VISA 0120 Foundations Media: Computation + Art

For my project I wanted to focus on the process of therapy or the feel-good-emotions of the audience while engaging in my art piece. Being a period of high stress and anxiety for everyone in Brown (exams, projects, graduation, post-graduation-no-job-in-bad-economy worries) I feel it would be an effective concept to soothe the mood of students here.

My initial experiment was a punching stand where people could vent out their frustrations. The surface was drawable and people could write or draw whatever is causing them so much stress and be the focus of attack. It would be placed in the Science Library where people would be cooped up for hours frantically studying and worrying, hence an apt location to stress relieve.

However, it wasn’t practical to build such a huge structure (due to fire safety reasons) and my lack of skills in building a stable and strong enough stand to withstand the force. Here was a mock-up I did which actually functioned pretty well as a knock-around punching bag on a bed, made of bubble wrap, a gallon of water and some tape.

My other experiment was a projection of a message to the seniors to reflect their time remaining in Brown and to cherish the last few weeks in college. A projector would be mounted on a window facing Thayer Street from the Science Library. It would be hooked up to a laptop would be able to customize a projected message. However, some of the messages could be misinterpreted as bomb threats or some similar security scare, hence it may not be the most wise of public art experiment.

My final experiment for the week was portable therapeutic art pieces. This was a take on the stress ball, where the comforting squishy feeling of kneading the object helps to relieve stress. I used the glove as the object, as the shape of the hand is familiar and act as a literal source of support through the tough exam period.
The objects used:
And the extremely satisfying and tactile outcome:

Self

This Self portrait has two components: unchanging, strong features and an interactive background.  Those who interact with the piece shape the portrait and have the power to influence it, but the features remain steady and independent of the interaction.

Publication excerpt

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999

Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential works in American experimental cinema. A non-narrative work, it has been identified as a key example of the “trance film,” in which a protagonist appears in a dreamlike state, and where the camera conveys his or her subjective focus. The central figure in Meshes of the Afternoon, played by Deren, is attuned to her unconscious mind and caught in a web of dream events that spill over into reality. Symbolic objects, such as a key and a knife, recur throughout the film; events are open-ended and interrupted. Deren explained that she wanted “to put on film the feeling which a human being experiences about an incident, rather than to record the incident accurately.”

Made by Deren with her husband, cinematographer Alexander Hammid, Meshes of the Afternoon established the independent avant-garde movement in film in the United States, which is known as the New American Cinema. It directly inspired early works by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and other major experimental filmmakers. Beautifully shot by Hammid, a leading documentary filmmaker and cameraman in Europe (where he used the surname Hackenschmied) before he moved to New York, the film makes new and startling use of such standard cinematic devices as montage editing and matte shots. Through her extensive writings, lectures, and films, Deren became the preeminent voice of avant-garde cinema in the 1940s and the early 1950s.

via MoMA.org | The Collection | Maya Deren. Meshes of the Afternoon. 1943.

Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1940)

Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)

via U B U W E B – Film & Video: Erkki Kurenniemi – Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968).

Martin Arnold was born in 1959 in Vienna. He studied Psychology and Art History at Vienna University.

YouTube – Martin Arnold – Alone.

PART ONE
Write a comment on three of your colleagues final stop motion video posts. Please respond to comments on your own work. Please offer constructive criticism and justify your thoughts. Avoid using language like “I like…” or “the work is really great.” Your comments should be descriptive and thoughtful, as if you are critiquing work for a journal. See the art reviews in Frieze Magazine for reference.

PART TWO
Make two one-minute videos: one in which time appears to be moving quickly, the other in which time appears to be moving slowly. (Consider using a tripod. Make a third one minute video of your choice. (All videos must be exactly one minute or 60 seconds.)

This unit asks you to express emotional qualities of your choice by creating a rhythm and/or procession of events through editing. Use as material for your video your physical self in space, possibly in relation to objects, props, processes or movements. Sound must be self generated. You may use drawings, but only as a prop. You may not shoot your film in your dorm or dorm room.

NOTE: You will need to share cameras for this assignment. You are free to use each others footage, but must create your own videos.

Paul Sharits was a film maker whose experimental work came to define the structuralist film movement.

Viking Eggeling’s “Symphonie Diagonale” (1921) is an early experimental film animation that balances abstract visual form and sound. Viking Eggeling is a Swedish filmmaker.