So the artist talk for the Dada show was a bit
interesting and a bit off. I heard the talks from the artists who did the rug
picture, the donkey head, and I do believe the Twinkie piece. While Dada does
mean nothing but mean something at the same time, I felt the artists were
trying to make sense of their piece. The Donkey Head artist talked about how
she wore the head at certain times to
represent the odd sense of out of place or when she wears it at places that
were demising. As I listen to her talking I felt like I can almost understand
what she was talking about, but something told me that it probably meant
nothing. The artists that talked about
their picture rug was kind of interesting. When I looked at it it looked like
something that you would have laying around your house as a decorations, however
when the artists talked about the rug, they said it was a way for people to expresses
their family's likes and their history. I never really read that, again Dada
mean nothing but at the same time it does. The Twinkie piece artist talked
about the love cream since the piece had a heart shape in the middle. Overall I
felt the talks weren't as I thought they were, but it was entertaining to hear
what the artist process was when they their work.
After reading the "Notes on Photography & Accident" by Moyra Davey this was
an article I felt a bit confused on. Throughout the whole article, she talked
about other events about her life while talking about the accidental photo. I actually
based my final project on this article because I found it to be a complex
thought process and to also try to find that accidental photo myself. While I
didn't have no success, I figured that it was not going to be that easy let
along it something you have to final natural with no thought process. The
article also talked about how for some photos that we take, we don't really
take pictures of things we normally don't take like graphite, destroyed
landscapes, or something that is unpleasant. Also for some photos, they
Photoshop out the unpleasantries like an ugly building or something along those
lines. With my project, I decided to take photos based on a random system, no
matter what I take photos of, it was all based on a random system. Still trying to read this article, I felt I
didn't fully understand what the whole meaning behind the article was about,
just bits and pieces. Still in was an intriguing article to read and it was a
fun project to do based on this said reading.
So after reading this article, I feel that it has a lot
of interesting points and it does bring up a lot of good points when it comes
art, society, and criticisms of the modern time. I felt that when it talk about
how some change it becomes increasing difficult for an issue to be heard of
because it is drown out but other nonsense to shut it down. I also like the points it makes about
capitalist civilizations and how it can interpret everyday life. One thing that
confused me was the criticism side of modern society. I wasn't sure if they are
against how people criticize the modern style of society or the fact that critiquing
art that the modern standards is making it difficult for art to be recognized
by its own demeter and not by the societies considers art. Everyday life was
talked about here and I thought about what it said about how the concept of
"everyday life" and you sometimes have to pull yourself away from
everyday life to see the full picture of what is going on around you and where
you live. For me this article does bring
good points up on how people are changing how they view art or how it is being
influenced on how people are viewing art in the society they live in. Also with
the capitalistic and other organization create a way for either people to view
art or what are is being viewed to the public. Maybe I am interpreting this all
wrong.
Reading this article was a fun experience. The whole idea
od a show being clusterfucked or chaos theory is an out of the ordinary was to
view an art exhibition. To be honest I have never really experience an art show
where everything is all jam packed into this small space and you have to use
every space to your advantage. Only thing I have come close to this kind of experience
is going to a video game convention or a comic convention where they do you all
the spaces but in such a small building. I find that reading this is that you
can actually make a completely art show by putting a bunch of art pieces in a
small space, but make the show effective for example a clusterfuck of say
traffic cones or something along those lines but represents the amount of
cluster in big cities like New York City, Las Vegas, LA, etc. Chaos Theory was
a bit upsetting to me. The example in the article they gave about chaos theory
was a bit disturbing for me because if would be something so bizarre and out of
the ordinary. However I feel like there are better examples of a controlled chaos
theory as weird as that sounds but I have seen and heard of control chaos and I
think if an art exhibit showed something along those line I would go see it. In
conclusion, the article may good points about how a clusterfuck can have an
effective message in an art exhibit.
After I read Maria Lind's "Returning on Bike: Notes on Social Practice" it was kind of something I already knew. I
studied Psychology and Sociology for almost 7 years and i am well aware about
the social adaptation of people over time. However for the art world, it can vary but
could also be affected by the same thing like technology, social norms,
etc. Along with those lines I feel like
this article does explain from a point of view of what the masses that don't view social practices as a
way that "follows the school of fish instead of not following the
school." While I agree that everyone should be unique and how to use you
social practice, I feel though maybe I am missing the point. Throughout my reading I looked at the pictures
that are in the article and least too say they were ok. I looked at them and it
doesn't appeal to me. While maybe the one where I see people are taking
pictures is one i would see that is talking about social practices since they
are taking pictures of a social environment.
The other one I thought that worked best for the article was the one
that had a bunch of people gathered around a set of stairs and just talked
about who knows what. To me that is the picture that would best describe a
social type place because it is one of the few places that is odd, but a common
place for people to go around and just talk.
After reading the Poor Image by Hito Steyerl "In Defense of the Poor Image" I was
intrigued and a bit off on what the whole message was about. Reading it over I
can see what the writer was coming across now that in today's society and
technology everybody has a camera at their disposal thanks to cell phones and
tablets. Of course not all of the pictures are the best, but it's something to
capture when the moment is right or something along with those lines. Of course it's interesting that in the
article the writer talked about how the poor image can be a form of art and how
the capitalism world try to market on that or how the poor image has evolved
into the masses that people can produce any form of poor image. It is like that
blurry shot of some mythical creature like big foot or the loch ness monster
but the picture is so blurry you can make heads or tails of what the image
really is. In my past I have taken poor images but I never really saw them as
works of art or bootlegs of movies or hell even video games I have come across
in my past. For me poor images can be works of art, problem is that as was address
in the read, with cell phones anybody can take poor image shots and videos.
Where poor images will go from here only time will tell.
Reading the Dada article was an interesting article and
an art form I was not aware of. Dada mean nothing, there is no point to it, but
at the same time it is. I found that interesting and at the same time
confusing. It was odd to hear that Dada means nothing but has a huge impact on
the art world and in society at that time and into today society as well.
Reading more onto this was just a bit confusing and something I had a hard time
comprehending the whole idea of Dada and what it means. I went to a show that exhibit
Dada and was quite fascinated by it. While it shows unique art pieces and what
the meaning were behind them, I felt like there was a lot of more that could be
explored or some more thought processes. I feel however that I am still
confused about Dada as a whole even after reading both the articles and going
to the show about it. I remember going to the show I saw this piece that was a
giant yellow messed up version of what I assumed was Mickey Mouse with a body
full of smiles. While it was creepy, I felt it was mocking how Disney happy
life motto was being mocked or maybe mocking how Mickey Mouse himself. Either
way, it was a strong piece, but that face crept the hell out of me. Dada overall is an interesting style of art
and I feel now that I somewhat know about it, I'll know what people are talking
about when they say "Dada."
An artist show that I went to go see is Bringing the Gold
that was exhibited at the Sheperad's Art Gallery at UNR. Looking through the art show was a throwback
to not only to my childhood, but some of the shows I remember watching. I loved
the pieces where the sculptures casted the shadows, but the shadows were not cast
by the light of the room, but a giant black paper with the outline of the
object. It remind of old western shows or movies I saw during my childhood like
American Tail going West or Gunsmoke. What was an odd piece was the pink sheep
statue. I found that odd and out of place and it reminded me of pink sheep in
the video game Minecraft cause you would see one in the game, but not reality.
It made me cog me head a bit to go, "That seems out of place". The
giant cow/bull head on the wall was quite over whelming because of not only
the size, but how it was just there. Trying to interpret was to me calling back
to my childhood. Is it a trophy type to call out the types of animal trophy
heads and how they are so over exaggerated or a mockery of said animal
trophies? The other pieces in the art show were fitting to what the artist was
going for. Final thoughts on the show was it was a nice show and call back to
my western days, but the pink sheep was so off for me.
During the Dada exhibitions that was being held at the
Jot Travis Building, there were a bunch of artists that talked about their
worked at the exhibitions. While it was interesting their idea behind why they
did their project, it was odd seeing the final product they ended up with. The
donkey head one was interesting as she talked about why she chose that and how
she went about it like where she wore it and why she wore it at these places.
Another one that was cool was the huge rug with a picture on it with the
picture being random stuff. While the artists talked about why they chose it
like that, I felt like the picture rug was something you would get to show off
for family and stuff like that or memory of something you did. What caught my
interest was a giant yellow Mickey Mouse things with a clear body full of
yellow smiley balls. That not only creeped me out, but it made me think about
"Is this artist making fun of Disney and they're happy go spirited
company, or the fact that it's making fun of companies trying to portray that happiness
comes at a price?" The artist who did that piece was not there for the
talk or the show, but boy that piece was something that just caught my
attention and made me think "What in the world were they thinking when
they came up with that?"
Overall I thought the artist talk and artist show was
fantastic and intriguing to experince.
For my lightbox project, I decided to use this picture I took while I was attending a video game convention Pax East. The idea I had was this: In today society, a lot of people are glued to their screens ranging from a phone scree to a computer screen. One thing I wanted to focus on was that the screens were the ones that had more light being showing from the light box than the rest to emphasized the fact that people are glued to their screen than interacting with people around them.
For my final project I based my idea on the reading on
Moyra Davey "Notes on Photography & Accident". When I read
this, I was intrigued with the reading. She talks about how with photos for
some can have an accident in it that was unintentional. in the reading a quote
stood out to me: "Most photographers have always had an almost
superstitious confidence in the lucky accident" by Susan Sontag and I was fascinated
by it. Continuing the reading I was slowly trying to understand about how her
process works and how she talks about others things in her life while looking
at a photo or something along with those lines. After reading it I was still a
bit confused on what her message was about and what her thinking process was
like, but the quote really stood out to me. How I interpreted a photo accident
is something that is taken within the photo that was not planned out. So I
decided to go through this route to find a "photo accident", however
I wanted to throw a twist. I wanted have a random factor to make it a more like
trying to find that photo accident, but also a force out of my control. The
random fact I used were dice. Particularly a 3,6,8,10,20 sided dices as seen
here:
I chose the 20 and 10 sided
dies because they would be the more effect because of their high numbers. The
10 sided dice (right) would determined how long would I take pictures for and
how many steps I would take before taking pictures while the 20 sided dice
(left) determined how many pictures I would take after I hit the step once I
hit that last step. I rolled a 10 on the 20 and I rolled a 70 on the 10 sided.
So I took 10 pictures every 70 steps for 70 minutes. I did this twice one for
the city and one while in the country because I wanted to see if I could get a
photo accident based on the environment and see the difference between a city
photo accident and a country photo accident. For the city I decided to go with
Reno downtown since it was a lot of cluster and for the country, I drove to
Fallon and went to a farm I was familiar with since it was away from the city
and I could get some cool shots out there. The equipment I used was a Samsung
HD Camcorder for the video recording and a Canon T3 Rebel for the photos. After I had the photos, I decided to put them
through a random generator and it will pick out which photos for me to print to
make it more luck based.
I picked a number between
1-138 since that was the number of photos I took and told the program to picked
70 photos since it was half of the total photos. While it was interesting, I
noticed that a lot of repeat photos were being picked and it worried me since
they were being hung up, people would be confused on why there were repeats of
photos up here. I ponder at the thought and finally came to the conclusion that
if I wanted to stick to my method, I had to keep the repeats in.
Next was the video side. I
had help with my roommate for this one. Again the dices were in play, however,
this time we based on how long we filmed, how many times we changed the angles
while filming, and what to talked about. The results were to film 60 minutes,
changed about 20 times and talk about current events while shopping at Wal-Mart
because from my experience, you can find some interesting things there while
shopping at Wal-Mart. I wanted to try and make the conversation and natural as possible,
ignoring that the camera was on and filming, but at the same time making sure I
was keeping to the method and the project in mine. Once the filming was done, I
took to my editing program ( I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6), again the dice
rolled determined how many cuts I did
and where those cuts were and delete the others. The results was this:
The whole random idea and
how it was done was based on John Cage's mathematical random factor in all of
his works particularly his "Chess" piece. I wanted to incorporated that because I felt
that when you somehow get a photo accident, it is in a way based on luck and by
random chance.
The final product of my project was I loop the render
video and hand the pictures around the video in random ways. I would hang them
perfectly, I just hung them whatever came to mind, all randomly. Creating a random
system and creating a way to where all of my decision was determined by the
roll of the dice was fun and challenging. Did I get an accidently photo? After
all was set in done, I did to see if I did get an accidental photo or something
in the video I did not plan. Only thing that was close was in the photos, I
looked at the dog and the dog jumped a bit to give me a lick. While cute, I
felt it didn't come close to what I was aiming for. True that it was something
I was not expecting, it just wasn't right, like a wedding photo being taken,
but in the far distance you see a tornado being touchdown. To me that is a
photo accident. Overall I felt my final
project was something I would not see myself doing, but it was an interesting challenging
for me to do and was something of boundaries for me I had to follow. I could
not just go out there and hope to get something what I was aiming for, but had
to follow a set of rules that was up to the roll of dice.
For my final project, I want to do a machinima video. I chose machinima because it is a style I am
very familiar with and have done in the previous past before I have taken
digital media classes. My idea was this:
"For my final project, I want to do a machinima
video. My idea(s) is I want to create an after math of a firefight (a shootout
basically.) What I wanted to do is use the games Halo or Call of Duty to film
and uses to build the environment for the project. The premise is that a
solider (or civilian) will walk through an aftermath of a fire fight. As the
person walks through, there will be shot or cut backs to when the fire fight
happen. As this happens, the person will be collecting dog tags (possibly
cutting to a shots showing how the solider has been killed) and continues on to
view the destruction of the after math of the firefight. The location/setting
will a small town that was occupied by soldiers of a war. I wanted to go for an
anti-war propaganda with irony since the games that are being used are war
type/shooter games. Throughout the whole video it will mostly be showing the
person/solider just walking through the after math and grabbing all the dog
tags and cutting back to the firefight. At the end, the solider/civilian will
reach the end of the town and looks back to see what war has done to this small
town. Then the camera will pull away from the town and aftermath. (As an
alternative ending, the solider get shot by a sniper from a faraway distance).
The message /moral would be that war affect everyone no matter how big or small
the event maybe."
The games I had in mind were first person shooters (Examples
Halo 3, Halo 4 Halo Reach, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Modern
Warfare 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Call of Duty Black Ops, and finally
Call of Duty Black Ops 2.) because they are the popular ones and were the ones
I had for the Xbox 360. After trying out
certain games that would work with my idea and would be able let me have a lot
of creative controls, I decided to go with Call of Duty Black Ops 2 because the
game had the map that would work best for my idea and I was able to have full
control of the camera which I believed would play a huge part in the project.
Along with that, the game had a special game mode called "Killed Confirmed"
which along for dog tags to appear after you kill the opposing enemy and you
earn point by collecting the dog tags so it was perfect for my project. The map
I chose was the map called "Standoff" as it was a small enough town
for the project. For the hardware like how
to record my game was I used a Hauppauge 1212 game capture device, and
an Xbox 360. One problem I ran into while testing was I could not have placed
dead bodies for the video. I had no way of place fake AI dead bodies because
the games could not let me. So I asked a few of my friends to help me out with
this project since not only when they are killed spawn dog tags, will also be
able to produce the dead bodies. The tasked I asked for my friends was to go to
certain spots and be killed by me or by the other players. I filmed in game
stuff about 2-6 times and about 2 days worth of raw footage.
As seen here I took was able
to film a lot. Through my whole filming progress, I had a set route of where to
go, what to do and how to react. In the next part , I went to filming again,
only this time, I was not stuck in a 1st person view, I was able to control the
camera after the game has be played as seen here:
Instead of being stuck in
first person view, I was able to go into free camera mode and get certain
angles of the shots I want and what need to be focus. I kept doing repeats within
the shots till I felt the shot was good or the angle was good. I also wanted to
try and make the camera fluidal and smooth. As for the players, I had 3 teams,
FBI, American Rangers and Mercenaries. The FBI agent was the one picking up the
dog tags from the dead soldiers (American Rangers and Mercenaries). I wanted to
make sure the people are identifiable and make sure who was who since I was
limited to the game's engine. Next in my editing program, I used Adobe Premiere
Pro CS6 since I am familiar with this editing program. I threw in all the video
I had filmed and started to cut parts to where the shots I want, where the
death sense were, and make the video flow together. Another problem I ran into
was since I had a lot of video, editing down to how I wanted the video to run
and how much was to be cut was a challenge since I filmed a lot of repeats and
different angles of the shots as seen in the picture.
To help with that, I made
empty video slots to where the shots I liked, I cut up and moved them up to the
empty video slot.
My final produce to my whole
project was this:
The huge thing that unfortunately
got me was time, I wanted to so much more, but because of time, I had to cut a
lot just to meet deadline. Hopefully I'll go back and edit more to make it the
project I had envision.
My final thoughts on this project was I had a lot of fun
and I realized that what I did had a lot more than I wasn't expecting, but the
whole filming and editing was a blast and I learned from this that timing and pacing
is key.
