Jennifer Montgomery showed two super-8 films. The first was How to Use Equipment, which was from a New York film club project, and was pretty funny. It was basically people trying out super-8 filming and projection, and featuring the amateurishness. My favorite scene was a woman on the telephone with an early 90's computer behind her. This clash of technology between the old (super 8) and the new, relatively, is viscerally exciting for me. Recording my lp's onto my computer is probably one of the most satisfying activities there is in my opinion.
Her structure for Notes on the Death of Kodachrome was emblematic of this juxtaposition; she starts with her friends in a very strange art film from the early 80's w/ naked people and such on super 8, and then spends the rest of the time looking for the equipment she used to make that film. She films her quest on digital video, revisiting with all of her old friends, who are now fairly famous folks. She talked to Todd Haynes, writer and director of the film Far From Heaven, and recounts a dream about a super 8 projector she had. After the conversations which seem to go around more than through any memories of the 70's and 80's, she has a vignette on super 8. The vignette is her dream, where the projector is made out of kitchen apparatuses, and she is an oriental emperess. I found it to be quite entertaining, and wished there would have been more comic super 8 vignettes instead of all that talking.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
New Art
On Monday, one of the TA's lectured the class on New Media, which is basically any art that involves a computer. A lot of the ideas she discussed we had already encountered in 115, but she brought up some new material for us to consider.
The most interesting piece was DJ Shadow's short assemblage, 911: State of Emergence, a collection of images spliced together to create associations between our leaders and the violent fundamentalists in the middle east. Because it was such a fast paced piece, it created these connections without a lot of reflection; it was like a typical Fox News production, except for its conclusions, which were opposite of the usual cable news network's. Of course, the fact that it was on the web also points to the community that's viewing it. It's for everyone w/access to a computer, and it's goal isn't to make money. The fear mongering practiced by the administration after 9/11 was mirrored by the media, attempting to keep people glued to their TV screens so they could make more money on advertising. There's no profit goal for the website on which DJ Shadow's piece was displayed.
What her presentation made me think most about was technology, and how it impacts the work that artists--especially filmmakers--produce. For example, the short film made w/a low pixel digital camera in 2003 was inspired by the blurry, blocky look of broadband video, which nowadays is much clearer. Her work is now pretty much irrelevant, but it makes a lot of sense for the time it was made.
The most interesting piece was DJ Shadow's short assemblage, 911: State of Emergence, a collection of images spliced together to create associations between our leaders and the violent fundamentalists in the middle east. Because it was such a fast paced piece, it created these connections without a lot of reflection; it was like a typical Fox News production, except for its conclusions, which were opposite of the usual cable news network's. Of course, the fact that it was on the web also points to the community that's viewing it. It's for everyone w/access to a computer, and it's goal isn't to make money. The fear mongering practiced by the administration after 9/11 was mirrored by the media, attempting to keep people glued to their TV screens so they could make more money on advertising. There's no profit goal for the website on which DJ Shadow's piece was displayed.
What her presentation made me think most about was technology, and how it impacts the work that artists--especially filmmakers--produce. For example, the short film made w/a low pixel digital camera in 2003 was inspired by the blurry, blocky look of broadband video, which nowadays is much clearer. Her work is now pretty much irrelevant, but it makes a lot of sense for the time it was made.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Goshogaoka
In discussion on Wednesday, all of the questions we asked each other eventually led up to the penultimate, scratching inquisition in everyone's mind: why did Sharon Lockhart make this film, Goshogaoka? The answers lie in her still photography collection that she showed before the film. One of her film heroes is Cassavetes, who was a very inclusive filmmaker; in other words, his professional work involved the efforts of a lot of amateurs.
With Vito Acconci we talked about performance, and i think this film is mostly about performance. We are definitely not just peering in on a normal basketball practice, but the kids in the film are normal basketball players. The parameters of the lens bring out this quality of performance aesthetically, as the camera never changes position, evoking the idea of a stage. The hand of the maker, however, is pretty much always evident, because they are moving these kids around (she hired a movement coordinator from Belgium) and having them exhibit skills that they didn't practice.
This dynamic still doesn't answer the question, however. Did she just make the film to prove this point about performance and film, or to show the performance qualities in everyday people? I think so. The total lack of anything interesting in the film forces you to examine the techniques and the movements of the kids--that's all there is. This doesn't mean it was an easy film to make or anything--she didn't let anything into the film that she didn't wish to be there. It was a very controlled production; maybe this lack of ambiguity of content left too little room for the viewer, or at least me, to explore the space of the film and feel anything strong about its images.
With Vito Acconci we talked about performance, and i think this film is mostly about performance. We are definitely not just peering in on a normal basketball practice, but the kids in the film are normal basketball players. The parameters of the lens bring out this quality of performance aesthetically, as the camera never changes position, evoking the idea of a stage. The hand of the maker, however, is pretty much always evident, because they are moving these kids around (she hired a movement coordinator from Belgium) and having them exhibit skills that they didn't practice.
This dynamic still doesn't answer the question, however. Did she just make the film to prove this point about performance and film, or to show the performance qualities in everyday people? I think so. The total lack of anything interesting in the film forces you to examine the techniques and the movements of the kids--that's all there is. This doesn't mean it was an easy film to make or anything--she didn't let anything into the film that she didn't wish to be there. It was a very controlled production; maybe this lack of ambiguity of content left too little room for the viewer, or at least me, to explore the space of the film and feel anything strong about its images.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Hamilton
The writer and director of Hamilton, a story about two young people with a baby, chose to include as little dialogue as possible in his Baltimore portrait. He also didn't include the introduction of new conflict into the story--he depicted peoples' lives after the problems had been introduced. Joe, the young father, is a growing boy trapped in a fatherhood predicament. The result, besides bitter silence and coldness towards his girlfriend, is a ranging body, yearning to escape. The seminal moment of the film probably comes during a walk, when Joe traipses about, smoking, and for a while, cars cannot be heard. Then, he is picked up by his mother, and we sense that he does not have a lot of freedom. The director won't give us the satisfaction of really knowing anything solid about any of the characters, which gives us some weird character pairings, like the house Joe lives in, for example. He seems to have black sisters, which is just a sort of odd thing when he's white, unless he or they were adopted. The director did not think it was important for us to know. Maybe being a foster child could help explain Joe's loneliness and seemingly constant discomfort?
The scene where this strategy of silence and plot absence works is in a scene that would have been at home inside of any type of narrative film. Joe is in his girlfriend's bed, and wakes up at 3 in the morning to play video games. The woman tries to get him to go back to bed, offering the warmth of her body. By the way Joe reacts, or doesn't react, we get the deep sense of resentment he has for the mother of his child, and we see the effect it has on the girl, who gets up to wash her face, presumably frustrated.
For all the time spent on the faces of the characters, however, there are some really stilted and boring performances. Joe, who Carl informed us is a semi-professional actor, is pretty interesting, but the girl is just toneless and expressionless, even though the camera is on her face when she's on camera, and it doesn't really move. And as Dan Kelly mentioned in class, the grandmother's speech about her flowers to the little boy was kind of creepy, and sounded as if she was reading off of cue cards as she went.
People talk more than these people talk, so the search for realism cannot explain this movie's lack of extraordinary or more melodramatic events. I appreciated the scenes where the strategy worked, such as Joe's walk, the car ride with his mother, and the walk to meet his girlfriend. Other than that, the style was much more apparent than the film's subjects, who appeared to simply be unprofessional actors, not real characters.
The scene where this strategy of silence and plot absence works is in a scene that would have been at home inside of any type of narrative film. Joe is in his girlfriend's bed, and wakes up at 3 in the morning to play video games. The woman tries to get him to go back to bed, offering the warmth of her body. By the way Joe reacts, or doesn't react, we get the deep sense of resentment he has for the mother of his child, and we see the effect it has on the girl, who gets up to wash her face, presumably frustrated.
For all the time spent on the faces of the characters, however, there are some really stilted and boring performances. Joe, who Carl informed us is a semi-professional actor, is pretty interesting, but the girl is just toneless and expressionless, even though the camera is on her face when she's on camera, and it doesn't really move. And as Dan Kelly mentioned in class, the grandmother's speech about her flowers to the little boy was kind of creepy, and sounded as if she was reading off of cue cards as she went.
People talk more than these people talk, so the search for realism cannot explain this movie's lack of extraordinary or more melodramatic events. I appreciated the scenes where the strategy worked, such as Joe's walk, the car ride with his mother, and the walk to meet his girlfriend. Other than that, the style was much more apparent than the film's subjects, who appeared to simply be unprofessional actors, not real characters.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Learning to Love You More
On Yoko Ono's website, there are assignments anyone can do to explore their world, and the resulting media is pretty entertaining. My favorite assignment was "Make a documentary about a small child." My Star by Roger Scott is about his son, Dylan. It has a great soundtrack that actually makes the baby exciting, maybe giving the audience a sense of the astounding amount of discoveries the baby makes each day. There is a hilarious shot where Scott zooms out and we realize that Dylan is lying in a dryer, which his mom programs to start like the liftoff of a space ship. This short and sweet style of documentary is like a yummy after dinner mint.
I also enjoyed exploring the guest curators' (or Ono's friends) choices, presenting some very interesting portraits generated from the assignments. The effect of taking a tour through the assignments allowed me to see the greater vision of the website coalesce into a jagged collection of artists and everyday people. This was probably the best example 201 students could get of daily practice, or personal filmmaking.
I was amazed at the amount of work put into some of these, especially the neighborhood field recording from Erin Thompson and Hanna Vachs. They took time with each person who accepted to draw their portrait and record their musical talents or performances. It wasn't especially entertaining--the bad musicians were very boring, but i did enjoy the first performance by the acoustic guitarist. The drawing allowed me to listen to the fingering and picture the performance in my mind.
I also enjoyed exploring the guest curators' (or Ono's friends) choices, presenting some very interesting portraits generated from the assignments. The effect of taking a tour through the assignments allowed me to see the greater vision of the website coalesce into a jagged collection of artists and everyday people. This was probably the best example 201 students could get of daily practice, or personal filmmaking.
I was amazed at the amount of work put into some of these, especially the neighborhood field recording from Erin Thompson and Hanna Vachs. They took time with each person who accepted to draw their portrait and record their musical talents or performances. It wasn't especially entertaining--the bad musicians were very boring, but i did enjoy the first performance by the acoustic guitarist. The drawing allowed me to listen to the fingering and picture the performance in my mind.
Abstraction and Projection
For this class, the theme was light. Projection was examined as an action, and the capturing of light on film was featured in the films. The most abstract films concerning light were Available Light: Shift and The Dark Room.
For Available Light, Luis Recoder set up a fogged lens apparatus that captured unfocused light on a 16 mm camera, turning everything into it's color-on-film representation. The film was long for such a project, but the effect was still pretty engaging. It was interesting that color was used as a key for vision, and that color on film was examined--it calls into question the realism aspects of film that viewers take for granted when color is paired with a film image.
The Dark Room was a roving trip of dark blues and greys recorded on 16 mm in a camera obscura. This film was a lot more difficult for me to engage in than Available Light, probably because nothing was ever sharp or definite. I didn't feel like i was in a camera obscura though; i just couldn't tell what was going on, and the set-back screen was just too hard to focus on.
For Available Light, Luis Recoder set up a fogged lens apparatus that captured unfocused light on a 16 mm camera, turning everything into it's color-on-film representation. The film was long for such a project, but the effect was still pretty engaging. It was interesting that color was used as a key for vision, and that color on film was examined--it calls into question the realism aspects of film that viewers take for granted when color is paired with a film image.
The Dark Room was a roving trip of dark blues and greys recorded on 16 mm in a camera obscura. This film was a lot more difficult for me to engage in than Available Light, probably because nothing was ever sharp or definite. I didn't feel like i was in a camera obscura though; i just couldn't tell what was going on, and the set-back screen was just too hard to focus on.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Vladmaster rocks the auditorium
I came in late, as usual, with a special greasy snack in hand and, to my pleasant surprise, found that i would not be watching five or more abstract films in one sitting. Instead, i would get to play with a cool toy. Well, i didn't really get to play with it, the directions were pretty clear, coming from an honest, NPR-type-voice from somewhere.
On the whole, I found the Vladmaster medium fresh and interesting. The experience is a very controlled one however, and put me in a meditative, obedient, almost hypnotic state. Especially with the lack of blinking, my narcolepsy got me a couple times as i caught myself dropping the Vladmaster. For this reason, i went ahead in the slides a few times, and listened to the soundtrack as i clicked through to the right spot, and really viewed the things as two seperate works. From Vladamir's comments, it appears that the processes are a bit separate, but she does still write the stories.
My favorite disc was the one about the construction equipment. An amazingly inventive story that begins with a fairly abstract picture of crumpled construction paper with an airplane's shadow on it, it also provides proof for the effectiveness of the authoritative power of direct eye-to-lens contact. It was a story that was made up, but told in a TLC, UFO sighting style, even referencing reports on the evening news that left me questioning why i had never seen anything about this event before.
I believe the soft miniature scenes were also effective in throwing the audience into another world where they couldn't quite make everything out (i already referenced the fuzzy first picture) and had to listen to the voice to help tie everything together.
This medium is totally fresh, but, again, it's filmed with a 16 mm camera, which is pretty crazy. Everything abstract seems to be in that format, one which i have technical difficulties with. I want to do digital stuff like Rodriguez, where i can be a rebel and not have to worry about dirt in the shutter gate that ruins a roll of film.
On the whole, I found the Vladmaster medium fresh and interesting. The experience is a very controlled one however, and put me in a meditative, obedient, almost hypnotic state. Especially with the lack of blinking, my narcolepsy got me a couple times as i caught myself dropping the Vladmaster. For this reason, i went ahead in the slides a few times, and listened to the soundtrack as i clicked through to the right spot, and really viewed the things as two seperate works. From Vladamir's comments, it appears that the processes are a bit separate, but she does still write the stories.
My favorite disc was the one about the construction equipment. An amazingly inventive story that begins with a fairly abstract picture of crumpled construction paper with an airplane's shadow on it, it also provides proof for the effectiveness of the authoritative power of direct eye-to-lens contact. It was a story that was made up, but told in a TLC, UFO sighting style, even referencing reports on the evening news that left me questioning why i had never seen anything about this event before.
I believe the soft miniature scenes were also effective in throwing the audience into another world where they couldn't quite make everything out (i already referenced the fuzzy first picture) and had to listen to the voice to help tie everything together.
This medium is totally fresh, but, again, it's filmed with a 16 mm camera, which is pretty crazy. Everything abstract seems to be in that format, one which i have technical difficulties with. I want to do digital stuff like Rodriguez, where i can be a rebel and not have to worry about dirt in the shutter gate that ruins a roll of film.
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