Sophie Calle ‘The Detective’, Pipilotti Rist ‘Suburban Brain’ and driving interview idea

I have always loved this piece of work by Sophie Calle.

Sophie Calle ‘The Detective’

Made in 1981, Sophie Calle asked her mum to hire a private detective who would follow her all day around Paris. The private detective was unaware of the connection between his client and the person he was pursuing but Calle deliberately took her unknowing detective to all her favourite places in Paris. She had been travelling for seven years and on her return wanted to revisit her childhood haunts and chose this as the way to ‘celebrate’ her return. It’s a beautiful series of photographs showing her wandering through the streets, capturing her genuine wonder and attachment to the places around her.

 

‘Suburban Brain’ by Pipilotti Rist is another piece which I really liked in her recent Eyeball Massage exhibition at the Hayward.

Pipilotti Rist, Hayward Gallery exhibition

Pipilotti Rist ‘Suburban Brain’

It’s a complex work made up of lots of elements but the part I was taken with most was the low-projected video of Rist talking to the camera whilst driving. Spoken in german and subtitled in english Rist talks about childhood relationships using philisophical statements (so not sure if it is completely ad lib). The moving image closes in on her eyes and mouth and takes in the passing landscape through the car window. It’s blurry and out-of-focus at some points and at other moments she addresses the camera directly. Again, this video is a small part of the work where abstracted colours from drive down a highway is projected large on the main wall. An intricate model of a house is situated in front with videos of domestic violence (I think?) played small scale inside. (I need to come back to this……).

Both works by Calle and Rist have led me to think about an element of the installation I want to show in the final show. I love the idea of filming an interview whilst driving and leading the viewer to favourite places. (Tracey Emin also filmed interviews with her mother and displayed them on small screens with headphones – I’ll look into them).

So, I am thinking, I want to film myself driving around Swansea to the places from my childhood. I want to film myself talking to the camera (from a flattering, unfocussed angle concentrating on the eyes and speaking mouth) by attaching it to the window. I also want to set up a camera which looks out of the car onto the road – don’t know what the quality will be like but I think it’s more important to be impressionistic rather detailed. ?. I think.

There are other things I have considered – have someone in the car with me filming, someone following me round in another car filming (like Calle) but on reflection I want this to be quite intimate. I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to someone about where I used to live in person – I’d rather edit it afterwards. And the following aspect is probably aping Calle too much – it’s not relevant enough I don’t think.

SO, I like this plan. I’m going to practice by filming myself driving around Wokingham and Woosehill first – handy location, down-the-road, might be cathartic to visit where I lived in my teens.

THEN, I’ll plan the Swansea route for the beginning of the summer holiday. Should have enough time to get the technical side sorted.

I’m excited about this. It feels cathartic and ‘right’. I think I might learn a lot from this, work-wise and personally-wise. Hmmm.

 

Diana Taylor

I came across these paintings today and I really like them.

http://www.dianataylor.co.uk/paintings

They remind me of lots of artists – I like the arrangements within them. I like the overlapping shapes and fragments and contrasts between drawings and graphic shapes. I think they are common ideas – Sigmar Polke, David Salle, Fiona Rae – but it is painterly language.

I keep realising that I’m always making things too difficult. I need to get all my images together, superimpose them in a timeline and watch them unfold as moving paintings. Mixed media collages first? Little movies then paintings from the stills? Just get on with it.

Degree show to present crossover of media with painting. Different presentation formats……..frames, wallpaper, printed textiles, digital prints, canvas paint on the wall, a plasma screen, computer screen……

Langland montage

I’m pleased with how this video has turned out. It’s not slick, the quality is a bit mixed but the datamoshing thing is finally working. I’m basically getting more familiar with the datamoshing software and I’ve finally realised that it’s easier to mix video made by the same camera – don’t cross cameras!

I’ve now got to be a bit more discerning with the pictures. The red trees at the end mixed with the huts at the end work really well.

I need to work through the shots, change the colours on fcp and organise the flow. The rhythms and colours need to feed into each other more fluidly – it’s still too raw. Overall, a good experiment though – got to keep playing with it.

A few pointers/questions/thoughts about this datamosh montage:

• Circles and pixels as units of vision I’ve use the circles filter on final cut for a couple of these video shorts. And I like the white squares which break up the image field with the trees in negative.
• Why are circles and dots hypnotic? Do we take in images as circles of light? Are they the receptors on the back of our retinas? Is this a similar idea to divisionist dots of colour and pointillism? Impressionism? Am I interested in the ‘impressions’ of things?
• Abstract images and perception I like how some images aren’t easily interpreted and take time to to be constructed – does that go back to ‘haptic visuality’? Unfamilar and jarring colours and strange, abstract images which eventually become clear?
• Neon colours - jarring on the eye, uncomfortable, difficult to ‘swallow’
• The chequerboard wipe – worth using? Could be slower?
• Exhibiting – The low resolution of this video footage is down to using the fuji watercamera. The images are pixelated and the datamoshing leads to big squares of colour breaking up the picture. How big would these images go to? What happens if you project them on a large wall? Should they be kept small and intimate? What do they look like on an iPad, in a frame on the wall? On a computer screen? If large do they become more hypnotic? I think I need to try projecting and think again about resolutions, like textile stitches – would canon images lead to cleaner, ‘better’ images? Is lo-fi and experimental more successful? Does the tangibility of the low resolution make it better? Datamoshing is corrupting files so should it be basic without added frills?

TO DO:

Project datamoshed vids onto a large screen. Do they work better on a small or large scale?

ANOTHER THOUGHT:

Exhibiting concerns – scale, screens or projection, intimate or engulfing, upclose or all-consuming? Objective or experiential?

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READ THIS AGAIN:

‘Origin of Haptics: Reigl’ in Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media

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BTW…

Going to Swansea next week and have visions of datamoshed Brynmill shorts, houses merging with streets and swings, all honey-coloured and autumnal. Need to take the Canon and make sure I get the footage. Aah, Swansea. I miss it.

Blossom Kaliedoscope

I really love the patterns and colours in this. And although that seems simplistic why can’t adding a simple filter in final cut pro make a lovely bit of video?

I went out and filmed pink blossom on a bright, clear blue sky spring day on the Canon 550d. I spun the camera round to create the sense of dizzying patterns and kept the composition simple – flowers against sky, pink against blue.

I uploaded them to the mac and played around in final cut deliberately wanting to do something with kaliedoscope filter. I like the repetition, the hypnotic pulsing, the lines, the stripes, the flowers made into rorsach tests….

The soundtrack is the cars passing by but does that keep the viewer in reality? I quite like the interpretation of the visuals as a sort of hypnotic daydream with the cars in the audio background keeping a hook in reality. I like how the mixing of the patterns with the untreated blossom footage shows how reality is merging with dreams or hallucinations.

Does that come across?

I like the kaliedo tile and the four section split near the beginning.

The problem with these filters is that they could get addictive and are a bit too easy to use. But in this instance it just WORKS with the simplicity of the blue and pink and the real intricate beauty of the repeated flower forms – I love it! I don’t think it would be quite so effective with anything drab and badly filmed. No, this video works. It’s overlong in and of itself but I think it could be used as part of something else.

Which leads me onto how it would be presented.

• Perhaps projected downwards onto the floor. The viewer stands in the moving patterns on the floor, consumed by the ‘dream’ – ? (ref. Mutaflor)
• Maybe projected to fill a whole wall
• Inside a kaliedoscopic structure, a wooden structure with mirrors on the inside, a hole to poke your head through (ref. Pipilotti’s wooden triangle structure)
• On a screen in a frame on the wall – ?

It’s all about sensory engagement, hallucinations, visions, dreams, memories…..? Another drawing of potential degree show to come.

Update March 12

It has been virtually impossible to do any MA work in the last five weeks. School has been nuts. The strain of three inspections – boarding, teaching, SEN – MYP deadlines, digital media problems with the kids, WTV demands and the Royal Albert Hall PLUS anxieties about this MA and my future have sent me over the edge. I’m REALLY tired.

There have been interesting chats in the past few weeks about sounds and other people’s projects. I haven’t contributed very much and my project has been at a total standstill since the end of Unit one.

So what do I need to do now? Make work. I sometimes don’t ever feel any clearer on what I’m doing. But maybe that’s the lack of sleep talking. I have been making notes and sketches in my book though – I’ll take pictures and post them.

SIMPLE TASKS I HAVE TO DO TO GET THINGS ROLLING

1. A datamoshing project with one of the students has worked really well. I’ll try that with shorts of Brynmill.

2. I want to make kaliedoscopic images from images of the beach – palm trees, huts, seagulls etc. Change the colours in the hut video – get hypnotic.

3. Underwater footage – crashing waves, rolling tides – mixed with an abstract animation of colours. Make abstract colour image stills and layer them in After Effects (use Blake stills first as an experiment to check it works).

4. Moving sky mixed with abstract animation of sky – same again.

Had a vague idea of filming my bedroom curtains blowing gently in the breeze, the colours changing subtly with the sun, somehow incorporating ornate patterns of picture frames, architectural features, chandeliers. This is when I start getting confused and feel completely overwhelmed. This is when I’m jumping forward in my ideas before I’ve got anything even made. It feels like the ‘meat’ of what I’m trying to get to, patterns and domestic interiors representing comfort and stability, education and civilisation. But I’ve got to wait, get the first things done first.

Oh getting impatient, frustrated, annoyed. SO SO SO MUCH TO DO and no time to do it. Why is everything always in SUCH a rush????

 

 

Like this…

http://www.theartblog.org/2007/11/alert-the-media-its-bonnie-brenda-scott-at-nexus/

Bonnie Brenda Scott at Nexus

Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern

I went to the Tate Modern yesterday to see Yayoi Kusama’s new show. It’s a retrospective of her work from the 60s to now and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how different it would be to the show at the Hayward about ten years ago. Given that she is a dotty japanese woman making art covered in well, dots, then surely it’s a case of seen it once, do I really need to see it again?

But looking at the reviews and photos in the papers I made a clear decision to go and see it in the real. There is something about dots, hypnosis, immersion, perception and hallucinations which feels important to this project. I love looking at dots that go on and on and on and what’s not to like about rooms covered in coloured dotty stickers?!

There is a special ‘Obliteration Room’, an interactive installation where people are given a sheet of coloured circle stickers to completely cover EVERYTHING.

Tea set in the 'Obliteration Room'

Spots!

 

And in the exhibition itself there’s another dimly lit room covered with gently glowing coloured spot stickers:

Glowing spotty tea set

 

And the whole show is finished off by a total sensation – the mirror infinity room. Oh my god.

'Infinity Mirror Room' Yayoi Kusama, Tate Modern

A room covered in floor to ceiling mirrors, a walkway through it and hundered of small coloured ball lights hanging at different heights together create the most amzing installation. It is like being in an infinity of light and dots. Really remarkable and I loved it. And the lights change colour!!

These were the books in the bookshop:

Optic Nerve

Are you experienced?

Psychedelic

But I didn;t buy anything because I don’t want to read and for my ideas to change – I JUST NEED TO MAKE!

Patterns, sea, sky, wallpaper, dots, stripes, pixels.

And liked this Tate ident playing after the Kusama biography video on a screen outside the exhibition – good use of bokeh (dots):

Tate animated ident on screen

 

I then went to a private view at Hoxton Square to see friend Hester Finch’s paintings – hesterfinch.com -  in a show called ‘Friends and Family’….

Friends and Family exhibition at Rove Gallery, Hoxton Sq

….and what do you know, Jude Law and Sadie Frost were both there. Haha!

Tags: dots, hypnotic, immersion, optic nerve, perception, psychedelic, stripes, Tate Modern, Yayoi Kusama

Beck – Round the Bend

 

Patterns, wallpaper, liberty, fabric, curtains, chandeliers, print, sea, sunsets, dots, flowers

Project After Effects

I’m going to use the book below to start learning After Effects. I’m going to follow the tutorials, learn my way around the programme, then work through the easiest tutorials. It makes to sense to pick out the ones for the effects I am most keen to use. Layers and transparency definitely up my street!

Term is starting again tomorrow (and have lots of things to do today) so it’s safe to say I won’t be doing very much MA work for the next few weeks. HOWEVER, I will try and spend the next five Sundays working through the After Effects tutorials. That way, come the Easter Holiday, I’ll be able to start layering my own imagery and turning the panoramas and drawings into something final. Nothing like cutting it fine eh?! I’m terrified I won’t get it done!!!! You can you can you can you can……..

My new bible hohum

Tags: After effects, tutorials

Oxford charcoal animation (inspired by Kentridge) and reflection

Whilst waiting for the computer to upload and process all of the camera footage I made this rather crude charcoal animation inspired by William Kentridge. It’s of Oxford, starting with a scene of Broad Street which is then scrubbed out and overwritten by a gargoyle head which then starts to speak saying ‘who, what, when, where’. I filmed myself saying those words, turned the file into about 20 stills and used them to draw the mouth over and over again. I used charcoal and chalk on textured paper and am quite pleased with the outcome. It’s stilted and clunky but OK for the time being.

Here are the jpeg photos I drew from:

Scene 1 - Broad Street, Oxford

Scene 2 - Gargoyle head outside Shedonian Theatre, Oxford

Charcoal drawing before filming

One of 20 photo stills to draw speaking mouth

Charcoal animation:

METHODOLOGY

Here is a screenshot of fcp, making the charcoal animation:

Charcoal animation process in fcp

The timeline is made up of approximately  50 separate photos taken when each small change was made to the charcoal drawing. In effect the photos are 50 separate animation cels.

However, when researching for my essay I discovered a technique called DIGITAL COMPOSITING as used by Jeremy Blake and written about by Lev Manovich. He says:

“Digital compositing refers to the proces of combining a number of image sequences, and possibly stills, into a single sequence with the help of special compositing software”.

Rather than today’s digital artists relying on the age-old process of lining up animation cels in quick succession, digital clips are overlaid in a dense arrangement of layers with different parts fading in and out continuously. A visual sequence therefore unfolds in both a linear time dimension and a spatial dimension. As Manovich describes, it is a “constant rhythm of rewriting, erasing and gradual superimposition”.

And so, that is what I need to progress onto next. I need to learn how to create spatial depth with my experiments. I need to start overlapping images in a timeline rather than creating the movement like a stop frame animation. I think that means using After Effects. I have written briefly about this before but now it makes more sense.

Is it After Effects I need to use?! Time to start learning the basics…….

Tags: After effects, animation, Broad Street, cels, charcoal, digital compositing, drawing, gargoyle, Lev Manovich, Oxford, spatial density, stop frame