VISA 0120 Foundations Media: Computation + Art

A wii-mote sketch By Isabel Parkes and Sean Feiner

Our Wii Processing sketch allowed the user to manipulate the dialation of the faces pupils using the wii mote.  Each eye was manipulated seperately by either roll or pitch.  It is a sketch for the greater representation of dancing and physically stimulation that occurs.  The sketch would be improved by furthering the interactivtiy of the applet by adding colored lights and possibly music to fully integrate the design with the theme.

I decided to rethink my final project, Made Public, as I felt my original idea was closed off and not open enough. For this past week I did a test for my new idea which concerns some of the original themes of punishment, discipline and torture. For my new performance I plan to interactively have a session of torture on Wriston Quad. The choice of this location serves as a commentary on the punishment and torture related to masculinity and fraternity social organizations.
For my test I publicly whipped myself on Wriston for several minutes and had someone film this event. The reactions were pretty amazing. For the final performance I plan to have raw meat that people will be able to throw at me and a group of others I have recruited for the performance. They will encourage members of the crowd to spit, insult and throw the meat at me as I and the others continue to torture me. Several cameras will be used to document this.

For this project my goal was to translate or revisit one of the works previously done in some way through processing. I chose to alleviate a doubled “gap” in my animation (which was ultimately a translation of the collage). This gap is the moment in the video loop when the medieval characters enter into one doorway exiting through another. They are literally “swallowed up,” I wanted to bring this to light through darkness. To do this I created an applet that features an array of images newly created using pictures of caves and rock formations to create spaces in which I could place the original characters and new creatures that were found in both of my previous works. The applet functions by allowing the user to create a window of vision through use of the mouse, hence feeling one’s way through the dark. In addition, one can click to find the next scene of the cave journey, yet ultimately the images cycle as one loop.

Here is the artwork behind the project:

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

For my new processing project I plan to revist the environment I created in my collage and my stop motion animation.  The main conceptual restriction taken by these projects will be a use only black and white coloring and an animated interactive applet that functions though a loop.  The project will represent the “gap” in my animation–the point where the characters enter into the cave.  I seek to create a series of cave images either as imports or as processing rendered images.  At this point it seems that importing a serious of images using the PImage function is the most effective because I can use the images in two interesting ways.  The first way would be to use the images as a texture by the texture() command which can map an image onto a given created polygon shape.  My initial hope was that I could do this using a circle but the texture function only works with straight line polygons.  The base of the image would be a black background on top of which the textured polygon would be drawn.  The polygons coordinates would be based around a translation of (mouseX, mouseY), and as the mouse is moved the image would appear to be revealed.  This gives the impression of searching in the dark cave.  In the cave images I would use my orgininal stock photos from the animation toadd in the charcters and some of the textures.  My hope is to also use a mousePressed function in order to change which image the texture corresponds to.  I am not sure as to the limitations of this and may have to work this out in another way.  In this way clicking would imply moving foward through the cave yet eventually the cave will reset back to the first image.  This would create a looped structure.

If I could achieve this, I would like to expand on my cave by making small cave creatures thats would be little more than simple curves with heavy stroke weight whose coordinates change based on mouseMoved with a limit, meaning they would “squirm” as the mouse is moved.  If these creaures are in the script after the textured polygon I believe that the project will be possible.

For my portrait I wanted to create a photorealistic representation that played with the idea of code as an abstracted form for representation.  This is why the image relies on the visual pun of “blue eye” to show that the visual “picture” and “text” are simply structures subject to and created by a code that creates forms, both visual, that convey the same meaning.

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This time around I recreated the video that did not address an aspect of time.  I wanted to refocus my project on my body in space, and the abstraction of that through the moving image.  I played with the ideas of editing to creature rupture in a smooth visual narrative but also have attempted to play with editing beyond one take meshing different angles and camera positions to make a fluid work.  I hope it shows progress.

David Lynch-

(born January 20, 1946)

David Lynch is an American mixed media and performance artist.  He has a wide range of work that falls between short art films to a prime time television show.  Lynch has received mixed critical acclaim for many of his films.  He is recognized usually for films such as Mulholland Drive(2001) or many other films that he has received Academy Award nominations for.  His work is characterized by chilling plots usually interrupted by surreal and horrifying experimental sequences.  His work, though much of which remains within dominant narrative practice, foregrounds some of the apparatus itself and also a tendency to move from the narrative.  He is one of few directors to also make large budget films that remains so heavily involved in the sound editing and even credits himself.  His most recent film Inland Empire also marked a shift away from film into a full length experimental feature completely done with digital video.
Many of his early works along with other shorts from throughout his career can be found on a DVD, called “The Short Films of David Lynch.”  I was able to see many of these (you can too, if you have netflix) including some of his earlier work-Six Men Getting Sick (’66) and Grandmother(’70).  He originally began his work from an art background and moved in the mid sixties to practice in film animation and experimental film.  Grandmother  is a little more characteristic of some of his later narrative cinema, and is the story of a little boy attempting to grow a new grandparent.  The animation in this film is astounding, and the mixed dark narrative really complicates a tale of child abuse.  His style and interest in man in relation (post)modernity are large influences on my work.  One of the most interesting pieces he’s done is also an extremely short film done with one of the original Lumiere cameras that can also be found on that collection DVD.  If you can get a chance check out some of the links.  Also watch Twin Peaks.
Grandmother (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VaI1v0CIlA&feature=related)
Six Men Getting Sick  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFo_05hUUcw&feature=related)
Lumiere (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjQ99gMIEM8&feature=related)

Image courtesy of archive.senseofcinema.com “Great Directors”.

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This last video was an attempt at disrupting a single outing of shooting.  While originally I had combined some of the clips with other footage I cut out some of it, while it was formally exciting in order to construct a piece that was from one single filming.  By disrupting the events but maintaing a sense of opening and closure through the signification of the pinball machine’s signboard, I felt the video really played with the process of deconstructing the video.

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This film which depicts time moving quickly has some of the longest takes in all of my projects.  I wanted to do this because time can move quickly, and even appear to do so without having to be expressed through fast motion.  I wanted to make a fairly formal piece in which standard conventions were used to express a simple but personal narrative.  The idea of being in the library attempting at all costs to finish a reading when time seems to be working against you.  I used the technique of point-of-view eye-line match, which was quite difficult because I worked alone and therefore had to finalize it through an illusory process via editing.  Another convention of dominant cinema I used was the internal voice-over narration which I felt added to the urgency of the piece.

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This film was heavily inspired by Soviet montage and at the narrative level appears to do so as well.  Though the film with a political message may lead to a sense of being overdetermined I felt it worked well with the concept of time moving or appearing to move slowly.  As workers hammer away at the their factory work they are driven by the dull monotonous tones of the hammer.  Their work is abstracted labor power which leads to the production of capital for the owner-capitalist.   I used the point of white and black pawns to represent this because it also shows how race has been used as a tool of working class division.  The video acts both as a representation of where time moves slowly and as a commentary on the slow process of radicalization and perhaps current failure of revolution.