Video Art

Here is my video art submission. Enjoy.

Art In Motion (and Sound)

In a natural progression from performance art, we have recently been studying modern video and audio art. This subject is of great interest to me, as it is the ultimate culmination of art and modern technology, providing a truly immersive, and in some cases interactive, artistic experience for the viewer. Much of what we've covered in class has been on the experimental end of the artistic spectrum, which makes it that much more interesting. Aside from a few of the experimental audio peices, it has all been very enjoyable. In keeping with the other media we've covered in class, we were also assigned a project requiring us to create our own video art piece, or video installation. After presenting mine in class, I will post it here as soon as possible. If I were to describe my piece in a word, it would be "trippy." Or maybe "psychedelic."

Performance Art Piece

After having explored, in some depth, various performance artists and the medium as a whole, we were assigned the project of creating our own such work. While I'm not the biggest fan of performance art, I took this assignment in stride, and I think I came up with a performance piece that incorporates two of my favorite things, traditional art and music. Throw in a little bit of quirkiness for the sake of a memorable performance, and that's exactly what you have with my "work of art." Below are several pictures from the performance. The person being painted is my roommate Andrew, who graciously offered his services.

Hands up!

Our latest class project involved photocopying body parts, and using these low-quality images to create a collage of sorts. At the heart of the concept is the idea of decomposing the traditional sense of the body parts, and making something bigger out of them. As the saying goes, the whole is greater that the sum of all its parts, and this definitely rang true in all of the works presented in class. For my entry into this medium, I decided to stick to just my hands, as I found them to be the easiest body part to reinterpret. Here is the design I came up with:


P.S. If you'll notice, I've tried to recreate a very famous work of art from the Italian Renaissance.

Light the Grid

Hooray!!!!!! I've finally finished my gridart project. It took a week of painstaking measuring, cutting, assembling, and an amount of gluing that borders on insanity, but it is finally complete. And I have to say that it turned out even better than I originally imagined. Overall, I'm extremely pleased. Before I even turn it in, I'm posting a bunch of pictures, from different stages of the construction process, to give a better appreciation for the work that went into the piece.

The cardboard grid fully assembled, without the paper cover or lights

Again

And again

The holes for the lights, taken from the front

The holes for the lights, taken from the back

The light wiring on the back of the grid; everything's been glued down

And finally............. the finished product. I made the pattern first in Microsoft Paint, then transferred it to the grid. A difficult, but fun process.

One last shot: the back of the grid, with the lights turned on

Again, I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and will definitely be putting this up somewhere in my dorm room. I think it is a perfect representation of what we are studying in class. It perfectly blends traditional, hand-made art with the magic of modern technology. I also like that it looks so clean and simple from the front, and yet so complicated in the back. It is a great example of how much goes on behind the scenes to produce nearly everything we enjoy in our daily lives.

P.S.
I'm considering adding, at a slightly later date, blue lights in the smaller, unused cells around the edge of the grid. I think it would add a nice contrast to the plain off-white lights, and serve as a sort of virtual frame.

A View to A Flipbook (and Gridart)

As far as the main subject matter of our most recent Art & Technology classes goes, we've been mostly looking at the history of radio, television, the computer, and most recently, the internet. However, my focus in this post is on the projects I've been assigned.

Firstly, as promised, I've posted some frames from my flipbook animation to give you a taste of what mine is about. Check them out below. I will talk more about it when I get the whole thing assembled as a proper video to upload.


Now that the flipbook project is out of the way, I'm working on a "gridart" project. This is pretty much what it sounds like. It is essentially any piece of non-digital art that is based around the notion of a grid. I won't reveal exactly what I'm doing yet, as I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I will say that it involves copious amounts of cardboard and a little electricity. Once it is done, I will definitely upload some pictures.

Dreamscapes and Flipbooks

Well, in class recently, we've been delving more deeply into highly conceptual films, most of them much more modern. One of my personal favorites was the Stanley Kubrik classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've loved the movie since the first time I saw it, about five years ago. Everything from the realistic vision of the future, to the psychedelic final scenes, it is a clear scinematic masterpiece. We also watched another Kubrik hit, A Clockwork Orange. Of course, it's widely known to be a very intense, and at many times, vulgar film, but the overall message is definitely one of anarchy and world change. Definitely a visionary film in the same way 2001 was. In addition to these Kubrik classics, we watched other interesting takes of the future, Bladerunner and Videodrome. We followed up with the musical oddity (a classic though), Rocky Horror Picture Show. All are great films in their own rights, and should really be seen especially those by Stanley Kubrik.

In other news, we've been working diligently for the past two weeks on flipbooks, as a way of exploring traditional animation techniques, and I have to say that, though I've made the simple flip-animation here or there in the past, this was a much greater undertaking, and I very happy with the final result. In the very near future, I will post pictures from it, and eventually I hope to get the time to compile it into a digital video of some sort, probably an animated gif or something. So look forward to that.