d'Est

I had mixed reactions to d'Est. It held my attention for the first hour, especially the static portrait like shots. I found my eye wandering around the frame taking it all in and then the next shot would appear. I was amazed that the countryside reminded me of rural Wisconsin, until the vehicle went by to remind me that it wasn't.

The shots of people all walking everywhere reminded me that our bodies were designed to move, not sit on our rear ends all day behind computers or in vehicles. The older ladies working in the field could do so because their bodies were conditioned to move and be physical, people in our country would be lining up at their local chiropractor's offices if they had to bend over and pick potatoes all day. For shame! Walking a mile (or more) in any weather doesn't kill these people, it strengthens them to handle anything they encounter. I enjoyed this reminder that our American way of life isn't the only way and isn't necessarily a better way.

By the second half of d'Est the tempo seemed to change. The majority of the shots became slow pans or slow tracking shots, mimicking that of a camera out of a car window. I am prone to motion sickness and I found myself looking at my watch about every 10 minutes and the time dragged slower than I ever thought it could. The subject matter was completely interesting, but the vehicle of delivery was very taxing to my stomach. I finally stopped watching all together so I wouldn't get sick. I would have much preferred seeing these shots either tracked from the front or zoomed if motion was necessary, but moving sideways for all of them was impossible to deal with.

How would I present this film? I would love to see it as an interactive learning center. Touch the screen if you want to learn about "subject a" which opens up tangents for further learning about subjects b, c, d...etc. An icon returns you to the main menu and further idea trails can be explored. A viewer could delve as deeply into a particular topic as they choose and then move on. It would ideally be coupled with text, still photos, music, or other different types of media to form a well-rounded exploration of the topic. I first encountered this learning tool at the Milwaukee Public Museum last year and really enjoyed the possibilities it held for learning all about a topic from numerous methods of interest.

d'Est intrigued me, nauseated me, and captured my curiosity about people living on the other side of the globe.

Other work by Bruce Baillie

Mr Hayashi...another of Baillie's films...also displays a sense of "a day in the life" type of journalling. Black and white, grainy old footage, and even decaying celluloid with somewhat poor exposures do not take away from the sense of serenity I feel when watching this elderly man working in his garden.

We used footage from this film for Film 255, as found footage, and created a new story by reediting it in comic book format. I have scanned that image and uploaded it here. Please click on the image to see it full size.

This goes to show how simple it is to rework a film to mean something completely different from the original intent. The original was dialogueless, I created the internal conflict, and so someone not having seen the original might think that my rendition is the real story. Maybe I should submit it to the tabloids :)

Up Close vs Intimate Photography

It's amazing the difference in feel these two up close photographs have. The twigs with berries feel warm and alive, inviting. The black and white to me feels cold and menacing with the turbulent waters and the stark dead branch. Just because something is up close doesn't make it intimate (again referencing Acconci, why does it always come back to him?!).

Intimate by Design

Low resolution, black and white, very pixelated footage, five minute duration of sound and visual on an ordinary cassette tape...sound limiting? Many such as myself had never heard of the Pixelvision camera by Fisher Price prior to Film 102 (last year), marketed as a toy from 1987-89 for around $100.00. Yet many artists have found this little gem and have latched on to it and its limitations to produce very intimate works of art. There are now annual film festivals centered on films produced with this camera.

On the glass half full side of the story what can this camera do? Due to the low resolution and the fixed lens there is no such thing as zoom, rack focus, etc. The artist must physically get the camera close enough to an object for it to be in focus. This necessitates an intimate cinema. One such artist at the PXL film festival told a story about war with plastic soldiers and horses. When he "zoomed in" on a horse the footage was actually close up details of a live horse. That is pretty ingenious and the results were striking.

With the tape length limited to 5 minutes before a splice must occur this camera also lends itself to shorter subject matter. Critics have said that some narrative type stories with this camera just simply went on too long. This camera is great for video blogging like Sadie Benning or short experimental works with close-ups of patterns and textures. This is not a voyeur's camera as the film artist MUST, by design, be intimate with its subject...in its "face"; up close and personal or else the footage won't turn out.

A great challenge, if the dept. had such cameras, would be to assign each student the task of creating a film with it in five minutes, and see how creative students could get in this format. The end results would of course all be different and students would see that less is sometimes more, in terms of cost factor or pixel resolution or duration. An independent or experimental film artist is often limited not by their imagination but strictly the depth of their wallet, so this camera could liberate a few and motivate them to get their work in front of the public (by creating for the PXL festival) all on a shoestring budget.

This would definitely please Jonas Mekas; filmmakers freed from the constraints of Hollywood and able to share their vision with the masses without debt or bureaucracy. How novel, how inspiring, how low-tech! Less IS more, who knew?! ;)

This picture was made with a 3 megapixel camera.
Notice the limitations in vision. The dates on the money also intrigued me.
Out of a pile of change lying around the house, eight of my coins were pre-1970.

Arcangel My Hero

This photo reminds me of 80's/90's pixelated bitmap graphics
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Cory Arcangel is an artist who makes art at the intersection of kitsch culture and computer history. It comes through in projects like "Super Mario Clouds". An original copy of the Nintendo Video Game Cartridge "Super Mario Brothers" was cracked open, and all the data erased, with one exception: the clouds that appeared in the game, scrolling by in 8 bit serenity. This fetishism for the dusty abandoned basements of video game culture permeates his work, coming out in his musical projects as well.

-- excerpt from

http://www.turbulence.org/curators/salvaggio/arcangel.html

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Arcangel creates using dead media from old computer systems, Nintendo, ATARI, etc. in order to be able to work with a medium as long as it takes to master it. In this day and age 2 years equals antiquity and if Joe Consumer doesn't buy into the hype and stay current he will quickly not be able to update and keep up with the learning curve. Whew, never before in history has technology been on such a fast track. I can appreciate Arcangel's love of the old and tested. It hearkens back to a simpler time, though each age has thought the one before it was simpler, and he can take his time and explore as it isn't going anywhere and he knows it is already dead.

Arcangel performs something like an autopsy in completely dismembering and disemboweling technology to really see how it functions. As a child I had above average inquisitiveness myself (would much rather dismantle something to see how it functioned than play nice with it--drove my sister nuts until Mom had to tell her "If you don't want her to wreck it don't let her play with it!) and I can therefore highly appreciate his work.

I really love the genius behind his RAM diaries. How cool that he didn't do any real work and the computer created this work of "art" for him from reading its own memory files as video and he gets all the money, fame, and credentials from it. I appreciate it because I have always bought lots of stock in the "Work Smarter not Harder" corporation. Kudos to him for finding a niche for this work.

Arcangel is my hero! I tend to enjoy more traditional imagery for personal art tastes, but I can certainly appreciate the genius that goes into his works and therefore can view his work also with appreciation for what it is even if I wouldn't watch reruns in my spare time.

Let us not betray...

"Let us not betray the dreams of those who have dreamed before us" Mekas emphatically beseeches to the crowd at the COOP ceremony in 2006 (as per the free download at jonasmekas.com February 13th). He challenges the listener to not be equal, to not be equal to the Hollywood system. He states that liberty is the freedom to choose differently.

In this PC world where difference of opinion is regarded as judgmental and narrow minded I find it refreshing that Mekas challenges me to think differently, think for myself, not buy into the masses and hype at a detriment to my personal voice. How quickly do young filmmakers abandon their voice and meld with that of the collective when they desire acceptance into the machine that is Hollywood.

I considered that route for myself very seriously for a time, I was going to take a semester off and join Hollywood to gain experience--become a slave with "no guarantee" of future employment "guaranteed" by the companies willing to exploit my eagerness. I realized, thankfully sooner rather than later, that I am an individual and would rather abandon my dreams of greatness that COULD come after years of abuse and lack of sleep/personal life/etc. or I could reshape my dreams into something that would allow me to have a vision and a voice yet also a life and fulfillment. I am reshaping my dreams of creating visual works on motion picture film to creating works on 35mm/digital still film. My professors have unanimously said that I seem to gravitate to beautiful images, that helped me to see that I don't need 24 fps when I can create one frame and tell a story with one beautiful image. If an image needs companions, more power to it but it may also stand up just fine on its own.

I choose to be different in the film department!! :) Well, now that photography is one of the tracks I am not so different, but I choose to come at the photography from a film angle rather than the visual arts angle and am glad for that. I couldn't see myself doing it and enjoying it so immensely any other way.

I know that all of the influences from film that I am exposed to will only continue to shape my still images and the meaning contained within them. Without the film background I wouldn't approach my images the same and maybe they would be weaker for it.

To think different isn't bad, doesn't make me judgmental or narrow minded, just different. Thank you Mekas for stating it so plainly and helping to remind me that I need to be true to myself and not get caught up in the hype of fame and stardom at the expense of true and lasting personal happiness and fulfillment.

To answer the conventions question...

I think there is a question that belongs in between those two questions, and I would like to hear your (everybody's) answer:

"Does abandoning traditional conventions mean that you have to alienate the viewer?"

Have to alienate or will inadvertently alienate. My family members for instance are not connoisseurs of all things art and when I show them projects that I'm working on they smile politely and move on to some other topic...not because they don't want to support me, but simply because they don't get it. The average viewer, without a trained artistic eye, often tends to look at the face value of a work and make the standard "I could do that blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back" type of statement because they are unfamiliar with the process it took to produce the end result and layers of meaning that may be evidenced in it.

This could be overcome with training of the masses by slowly working elements of non convention into a conventional film. Conventions weren't conventions until they had been used and people began to understand them. Though contradictorily if the lack of conventions became widely used and understood it would then become a convention...hm mm.

Maybe it all boils down to how a work is created, if there are cues for the intended audience to follow the work, etc. then it wouldn't necessarily alienate them. If no precedent or explanation or seeming logic or order of any sort is in place then maybe many would feel that sense of alienation as they strive to derive meaning or create a narrative from what is presented. Since Aristotle created the three act structure humans have understood film, stories, and plays best when they fit this model. Many go to the movies to escape real life for a time and simply don't want to work too hard to figure out what is going on, even if the plot keeps twisting and surprising there is usually still the three act structure and an eventual conclusion of sorts.

Interesting question.

Steele Conditt, Benning July vs. V-Log Festival

The various works screened in class Monday all have the same theme--personal, up close, explorations of self within the confines of the video medium, whether 3 CCD zoom or pixelvision or cell phone.

The videos mostly all contained close-up framing and intimate diary type conversations. An intimate exchange between the artist and the viewer as if you've known each other for years, yet in each case you've just met. The amateur YouTube artists are artists none the less just like the ones we viewed in class. Benning's diary with the Pixelvision camera is no different than the upload from SadEyedAnimeGirl who parks the camera in front of her face and rambles on about life. If Benning can become famous, why not this girl. The videos have the same feel of a person who is lonely and trying to connect with the world and wants people to listen to her and care.

The videos from class also contain a lot of repetitive movements. Conditt's editing style shows many of the same clips reinserted throughout the piece, such as the woman sliding down a mattress. Steele's exploration of body doesn't simply point and move on, she emphasizes each scar with repetitive tracing of the scars with her finger. The eyes linger on the tracing motion almost more than the scars themselves. Acconci keeps moving his body towards the camera and away as he drones about loving the viewer. July's piece fixates on body motions of the surveilled woman, who moves around in the space while staring at the surveillance camera.

Each piece draws a viewer close to a screen, beckons the viewer to participate in their life and rantings or delusions. Each explores the boundary of private versus public and the breaking down of those boundaries in displaying these works in a public arena.

YouTube is the experimental forum of today and it's participants are finding recognition as viable artisans same as in the days of early video. It begs the question though...will this enamored viewing of these types of works last or is it merely a phase that will pass as the next type of medium is born?

Vito Acconci

Psychological and confrontational. These are two words used to describe Acconci's works from the 70's. He wants to clash against the norm, to push himself onto the viewer and cause them to think. In achieving this aim he is largely successful. He indeed manages to invade one's comfort zone to the point of intense discomfort.

Carl spoke accurately in mentioning the creep factor, Acconci is quite abrasive and almost reminds me of a serial rapist in leer and tone. This is exactly the way he wants to draw in the viewer. He wants them to experience himself and his body up close and personal on the small 13 inch (or so) video monitor he would have been projected on in a 1970's gallery installation. The graininess and lack of editing abilities did in fact create limitations that artists needed to work around when conceptualizing their pieces. Acconci chose an abrasive and confrontational direct address approach and desired the viewer to see him life-size in the small video screen and feel as though they might come right into the space with him.

Many of his methods and ideas of video making are no longer relevant or necessary due to the advances in technology and I wonder if due to these advances it would explain Acconci's shift to now more architechtural artistic approaches. Once the medium lost its inherent video qualities and became more cinematic maybe he no longer felt it had the same appeal and interest. Maybe he simply got out all of his sexual angst in the 70's and has since mellowed with age. I don't know the answer to that, but to see the wide changes in technology over the past 35 years is amazing and possibly for him not a positive thing in light of how video should be for everyone but now video is largely among the ranks of the film. YouTube and Google videos still remain the low-tech voice of the people, accessible to all with a camera and waiting to be viewed by whoever desires. Acconci in his day would have thrived in this realm, though I have a feeling the censor's would have pulled his work down based on his provocative subject matter. :)