Chris German's Experimental Experience

This blog will consist the experimental work created by Chris German. As well as inspiring experimental videos and movies from across the web.

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Into the Light

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Swordfish is a very twisted movie. The ending will leave you with one message, that is the art of distraction. This movie is very solid, the story, acting, directing is all excellent. I would suggest for anyone to watch this movie if they havent already.

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Readings for 3/21

In the article "The Poetics of Augmented Space," by Lev Manovich, he defines "augmented space". He explains how augmented space is the physical space overlaid by a layer of multimedia information. This information has the ability to change and be tailored to certain users. Manovich wants to focus on the experience of the human subject when engaged in a augmented space. He then talks about the types of technological applications the extract data from our physical world. Some examples are video surveillance, cell space, and electronic displays. He believes that these three applications very much belong together to transfer data from our physical world. The overlapping of augmented and physical space allows that data to be monitored. in shorter terms, augmented space is monitored space. Manovich goes into detail about monitored spaces within our parallel worlds of physical and augmented. Architecture is another way to practice this augmented space. Manovich believes architects and artist must collaborate on creating smarter buildings. He thinks continuous information show appear on the buildings.  

In the writings by Liz Kotz, she defines the term projection as something that indicates displacement, dislocation, and transfer. She explains that at the core of a projection, it is a form of geometric properties of light rays. 2D picture planes and 3D space is combined into an immersive environment. A technique of projection is intertwining space with an image and subject. Another technique is using more than one projector, that breaks the norm of the cinematic one screen projection. Kotz makes a very interesting statement when she compares large-scale photography and video projections, saying they are ultimately high-tech paintings. They both incorporate cultural aspirations of paintings and the appeal of Hollywood, which allows projection to be such a popular medium in contemporary artist. Kotz states that video can be used more than just a tool to remake cinema, but video allows the projection to become a medium in itself. She then goes on about how video might not be a medium at all, but merely a structure for the form and content. Kotz ends on talking about the piece Olympiad, and the effects of the feedback of the signal. The transformation of information will disrupt from time to time.

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Bill Viola: Ocean Without A Shore

This piece shows a strong sense of transformation. There are many ways to interoperate the piece. Bill Viola's use of black and white transforming into a color shows a lot of meaning. The difference between analog and digital could be one perspective, as well as life and death. I enjoyed how the image was very pixelated but transformed into a full HD video. The threshold that the person crosses in the video is visually pleasing. The water adds a layer to help with the transforming image. "Ocean without a shore" gives me a feeling of a timeline of a life changing event in someone's life. Most importantly the idea rebirth in one's life. This piece was very exciting to see. Seeing this piece made me very interesting in checking out more of Bill Viola's work.

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Stockhausen, Karlheinz – Mixtur – for 5 orchestral groups, 4 sinusoid generators and 4 ring modulators - PART 33

The sound is very chaotic. I got the feeling of an elephant running around a kitchen full of pots and pans. There is a slight sound of horns playing during the piece, which i enjoyed. This sound should be in a nightmare dream sequence in a cartoon. I get the felling of someone being chased by a monster down a long dark hallway. Most of the sounds a very abstract which what I think gives it the dream like feeling. I had a feeling which made me nervous when the music was playing. I enjoyed the feelings of me being hurried and my thoughts being rushed.

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This short film is visually amazing. The collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney produced a piece of art that took half a century to complete. Their video Destino has a very pleasing story of a beautiful woman. The animations are those like Disney's and the setting is based off of Dali's work. The video is truly a beautiful piece of art. 

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Exercise 2 for Experimental video.

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William Wegman- "The Stomach Song"

This short video shows the simplicity of performance. Wegman is a well known experimental artist, I am always interested in the meanings behind his works of art. He has created a style of art of recording yourself performing infront of a camera. What now is a lot of what the videos are on the web.

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Krauss & Wagner Readings 2/22

The focus of Rosalind Krauss' writings suggest that we think in a phycological state rather than a physical state when referring to video. More fine art focuses on the physical object and the particular form of the material used on the object. Video is much different because it has the capability to record a moment and transmit that information at the same time. This causes instant feedback for the viewer. Krauss explains how the physical medium of video are the opening and closing parenthesis of the human performing. There was a piece called "Boomerang" that had such a strong effect on feedback and how is collides with the present. The piece had a woman speak into a microphone, and she would get a delayed response of what she just said. The past became part of the present causing a "collapsing present" effect. It was hard for the woman to concentrate after a while because of the confusion of hearing what she just said to what she was thinking of saying next.

Lynda Benglis' piece called "Now" was another great example of the past interfering with the present. There was the camera, the human, and a monitor recording what the subject was saying. The feedback was a mirror like effect, causing all past recordings to become part of the present. Krauss goes on the explain the difference between Reflection and Reflexiveness. She says reflection is trying to achieve external symmetry, while reflexiveness is trying to achieve radical asymmetry from within. 

Wagner touches on many of the same subjects as Krauss. One line of Wagner's writings which I feel is very important to acknowledge is that art needs a witness. In the 18th century, a Frenchman coined the term "critique." A witness is someone who sees and knows firsthand what they are viewing. In one piece called "Centers", a man points his index finger at the audience for 22 minutes. This starts to create an unsettling feeling as the audience. Vito Acconci, the creator of Centers, plays a lot with including an audience in his work. He has experimented with taking pictures of a crowd as he walks out to the audience. He places mirrors behind him and stares at the audience, one by one, creating a feeling where most people couldn't look at him anymore. Vito Acconci has experimented a lot with connecting with the crowd during a performance. A lot of what these writings touch upon is this paradoxical mirroring of the image and the audience. Most of the examples talked about in these two writings are the same artist, who all experimented with the phycological effects video can have on an audience. 

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In this video, the symmetrical composition is very attractive to the eye. Though it is an overused technique to mirror a video image, people still tend to succeed at this. This is technique is truly experimental because you do not know what your end piece will look like while your in the production stage. I am fascinated by that, and I tend to explore doing more post production experimental editing to manipulate my original image. This is an inspiring piece to experiment with symmetrical psychedelic design within my video art.   

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Laura Marks Reading 2/15

I always knew there was a difference between the analog and digital realm of video. In Laura Mark's essays, she explains the true detail and technical differences and similarities of the two mediums. She starts off by saying, "I follow the common definition of an analog medium as one that creates an indexical representation of reality." This pretty much means that analog captures a certain wavelength of corresponding electrons onto a tape. A way artist explore the boundaries of analog video is interfering with the electronic signal the camera captures. Common example of this would be the paradoxical experiment of video feedback. This is when you film a television, and the image on the television is the image of the camera. You are filming the same electronic wavelengths over and over again, which disrupts the signal, creating a random effect. "A digital medium, by contrast, is one that translates reality into a series of 1s and 0s", said Laura Marks. I am very familiar with these differences of digital and analog video.

Something I never noticed, but plays a big role in the deference's between the two mediums is the mechanics of editing. Analog editing, is called linear editing, meaning you must edit in a linear fashion of 1 plus 1 plus 1. Digital editing allows you to go back to any point of the sequence and manipulate a certain frame, without affecting any other part. Digital editing consist of changing a series of 1s and 0s. Because analog video is starting to become obsolete, due to the quick technological advancements, you can still find traces of analog life within digital video. Marks explains that students who have just started learning video production in an all digital realm tends to experiment with the analog video very much. She also explains that performance video, a common and popular way of filming in the 70's, is being used by artist with a digital camera. In the 70's, performance video was usually unedited and done in a single shot. Artist using digital video have been revisiting this technique throughout the years.

While analog video always had mechanical malfunctions, so does digital. Analog tape coud easily be disrupted but the loss of magnetic decay on the tape itself. Digital video is disrupted when an image is being rendered and the computer forgets certain pixels. This term is a called lossy compression.  When a machine is disrupted and errors occur, the machine generates a randomness to fill in the errors. An example  is the digital confusion between translating the image into 1s and 0s. Sometimes the computer comes up with a maybe, meaning neither 1 or 0 is generated.

There is a lot of techinical stuff I learned in this reading. The section on quantum physics was hard to understand but still got through to me. It makes sense that the tiniest electron plays such a big role in understanding reality. Analog video is a real, meaning what we see is what is there. There is a path of electrons you can follow from the inmage to the camera. The problem with digital is you cannot trace this path from image to camera. This sparks questions of wether digital video is a feedback system of reality. Because there is steps in digital where the image is literally deconstructed, is digital video the way to perceive our reality?

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