book

Last night I read an interesting introduction to new media. I will post tommorow when I have researched it online and am feeling better.

Blog Entry

Ill today so hoping I didn't miss too much work. I'm trying to teach myself the you tube stuff but feel I'm reasonably up to date on it now, so not too worried about that.
I am really looking forward to finishing this project and seeing it in all it's glory. I am also looking forward to presenting it in front of my peers and getting feedback as well as seeing others work.

Library

This is very similar to my project and my use of the library. I may do some similar filming to this in St Martin's College library at come point.

Birds

Birds are an important part of my film as the pose an interesting antithesis with the boy in the confines of the library and later as he escapes to the real world.

Nude Descending Stairs

"Nude Descending a staircase" by Marcel Duchamp caused a scandal in 1913 at the Amory show New York. 62 years later, Shigeko Kubota, produced a new media version of the same name using a physical representation of the title. To me this shows how the instillation is useful for projecting the film.

However I am finding it very difficult to decide on what instillation to project onto. For me, the film is the art itself, and it is important that the backgroud is not so busy as to take away from the film itself. I have based the work on the natural and manmade so I would like to encorporate this somehow into the projection. I have thought of books from the library, feathers from birds, trees, windows and mirrors, yet all of these are not a good projection surface. I think feathers and wood would be workable around the surface and intend to discuss this with my other class mates.

Video of natural manmade sounds

So far for this project I have researched many artists using the internet as my main resource along with several books. I have also used artists who are not necessarily new media artists but who have inspired me through their use of art and installtions. Janet Orselli is a favourite of mine and I have looked at her work for this project as inspiration for mine. My film however was based on the idea of natural and manmade, but has also evolved as my knowledge of how film can be used, has grown.

For example I looked at the way two completely different pieces of footage could be edited to give an impression of something to the viewer, that woulod make the viewer realise something without my needing to spell it out. This is a very important part of the film making process and subtlety can work well but can also be largely lost.

I know exactly what I want the film to do and what I want in it. Actually creating the desired effect is proving tricky, especially when you throw all the technical difficulties in with it!!

Tate in Space

Tate in Space is a collaboration between Susan Collins and the Tate Gallery. They are web pages that are the place of a genuine art gallery orbiting the earth, in the place of the Tate satellite. It has the added benefit of art historians, space historians, and scientists to improve the quality and truthfulness. It was nominated for the 2003 BAFTA interactive awards in the interactive category.

Personally, I find this idea very interesting. The web has become so much more than just a useful resource, it is a massive part of everyone's lives and allows creativity in more accessible. Therefore it was inevitable that a new generation of artists and art would evolve without the confines of a gallery and with the means of expressing themselves and putting their work out there. Digital media became popular before the use of the internet, yet YouTube and other popular media sites mean that anyone and everyone can view or produce work that has meaning to them.

Susan Alexis Collins

Susan Collins is the head of Electronic Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. Recent works include Tate in Space, and a Bafta nominated Tate commision.

The picture depicts a current piece of work by the artist entitled "Glenandia", the image is "transmitted live at the rate of a 60 pixels every minute via the internet".

Problems with this Project

I've had various problems with this project. Although I have enjoyed computers all my life, I will be so relieved to get a trusty pen back in my hand!!

Among the complications has been:

1) I ordered a digital camera which the university rejected and had sent back to the depo. I then had to cancel it and am still awaiting a refund which does not include postage!!! :(

2) I have changed video files from Avi, Mpeg4 and others and they refused to work, I finally got it to accept Mpeg4s!

3) I lost countless pieces of footage between the five computers I have been working on at seperate times!

4) Both my blogger and delicious sites have been acting up on occasion

Not all technical, but obviously all irritating in their small way!

Luckily now I feel I am getting back on top, and by the end it all should work. :)

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik is often credited for inventing video art, so therefore, a useful place to begin researching this project. According to Wikipedia, he was a South Korean-Born America who was born in Seoul. He graduated from Tokyo university and later moved to Germany where he began participating in the neo-Dada movement, known as fluxus.

Expositon of Music-Electronice Television.

It was here that he made his debut before later working with the cellist, Charlotte Moorman, so as to combine music, video and performance art, collaboratively.

Moorman was arrested for going topless in one of Paik performances, entitled "Opera Sextronique".

Along with many other artists including Salvador Dali, in 1984, he aired "Good Morning, Mr Orwell" to show that the impending future put forward in Orwell's book of 1948 had not materialised. This struck a chord with me as I watched the university production of "1984" just this month. Whether or not I would base my work on Nam June Paik, I cannot argue it is vital to study his work in this project as it is arguably a major starting point to this genre.

Library

I have chosen a library for this film to represent being lost and confined. The main idea for this piece came to me in the library at Lancaster when I was researching media artists. Over the course of making it, it developed quite a bit but I kept the idea of the library as it was relevant and was the basis for the original idea which I felt meant the basis for the film itself.