Week 6 - iMovie

Video art began in the 1960s with artists such as Andrew Pike and the Fluxus Movement. His first video art was of the pope's visit that he subsequently screened at a local cafe. Used to document performances of performance and body artists as well as installation. He also used magnets to distort his images. 

YouTube has many such films:

In Zen for Film, he uses a mostly white screen with the occasional blotch.

Bruce Nauman, 1967 - Walking in an exaggerated Manner...

Pipilotti Rist, 2001 - Open My Glade - a feminist performance artist. Images of her smearing her face against an invisible surface. Screened on a billboard in Times Square to say something about the way women trap themselves with the way media portray themselves.

Mathew Barney, Cremaster - filmic techniques and costumes...symbolism, goo and lots of money!

Video art relies upon concepts and aesthetics.

Another Proposal Idea

In this photo from The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/world/march-of-indias-big-parties-halted-20090327-9e8o.html), campaigning hordes of politicans (and these are just ones from Bangalore) are made more identifiable through the distribution, I'm assuming, of masks of their faces. What does altering one's face do to one's identity? How small can that change be?

Mobile Phone Artwork: MeMe

This is what I did as a test of some ideas:


- captured photos of myself in a mirror on mobile.
- transferred photos to Mac via Bluetooth
- captured sound with MP3 player and transferred to Mac

- edited sound file in Audacity to multiple the voice and play with timings
- created a PowerPoint slide show with animated transitions, timings and sound
- cropped and edited each photo to show a range of effects
- downloaded a PPT to AVI Converter and recorded a movie of less than 100Mb.
- uploaded to blog.

The only thing I don't understand is why the sound didn't work.

Proposal Ideas: Fiddles with Identity

Jane Eyre Ch 16 - Jane draws a chalk drawing of herself on rough canvas in order to highlight her imperfections. She draws a second drawing of her rival, Miss Ingram, on fine ivory with light strokes and small brushes in order to supra-highlight the reality that Rochester is unobtainable.

In Ch 19 Rochester disguises himself as a gypsy to read the fortunes of his house party guests, or rather to play with them, and tests Jane's loyalty and good sense.

Introduction to Film Art - The cinematography chapter details the range of camera motions for different effects, for instance, surveillance footage.

Multiple views of same person, Morphing from one person or family into another, Viewing of body parts or items a person owns - which is 'me'?

Identity Theft via my mobile:
http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/2009/03/20/235356/my-phone-stole-my-identity.htm

And intentionally identity removed to protect the innocent/guilty:

Bag as identity!

What's in my Bag, 1 Feb 2009 entry: http://jadearlindita.wordpress.com/ -

A place to search for advert campaigns, http://www.visit4info.com/

Nivea 'paper model' person advert:
http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Sure-Skin-Care-Deodorant-Paper-Model-Sure-Deodorant-Range/57621

Dove 'Evolution', the retouching model advert:

Dove Campaign For Re..
Watch the ad...

Week 5: Mobile Phones

Mobile Phone software and capabilities:

Music, internet, photos, video, games, sms, recording audio, flash messages (and other formating such as blinking), bluetooth, up and downloading, phone surveillance software, ability to personalise (eg assign ringtones to particular callers)...

Emerging art forms:

Text or character based art, poetry, stories built up by a round-robin effect, creating ring tones, short films, video art, screensavers, sound pieces from ring tones, sculpture from mobile phone bits, dynamic collage (each recipient adds a piece), stop-motion animation,

Phone-related themes:

Texting language, Portability, identity, privacy (eg upskirting), size of device, multiple recipients, ownership, individuality, space-time (transnational borders and time zones, expectation of immediate response), collaboration

One can use the phone as a production tool, as it contains some software for manipulation, but also as a method for presenting your art.

How to connect Mac to Mobile:

Click bluetooth icon on the right top menu bar.
Make sure Turn Bluetooth is On.
On phone find Bluetooth setting and ensure it is turned on and Find Me.
On Mac scroll through Browse Files to find phone and use as a file manager.

Phone asks if I want to 'bond' with the computer - Yes.
Enter a password - hit 1 key three times and enter.
When corresponding password box comes up on Mac, type in 111 and Ok.
Browse screen comes up.

To send a file:

Click Bluetooth icon and my phone name and Send File.
Select file to send (make sure it's an acceptable file format and size) and Send.
The file is transferred to my phone and I must select Accept in order to complete the download.

Websites:

dlux.org.au/mobilejourneys
portableworlds.anat.org.au



Clayanimation:

How to make a claymation animation on a mobile: www.clayanimation.com
To download a claymation freeware: english/stop_motion_animator.htm

Be aware that 24 frames = 1 second of film time

Could also use a series of stills, turn into a PowerPoint presentation and add music and voice over narration.

Week 4: Painter Corel X...more proposal ideas

Confronted with a third highly powerful piece of software and only a short time to get to 'know' it, and this one without a freeware version to use at home, I cannot imagine pursuing this software. I didn't so much experiement with strokes and layers and the 700 tools, but drew how I felt, which was not well and software overwhelmed. So, I drew a child-like drawing - because I felt childlike (put in the position of being a novice yet again) and because I found a combination of brush types and textures I liked: chalk which was sharp, grainy or dull or various thickness on a paper surface of my choice, and I chose a simulation of a natural cotton fibre paper. So I experiemented with colour mixing and fill - plain and patterned - and drew a child-like family drawing.

DRAWING

A lesson I learnt was, never draw on the canvas, put everything on a layer which allows you more flexibility in turning layers on and off or rubbing bits out to show layers below, or swapping layers around. However, given my lack of Corel at home, I'll be using this as a JPEG, not Corel format.

As I drew I had more ideas about identity, family, masks, which is interesting me for my proposal. I imagined what I could do with this childish drawing. An adult drawing such a drawing of a family has a particular meaning - apart from 'she's suffering from a reality attack about her abilities' - and how that might be combined / blurred / rubbed through / mixed up /morphed with other non/idealised pictures of families.

Here is such an idealised family:

They are easy to find and often used to sell something as in moving services (abcmovingcenter.com).

Mind you, even 'happy families' can be disturbing as on Dude I Rock http://www.dudeirock.com/ where the writer digitally alters all sorts of photos to insert himself: in this case all members of this family are versions of him.

Further, I imagined taking a series of photos of one person morphing from one expression to another: from a public mask of politeness into their truth feelings of whatever, perhaps boredom and disgust. On Flickr, I found a Japanese artist, Ogawa Mari http://www.flickr.com/photos/8497209@N08/2988405919/, who has included as series of shots of masks of her wearing a mask of her own face:

Here's an exhibition called Artifacial Expression, for instance, http://artifacial.org/the_varieties and http://artifacial.org/face_shift, that document changes in normal facial expression in a way that suggest reduction to digitisation for computer programs in robots.

Digital Photography Artists

It's not difficult to find a lot on Cindy Sherman (see http://www.cindysherman.com/). This week's coincidence was reading about mis-en-scene in my film studies unit: what elements (and how) within the frame that the director choses to control. Re-visiting her 'film stills', I know understand a little more about them. For instance, how carefully she lights each image, its colour design, the setting if any, its costume and makeup, the pose...all these guide assumptions we make and, thus, the story we construct as a viewer.

Whereas Sherman is all about the face, Tracey Moffatt, is about the setting (see http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt/ - First Jobs series). Her choices say to me: technicolour 1960s, function dictates form, setting is more important than person, cheerful optimism that technology will solve all ills.

Sophie Calle (see http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste-Sophie_Calle-18.html) for instance includes "portraits of young offenders used as targets during the training of police officers in the city of M" whose identity has been 'protected' simply by covering their eyes - perhaps identity is not merely int he whole face, but just the eyes! In another set she presents 'Iconic portraits mutilated during the civil war in Spain'; these are Christian statues constructed in a time when realism in art was of critical value to the Church. Perhaps the fighters recognised that cutting off the nose of a saint was as powerfully symbolic as cutting the nose off a fellow citizen? And in a third series, posed human and artifical figures are posed as they read a message addressed to themselves, "Take care of yourself": we read the figures as reading a message of care.

Week 3: Digital Camera

This week we took photos around campus and then had a bit of a play in Gimp (download here: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/). I've also used Picassa (download here: http://picasa.google.com/). I love my click-and-shoot camera. I can take almost as many pictures as I like - and see them or delete them or adjust the shot or the camera and shoot again! Some people take that as being skill-less as if the quality of (or interest in) the photo depended entirely on the quality of camera! However, our lecturer reminded us of two principles, that in taking photos we still need to take photos with an intention and, therefore, need to make some decisions, for instance:

• set up the shot with poses, costume, framing and so on, or


• impose some kind focus or rule (completely candid, a theme, particular patterns etc) upon our photo-taking,

and are we choosing to take the photo:

• using automatic settings, or


• using automatic and manipulating digitally, or


• adjusting one or more elements of whatever can be adjusted on the camera

Or any combination of the above.

I chose to take my photos on automatic settings and manipulate later. The theme I imposed upon myself was that of surveilling students unaware (see previous post). Here's one of the results:

In this photo I have applied various filters to make the photo more grainy and saturated as if it was old and taken under difficult circumstances. I have made the target appear to glow - the way once we put something in our attention we are immediately hit in the eye by the many examples in our environment. I have also added a collage element to give a more 3D effect. The girl in the foreground was cut out of one photo and pasted onto a new layer which i then re-sized and used a mask to (roughly!) brush out her original surroundings so they are invisible.

Maybe this is the 'camera never lies' element, but it's rough so we know its a fake - we might forget that the audience can usually read our text! Finally, I pixelated the girl's face, partly to protect her privacy but also to suggest an air of covert operations and the format of so much news where broadcasters must have something to show, but must also stay within the Privacy Act. This says so much about our need to show 'progress' in daily events as our assumption that identity lies in the face.

Proposal Ideas 1

In thinking about my proposal, I'm trying to remember my interests in identity.. in the ideas below I'm thinking about 'realness' and identity and the technique would be digital camera and digital manipulation.

Un/Masked:
From before, during and after the moment of awareness. My assumption being that 'unmasked' is a moment of genuineness - the real person before they assume one of their public masks. I imagined taking series of photos of people unaware of my presence and lost in themselves and then continuing to shoot as they become aware of me.

Obsessive Surveillance:
Having just seen the latest episode of 'Skins' (UK teens trying to discover themselves, particularly their sexual identity, see http://www.e4.com/skins/guide-series2-episode2.html) in which a young woman obsessively follows and photographs a young man in sitations where he is both unaware and lost in himself and with a public mask on, I wondered if I could do something similar. Perhaps of my husband...the idea being not questions of fidelity, but about well do I know the real person. Presented in some kind of photo-wall I'd have many many versions of my partner, many many versions of my partner. There would be some that I know, some I don't and some where he is completely himself and others where he is utterly masked.

Reflection upon presentation of assignment 1

Questions wisely asked during my presentation allowed me to realise that an influence carried over from 2008 is Mark Rothko who eliminated figurative content focussing only on colour, paint texture, canvas scale and shape and installation. Here's an example, Untitled 1953:

It's the sort of work that just makes me feel. And what I feel is what Freud and others called 'the ocean sublime', a sort of collective spirituality.

Here's a huge feature on the artist, his life and work from Washington: http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/

From admiting that influence I was able to recall that colour had an on-going importance to the vividness of the imagery of Plath. Maybe colour made Plath feel too?

I was also asked about scale, whether I imagined Brown Arc larger than this blog, perhaps projected on the side of a building like the truism texts of Jenny Holzer (see http://www.jennyholzer.com/list.php). I answered I was interested in scale, but possibly for the opposite reason - that sheer size alone does not necessarily equate to 'getting noticed' and I gave the example of 'an alien in a crowd': if an alien walked down a crowded Manhattan street, no one would bat an eye - we are so numbed by SFX that seeing the odd in the everyday we'd just take it as a SF nut off to a convention! Here's just such an example from Bobby Breidholt (for more see http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/User/Bobby%20Breidholt - I like his pattern and SF influences):

All this led me to wonder about my next assignment, a proposal for the artworks I'll hand in as my folio.

Assignment 1: Preliminary Artwork and Critique

In this blog you'll find my first assignment created in Inkscape 0.46. The title of this piece is Brown Arc and is a response to Sylvia Plath's poem, 'Ariel'.

For context you can read about Plath's life and work at http://www.sylviaplath.info/biography.html,
see the text of this poem at Poem Hunter
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ariel/)
as well as read some commentary on this complex work at http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/m_r/plath/ariel.htm.
Maybe what you 'should' know is that 'Ariel' was a poem written during a highly creative period and within a year of her suicide.


I barely understand 'Ariel' myself, it 'contains' so many images, multiple meanings and several intertexual links within its brief form and I'm loathe to extract phrases from its structure. However, what follows are the sequences I'm responding to matched to the element and technique in the image above.


(1)
Line: "Stasis in darkness/Then the substanceless blue/Pour of tor and distances."

Element: blue background to the left of the image

Meaning: A freedom from stillness, trappedness and suffocation to brightness and space. There is both certainty and shapelessness. Note that a ‘tor’ is a hill. Plath was in a small house, in a cold winter, with small children and a turbulent marriage to British Poet Laureate (a poet appointed to write poems for special events on behalf of a nation), Ted Hughes.

Technique: I created a bottom layer and added to it a square the size of the page with the shape tool and then added a colour with the colour wheel, increased its translucency and added a gradient with a stop that decreased the colour right to left.

(2)
Line: "...sister to/The brown arc/Of the neck I cannot catch,"

Element: the brown arc coil.

Meaning: Horse and riding imagery to express movement, freedom and escape into the distance. There is identification with a 'twin soul', perhaps Hughes, but a sense that satisfaction can never be complete. Note also the sense of moving from brightness into darkness as identity becomes less focused and more uncertain with distance.

Technique: Drawn with the calligraphic tool, colour adjusted, sculpted for shape, cloned, dragged into a sort of coil with each arc increasingly blurred to give a sense of depth and upwards movement.

(3) Line: "Nigger-eye/Berries cast dark/Hooks ---//Black sweet blood mouthfuls,/Shadows."

Element: darkening filter to the right of the image

Meaning: The imagery is said to portray eating succulent blackberries, something you might find on an autumn ride in rural Britain. Although the imagery is sexual, like many of these lines, it is also dark, unsafe and portent-filled. (Note that commentators seem to get caught up in the use of the still taboo word ‘nigger’ by a US poet writing in the 1960s, a time of ‘freedoms’ emerging for non-white, non-middle-class, non-men in Western-style societies).

Without this overlying filter the image is bright and unambiguously cheerful; the filter suggests that the poem is richer, more complex than any single meaning we might feel more comfortable about. For instance, notice that in Plath's word imagery and my digital imagery brightness and darkness are linked. They are inevitable and a part of one another: one leads inescapably into the other - day to night, happiness to sadness, desire to its absence...and so on.

Technique: I created a separate layer and added to it a square the size of the page with the shape tool and then added black with the colour wheel, increased its translucency and added an effect with gradient left to right.

(4) Lines: "And now I/Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas./The child's cry/Melts in the wall.//And I/Am the arrow,/The dew that flies,/Suicidal, at one with the drive/Into the red//Eye, the cauldron of morning. "

Element: Red 'sun'

Meaning: In these lines there is hard and soft beauty, freedom, a momentary escape from earthly/domestic ties in an intense climax from the riding and/or sexual encounter and the drive and energy released that nourishes one afterwards. But there is ALSO danger, death and violence constantly present and towards which this vital energy is also directed.

Technique: I drew a circle with the Ellipse Tool, coloured it as red I could and applied an Object, Filter Effects – basically a blur, saturation and brightness.

Week 1: Introduction to Digital Art

So why am I here? Well, the really cynical and pragmatic answer is: I could could fit two units into one day, which is convenient given my cross-institutional enrolment. And the other reasons? Truth, maybe? That phrase, 'the camera never lies', such an untrue statement in itself, is worth exploring. Can greater truths actually be told through digital manipulation? And can those truths be extracted using not necessarily the most complex tools and techniques, but by stretching the most basic and most widely available tools? Can those truths be found in the most mundane subjects and themes rather than the most extraordinary? I mean, look at this photograph (ABOVE) of the northern lights in the Yukon, Canada. This extrordinary moment is a photo of 'nature', it is 'natural' and stunning - what would be the point of me trying to replicate that unless perhaps it was a SFX for a film?

I'm a blank wacom drawing tablet really - whatever that is. I've dabbled in the most basic image enhancement and audio file stuff that's been useful for everyday purposes and to get from this through education and research to art will be an interesting journey.

Before the semester began I was looking at faces particularly from the 'Black Saturday' Victorian bushfire media coverage (see http://www.theage.com.au/national/bushfires), a documentary on the origins of facial plastic surgery (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dd18c and also http://www.gearability.com/2007/11/03/the-origins-of-plastic-surgery/). Plastic surgery is an example of discovery following the need for innovation in war, in other words it was developed and practised largely upon male soldiers with facial injuries but becomes transformed into an industry practised largely on women who have been socialised to be dissatisfied and anxious about their bodies. And, finally, my interest in a new US drama,'Lie to Me', which is based on uncovering the villian by analysing facial micro-expressions (see http://www.fox.com/lietome/).

Faces seem to be such a vital seat of 'identity' and the items above raise such questions for me as: What or where is my identity if I have no face or a damaged face; particularly as a woman and that whole history of investing worth in beauty? If we give away our true motivations through our faces, why do most of us miss most of the clues and get into so much trouble with each other? Are my expressions me? Do I control them? Or are they biology and evolution?

In addition, faces are also used for 'identification' as in 'I identify with this other person because they seem to be like me' or 'there but for the grace of God go I'. So in terms of the February 2009 bushfire coverage there is an astonishing array of photography, much of it Destruction Beautiful, and much of it tugging at our emotions by displaying faces unmasked, naked, raw. This is a sort of commercialised truth. This collecting and publishing of what seems to be to be private grief and trauma, clearly, is not a neutral activity: there are reasons for printing such photos. They create drama out of emotion. Emotion and drama cue responses in us, including anxiety through identification. To soothe, or further excite ourselves, we buy more papers and more commercials (through tuning into TV news)...when and why did such graphic, extensive and personal coverage of disaster, funerals and accidents become news?

It seems likely that in these aroused states people become more open or susceptible to other actions or forms of persuasion. For instance, a political agenda has been attached to this tradegy, that is Kevin Rudd's Annual National Day of Mourning, these events appear to be being moulded into 'Our Australian identity'. Maybe the thinking is something like this, 'If bushfire is a way of life in Australia...even back into Indigenous burning practices...and, after the disaster, 'we' show our 'true colours', our 'unique' Australian 'values', through our compassionate response, then QED it must be part of who 'we' are as a nation. Thus, if an overseas early 2oth century military disaster can be converted into a location for national identity, why not this which happened in our backyard?'

Anyway, I like to pay attention to the 'coincidence' of these materials coming into my attention and I hope that something will emerge from this, maybe family photos and holiday films and the truths and lies that they depict? Maybe it would be very cool to learn how to use Second Life, build a family home, create a family and run the films and slideshows there? I've got no idea how long that might take...anyway onto the journey.

Week 2: Inkscape

After a very brief introduction to Inkscape and its complex language, here are some results:

(1) Blues1 (ABOVE RIGHT): Using the calligraphic tool to create ribbons that I can change the colour of the inside, stroke (ie the outline of the ribbon) and turn into solid shapes, create multiple layers and gradients and fill effects. I decided to use only blue, partly because I find it calming - and learning software is contraindicated for my calmness - and to experiment with a very limited palette.

(2) Sunshine (ABOVE LEFT): Using the Text tool to enter text, which can be formatted, stretched, contracted and made to flow into shapes or around curves and spirals. In this case it has been turned from an Object into a Path and the Node tool clicked. Individual and multiple nodes can be selected and stretched, moved and overlapped for interesting effects. If I had multiple objects and turned each into a Path I could use further items from the Path menu to cut out bits of shapes. In this case the text I used was SUNSHINE, which I then proceeded to completely obliterate.

(3) Stairway (BELOW RIGHT): Using the 3D Boxes tool, Node tool to stretch and alter the shape, Group to group several boxes and Clone to Replicate groups and I also changed opacity to get a translucent effect. All three of these images have been Exported to Bitmap, but this one does not seem to save quite as the drawing file did?!