A studio art course taught by Amber Frid-Jimenez on the use of computational methods and techniques to produce critical art projects about society and culture.
Here is the video documentation of my final project. I’ve uploaded it to youtube since the file size exceeds the maximum file size for the blog (if i were to compress it to a size small enough to fit on here it would look terrible, it’s about 9 minutes long). Thanks to Daniel for acting as camera operator for the project.
This experimental performance took place on Sunday May 2nd in Manning Chapel (without permission) at 10:30 pm. The performance is meant to be an exploration of the absurdities of religion, particularly Catholicism, and the effects of religious indoctrination.
Please leave comments on the video to let me know what you thought of it.
For more information about the project see the pdf I posted previously.
Our wiimote sketch allows the user to manipulate a triangle at two points using different aspects of the movement of said user’s wiimote. The can change the shape and size of the triangle by moving the wiimote in different directions. By pressing button B the user will cause two circles to appear on the screen for thirty frames. These circles contextualize the triangle by operating as eyes on a minimalistic cartoon face. The user is now manipulating not a triangle, but a smile.
For my experiment I printed out 100s of the slips of paper shown below and distributed them throughout Manning chapel.
I put a few in various significant places throughout the chapel. Most of them were hidden in some way or another.
I then placed one in every single hymn book in the chapel.
I placed one on the organ high above everything and highly visible to anyone who looks up.
It was my plan to go to a Catholic mass the day after I placed these all over the chapel and attempt to document people’s reactions, but due to my own scheduling mistakes I missed the mass. I don’t think I would have been able to see much of a reaction anyway due to the nature of the way I carried out the experiment and the difficulties of catching someone’s reaction or even noticing that they were reacting to my experiment, but it would have been very useful to see this nonetheless. In this sense my experiment was something of a failure. I returned to the chapel later to see which of the slips remained, which did provide me with some useful information about placement of work and it’s pertinence to permanence. Some of the slips were placed in such a way that they will likely not be found for a very long time, possibly even a few years.
also: the blog turns all my vertical pictures sideways, i have no idea why, and i can’t seem to fix it.
Controls: Move the mouse to stamp the picture on top of the background. Click the mouse to cycle through different stampable images.
My piece is a reflection on the effect of religion (specifically Christianity) on young children. The religious imagery covers up the children as it is drawn onto the background, eventually covering them entirely. This is meant to parallel the way that religion effects thought in children. Religious teaching becomes further ingrained in the mind over time until it is unclear if someone is thinking for himself any longer.
In this assignment I plan to create a background image of a child that eventually becomes overwhelmed and obscured by religious imagery. I plan to do this by using some sort of random number system, which I’m not entirely sure is how to do in processing (from what i’ve looked at it is either very simple, or very very complicated, i don’t fully understand it quite yet). A mouse press would elicit a random number corresponding to an image to be generated. I need to look into ways to do this further. I could also potentially utilize a loop. Each number would be assigned to an image so that the background would eventually become overwhelmed by these various religious symbols. Another thing I considered was constricting the symbols to appearing inside the child’s head, but, again, I am not certain how/if this can be done
My piece deals with the idea of digital abstraction. I wanted to illustrate some of the things that are lost and some of the things that can be gained when dealing with imagery in a digital environment. The most obvious way to show this was to depict an image zoomed in so far that the individual pixels can be seen. The changing colors of the eyes were meant to indicate some of the abilities that digital art has that other forms of art do not, while the pixelated image juxtaposed with this motion shows some of the limitations of digital art.
Miranda July in a screenshot from Me and You and Everyone We Know courtesy mirandajuly.com
Miranda July is a filmaker, performance artist, and writer who was born in 1974. A web project she created called “Learning to love you more” asks readers of the site to participate in assignments that include things such as draw a scene from a movie that made you cry, write your life story in a day, and recreate and object from someone’s past. You and Me and Everyone we know, a film written, directed, and starring Miranda July herself, showed and one prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festival. The film revolves around a number of different characters who become intertwined throughout the course of the film. You and Me and Everyone We Know achieved moderate popular success. Much of July’s work seems to center around people and their relationships and she quite frequently stars in her own films. I particularly enjoyed a short film of hers that depicts a character played by John C. Reilly asking people on the street if they are anyone’s favorite person as a part of a survey. Her performances incorporate various types of media, often include audience participation, and like her films usually center around human relationships.
Here are links to some of her films and a scene from MAYAEWK:
I believe Miranda July’s work is particularly relevant to my work for a number of reasons. Often times she uses somewhat oblique dialog or narration in her films leaving it partially up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the film. Most of her films focus on human relationships whether they are with the environment or with other people. I often attempt to explore similar themes in my films (elevators film- environment god for or against film- human interaction). We both have a particular focus on the human element. July often stars in her own films, which is something I also utilize quite often (and have utilized this week). My reasons are often reasons of necessity and convenience, but there are personal and artistic motivations as well and I have cast myself in films that I have made previous to this class. July’s work also has a certain sense of humor to it, something I almost always try to incorporate into my work.
My film for this week further explores the issues brought up by my “time moving fast” film from last week. This film delves further into the relationship between religion and consumerism. It uses humor to point out some of the absurdities of religion and religious practice. I attempted to represent all of these things in a more clear, direct, and well thought out way than last time, while still leaving plenty of space for the viewer to interpret the video for him or herself.
This film (the film of my choice) utilizes a repositioning of sound to play with expectation. The sound used with each clip attempts to represent the reality of the experience of each activity rather than the actual physical reality. The juxtaposition of a “sermon” over top of clips of skateboarding and moving through traffic attempts to point out some of the dangerous absurdities of religion, which become further emphasized by the loud stressful noises used in the chapel scenes.
Note: When exporting this video 30 some seconds of black space where added to the end of the video. I am not sure why or how this happened as I did not add all that space myself. The film is meant to end after the roaring noise of the skateboard fades out.
This film depicts time moving slowly through the manipulation of anticipation. I wanted to make a film that was almost excruciatingly slow and borderline annoying to watch. The viewer waits for something exciting to happen, but nothing ever does. Time always seems to move slower when one is anticipating something, so I utilized the anticipation of getting to the top of an escalator to make time seem to move more slowly. The audio for this film is an attempt to recreate the impression of the repetitive and irritating elevator music that is constantly playing inside malls.
This film juxtaposes religious and commercial imagery to represent the overwhelming and fast paced world of consumerism. Consumerism has reached something of a religious status in modern society and I wanted to draw attention to this. The film compares and contrasts stained glass windows with advertisements, preachers with mannequins, and churches with malls. The audio enhances the sense of overstimulation with fast paced rhythms and strange traces of distorted music.
