Emily Hammack

[mountainorbit-blog]

Project #4 Excercise

[mokenjirip]

My vote is unravel. I think it would be fun and interesting to watch. Although, I wouldn’t mind watching you get soaked :).

[trudylovato-blog]

[mysticdefendordream]

You made this task interesting and FUN 

[mokenjirip]

Well I’ll… be. Sock folding art.

[ecastelart]

This is awesome! I love how you make a chore into art! I also like that you chose to only show your arms which brings more attention to the pairing and music! Very creative!

[spiderscissors-blog]

Project #4

For this performance, I wanted to get across the idea of a struggle. Although this particular kind of struggle is created and suffered by the wearer of the shoes, it is not an easy feat. It is a sort of metaphor for creating your own problems and then trying to live with them as they continuously make it harder to move forward. There is an amount of determination it takes to continue a walk like this through grass with heels on but, if you had just worn flats there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. I decided to take the 1 minute video and speed it up so that I could play it backward too. If I had done this performance in real life I would have worn a fancy dress to go with the sparkly heels. I would have walked forward for a specific length and then walked backward. The walking backward is supposed to symbolize a backtrack from the struggle back to the beginning so that changes can be made in order for the struggle to be lessened. 

[spiderscissors-blog]

The Artist is Present Response

This film was very emotionally touching unlike a lot of art documentaries I have seen. The lengths that Marina goes to for her performances are far beyond where many visual artists are willing to go. I have never even tried to fast or tortured my body for my art. Does that make me undedicated? I don’t think so. I think there is no wrong way to dedicate yourself to your art. As long as you pursue it and express it you are an artist.

  The physicality does, however, amplify the messages Marina conveys with her work. The fact that there is physical distress in her performance makes it real how important the message is to her. I love the idea she has of bringing the artist to the same experiences as the audience so that they are all present together. It is clear in the images of the audience that they felt this power. It would have been amazing just to sit in that room and watch.

I used to think performance art was mostly dance and free-form movement but after learning about it I see how inspiring it is. I can also see how it can easily be a misunderstood form of artistic expression. Marina says in the film that she doesn’t want performance art to be alternative any longer. I think there is still some time before performance art can be seen completely for how moving and powerful it can be. It is easy with today’s technology for art to be misinterpreted. I think it is merely important to continue the conversation that has been going on for centuries by asking “what is art?”. To me, what Marina does is without a doubt art in a very pure and raw form.

[spiderscissors-blog]

To collect: me walking around a natural area piling up pinecones or sticks

To struggle: me walking through some grass with high heels on.

To rip: me ripping paper or fabric anything that makes a satisfying noise

[spiderscissors-blog]

Reading Response

I found this text to be really informative. I haven’t really thought about performance as an attainable media for myself. It is interesting that such a large piece of performance history arose as a reaction to the rise of museums influence in the art world.

The reading highlights the birth of artistic movements as they correspond to political environments throughout history. It is important for artists today to realize that the two, art and politics, often develop together in society.

The movements described sound a lot like the festival circuit in the states. All manner of creatives gather to enjoy weekends full of performance, craft, trade, and art in every form. I have never been more surrounded by creative people than at a festival. Music is usually what brings the crowd but the community created in a campground is unlike any other. People often dress in costumes and play their own festival personas for days on end. I have found it is one of my favorite places to be.

My high school art teacher used to say that art is 99% the act and 1% the end product. I think that is similar to how performance artists view the art world.

[ecastelart]

For my video art project I used footage from 3 different time lapse videos of flowers opening and closing that I found on archive.org. I used instrumental music by the Piano Guys and I recorded myself reading a poem I found online. My goal was to use the flowers and their opening and closing process as an interpretation of vanishing and becoming. As the flowers are closed this is the state of vanishing and as the flowers open they are becoming. The poem is about a woman who is escaping reality and leaving her physical body and discovering a new world made of her inner desires and dreams. I felt that this poem and the flowers transformation, which all occur in one minute, shows how abstract reality really is. Even when we have an empirical sense of reality we immediately question it. I think it is hard for us to understand what is real or believe something is real unless it is our own reality. After completing this project and reading Vanishing and Becoming I have decided that reality is totally subjective.

[trudylovato-blog]

The video was beautiful and fit the poem and assignment perfectly.

[spiderscissors-blog]

The idea of using a poem in your audio works very well with this idea. It demonstrates further your point that reality is subjective and you are projecting your reality with your voice so that the viewer can hear and see an idea that you have. It works really well.

[mountainorbit-blog]

For my Project #3, I chose to respond to Gorky’s ‘Kingdom of Shadows’. While reading his impression of B/W silent film, I was reminded of winters during my time in Wisconsin: a stormy winter grey sky blending into a grey earth, monotone and colorless. The first half of my video, I have captured images that had an absence of life. For my main audio track, I used NASA’s electromagnetic sound waves of Saturn’s rings as this was the loneliest, most distant and lifeless sound I could imagine.

From here I focused my theme into ‘becoming’. The B/W image starts to move, first monotone, then burst into color. I sampled parts of a U2 song, looping a musical phrase and layered lyrics on top of it, choosing key lyrics that  I thought would support my response to Gorky…”So many ways of seeing, this is no time, not to be alive”.

[trudylovato-blog]

The video is edited beautifully. The images went well with the music and the concept was cohesive.

[spiderscissors-blog]

I really loved the video footage you used. The swirling colors go really well with the audio. Where did you find those videos??

[mysticdefendordream]

I felt inspired by the reading and the discussions with my fellow classmates.  It got me thinking of the cycles within life such as the phases we go through as we age, cycles of flowers, trees, butterflies, and life and death.  

I recently had a death in my family, and so I was especially drawn to the cycles one experiences throughout life as well as life and death itself.  The idea that while we are here, we experience a sort of vanishing and becoming as we age and become different people in different stages of life, really struck me.  It reminded me that while we are here, experiencing our subjective reality, to become something beautiful and spread that beauty before we vanish into the ether, beyond, heaven, whatever you want to call it.

I fell in love with this portion of the Fantasia 2000 film!  I paired it with a favorite song of mine called, Blessed We Are, by Peia.  My hope is that the film and the song can convey my idea of the cycles within life that destroy and remake us, and becoming/sharing/spreading the love before we vanish.

I tried to be abstract as possible, cutting out parts of the storyline but ultimately feel like some of the events add to the overall idea.  I spent hours editing a 9 minute clip down to about 1.5 minutes.  I hope you enjoy it as mush as I do!  

[trudylovato-blog]

The song does go along with The images in the video. It is clear that you put a lot of work into this.

[spiderscissors-blog]

This is a very beautiful pairing of song and video. I really enjoy the emotion shown in the clip from Fantasia I think it mirrors the mood of the song very well. This was lovely to watch.

[spiderscissors-blog]

If you haven’t watched Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World it is a documentary on Netflix that mentions Marina Abramovic and shows a few works of art that are in our book. Just a suggestion if you like documentaries about art. I learned a few things about the art market.

[spiderscissors-blog]

For this project, I wanted to play with the idea of light as something that can be captured, redistributed, and transformed. The reading talked about light and projection as being one of the first media. I wanted to tell a small story about the way light can bounce and shimmer in the natural world. The narrative I tried to relay was a hand grasping the light from the sky and distributing it onto various surfaces and then putting it back up into the sky. Making the light vanish, become, and vanish again. I struggled with filming as my hands are not super steady. If I could improve anything in this it would be to fix the filming so that it was less jumpy.  The music I chose is from a recording I took of a friend playing the keyboard. I thought that it mirrored the bouncy energy of light and especially glitter. I spent so many hours editing this together and still have a lot to learn but I am somewhat satisfied with the result. I think it has the dreamy quality I was going for. 

[spiderscissors-blog]

Chapter 6 Response

“Always changing, never twice the same”

It doesn’t come naturally to me to think about concepts like duration, tempo, implied and actual time because most of my artwork is two dimensional. When doing the exercise for this unit I tried to keep these concepts in mind. I tried to be mindful of how long each shot stayed on screen and make sure that the shots met the tempo of the song well. I struggled with tempo specifically because the song I chose has a lot of fast strumming and singing in it.

When talking about recorded time I can identify more with the photographer sitting and waiting for the shot to come to him. This is more similar to my artmaking methods. I try not to force the ideas but I spend a lot of hours quietly waiting for them to come to me. If I do not sit and wait sometimes the ideas come in times when I cannot record them and they often get distorted as time goes by and my brain has other things to do.

The description of the sculpture Autopoiesis sounds like a really interesting thing to see and hear in person.

This chapter had many interesting examples of artworks that I find inspiring as I think of my project idea. I hope that I can employ motion and narrative skillfully in my project but it is my first time creating a video from scratch.

[kathleennyoung-blog]

Exercise #3- Rise of the Legend X The Clash

There were so many ideas that came to mind but I didn’t take too long on this to focus on Project #3 the most. Simple but kind of made the scene a little less intense and more fun. With the music added it reminded me of a Kill Bill feel, too. I had a couple other more intense options, but again wanted to keep it light hearted! Being a film major I could go on and on making these fun videos, but I know the point of this exercise was to simply show that I could make a video in premiere, edit, and export. I cut the clip somewhat and had to adjust the audio so it fit better for the end of the scene to stop with a break in music. 

[mysticdefendordream]

Nice!  I really enjoyed the combination of the scene with the music!  It felt fun and less intense.  Also, it reminded me of childhood sword battles I had with siblings, without the blood of course, lol.  I always imagined this intense battle while we played.  Great job!

[spiderscissors-blog]

I really enjoy the combination of fast and slow motion in the film and how the song changes tempo as well. There are some great parallels with the music corresponding to a punch or a sword swing. Really fun to watch!

[trudylovato-blog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrdP6-6N4qw&feature=youtu.be

This is my video for Excercise 3. Due to copyright issues, it won’t play on its own, you have to click the link. It was fun to make and I worked hard so, enjoy!

[spiderscissors-blog]

I can’t get this to play even when clicking the link :/ Would love to appreciate your hard work! Video editing is completely new to me so I understand the struggle.

[kathleennyoung-blog]

Response to Vanishing and Becoming

“My first, and perhaps most important comment is that we are at the very beginning of understanding how projection might work. If as I believe, it is a hugely significant metaphor in the ways we understand our relationships with the world and with each other, then these formal permutations are potentially a great road towards making new ways of seeing.”

From Cubitt’s “Vanishing and Becoming”, the paragraph above hit me as the summary for the main idea of what it all means. There were so many tangents in this piece of writing, but I can see how they all kind of merge together. The discussion about how media types can influence one’s perception of the world by illuminating individual elements was a key point. It is easy for all of us to believe in habitual patterns as being an accurate representation of the world as it is, when in actuality things can be more complex.  Communication is key, but in communication some information is always excluded, and I think one of the most important questions in anything is, “What information is being left out?” It’s how we progress. Cubitt’s discussion of different forms of projection other than the standard rectangular projection on a white wall or an image emanating from a T.V. screen as being an untapped resource was intriguing, and I think the evolution of projection will absolutely influence the way we view our relationship to both the human and non-human world. There are quite a few perspectives to the idea of what it is to have light, projection, color, and how it relates to life, or the illusion of life. I enjoyed how he discusses what is considered “real” and not but that even that way of thinking can still be abstract/different to every person. In addition to that is the spirituality concept. 

Because of this class I have discovered I am not the best at looking at art in an abstract way, but am trying my best to be open minded and think this class also helps with that. 

Side note: A quote that got me thinking (and still has me thinking) is: “The world we see is but a reflection of a reality that escapes its reflections…” Maybe some of my fellow classmates can give me their insight on what they think of that sentence. 

[mysticdefendordream]

Your right, life is more complex than it appears, and the elements of communication that are left out can be so important for a better understanding of each other and the world.  Perhaps as the art form (and humans) evolve we will progress enough to understand each other and the world more efficiently or at least communicate better.  This new media has the potential for this kind of explanation.  Explanations that are more emotive or meaningful.  Your also right, in that everyone has their own version of reality.  Maybe these different versions can, one day, be cohesively constructed so as to allow understanding.  What I think of when I read the quote at the end of your response is the spiritual realm.  With scientist developing theories like multi-verses and such, there could be so many planes of existence that we have yet to understand, see or feel.  I think of hundreds of years ago or even centuries, how our understanding of the world or even our own bodies was different.  What else is out there or within?!!!  

[williamlmoore]

Great discussion!

[spiderscissors-blog]

Building off of your question “what information is left out?” Our eyes only see a section of the light spectrum we know exists here on earth. Many insects and animals can see far beyond in either direction. I am always curious if there are entities that reflect light spectrums that we cannot perceive. If there are, will projection help us find ways of seeing past our physical limitations to help us further understand the world around us? I believe that the more we know about our world the better we will be at communicating with each other. We are all naturally curious and being curious can bring people together when they have nothing else in common. It is exciting because there is still so much unseen potential in this medium.

[spiderscissors-blog]

Response to Projection Vanishing and Becoming

This reading was very dense but brought many ideas to my head. The end of the second paragraph says “..the beginning of art lies in projected light” making me think back to what I know of the earliest cave paintings. When I learned about them in art history my professor talked about how the people who made them would view them with a dancing torchlight that seemed to animate the figures as the light dancing on the surface. As I was thinking about this and reading on I saw that the text talked about the hands of Pechemerle being projected on the rock surface. The reason for both art forms are unknown to this day but we can take what we know of why people make projections (or any artwork) today and infer what they must have meant thousands of years ago. Sadly, this is still just a guess and the mystery intrigues me.

It makes sense to me that light and projection could be the first forms of art because it relates to how our bodies perceive our world in one of the main ways. Our pupil filters light into our eyes like a tiny projection back to the optic nerve. There is a limit to how much, and what type of, light we can process with our brain in one moment. After we see something we can “project” it in our mind hours, days, or months later. Many art forms also try to do these things but never before were they so close to the way that our minds see the world. Like a memory, we create shorts, movies, GIFs that we can replay as many times as we would like. We create new worlds in movies that we could only see in our imaginations before cinema in an attempt to live in another world if only for a few minutes. Children often imagine new worlds without ever having to see them on a screen. I would be curious to know how child’s play has evolved over the decades we have had moving pictures to show them new worlds with.

With new and wonderful technologies there usually comes someone or a group of someones who want to use it to control or influence another group of someones. I think this is a sad affair based on the negative qualities of human nature. I don’t think that VR will be the perfect way to do this because it is another escape method but doesn’t pull us away from reality any more than video games do. However, it could be bad for our society. I don’t think that Americans need any more devices to help them be lazy and avoid living their REAL lives as fully as they could.

I really enjoyed the part of the sentence “, the universe is just as busy projecting light...as we are,”. That idea makes me feel small but simultaneously makes me feel like a part of something grander than I can imagine.

I might have to read this for a third time before finally coming up with a good idea for my project but these are just a few thoughts I had while reading the first two times.

[andrewbissell]

Exercise #3:  Journey Through The Past For this exercise, we were tasked with creating a music video. For the music, I selected a live solo version of the song “Journey Through The Past” by Neil Young, from his album Live at Massey Hall 1971. Inspired by the piece “Projection: Vanishing and Becoming” by Sean Cubitt that we were tasked with reading, for the visuals I decided to find old home video footage on Archive.org. I found three separate 10-15 minute long pieces that I then sorted through, choosing small clips to edit together. Coupling these specific visuals from the past with the melancholic subject matter of the song, that comes through strongly in this version, as well as timing the pacing of my edits to the music I think both re-contextualizes the visuals and accentuates the song.

[mountainorbit-blog]

This was moving!

[spiderscissors-blog]

I really enjoy the way the videos mirror the music so well this is really great editing!