I finally worked out all the kinks with my installation piece for Borrowing Light. From broken fluorescent bulbs and getting the right projector to locked doors with alarms and blown out circuits, it was a bit frustrating. But I got there in the end. When I started documenting the piece, I fell in love with individual pictures. So here are two parts of the installation in images and a video of the third part.
My goal was to use a bank of windows as a window, a mirror, and a screen.
This section of the windows is acting as a window. At night you see your own reflection in the window because it's light inside and dark outside. To reverse this, I added light outside so that the wall becomes the focal point of the window scene.
Outside, the window does the opposite, acting as a mirror and shielding the view of the interior. From this angle, the whole panel looks black.
If you get a bit closer to the window, you can make out what is going on both inside and outside--the bricks from outside sit on top of the interior image.
On one section of the windows I used a rear projection (projected from outside onto the back of the glass) to turn the windows into a screen from inside.
In this section of the installation I enhanced the reflective quality of the windows by adding more light. Normally the windows are already reflective indoors, but they are even more effective with the added lights.
From outside there is a very clear view of the interior.
So I want to upgrade my SLR, but I'm not sure how crazy I want to go. This is the debate right now. I know these cameras (and their prices) are really different, but there are reasons I'm drawn to each one. I'll start talking about my current camera and then move up in price/features. Opinions please!
This is the Olympus EVOLT E-500, my current camera.
Stats/Info: 8.0 Megapixels No video at all 2.5" LCD Monitor 2.5 fps continuous shooting 100-400 ISO Kit with 14-45mm & 40-150mm lenses ~$625
This is the Nikon D5000.
Stats/Info: 12.3 Megapixels 720p HD Video Only 5 min/2GB length vids 24 fps video 2.7" Vari-angle monitor 100-6400 ISO GPS Geo-tagging ~4 fps continuous shooting Quiet Mode Kit with 18-55mm lens ~$525-$575
This is the Nikon D90.
Stats/Info: 12.3 Megapixels 720p HD Video Only 5min/2GB length vids Overheats after an hour of video 3" LCD Monitor 100-6400ISO ~4.5 fps continuous shooting Body only ~$775
This was made with a Nikon D90.
And this is the Canon EOS 7D.
Stats/Info: 18.0 Megapixels 1080p HD Video Manual video exposure control Selectable frame rates 100% field of view display 3" LCD Monitor 100-6400 ISO 8.0 fps continuous shooting Waterproof Kit with 28-135mm lens ~$1800
The appeal of the 7D is that it would be investing in a video camera and an SLR at the same time, which is pretty legit. I mean, if I wanted to go all the way with that concept I might buy the Canon 5D Mark II (they filmed the latest season of House with it!), except the 7D has a better fps continuous shooting rate (and I want to do some stop motion). Also the Mark II price gives me a heart attack ($2500 for the body). Selling my current camera will only make me a couple hundred bucks. The D5000 is appealing because the price is far more reasonable and it's still got HD video (just with a lot more drawbacks). The D90 is a step up from that, but still more reasonable in pricing. Ahhhhhh.
It's here! The minimalist video I never put online from my time in the Netherlands. If you go back in the posts you can read about it...it's meant to play on a small screen on loop as a very intimate piece. Enjoy!
My friend Eric who goes to UMass is starting a zine called "Popsong Living" and he asked me to submit some stuff. I gave him two of my poems and I'm really excited about it. I think I'm going to work on some visual stuff as well for another issue. I love this kind of thing!
I have quite a few posts up about a collaborative piece I'm doing in Borrowing Light. Check them out at our class blog. Feel free to leave comments either there or here, they're always appreciated (aka I love you Maggie & Lucy). I think this has been a good collaboration and I'm excited to see where it takes us over the weekend!
I am uploading some of my raw footage of the television in my living room. I plan to work with each clip as a separate entity. I will experiment with re-filming it and seeing how the sound and video changes...
This piece Yoko Ono did with Fluxus relates very directly to mine because we use the same medium (video) to look at the striking and burning of a match. I would say that Yoko Ono's piece is far more minimalistic in its exploration while mine takes on a spatial component and the surrounding darkness, which I personally think is an important part of the human component tied to matches.
2.Yaacov Agam-Fiat Lux, 1967
Yaccov Agam likes to work with motion, sound and light. This piece is a lightbulb that turns on because of sound. I feel like the setting and singular light source relates to my piece. Matches produce a sound when lit and Agam is associating light with a sound as well as a space. I found this piece in the Light Art from Artificial Light book I checked out from the Dude.
Seth Riskin uses dance and light to show space in his works. His work is as much about the darkness as it is about the light source and human interaction. I am actually really excited that I discovered him because his artist statement (quoted below) reveals that we think in similar ways about light and space and movement.
"My first impulse as an artist was to become space. I wanted to bring viewers inside the movement experience, into contact with the numinous dimensions of space. Light allows me to realize this artistic vision.
In the Light Dance performances, light carries the subjective experience of movement beyond the limits of my body. Light Dance is a transposition of the “dance” from the body to the boundaries of the room. In silent, space-defining performances, light effects extend from my body. I “sculpt” space; precise body movements articulate fluid architectures of light, encompassing viewers with the “dance”.
Fundamental tenets of the Light Dance thesis include the concept that inner light and physical light are one, and that an experience of light can overcome the experience of body.
The silence of Light Dance I experience as wholeness. Inspired by a sense of the unlimited, I was led to light as a metaphor for deep knowing, dissolving borders between the body and space, the human spirit and material, the performer and viewer. I understand silence as I do darkness: not void, but whole, the fullest knowing of light, rather than its absence, that may be infinitely articulated and approached through art."
4. Plato's Allegory of the Cave
In his allegory Plato describes people chained to the wall in a cave. Behind them a fire burns and there are puppeteers making shadows. The people fear the shadows because they don't see what causes them. This is all they know of as reality.
I think this relates to my piece because the only light comes from the matches, which create shadows and reveal the world to the performer and audience at the same time. The performer and the camera become puppeteers, deciding what the viewer gets to see within the space at any given moment. Video uses a singular perspective, creating the only reality of my basement that the audience can know.
5. 15th Century Projector-Johannes de Fontana
The projector was initially invented in 1420 by Johannes de Fontana. He drew a picture (seen below) of a monk holding a lantern with a translucent window containing the image of a devil. Most of the initial projections were frightening and related to hell. I think the darkness and flickering shadows of candles and match light can take on that ambiance and they project shadows into a space, even if they are soft and out of focus (which is what Fontana's image would have looked like since his projector didn't have a lens).
I am becoming more and more excited and interested in collaborating with other people. Here are some of the collaborations of my past, present and future...
PAST
Dance Day 2006 Music by Ben Babbit Choreography by Laura Thompson
Ben and I collaborated for one other dance during the summer of 2008. That was for my company, Patchwork City Dance, and it isn't on the internet at the moment.
PRESENT
This weekend I am shooting and editing One Day Runway, a Basement Arts show that is free to the public. It's a spoof of Project Runway and should be a lot of fun. The designers have 24 hours to complete their challenge and the runway show will be live right after the video airs at 11pm in Studio One in the Walgreen Drama Center on North Campus.
FUTURE
I may collaborate with a fellow student in my light course to do something with small holes people can look through, projections, and light. Who knows. He's interested in boxes and lights in liquids and I'm interested in the transitory flickering of matches, video, and odd spatial installations.
My friend Josh of Our Brother the Native just mentioned something about dance and a music video this summer.
I'm hoping to collaborate with an actor/performance artist in my Creative Writing class. He is way out there and so in tune with himself.
My friend Ali has been writing a lot of screenplays and has a ton of ideas. We should really get together.
This is my latest update of Strike, a piece about source light. I found that matches only exist within the context of humans because we are the only people who use them and are capable of striking them. A match sitting on its own is not a source of any light. Someone has to act upon it, strike it.
This is a collage of three different "situations" using matches. I am still tweaking the editing and coloring. My goal is to get rid of the boxes in the background so light comes from the pitch black of the whole screen as opposed to a small frame. I was told that people's outfits are distracting, but I was very interested in giving very few directions to the people involved so that it was a purer form of interaction. I don't think I want to change that thought of it.
Also, my friend Max Shults has offered to write music, which would maintain the striking match sounds but add another layer to the piece.
I have taken a new direction through many failures and a change of heart. I have become very interested in low quality video this year. The sheer volume of low quality video out there in the world vastly outweighs the HD, which is an odd phenomenon considering the image quality of existing cameras and how inexpensive HD has become for consumers. Last semester I made a video of television feedback by filming it with a crappy cell phone camera and then re-filming that video about 60 times. I took the change in pitch and images and created a composition out of it (see video below).
My roommates watch a lot of TV so I am going to start mapping what they're watching by filming it with a portable video camera I got cheaply. I may also explore filming some epic moments in television history (man landing on the moon, first ten minutes of MTV...I don't know).
I have some crazy plan in my mind that I am going to combine this with Jitter (Max/MSP/Jitter) because I've been teaching myself how to use it and I think it would be a good thing to incorporate into my learning experience. Right now the thought is that there would be a television or a series of televisions that would show different pieces of the map. When someone physically changes the channel of the TV, the clip would change.
I could edit these piece of the map--each as a separate entity that is composed to be a part of the whole--or I could let MSP & Jitter do some of the manipulation work for me by using data and the drunk or random functions. More video data to come...
I'm sorry I haven't said anything in a while. Life sometimes consists of thinking and quietly talking with other people about it before you can make anything concrete. Also, two of my three studio classes have their own blogs where I'm posting and the third is working with kids in Detroit so there really isn't much to physically show that's my own at the moment. That is why I'm linking this blog to my class blogs.
This has been my dilemma for quite some time. I don't think in shapes or how something is built (well sometimes I do but then it's just a material study because all of my work seems to have an idea...and even then I think about how it moves or how I move). I think about how I move when I build it, see it, experience it, perform it. I think about how the material(s) feel in my hands.
I think I am going to start making some "sketches" that are what my body parts are doing when I make something. So if I was working with my hands I would use a different color for each hand and progressively draw what they were doing...pulling tape, cutting, shaping. This could be very interesting...
My book on synesthesia came in the mail today! I also got Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson because I loved the short story we read from it in class last week. Ancient Evenings is still missing...I'm worried about it.
Also, I got my letter, FINALLY. Now I have to write back.
I am senior in the School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. I also studied ArtScience/Image & Sound at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten & the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag, Nederlands during Fall 2009. I am interested in exploring the human body and emotional experiences through a variety of media, especially film, performance, & sculpture.
This section of the windows is acting as a window. At night you see your own reflection in the window because it's light inside and dark outside. To reverse this, I added light outside so that the wall becomes the focal point of the window scene.
Outside, the window does the opposite, acting as a mirror and shielding the view of the interior. From this angle, the whole panel looks black.
If you get a bit closer to the window, you can make out what is going on both inside and outside--the bricks from outside sit on top of the interior image.
In this section of the installation I enhanced the reflective quality of the windows by adding more light. Normally the windows are already reflective indoors, but they are even more effective with the added lights.
From outside there is a very clear view of the interior.
