BERLIN: NO FACES
I gathered this footage on a field trip to Berlin. Rather than doing the usual tourist video thing, I opted for a piece that did not reveal any of the characters faces. This tied in nicely with the work I was doing about missing people. Not showing the faces creates a sense of 'tension' in the piece, we automatically try to make sense of people by facial recognition. Like the faceless characters in this piece, it could be said that missing people in some respects have no identity, neither proved living or dead.
Holocaust Memorial
Perhaps it was the cold of the day, or indeed the snow that had fallen, I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I sensed a strange energy around the area of the memorial to the holocaust. The snowy light bouncing off solid geometrical forms, people hiding in ghostly shadows, emerging, then disappearing again. Laughter and games in the place of a thousand sorrows, and we left in peace.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
08/03/2009
Return of Richard Mutt In this piece, I have taken a contemporary slant on Marcel Duchamp's urinal. Video art is anything the artist wants it to be. The artist must have his concept in place to be credible but I will argue that a concept could be assigned to anything. For example: In this piece of contemporary video art (note the words the artist uses, he implies that it is actually a piece of contemporary art already, thus confirming to the spectator that it is indeed art, and not just a toilet being flushed ) the artist uses the toilet as a metaphor for the cycle of life: We flush away our waste, one of two things happen, if we have a septic tank, when it fills, it usually gets emptied more likely than not by a farmer, who then spreads the waste on the land to act as fertilizer. This makes the grass grow, which the cattle then eat, we then eat the cattle and the process begins again. The other way is by a waste treatment plant, the waste is treated then released into rivers etc, the rivers lead to the sea, the seas put moisture into the air which falls as rain. Rain helps the crops to grow, which we then eat, and the process begins again. So there we have a credible? Concept which the artist has used to justify that it is not just a toilet being flushed, he has even referenced another artist. ( I am sure that many more artistic references could be found; Simon Starling, Robert Rauschenberg etc. ), This ultimately begs the question, is the concept more important in contemporary art, than what an actual finished piece is? If the answer to that question is yes, then to be considered a great contemporary artist, all we will need to do, is come up with great concepts, the finished piece itself then will be irrelevant.
Friday, March 6, 2009
06/03/2009
Bernie painting her shanty home
Arranged to meet Mark at 10.30 and was pleasantly surprised when he turned up. It was a slow process saving the files to the external hard drive, so he headed off while they were downloading. He must of forgot about it but I was able to complete the transfer of the files to another mac without any problems. Spent the rest of the day downloading my video work on to DVDs to present to the tutors for the progress reviews. I had some sad news today, my colleague and collaborating artist Mathilde, (on Erasmus exchange from France) has been told that she would more likely than not, be refused continuation of the course into 4Th year, and worse still, she would not be permitted to redo third year. She mentioned something about her English but she speaks it very well, as for her written English, I have read some of her notes and her written English is of a high standard. I don't know the politics involved but I do know that our class is a small one (24 originally, 1 left in first year, Tom passed away, and Amy has gone to sculpture. Jo is in second year but we got Rachel repeating instead, so we are still 3 students short. Mathilde is devastated to say the least, she loves it over here, and especially loves the college, she gets on really well with everyone. I suppose I am biased but we get on really well as collaborating artists, we have some great ideas for future work together. I believe she will be a big loss not only to me but to the college as well. I hope there is something we can do to keep her in the class.
05/03/2008
Had a funeral to attend today, nevertheless, came in for a couple of hours anyway. Had the usual debacle of trying to actually get some work done on the macs. Managed to nab the elusive Mark but he was unable to sort the problem out due to time restraints, as a result, I could not get any work done.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
04/03/2009
Went to the animation intro this morning, very interesting but a few us agreed that we would need a few weeks to get into the swing of it, a couple of hours is not really enough time. The mac computers that have just been over hauled, updated, and have had the student u drives added to them, has now reverted to the old format for some reason. Nigel is furious with the calamities which are going on, I can't say I blame him, it seems utterly pointless to spend thousands of euros on state of the art computers, and not have them working properly. As a result, I now have to find the computer that my movies were saved on, they were all in use this afternoon so I was snookered. Progress reviews next week,Alan has asked me to present some work, so I will have to get some things onto discs. They will be works in progress.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
03/03/2009
Photoshop this morning. I am intrigued by the limitless possibilities inherent within the adobe programme. I am starting to make some kind of sense out of it now, Nigel was very helpful by explaining things (more than once) ! I am convinced this will be a useful tool in my studio practice. My colleagues seem to be very keen about the Berlin exhibition, we will have a meeting after the literary review, to see where we go from here. Had a chat with Alan about Berlin, he seemed quite enthusiastic about it, and gave some very helpful advice.
David stopped to have a quick chat about the FYP he said it was fine but needed a little tweaking to make it a more specific or less broad question, on the whole though he was very positive about it. Mathilde I and Carried on with our sound experimentation, we did not record it on video this time, as we would have way too much footage to edit. We went around the college recording various sounds/ ambient noise. The basement was an interesting place to record sound, especially as it was in darkness, this added a sense of heightened sound awareness to us both. We had a chat with Nigel about our project, he seems very interested in it. He recommends the after effects programme, as well as premier pro.
David stopped to have a quick chat about the FYP he said it was fine but needed a little tweaking to make it a more specific or less broad question, on the whole though he was very positive about it. Mathilde I and Carried on with our sound experimentation, we did not record it on video this time, as we would have way too much footage to edit. We went around the college recording various sounds/ ambient noise. The basement was an interesting place to record sound, especially as it was in darkness, this added a sense of heightened sound awareness to us both. We had a chat with Nigel about our project, he seems very interested in it. He recommends the after effects programme, as well as premier pro.
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