Sunday, November 30, 2008
night and the city: Indie Maverick Rob Nilsson's Nine-Film Panorama of Urban Anomie/By Dennis Harvey
Keeping in the tradition of the last two articles discussed, I chose to look at this article on Rob Nilsson. The table of contents referred to this article as being about “the vast canvas of San Francisco's under-the-radar grassroots maverick.” While for a minute I marveled at the staying power of the word maverick and it's ability intrigue after being used to the point of redundant meaning loss in the last election, I realized that this topic was something that might be worth reading about; it was something that I might not easily come across it elsewhere. And it was. In fact this article about Nilsson himself, and the works he considered to be “the most important cinema made in America in this era”, his own 9 @ Night, was very interesting.
Nilsson was born and raised in Wisconsin and the San Francisco Bay Area. He came across filmmaking on a lark while teaching a group of Nigerian high school students and has been making a prolific and impressive amount of films ever since. Similarly to Oshima, Nilsson rejects the idea of working within studio standards and guidelines. He believes that American film currently serves to distract people from their “boredom” and does nothing to “feed their souls”. Nilsson created a film collective/manifesto called Direct Action. He did this before Von Trier created the Dogme 95, but got much less exposure. His current group is called the Tenderloin yGroup. It is a group that consists of streetpeople from San Francisco's Tenderloin distract as well as others from every sort of background and talent. It was these people that came together to create Nilsson's 9 @ Night.
9 @ Night is nine separate feature length films that all work together as a cohesive picture of the city and those that are forgotten. They use primary non professional actors and were all shot with little money. They have only been shown in their correct order and entirety a few times but they will hopefully be achieving wider distribution through cinematiques and art movie houses. Hopefully they come to Milwaukee so we can have a chance to see the “most important” works in American cinema.
I do, however, think that “the most important cinema” is a big leap and much too broad of a statement for an artist or anyone to make. Nilsson is basically negating everyones work but his own. He believes that current American filmmakers are “either confused, lost, or irrelevant”. Though it seems he is doing amazing grassroots cinema, it still seems a bit much to presume. By making this statement he is saying that the whole industry of films and film academia is studying and making things that are essentially useless, or without at least without real value. (At least when looking at American films of this era.) It is too narrow of an opinion for me to take stock in. I do think that many movies do simply help temporarily stave off boredom, but there are many works of relevance that can be seen, such as some of the video exhibits residing within the Stop. Look. Listen. exhibit. Perhaps by making this statement he is trying to move more people to adopt more grassroots efforts into their process and move away from the mainstream
I do find Nilsson to be an inspiring filmmaker. He manages to gather talent and tell the stories that he feels necessary on low to no budget. Like Clementi and Oshima he is a bit of a renegade filmmaker. This is important in todays age where people are currently barraged with media symbols created by a homogeneous industry on a minute by minute basis. It is very easy to sink into a feeling that they only way to work in films and media is to become part of this massive multi billion dollar industrial machine. In Milwaukee, the “indie” movie theatres have taken to showing more mainstream films such as Sex And The City and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There just aren't too many venues for lesser known relevant work. Seeing people doing films off of the grid and reading about them in a publication available in many bookstores is heartening. It helps to make it feel like it is possible to avoid the conglomerations and lead a more fulfilling career life. It's also always nice when people achieve some sort of success coming from Wisconsin. When walking around exhibits and seeing the tags of New York, LA, and San Francisco over and over again I feel my shoulders slump and I actually get a bit weary, sometimes. It's disheartening that people usually don't produce out of their native areas. It was good that Nilsson has come from WI, gone to San Fran and been productive, but wish he could have done it here.
Keeping in the tradition of the last two articles discussed, I chose to look at this article on Rob Nilsson. The table of contents referred to this article as being about “the vast canvas of San Francisco's under-the-radar grassroots maverick.” While for a minute I marveled at the staying power of the word maverick and it's ability intrigue after being used to the point of redundant meaning loss in the last election, I realized that this topic was something that might be worth reading about; it was something that I might not easily come across it elsewhere. And it was. In fact this article about Nilsson himself, and the works he considered to be “the most important cinema made in America in this era”, his own 9 @ Night, was very interesting.
Nilsson was born and raised in Wisconsin and the San Francisco Bay Area. He came across filmmaking on a lark while teaching a group of Nigerian high school students and has been making a prolific and impressive amount of films ever since. Similarly to Oshima, Nilsson rejects the idea of working within studio standards and guidelines. He believes that American film currently serves to distract people from their “boredom” and does nothing to “feed their souls”. Nilsson created a film collective/manifesto called Direct Action. He did this before Von Trier created the Dogme 95, but got much less exposure. His current group is called the Tenderloin yGroup. It is a group that consists of streetpeople from San Francisco's Tenderloin distract as well as others from every sort of background and talent. It was these people that came together to create Nilsson's 9 @ Night.
9 @ Night is nine separate feature length films that all work together as a cohesive picture of the city and those that are forgotten. They use primary non professional actors and were all shot with little money. They have only been shown in their correct order and entirety a few times but they will hopefully be achieving wider distribution through cinematiques and art movie houses. Hopefully they come to Milwaukee so we can have a chance to see the “most important” works in American cinema.
I do, however, think that “the most important cinema” is a big leap and much too broad of a statement for an artist or anyone to make. Nilsson is basically negating everyones work but his own. He believes that current American filmmakers are “either confused, lost, or irrelevant”. Though it seems he is doing amazing grassroots cinema, it still seems a bit much to presume. By making this statement he is saying that the whole industry of films and film academia is studying and making things that are essentially useless, or without at least without real value. (At least when looking at American films of this era.) It is too narrow of an opinion for me to take stock in. I do think that many movies do simply help temporarily stave off boredom, but there are many works of relevance that can be seen, such as some of the video exhibits residing within the Stop. Look. Listen. exhibit. Perhaps by making this statement he is trying to move more people to adopt more grassroots efforts into their process and move away from the mainstream
I do find Nilsson to be an inspiring filmmaker. He manages to gather talent and tell the stories that he feels necessary on low to no budget. Like Clementi and Oshima he is a bit of a renegade filmmaker. This is important in todays age where people are currently barraged with media symbols created by a homogeneous industry on a minute by minute basis. It is very easy to sink into a feeling that they only way to work in films and media is to become part of this massive multi billion dollar industrial machine. In Milwaukee, the “indie” movie theatres have taken to showing more mainstream films such as Sex And The City and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There just aren't too many venues for lesser known relevant work. Seeing people doing films off of the grid and reading about them in a publication available in many bookstores is heartening. It helps to make it feel like it is possible to avoid the conglomerations and lead a more fulfilling career life. It's also always nice when people achieve some sort of success coming from Wisconsin. When walking around exhibits and seeing the tags of New York, LA, and San Francisco over and over again I feel my shoulders slump and I actually get a bit weary, sometimes. It's disheartening that people usually don't produce out of their native areas. It was good that Nilsson has come from WI, gone to San Fran and been productive, but wish he could have done it here.
Sound and Video Art
Stop Look Listen. The exhibit currently residing in the Haggerty Museum on the campus of Marquette University, is a compilation of works from some of today's prominent video artists. The exhibit consists of many different works that utilize elements of sound to amplify and bring further meaning into the pieces. Aaron Zimm (field recording artist) described sound art as sound that is working to achieve a higher level of meaning and provide more than just the level of comfort and recognizability that come from familiar sounds and universal musical structures. Sound art is demonstrating something. Something more. The sound, or lack there of, that is used in conjunction with images in the pieces by Patty Chang and Johanna Billing work in ways that both enhance the meaning of the work and inspire different avenues of expanded thought, both in and outside the pieces.
In Patty Chang's The Fountain, she uses sound to enhance the feelings of danger and claustrophobia. For her piece, she laid a mirror covered with a thin layer of water horizontally on the floor. She then positioned herself over it and proceed to slurp and gulp at the pool. The camera and framing show only her bare shoulders, face/head, and part of the water covered mirror. Throughout the piece the camera remains in this close stationary shot, without variation. The viewer is then drawn in and made to feel caught in this realm. It is as if they are gulping the water which creates feelings of claustrophobia in the audience. The only audio the viewer is hearing in the piece is the sounds that Chang is making; this includes the smacking of lips, the gulping of the water etc. There is no music or outside sounds layered. Having this as the audio intensifies the feelings of claustrophobia. Only the sounds of Chang herself can be heard which further connects the viewer with her form. There is no background music or other dialog to focus or to direct the viewers thoughts. You are brought into this world without any sound to help guide you away from Chang's actions. This piece is set up with headphones. Headphones add to the claustrophobia as they do their best to encompass your head and block sounds that may be occurring outside the work.
On the piece by Johanna Billings...
In the article by Zimm, he mentions that music and its identifiable nature can be used to create a a garden path. It can draw in and audience and lead them to discover other more complex aspects. Billing uses the pop song Magical World (also the title of her work) as a garden path, an easy entry, into her piece. In the film the song is being sung and preformed by a group of children in Croatia. They are singing in English, but English is not the children's first language. As with Chang's works, the sounds we hear in the piece are diagetic, but they are musical as opposed to plain human. Listening to this American pop song sung by the innocent faces of children gives an immediate sense of familiarity making the viewer initially engaged in the piece. Once they are effectively engaged they then begin to realize deeper dimensions in the film utilizing the garden path effect. They will be able to ask themselves questions about these children's lives, the state of their country and innumerable other aspects . This normal American pop song is transformed. It is recontextualized and leads to many thoughts that the song itself could not have brought. Billing's ability to change the feeling and meaning that this familiar song brings moves her work from simple sound or video into video art. She successfully combines music and video into a more high art form.
By defining what sound and art and music means to him, Aaron Zimm touched on what it means to make a higher level of art, that is to say art that appreciated by a certain well versed audience When looking at the way Zimm outlines his theories it seems apparent why these works by Patty Chang and Johanna Billing were chosen to be displayed in a museum, which is traditionally a more high art arena. Both The Fountain and Magical World are working on complex levels that engage the viewer raising questions and physical visceral reactions They do this not only through their images, but also through sound; sound as an integral part in their being and creation of meaning.
In Patty Chang's The Fountain, she uses sound to enhance the feelings of danger and claustrophobia. For her piece, she laid a mirror covered with a thin layer of water horizontally on the floor. She then positioned herself over it and proceed to slurp and gulp at the pool. The camera and framing show only her bare shoulders, face/head, and part of the water covered mirror. Throughout the piece the camera remains in this close stationary shot, without variation. The viewer is then drawn in and made to feel caught in this realm. It is as if they are gulping the water which creates feelings of claustrophobia in the audience. The only audio the viewer is hearing in the piece is the sounds that Chang is making; this includes the smacking of lips, the gulping of the water etc. There is no music or outside sounds layered. Having this as the audio intensifies the feelings of claustrophobia. Only the sounds of Chang herself can be heard which further connects the viewer with her form. There is no background music or other dialog to focus or to direct the viewers thoughts. You are brought into this world without any sound to help guide you away from Chang's actions. This piece is set up with headphones. Headphones add to the claustrophobia as they do their best to encompass your head and block sounds that may be occurring outside the work.
On the piece by Johanna Billings...
In the article by Zimm, he mentions that music and its identifiable nature can be used to create a a garden path. It can draw in and audience and lead them to discover other more complex aspects. Billing uses the pop song Magical World (also the title of her work) as a garden path, an easy entry, into her piece. In the film the song is being sung and preformed by a group of children in Croatia. They are singing in English, but English is not the children's first language. As with Chang's works, the sounds we hear in the piece are diagetic, but they are musical as opposed to plain human. Listening to this American pop song sung by the innocent faces of children gives an immediate sense of familiarity making the viewer initially engaged in the piece. Once they are effectively engaged they then begin to realize deeper dimensions in the film utilizing the garden path effect. They will be able to ask themselves questions about these children's lives, the state of their country and innumerable other aspects . This normal American pop song is transformed. It is recontextualized and leads to many thoughts that the song itself could not have brought. Billing's ability to change the feeling and meaning that this familiar song brings moves her work from simple sound or video into video art. She successfully combines music and video into a more high art form.
By defining what sound and art and music means to him, Aaron Zimm touched on what it means to make a higher level of art, that is to say art that appreciated by a certain well versed audience When looking at the way Zimm outlines his theories it seems apparent why these works by Patty Chang and Johanna Billing were chosen to be displayed in a museum, which is traditionally a more high art arena. Both The Fountain and Magical World are working on complex levels that engage the viewer raising questions and physical visceral reactions They do this not only through their images, but also through sound; sound as an integral part in their being and creation of meaning.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
From the long list of journals, blogs and magazines (obviously lengthened by the current strength and growth of internet publications) Film Comment was the publication that was something that I most wanted to have another look at. I had haphazardly picked it up years ago and remember being impressed by the respectfully prestigious and academically intelligent work. I hadn't expected, perhaps naively, to find such obscure film references coupled with evocate choices in photos and modern film pieces. Despite the initial pleasure I received from finding the publication, I haven't looked at it since. Now going back to it I was again surprised. It was better, more engaging, and more independence inspiring than I remembered!
The publication seems to be a well rounded work featuring articles from around the world. (In this particular issue Sept/Oct. 2008 main pieces were on the Japanese, French and British supplemented by smaller articles and reviews also mentioning world issues with and in film.) It also seems to spend an equalish amount of time on films of the mainstream, art house, and more obscure rarely seen works. Two pieces in this publication caught my attention, were the first that I read, and seem indicative to what the magazine wants to represent. These two articles are not, outright, about media making currently. But they are about a film and art culture and ideas of resistance that I believe are just as important and applicable when thinking about making film in 2008.
A Samurai Among Farmers: Rejecting the orthodoxies of postwar Japanese society, Nagisa Oshima created a radical and uniquely protean body of work/By Tony Rayns
The first thing to remark on this (as with the next) article is the remarkably drawing title. Halfway into the first paragraph Rayns states that had Nagisa Oshima been born French “he'd be as well known as Godard--and probably more influential”.(p53) This a bold statement to begin an article with. Luckily the article takes a thorough look through Oshima's filmography with reasons and inspirations for his work. It left me to feel his work does contain this potential (without ever seeing one of his films!)
. Oshima left his contract at Shochiku Ofuna Studio and pursued his own work. Oshima worked without the constraints of any particular allegiance and felt himself free to criticize any thing that moved/angered/inspired him. Throughout his career funding was not easy to come by as he refused to standardize and censor his work. He would work doing TV spots and receive small art house and foreign funds to complete his films. Now most of his films are, unfortunately, hard to come by but some are currently on a touring retrospective organized by James Quant. (This tour will be in Minneapolis Nov. 5th through the 23rd and in Chicago Jan-Feb).
While many of his Japanese contemporaries were content simply adding their touch to genre films, Oshima continued to make films of different structures, techniques, and ideologies. This article brings one of world cinema's greatest yet nearly forgotten artists the attention he deserves. I think that is a main point of what this publication tries to do, investigate and discuss work and people that deserve to be acknowledged from a thorough, entertaining and critical standpoint.
*Ideally, I hope to attend some of the viewings.
Invocation of my Demon Brother: Actor, filmmaker, and mystic nomad Pierre Clementi-the French undergrounds missing link/By Michael Chaiken
I think I may have fallen in love sitting at the counter of a downtown George Webbs. Not with the random man starring at me as he sipped his cola from a tall styrofoam cup, but with a small thumbnail picture towards the back of the magazine. Pierre Clementi, as the article's title suggests, was a French actor and director. He, similar to Oshima, didn't work within any industry boundaries. He would take projects that would coincide with inner quests. He would take projects where he collaborated with friends. He also took work for and in big name projects such as Bertolucci's The Conformist and Buñuel's Belle Du Jour. Essentially he did whatever he wanted, however he felt inspired. Pierre allowed the work to transform him, for his body to become an avatar for roles. Life and film work became blended. He was a beautiful genius (as the article suggests) that sacrificed himself for art. The works that he directed himself were shot with a Beaulieu 16 mm camera. Clementi's approach to creating was a very, to apply a modern term, diy approach to film.
*It is also important to look at this, in our age of media, where many artists justify creating and lending their works to commercials or major motions pictures with the reasoning that it is the only way that they can make money and produce more work. There are other ways to go about it as in Clementi's case, and ways of actually staying true to that reasoning, taking that money and putting it towards passionate independent productions as in Oshima's case.
The publication seems to be a well rounded work featuring articles from around the world. (In this particular issue Sept/Oct. 2008 main pieces were on the Japanese, French and British supplemented by smaller articles and reviews also mentioning world issues with and in film.) It also seems to spend an equalish amount of time on films of the mainstream, art house, and more obscure rarely seen works. Two pieces in this publication caught my attention, were the first that I read, and seem indicative to what the magazine wants to represent. These two articles are not, outright, about media making currently. But they are about a film and art culture and ideas of resistance that I believe are just as important and applicable when thinking about making film in 2008.
A Samurai Among Farmers: Rejecting the orthodoxies of postwar Japanese society, Nagisa Oshima created a radical and uniquely protean body of work/By Tony Rayns
The first thing to remark on this (as with the next) article is the remarkably drawing title. Halfway into the first paragraph Rayns states that had Nagisa Oshima been born French “he'd be as well known as Godard--and probably more influential”.(p53) This a bold statement to begin an article with. Luckily the article takes a thorough look through Oshima's filmography with reasons and inspirations for his work. It left me to feel his work does contain this potential (without ever seeing one of his films!)
. Oshima left his contract at Shochiku Ofuna Studio and pursued his own work. Oshima worked without the constraints of any particular allegiance and felt himself free to criticize any thing that moved/angered/inspired him. Throughout his career funding was not easy to come by as he refused to standardize and censor his work. He would work doing TV spots and receive small art house and foreign funds to complete his films. Now most of his films are, unfortunately, hard to come by but some are currently on a touring retrospective organized by James Quant. (This tour will be in Minneapolis Nov. 5th through the 23rd and in Chicago Jan-Feb).
While many of his Japanese contemporaries were content simply adding their touch to genre films, Oshima continued to make films of different structures, techniques, and ideologies. This article brings one of world cinema's greatest yet nearly forgotten artists the attention he deserves. I think that is a main point of what this publication tries to do, investigate and discuss work and people that deserve to be acknowledged from a thorough, entertaining and critical standpoint.
*Ideally, I hope to attend some of the viewings.
Invocation of my Demon Brother: Actor, filmmaker, and mystic nomad Pierre Clementi-the French undergrounds missing link/By Michael Chaiken
I think I may have fallen in love sitting at the counter of a downtown George Webbs. Not with the random man starring at me as he sipped his cola from a tall styrofoam cup, but with a small thumbnail picture towards the back of the magazine. Pierre Clementi, as the article's title suggests, was a French actor and director. He, similar to Oshima, didn't work within any industry boundaries. He would take projects that would coincide with inner quests. He would take projects where he collaborated with friends. He also took work for and in big name projects such as Bertolucci's The Conformist and Buñuel's Belle Du Jour. Essentially he did whatever he wanted, however he felt inspired. Pierre allowed the work to transform him, for his body to become an avatar for roles. Life and film work became blended. He was a beautiful genius (as the article suggests) that sacrificed himself for art. The works that he directed himself were shot with a Beaulieu 16 mm camera. Clementi's approach to creating was a very, to apply a modern term, diy approach to film.
*It is also important to look at this, in our age of media, where many artists justify creating and lending their works to commercials or major motions pictures with the reasoning that it is the only way that they can make money and produce more work. There are other ways to go about it as in Clementi's case, and ways of actually staying true to that reasoning, taking that money and putting it towards passionate independent productions as in Oshima's case.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Field Report 2 Act/React: WorkTogether
Control, control, control, control. The exhibit currently inhabiting the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) features interactive works from some of today's most prominent and imaginary media artists. These artists have reached new places in the inclusion of the audience into art piece installations within the museum and gallery experience. This particular sort of audience/art convergence was not possible before the technological advancements and eventual economic availability of video equipment. Lev Manovich, media theorist, points to the idea that people have always been participating in works of art. With books and movies the person engaged with the material is relied upon to fill in the gaps of the storyline. Video games function in a similar way to the sort of works on display at MAM. They both require the participant to step up and into the work, to make choices and create changes. Roger Ebert felt video game works were inferior to classical film work because the artist hands over some authorial control to the participant. Is this so? What are the limits that surround some of these pieces residing in the Act/React exhibit? How they are formed and what is the way/potential for people to change them?
These sorts of works now showing are examples of how people can interact through technology. It has already been shown in many different ways that people can come together to create and change works. For example a drawing can be posted as a base for others to add to, changing the images and meaning. Sculptures can be movable objects for a person or people to manipulate and rearrange. The Act/React installations allow the viewers to change the representation and works in a variance of ways that are particular to each piece. These projects all rely on strong complex technology to function. It seems to beg a question as to how much an artist has to do with the project or how much the technician rigging the technology has to do with the piece. Assuming the artist happens to understand these technological issues and has the ability to assemble them, they themselves would be solely responsible for creating the world that the audience enters into. (If not, the process would be one of collabortion with the technician) The artist would set the parameters for the world and what can go on in it.
Camille Utterback and Daniel Rozin both use specialized computer programs , cameras, and a projector in order to create their works. Utterback, with her untitled works 5 and 6, invites the visitors physical actions to be captured and turned into lines or splotches on a screen where a work is already in progress. Depending on where a person would stand or move, a computer generates a line or shape that represents them on the screen. It is essentially an abstraction of the participant working in conjunction with a preset computer program. The marks that others before them created are in constant flux as new viewers engage with the pieces. The marks that are made on the screen are done by the viewer, but it is only due to the computers programming that this piece is possible. Therefore even though the viewer is participating in this event, it is the artist and her use of technology that has made every movement on the screen possible. She has decided how the world of the piece will be mapped and how each participant will have the potential to the visually represented. In this way Roger Ebert's statement is right and wrong. The artist is giving the illusion of handing over control to the audience when, in reality, they are a sort of god presiding over their work; just as they would over a traditional film.
Rozin's work functions in a similar way to that of Utterback. As mentioned, they both use the same devices to create and make their works possible. Rozin takes a less abstract approach to representing the participating audience. As the viewer enters the piece Snow Mirror, pixels (the smallest digital particles) cling to the human forms transforming them into fuzzy snowy outlines. The room in which the exhibit is installed is pitch black which throws one' s perception of spatial relations as if you were engulfed in a snowstorm. When looking at your image and the image of the another in the work, it is hard to tell how close or far apart you actually are from that other person in the relation to the space both inside and outside the piece . Again, though each person will have a different experience in the snowstorm, it is only because Rozin has created its world and laid out the parameters and restrictions.
All in all the experience of the museum was a pleasant one (though one that, as it was commented to me, would have perhaps been enhanced by the use of certain hallucinogenic substances, which would have made for quite the collaborative interactive process. Artist, human, computer, and nature...or chemical) It was very fun/entertaining to watch people react to the pieces and to do so yourself. The artist as ultimate creator still seems to reign, but the new processes in art engage people in new ways to spark interest. To quote George Fifield in saying “at its best” the art in these exhibits will inspire people to re-examine themselves, the way they interact with each other and the world at large.
These sorts of works now showing are examples of how people can interact through technology. It has already been shown in many different ways that people can come together to create and change works. For example a drawing can be posted as a base for others to add to, changing the images and meaning. Sculptures can be movable objects for a person or people to manipulate and rearrange. The Act/React installations allow the viewers to change the representation and works in a variance of ways that are particular to each piece. These projects all rely on strong complex technology to function. It seems to beg a question as to how much an artist has to do with the project or how much the technician rigging the technology has to do with the piece. Assuming the artist happens to understand these technological issues and has the ability to assemble them, they themselves would be solely responsible for creating the world that the audience enters into. (If not, the process would be one of collabortion with the technician) The artist would set the parameters for the world and what can go on in it.
Camille Utterback and Daniel Rozin both use specialized computer programs , cameras, and a projector in order to create their works. Utterback, with her untitled works 5 and 6, invites the visitors physical actions to be captured and turned into lines or splotches on a screen where a work is already in progress. Depending on where a person would stand or move, a computer generates a line or shape that represents them on the screen. It is essentially an abstraction of the participant working in conjunction with a preset computer program. The marks that others before them created are in constant flux as new viewers engage with the pieces. The marks that are made on the screen are done by the viewer, but it is only due to the computers programming that this piece is possible. Therefore even though the viewer is participating in this event, it is the artist and her use of technology that has made every movement on the screen possible. She has decided how the world of the piece will be mapped and how each participant will have the potential to the visually represented. In this way Roger Ebert's statement is right and wrong. The artist is giving the illusion of handing over control to the audience when, in reality, they are a sort of god presiding over their work; just as they would over a traditional film.
Rozin's work functions in a similar way to that of Utterback. As mentioned, they both use the same devices to create and make their works possible. Rozin takes a less abstract approach to representing the participating audience. As the viewer enters the piece Snow Mirror, pixels (the smallest digital particles) cling to the human forms transforming them into fuzzy snowy outlines. The room in which the exhibit is installed is pitch black which throws one' s perception of spatial relations as if you were engulfed in a snowstorm. When looking at your image and the image of the another in the work, it is hard to tell how close or far apart you actually are from that other person in the relation to the space both inside and outside the piece . Again, though each person will have a different experience in the snowstorm, it is only because Rozin has created its world and laid out the parameters and restrictions.
All in all the experience of the museum was a pleasant one (though one that, as it was commented to me, would have perhaps been enhanced by the use of certain hallucinogenic substances, which would have made for quite the collaborative interactive process. Artist, human, computer, and nature...or chemical) It was very fun/entertaining to watch people react to the pieces and to do so yourself. The artist as ultimate creator still seems to reign, but the new processes in art engage people in new ways to spark interest. To quote George Fifield in saying “at its best” the art in these exhibits will inspire people to re-examine themselves, the way they interact with each other and the world at large.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Field Report: Handmade Emulsion and Crab Cages
“The Planning” of Film
The planning of a film is something that has always sort of interested me. I have recently been enrolled in a film studies class where it was stated that ALL films are very carefully planned. Down to every attentive detail. When this was said it was actually only (for the purposes of the class) in reference to pop culture cinema. I think that this was just said to provide an easy outline to look at a film for the first time film students. It kind of distressed me though. It was not a wild or necessarily wrong statement but personally, I believe that some of the best stuff in cinema comes from accidents and coincidences or randoms that occur during the filmmaking. That's what can make magic. It is sometimes the planning that can outline a film and create a frame for something beautiful. An outline that is willing to accept what the medium and its influences can add to a piece. Like in the case of Robert Schaller or David Gattens What the Water Said nos 1-3.. It seems to be precisely the mix of careful planning and the acceptance of accidents.
At the Robert Schaller screening a man from the audience remarked that one of his films seemed very calculated. (The film that had been screened featured a musical composition with dancing woman and 3 sideways projectors.) He was wondering what Roberts plan had been. Robert had in fact worked very closely with the choreographer (who also danced in the piece) to present their interpretation of another written work and use a series of complicated math equations to evoke and pull from the readings. They did this through dance movements and the insertion of lines chosen from the previously written work by this complex math equation. They worked very had to create this framework without necessarily knowing how it would actually all come together and speak through the screen. It was this very deliberate set up to allow random seeming magic to happen.
David Gatten set film out in crab traps, let it wash along the beach etc. to get the marks that he show up in his film. He also recorded the water sound. Here he planned out these creative ways to bring movement and marking to film. He had no real way of knowing how this would turn out. What the water said was probably just as interesting or new to him as it is to an audience, yet he lined up a way to make this happen I think there is this parallel between how the two artist mold and allow their art to form,
The planning of a film is something that has always sort of interested me. I have recently been enrolled in a film studies class where it was stated that ALL films are very carefully planned. Down to every attentive detail. When this was said it was actually only (for the purposes of the class) in reference to pop culture cinema. I think that this was just said to provide an easy outline to look at a film for the first time film students. It kind of distressed me though. It was not a wild or necessarily wrong statement but personally, I believe that some of the best stuff in cinema comes from accidents and coincidences or randoms that occur during the filmmaking. That's what can make magic. It is sometimes the planning that can outline a film and create a frame for something beautiful. An outline that is willing to accept what the medium and its influences can add to a piece. Like in the case of Robert Schaller or David Gattens What the Water Said nos 1-3.. It seems to be precisely the mix of careful planning and the acceptance of accidents.
At the Robert Schaller screening a man from the audience remarked that one of his films seemed very calculated. (The film that had been screened featured a musical composition with dancing woman and 3 sideways projectors.) He was wondering what Roberts plan had been. Robert had in fact worked very closely with the choreographer (who also danced in the piece) to present their interpretation of another written work and use a series of complicated math equations to evoke and pull from the readings. They did this through dance movements and the insertion of lines chosen from the previously written work by this complex math equation. They worked very had to create this framework without necessarily knowing how it would actually all come together and speak through the screen. It was this very deliberate set up to allow random seeming magic to happen.
David Gatten set film out in crab traps, let it wash along the beach etc. to get the marks that he show up in his film. He also recorded the water sound. Here he planned out these creative ways to bring movement and marking to film. He had no real way of knowing how this would turn out. What the water said was probably just as interesting or new to him as it is to an audience, yet he lined up a way to make this happen I think there is this parallel between how the two artist mold and allow their art to form,
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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