AEROSE ART

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Final project: ‘Til Death Do We Art’

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Self Critique

This final project was so much fun! I was happy to get the opportunity to continue with some of the ideas and themes I had brewing from the last stop motion animated video I made. As far as the actual process of this project, my time management absolutely could’ve been better organized, in order to give more time for experimentation and editing and the slow technological saving and exporting factors. I feel content with the final product, really enjoyed matching the sounds to the storyline, though would’ve liked to add some more layers to that aspect of things if I had organized my time better. In the future I intend to play around with more film techniques and camera angles in order to maximize the film aspect to these claymation films. Someday I hope to make a full length one with a whole team! So much fun!

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Artist Statement

This final project is titled, ‘Til Death Do We Art’, and is a 4 part stop-motion video about the trials and tribulations of the creative process and the act of walking the path of being an artist. In the first chapter, our character is struggling to step up over massive stairs, until a spray can comes along and allows her to step up easily to a new level. In the second chapter our character finds herself among old potatoes, so old and forgotten that they have grown roots and eyes. This is a metaphor for how inspiration and creativity can often continue to grow and develop even while being ignored. The title, ‘Tot Meditation’ is a nod to the potatoes and the ‘beginners mind’ in zazen, meditation and being a fresh minded artist. The 3rd chapter is an exploration of being ‘too close to ones work’ and how tunneled the vision can become when all you see is what is closest to you, instead of the broader picture. Lastly, the final chapter is when the character receives a space to paint herself, the title is a reference to Virginia Woolfe’s seminal book, ‘A Room of Ones Own’. This short film is a second part to my las stop motion project, ‘A Message’, and is a continuation of some of the themes of artistic production and ‘dispelling negativity with creative activity’. 

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Outtakes and project process for the final project

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Exercise 2: Mirror’s Edge

The movement from the 1st person perspective as the female character, Faith, of this video game is sporadic, jumpy, and gives the player feelings of displaced equilibrium, falling and crashing, as she par cour’s around urban rooftops and stairwells. The obstacles she encounters must be literally overcome in order to move through the game, by kicking down doors, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, scaling buildings via rope and ladder, and knocking down assailants. The movement is very rapid and awkward, like holding a camera and running around with it. Because of this, the player feels her movements as she makes them, sort of viscerally.

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Exercise: Disneyland

Subject: Disney-inspired/themed, Disney films (animated and live-action)

Form: Bright colors, vibrant and illustrative sets, costumes that bring feelings of playfulness, child-like wonder and superficiality blended with realistic elements.

Content: Amusement park/rides, hotels, cafes, shops and actors designed to make the attendee feel like they are in a Disney movie and setting

Context: Southern California, L.A., USA. It’s located in Anaheim, CA, which is a sprawling suburb full of middle-to-upper class (predominately white) residents. The land of film and Hollywood and superficiality and glamour and shiny consumerism.

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'Usually the machine just paints people as blobs of flesh with tendrils and limbs randomly growing out—I think it’s really surreal. I wonder if that’s how machines see us,'

Robbie Barrat quoted in Rahel Aima’s Draw Me Like One of Your French AI-generated Nudes

AI-generated imagery is super fascinating, especially these new breeds of non-existing humans that are generated by machines (see: https://futurism.com/these-people-never-existed-they-were-made-by-an-ai/) and Barrat’s nudes, in the contrast between programming of these algorithms. I enjoyed the point he brought up (the artist not author), that if the machines were left to their own devices perhaps they would make agendered aracial versions of humanity. The concept of visualizing how technology views us (its makers) is super fun to process as well--makes me think of how humans visualize God or the universe from our tiny consciousness and perspective.

How does all of this technological upgrading of humans’ depictions of themselves (photoshop, image filters, ai-generated portraits) affect our grasp of ‘reality’?

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As Rafman reflects, 'while there is a “‘report a concern’ on the bottom of every single image, how can I demonstrate my concern for humanity within Google’s street photography?' The space in which to have this discussion, the edges with which to see, for room to reflect, are barely visible now, and constantly shrinking.

Ben Valentine, On The Edge of Google

This article and the artists highlighted within it gave me hope for our increasing surveillance state in digital and non-digital realms. And in answer to artist Jon Rafmann’s question (that is answering through his work as well), by creating art that defiantly emphasizes these humanitarian concerns, we are able to demonstrate that concern, and move people with it.

How does capitalism and newly passed laws defying net-neutrality play a role in the apparent non-censorship of the internet in America? 

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This is what is so admirable — no, not me, dumbass — the overcoming adversity stuff. The staring failure in the face and shoving your middle finger back at it. The people who don’t give a fuck about adversity or failure or embarrassing themselves or shitting the bed a few times. The people who just laugh and then do it anyway. Because they know it’s right. They know it’s more important than them and their own feelings and their own pride and their own needs. They say “Fuck it,” not to everything in life, but rather they say “Fuck it” to everything unimportant in life. They reserve their fucks for what truly fucking matters. Friends. Family. Purpose. Burritos. And an occasional lawsuit or two. And because of that, because they reserve their fucks for only the big things, the important things, people give a fuck about them in return.

Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck

This article hits home on so many (fucking) levels to me. One of my mantras (if you will) is ‘Zero fucks given’, which I generally notice myself using in times of joy and unabashed liberation where I chose to take a risk of being (perceived as) a fool, bitch, debaucherous vixen, dare devil or any other number of situations where not caring is essential to achieving new heights of ecstatic glory. Also, as hard as it is, our world is totally fucked and often I find myself slipping into sheer fear and depression about all that I cannot change or waver to straight up nihilism and indifference--the balance of not giving all my allocated fucks away to capitalist imbeciles ruling the world is essential to my creative production. I literally have to give less fucks about some things in order to actually make anything worthwhile, physically and emotionally, for myself and others. 

How are ways that you (whoever’s reading this) give zero fucks, and what are the rewards and consequences of making such non-actions?

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Self-critique

This project was fun and interesting, as it brought to my awareness many sounds that I take for granted that transpire around me everyday. Assembling them into an abstracted narrative of my day was a unique challenge, as my inclination was to make them palatable to ears and more musical, which was not the goal of the project, so I found myself at odds with my instinct to manipulate sounds into the way that my ear actually hears them. I definitely found the 2-3 minute limit challenging, and the overall design of the collage, as I felt that the final project only barely scratched the surface of my concept and could’ve been more direct in its execution. In the future I would like to continue exploring sounds and time in art and intend to capture more isolated daily tasks/activities such as art creation (spray painting a large wall), brushing my teeth or getting ready, and one shift at work. This project was more of a taste of these ideas and I look forward to future projects where I can hone in more specifically to extrapolate them.

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Artist Statement

This sound collage is a montage of sounds that I encounter on a daily basis in my work-life, family life and private life. This project is also an exploration into the ways that sound can go into the mind, ways that songs can be bent and reversed and altered to convey thought processes, as well as build memory and emotion. Various sounds have connotations and associations when received, depending on the context they are obtained in. This exploration into sound works to enhance these contextual sound relationships to form a transcendental experience that mimics a psychedelic one, where time slows and speeds according to how fast or slow the mind registers the sound around it. 

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Project 4: Sound Collage

A Day In The Life of Aerose

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Project Ideation: Sound Collage

For this project on sound, I want to explore the sounds around me and collage them and alter them to form a cacophony of sound that I swim through everyday. I want to experiment with editing and warping some of the sounds to abstract them, to tell a story of a day in my life, the sounds that occupy my mind and outside of myself. Day in The Life by the Beatles was one of the first electronic-esque songs I ever heard and enjoyed (excluding Pink Floyd), when I was 10-11 years old. The abstraction of sounds and voices overlaying each other was possibly my first psychedelic experience, and opened my mind to what could be considered music. So I aim to complete my own Day In The Life, taking sounds from around me and within me to explore the line between my own thoughts/mental soundtrack and the soundtrack of living that constantly goes on around me. 

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Time has been absolutely embedded in nature, in beautiful ways

Author J. Griffith, interviewed in RadioLab’s podcast ‘Time’

This podcast covered so many fascinating aspects of time. The quote I chose was from an author who specializes on how most of the world throughout history has kept time--through birds (the Caluli people of New Guinea teaching their children to keep track of points of the day through different birdcalls), scents (clocks that let out different herbs and spices at different hour intervals) and flowers (morning glories during the day and different flowers opening throughout the year--time based on color). 

How could we western 21st century people integrate other time recording methods in our lives, amidst the minute second/minute/hour model? How could these other methods work compatibly with our constantly consistent phone clocks and communally recognized time?

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Léon Theremin Inside Out

Listen to Léon Theremin Inside Out by AEROSE #np on #SoundCloud

Trippy theremin

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Ominous Birdsong

Listen to Ominous Birdsong by AEROSE #np on #SoundCloud

Second exercise in warping sound with effects