Craft Work Introduction
Woah, what a great brief! I’m already so excited to begin. Before I get ahead of myself let me recap. As the title implies, this brief is about craft and process, about making, and about making well. It’s about producing something with care and precision, it’s about the idea but also about the beautiful end product. But making something well-crafted doesn’t have to be necessarily product design, as I originally thought. I can be print, typography, web based or filmic. In fact, in light of the latest project I did, which was making a physical clock, I’d like to steer away from thinking about the outcome in terms of its physical properties for now. I want to try to push myself to express my concept in different forms. At the end of this year I’d like to be able to present clever ideas concretised in a range of different formats, given validity by the strength of their concept rather than driven by their outcome. In particular, I’d like to work in the gaps between different mediums, trying to blur those boundaries. I also want to continue being inspired by things outside of the art & design world, because that’s how my work has the potential to be relevant and hence have an impact. I want to start a conversation between design and scientific data, between art, engineering and philosophy.
I’d quite like to work with moving image again; I haven’t done so in a while. But not in a traditional sense. Not with actors and props and a typical storyline. If this is the case, it will all be as an add-on, to further the idea I'm trying to get across. I’d like to do something time-based and multidisciplinary. Given my dissertation and all the work I’ve done on sound and avant-garde cinema, I’d like to incorporate that somehow in my practice. I already know it won’t be a commercial piece. But it will be something that will make people pause and think: huh... I hadn’t thought of that. Or at least that’s the goal. I was reading somewhere for my dissertation that a true experimentalist isn’t trying to change the work, but only introduce a shift of perception into an individual viewer. I agree with that. A piece of work is a conversation in that sense, a suggestion made by an artist, a question asked or a simple shared statement. Then it’s up to the viewer to pick up on it or not, depending on their context. Sometimes the viewer and maker are in sync, like to pendulums, in which case a beautiful connection can be born. At other times, they are just to far apart in their mind-spaces. Just a question of bad timing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIYV3BLcno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60P6DJLjXVU&t=347s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHn72XVbvu0&t=50s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hJn-nkKSA&t=67s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3Op9zUEig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_jzsjQ5ygs
Anyhow, here are some initial inspirations. I notice how all of these have very specific camerawork techniques. Maybe I will have to develop one of my own. I definitely know I want to do something interesting with the soundtrack though. I’m just afraid that I’m already thinking too much about the format and outcome rather than starting from an initial concept that I want to put across, which will put into perspective all the making choices I have.
I know i’d like to use data and information collected from the environment. I’ve been thinking of recording lights out of my window, in the windows across of the road, and watching them flicker. I don’t know why yet, but it fascinates me. The on and offs of the lights are a sequence, a code, like morse, or just electronic signals of 1s and 0s. What could i use that for?
I also read something today that related to an idea I was really fascinated by as a child. It is the psychological phenomenon called event boundary effect, and it happens to us when we move from an environment to an other, for example by walking through a door. In these situations, it often happens that we forget what we are looking for or what we are doing. This is because the mind tends to compartmentalise our memories and thoughts, and with changing boundaries it files them away in a “container”. I’m not sure how this relates to balance yet. The only link i can think of at the moment is the balance between past and future, but it might be a weak one, however open to interpretation it is. In any case, I’ve always been interested in this idea of memory, always having had a horrible mnemonic abilities myself. Sometimes I feel like I’m a different person remembering things that other people have told me i did. For all i know, I’ve been sitting writing this blog post since I’ve been born. (ok maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get my point).
Anyway, I want to make a film. I’ve been influenced by the structuralist filmmakers I’ve been reading about. They make films that are self aware, that don’t hide their medium, they embrace it and deconstruct it, trying to get to the essence of narrative and storytelling. That’s what i want to do. I want to tell a story in a thousand different ways and manipulate the audience. Create an illusion and shatter it, like the structuralists. I want to embrace the science of light and sound, of process and material. I want to embrace the harmony, the beauty and the magic of the art form. But how?
There is always this idea of balance that bugs me. Maybe I’m just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole (that’s what people say right?). Maybe i just need to break it down and start from there. What is balance? A contrast, a conflict. But also a harmony. Complementary things, different but bound together. A relationship. Or two equal things, in weight on a scale. Things that are worth the exact same. A balance is also when you have a bit of two things, without indulging in one too much. A balanced diet. It is also a state of tension. Of alertness, a moment to capture. A heightened moment of dramatic tension. It is perfection, but it is fleeting. Balance is a fleeting moment of beauty. It speaks to the soul yet it is tragic in its rarity. Alain de Botton wrote in my favourite book that it is almost impossible to find something beautiful without finding it moving, and a little sad. Thats because, in that moment, we realise how rare it is. That’s a balance too. Of happiness and sadness, of beauty and tragedy. There is not one without the other, like light and dark. There is no beauty if there is no ugly. Yin and yang. A balance is also necessity therefore, to have one to have the other. It’s a state of desperate need for one’s opposite to exist.
I like the idea of balancing light and dark. Sound and silence. I wonder if i could create that as a mathematical relationship on screen. I like mathematical systems, especially in relation to ineffable human qualities and things. I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Maybe it’s because it gives everything a sort of perspective, it provides a sense of relief in knowing that things are out of your control. If things are controlled by a mathematical randomness, you are invincible, you can’t go wrong. There’s no point in worrying, it’s not gonna change. The optimist and the pessimist are both going to live the same life.