Assignment for March 17, 2011

1. Email me a proposal for your Final Project at my ravijain.org address -- a few paragraphs at most.

Here is what we are thinking for the Final Project:

• A time-based media project that is driven by personal content/experience (doesn’t have to be soul baring)
• A component will be a project statement in which you define time-based media – what it means for you. We’ll look at statements and their importance in the next class.
• Build upon assignments so far, but please push yourself.  Don’t be afraid to “fail” – by that I mean, I’m paying attention to concept and to the fact that you only have three weeks to realize this project, so any short comings that are documented are acceptable.
• No restrictions on length or topic.

Field Trip: ICA Boston

So I decided to go to the Institute of Contemporary Art with Nikia last week. I've been to the MIT art gallery in the past but haven't gotten a chance lately to visit the ICA. There weren't as many things currently on view in the exhibitions as I had last seen it, but nevertheless there were still some interesting pieces. Many of the art installations were abstract and heavily conceptual...thank goodness for the exhibit descriptions! Mark Bradford was one of the featured artists, where most of his work consisted of abstract, oversized paintings with mixed mediums. He uses many bright bold colors and all of his paintings have repeating motifs like grid-like patterns and adding several layers of different mediums. What was interesting was each new layer was dissolved or cut away at certain places to reveal what was underneath it... it was an interesting way of showing "class, race, and gender in American urban society". He also had a video on display where he was wearing MC Hammer-esque pants with a giant tube wrapped around his waist and he was attempting to play basketball. By hindering his own movement he said it represented society's expectations/stereotypes as pressure for weighing people down from what they do...

There were several pieces in the galleries that interested me, including Shepard Fairey's artwork (it was amazing to see the collection of artwork, I just wanted to have them all for my personal space). Another piece that I found interesting was Christian Jankowski's "The Hunt". It was a short video which followed Jankowski over a course of one week where he shopped at a grocery store and only bought/ate the things he shot with a bow and arrow. It's quite humorous but it also made me think of nomadic tribes hunting for food, meshing primitive hunting traditions with current methods of obtaining food, and the male's role as the "hunter".

VanDerBeek Trip

I took a lot of notes while I was at the exhibit. I'm pretty sure I liked more than half of what I saw. I struggled not to over-interpret anything because I hate when people do that to me. I thought some of VanDerBeek's work was nice explorations of texture, like the metal work series and some of his traditional paintings. I wasn't expecting to see traditional media at this show, but I got a Mondrian feel from the wall of paintings on plywood. It also struck me that VanDerBeek was really exploring geometric relationships with circles, orbs, eyes, celestial bodies, etc. I liked most of his collages; I thought they were very Dali. I got an impression of turning people into architecture.

I think the movie showing I caught was "Astral Man". It reminded me a lot of "Dr Who", "The Tomorrow People", and other 60's sci-fi shows and movies. The audio when I first entered the theater was also typical for the genre, odd sorts of underwater-sounding noises, which I think were used in sci-fi at the time to give the feeling of a submarine in space. At this time, the dancers were prone, I think having restless dreams. Then, the dancers stood up and were more active. As the dancers sped up and started interacting with each other, the music changed to a peppy classical violin. I think the movement of the dancers, the music, and the psychedelic backgrounds all interplayed well. The next movie started with some blurry shifting figures and what I think was an audio track from a therapy session talking about an uncomfortable dream. Slowly, the blurry shapes focused into macabre human figures that visually expressed the tension of the voice describing a bad dream.

Unfortunately, several of the projectors in the room with the 360 movies weren't working. Technical/electrical difficulties at MIT. Go figure...
Before reading the description of the project, I sort of saw a historical progress through the movie clip I was watching the most. The entire piece was an attempt to summarize the totality of human history in a multi-movie piece. So, it made sense to me.
The other projection piece, I didn't like as much. I got the idea of "Poemfields" giving a multimedia styling to lines and words of poetry. I like the idea, I didn't like the execution. I didn't think it was visually appealing, and I didn't watch it long.

Wow, this is getting long. I'm going to do a bullet list of the pieces that struck me:

• One of the Dali-esque collages featured a man holding a woman's hand, but her face had come off and was falling. I at first thought this was perhaps about dehumanizing women in romantic pursuits. I looked closer and noticed the man had a watch, and was thus taking her pulse. Now, a statement on the impersonalization of the medical industry.
  
• Variations V - I didn't like the piece, but I like the idea of an audio-reactive environment to play in
• Panels for the Walls of the World
• Audience feedback in ongoing art
  
• Fax machine art!!!!
  
• Nixon & "If no tyrany exists, invent one" - This seems relevant, again.
• "On a treadmill" & a Southeast Asian about to be shot - Makes me think of the 'War on Terror'
• A comment about finding few Communists in Cambodia (which no doubt involved killings during the search) combined with a comment about legalizing abortion made me think a lot about what of many possible messages was being expressed. The hypocrisy of killing some people is bad but some people is okay? That we will always make up justifications for killing another human being if we really want to?
  
• Social Imagestics: Somewhat accurate predictions about Year 2000 culture's use of technology and social media being international and reactive and the resulting lack of privacy. "We will get the future we learn to expect", or, perhaps, are taught to expect.
• Vanderbeekiana: I really liked the still images transitioning into structurally similar but very different content images. My favorite was the nude woman turning onto a landscape with a road and castle, then back into a woman.
• Strobe Ode: Ow! My eyes!
  

Field Trip!

Okay, I did suss this out within 24 hours of my declaration on Thursday, but am only now getting around to posting this.

I think this show at the List sounds good.

I like the List for a number of reasons:
-- small enough space that one doesn't get overwhelmed by the work
-- T accessible
-- I've always had a thing for MIT

So please head over to the show and report your reactions on the class blog.  Doesn't have to be a term paper, just a few paragraphs highlighting your reactions.  I haven't been to the show yet myself, so it's on my schedule to do soon as well.

In honor of the upcoming holiday

We see someone’s face smiling wistfully as they work on something below the level of the camera. After a few moments of that, they stuff a valentine into a red envelope, lick it, and seal it happily. They seem satisfied with their accomplishment.

They get a phone call. Their face brightens even more as they answer. “Hey, you’” we hear. “Nothing important. Yeah, I can chat.” Their smile turns mischievous as they gaze lovingly at the red envelope.

Then, their expression changes into one of surprise, then dejection. “Ok. Bye, then.” They now stare at the red envelope with a combination of sadness and spite. We next see the red envelope thrown into a recycling bin.

Treatment Assignment: Parody

I decided to take a humorous approach to this assignment and write a funny story about Christina Aguilera (what can I say? The poor girl's performance during the Superbowl inspired me)...

So here's the idea/breakdown of the story:

The story takes place in a school similar to a high-school. However, it is a school which specializes in training celebrities and artists on improving their performances. The protagonist of the story is Christina Aguilera, and she’s the “new girl” in school. On the first day of school, she meets the “mean girls” clique which is Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna. The mean girls immediately befriend Christina but are gossiping behind her back and making nasty remarks.

All of this takes a turn when Cher, the music teacher, offers Christina a chance to redeem herself by performing as the lead in a school production of Burlesque. The mean girls decide to stop being “nice” and let their cat claws come out. They tease Christina by constantly mocking her appearance and feeding her “diet granola bars” which actually fattens her up. One day, when the girls are walking down the hall together, Britney drops her pink diary. Christina picks it up accidentally to find out the nasty things the girls have been writing about her which infuriates and motivates Christina to give the best performance of her life in hopes it will gain their respect.

On the day of the performance, the girls have one final confrontation on stage and have a dance-off. Christina in a final attempt to show off her dance skills, begins spinning so fast until she explodes into confetti. The End.

Assignment for February 10, 2011

Yikes! I never posted this assignment (just verbally communicated).

1. Write a treatment for a story that can be realized through motion imagery (video, animation, hybrid) with a duration between 30 and 90 seconds long.

2. Post on the class blog. Please use label "treatment".

Time Sequence Project (#1)

For this project I decided to do a miniature version of a 3-D art installation. It's just a prototype and I envision the actual pieces to be produced life-sized (larger than a human) being. The materials would consist of large vinyl panels and hollow so each piece would be light enough to be moved/shifted.

The theme of this assignment was "transformation" so I was inspired to carry that theme into the execution of the piece as well. So I decided to go for a modular art piece where each of the 8 different triangle components could be moved and shifted around to create a new experience each time it is viewed (theoretically in a large art space).

Alice in the Snow

I was planning on putting the same text captions into my audio slideshow as I'd put in my flickr album. But, when I got the music put in, I decided the captions didn't really fit with the new mood.

I started with fade-to-white transitions, thinking it would match the snow theme, but I didn't like the result about half of the time. The cross-dissolve transitions seem kind of standard, but I liked them much better.

Also, adding the music, I heard places where the tempo or slight changes fit better with one photo or another. So, I did a lot of editing after adding audio to match up images like Alice scratching at the door and the insistent notes of the song.

'Let it Snow' starring Alice

Note: I found working with the transitions in iMovie to be very frustrating. After adding transitions, any time I'd make a change to the length of an image or length of a transition, EVERYTHING around it would change. Annoying.

Assignment for February 3, 2011

Using your 5 to 15 images that you shot/created as an extension of your single composed image that explored the theme of "Transformation", created a sequence.

Think of the examples we looked as inspiration: collage/montage, handmade book, PowerPoint based animated presentation, iMovie based image sequence. These are just a few types -- feel free to mash these up or innovate another means!

Bring your completed piece to view in class.  Do make a post on the class blog with an image (can be screengrab) of your piece, but bring in any media files (video, for example) into class. We will play those locally.

In our next module we will get into outputting and exporting media content, as well as look at options for where to post.

UPDATE: please label this assignment 'sequence'

Assignment for January 27, 2011

1. Continue to explore your interpretation of the theme of transformation by extending your single image to multiple images.  You can take as many as you need to, but you should end up with between 5 and 15 images for your next assignment 'sequence'.

2. Don't post your images on the class blog, but make them accessible in class if we want to review (thumb drive, posted to flickr, etc)

3. Please review forthcoming posts on making books and utilizing photoshop (layer masks).

Time Based - Composition I

I chose to use a cropped wideshot for this composition assignment. I was thinking about how 'transformation' applies to people on a daily basis, and make-up and attire is definitely one of those things.

We shower, we get dressed, and go thru a personal transformation every day. In this particular case, applying primer and eyeliner before going out for an event. I decided to do it symmetrically because I did not want the audience's focus to wander around. I also chose to crop off some of the facial features to really bring in the focus to the eyes as the main subject.

As you may have noticed, one of the eyes (for each person) is finished, while the other is currently in the works of being finished (hence therefore the brush and the eyeliner pen). By taking a photo of unfinished eyes, it shows the transformation process in one photograph.

Assignment for January 20, 2011

1. Compose a single photographic image with the concept/theme of "transformation". Do not alter the photograph by means of photoshop beyond cropping and any color balancing.

2. Post on our class blog in an original post using the label "composition". If you use flickr.com, please post with the tag: "dgm6125winter_composition"