So, I am returning to the blog. I know I expressed that I wanted to continue all along, but blogging is time-consuming and involved at times. If I can't do it right, I don't like to do it. I have continued with art, especially painting. However, I have had a lot going on so sometimes I think it is better to keep making the art and living life for real than writing about it on the internet. Or maybe I have it backwards and this is or will be real life in time... To connect to the last post that I left, The Room is a timely topic. I just got back from winter break and over that break I had the opportunity to meet Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero (one of the other actors from the picture) at a viewing of the film. One of the best nights of my life. Interactive audience with footballs, screaming and throwing plastic spoons...
It is sometimes really helpful for me to think about progress in steps or separate phases. That way I keep moving and focus on one thing at a time, but when I look back I see that I have accomplished more than I am aware of even after I started thinking about my video in a final phase. Once it got to a certain degree of finish I started thinking of things in terms of finishing touches on a minor scale, but in some ways I have been doing more work or at least more intensive alteration since I have entered this stage. There are always a few more things that I'd like to tweak and play around with. I hope that feeling serves the project well, but I also I hope I do reach a state where I can feel satisfied with the product to feel like the video has reached my original or revised set of goals and encapsulates the message that I want viewers to receive. I have been working to swap out and trim down some of the current scene choices to make the video a bit tighter, more direct, and more effective.
The result of changing, trimming,and adding footage, not to mention credits and titles, has put me very near 10 minutes. I think that means I still have a good minute and a half by which to reduce my video so that I safely fit within the confines of the ten minute viewing timeslot with a brief introduction and maybe a question or two, barring technical difficulties. I hope to avoid technical difficulties by starting to think about putting my project on dvd middle to late next week when I still have time to work out kinks in the final stages of development. This week I have done a lot of tedious fiddling with minor parts to get them right, find a medium between abrupt and lengthy transitions, add some subtle filters for emphasis and some aesthetic purpose(rather than unnecessary dazzle), and try to consider solutions for some of the criticism I have received. So far, these general issues seem to be getting resolved better than I anticipated.
My next concern is music. I want to keep the strongest portions of the video intact without detracting with music, but I think it will also help make some of the less effective transitions work, and generally help hold the video together. I am a bit apprehensive because I don't want to disrupt the current tone of the film or overemphasize it too much, just compliment it. I have been dabbling with Garageband and I have started recording material for background sound, but I am not far enough along to say how much it will help. I definitely think music is important to the communication of a vision if applied more judiciously than arbitrarily. One of my concerns is vocal use. I think that is the most effective and also the most dangerous part of adding music. I don't want to steal anything from dialogue, but some parts may not make sense to have solely instrumental music. Both can be powerful if used well. I have also been trying to find the right angle on my working title. Here are some of my considerations:
Un/Familiar Voyage Reverse Shock: An Uncanny Journey Raw Shock: A Story of Return Raw Shock: A Study in Cultural Adaptation
I think that the title should be open to interpretation to make the viewer wonder, but also be applicable enough to suggest that some kind of analysis is taking place.
I don't know where to begin discussing The Radicant because it takes a great deal of time to read, for me. This is not because I find it too difficult to understand or can't relate to it, but quite the opposite. I find it dense and thought-provoking. There are so many concepts contained within that I can only take in bits at a time as my head starts reeling from all the possibilities and thoughts that are relevant to my mind and my situation. I will attempt because of this truth, to limit myself and challenge myself to find and highlight only those things that I find most important and the most recurring concepts in my own mind. To start off, I find the term radicant as defined by Bourriaud to be very well-stated and aptly described. I think that the progression of the internet and technology along the current path is very much like a system of roots that spreads out and connects wherever possible. I will also say that this a very large concept when I think about what that means to the lives of us here, and now experiencing these changes and networks. It can be scary and exciting simultaneously, perhaps with a bit of beauty thrown in. When described in that way, I might start to think that new media and internet possibilities have a achieved a level of sublime, though I am not sure that is accurate to say. I think that Bourriaud's raising of the issue of video is very interesting. He has a good basis for predictions about future trends from the unique kinds of statistics he picks up about particular video content and shifts from completely original concepts to the increasing trend of borrowing, remixing, or creating any type of mash-up that has been becoming increasingly simple and more prevalent. There is a valid point here when he speaks about not a decrease in creativity, rather a different emphasis on speed and a different type of creativity to create new things from preexisting or borrowed elements. From there, the possibilities become more spread out as he discusses how much more video use and uploading exists now because of Youtube and all the similar video platforms. It is exciting, though I think also daunting and a bit frightening to consider that, indeed in a short time there may be little of our lives that goes undocumented by video or does not become digitized, transformed, and edited for display in a variety of possibilities. I have similar mixed feelings about the consideration of measuring greatly different artists and their works in the same place and time regardless of the circumstances of their works' production. The fact that such information as well as cultural, regional, and chronological aspects of oeuvre and identity could be so blurred as to become irrelevant or impossible to ascertain when judging the content of work. Will that eradicate the need for criticism, comparison, and evaluation all together? If there are no differences of creation that can be depended upon, will there be differences in result or will art just become more similar as all the divergent ideas and concepts become melded into the web 2.0 world? It is appealing to think of such freedom from stereotypes and unfair judgement or no judgement at all, but then what becomes of art? Will it continue to have value and purpose or just become a mass of indistinguishable content that is too difficult to measure or understand? If the things that we are experiencing now and witnessing the changes of are all part of the Web 2.0, what will a Web 3.0 do to change the way we disburse and collect information. I don't think art can ever be the same in times that are so quickly changing just like The Radicant explores artists' new approaches to investigating time, history, post colonialism and other themes. Bourriaud's suspicion that the next wave of art after post modernism will not be a group of concepts and trends that spread globally, rather ideas that will start off as global "from scratch." If this is true, where does that leave criticism and the art history that discusses and classifies trends once they have happened? Will it, too, have to speed up and become global to develop simultaneously with such a movement, or would it fall behind and be done away with in the process of streamlining to only necessity and removing anything that seems obsolete? It becomes evermore unreliable and perhaps futile to speculate as technology changes and updates the world so rapidly.
Laurie Anderson: On Performance provides a revealing look into the artists thoughts and ideas even more than it explores her particular works. Laurie Anderson is an interesting artist because she crosses into so many areas with her artwork. She has taken performance art and technology to new levels and even made her way into pop music and inventing with tools for her violins and other compositions. Some of her concepts are more interesting, but what is most important is the way she keeps developing and changing herself with the times. It is remarkable that she can keep going and sustain some of her methods and concepts so consistently and is not afraid to create a body of work and then change direction or back off from a particular idea when it is no longer foremost in her mind. I find her personality and thoughts to be most interesting and I find similarities in some of her perspectives with some of my own thoughts on the issues. I found her fascination with Van Gogh and the need to compare artists to him whether there existed a direct parallel or not to be a humorous, but understandable occurrence. I think we all run into something that is so relevant to us that we fixate on it to the point that it bothers others. I also understand her desire to incorporate her daily experiences into her life since that is one of the directional influences on my current video project. I also see a parallel in the wish to explore the voices each person adopts in each context that they find themselves in. This sort of interest is one of the reasons why I am attracted to the idea of combining daily happenings and scripted events with the sort of personal interview to show the different sides of characters. My ideas also tie into the way Anderson chooses to view her work as a sort of discourse with the viewer, I value that sort of perspective on the relationship between artist and viewer as well. I do hope that my project will open up ideas and concepts to my viewers in the same fashion. I think that artwork is more valuable to both parties when the works are capable of opening such an exchange of ideas. Her discussion of documentation of her work was quite provocative and reminded me of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I often have conflicting concerns about documenting my own work and it is easy to see that the exact occurrence of the performance event, or the "aura" of an original work for Benjamin, cannot be summarized or substituted in any way. There are certain works, especially in crossover and performance art that just cannot have a surrogate or faithful preservation and it begs the question, "should we even try to preserve something that is inadequate?" I think Laurie is right in classifying our culture as overly fast and I feel there needs to be those individuals willing to take the time to slow people down and scare people to thinking about what they take for granted. Such a message is needed far more frequently than it is received. The last point of interest for me in Anderson's perspective was that of the love-hate relationship that she has with technology. I often feel some of the same frustrations and elations that she also gets from technological advancement. People do use language as a defense and a crutch to help or protect them from the things they find uncomfortable, but I find this unacceptable and unhealthy because there are some times when one really needs to experience something uncomfortable for a change. If you only had comfort all the time, you would cease to know what it is. Discomfort is necessary to know comfort by comparison. I also agree that people have different styles of communication just like voices depending on context. I personally hate talking on the phone and always have had this sort of aversion because it makes people act differently and makes them feel like it is okay to be less polite or formal and to say things that they ordinarily wouldn't. Anderson spoke about this more in terms of the computer and how e-mail changes conceptions of communications to encourage the feeling of no responsibility for increased use of profanity and a reduction of flexibility through fixed comments and policies. I think this is a very perceptive observation. I notice more personal frustration with people's tendencies to be less formal, clear, or grammatically correct than is necessary and at the same time they are reducing their actual social interactions by substituting with computer chat or other networking made possible by the internet. IHRTLUHC Jordan Severson
