorne has experienced.

The external information provided by Thorne’s talk helped me to understand the connotation and intention behind the pieces in his exhibition. Although I was admittedly sick and somewhat “off” on that day, I do not think I would have been able to understand the deeper meaning of his work without his explanation, and so I am glad to have been able to hear it. His work, in one of arts’ important roles in society, makes the audience aware of a complex social issue. I appreciated the opportunity to hear about his perspective as a child. It made me wonder in what ways the social disconnect black children can experience could be changed in the future.

Thorne incorporated some dark humor in this exhibition with his sculpture “Please Don’t Touch”. He suspended a sphere of real human hair, in various textures and shades of curly black, from the ceiling, with an afro pick stuck in the side. Thorne recalled, with his glowing smile, that his white classmates used to touch his hair without permission, and how he would cry about it when he got home. His sculpture addresses this issue in real time in the gallery. Some of the audience may be likely to touch the piece even though the title specifically instructs them not to. 

Fresh Guacamole by PES

After seeing so many great examples of stop motion animation in class, I've been thinking of one of my old favorites today: Fresh Guacamole, by PES! He and Jan Svankmajer both use such perfect sound effects.