My farwell + Last class period.

Well it is sad to say that this will be my last blog entry of the school year, it has been an awesome few months and I have really learned a lot. The last class we had this week was somewhat inspirational to me in a way. The "The Sneeze" done by the Thomas Edison Company was truly remarkable to see how almost one of the oldest films ever was done, and it was only 4 seconds long! Still an incredible idea to start a class with because it lets you think about the start of film and its roots far beyond the time most think about. Secondly we started moving into George Kuchar's work which I have to admit although it was odd I really enjoyed the mans narrative. Im glad we did not have to witness what George is most notably known for in his film that happens to involve a toilet. Overall though the narrative brings me back to what I talked to Carl a bit about as with the similarities of Kuchar and Garrison Keeler of NPR's the Prairie Home Companion. They both have this active voice that keeps you sucked in with there story telling, and just the way they described things with that subtle sarcastic nature really made them stand out as similar people. This was another thing I enjoyed about having this as one of the last films we watched as it brings me back to my childhood and later years as a listener to NPR and Keeler's amazing story telling almost completely mirrored by Kuchar's quirky films. It was a full circle effect and was probably the best way to end the class for myself.

Over all I am glad I took this class as I have now learned how to dabble into the experimental side of things every once in a while, which I used to shun. I have opened my eyes to this class and genre as a whole and feel I have become even more open minded because of it.

Thank you Carl for being an amazing lecturer (probably best public speaker I have heard in a long time) and I would like to thank Danya Moses for being an awesome TA and provoking my thoughts for these blogs.

Have a great summer !

-Steve Teeple

Point A to Point B

We discuss this topic a lot in todays world I believe, that is the topic of what constitutes a narrative? Of course if a film takes us from a starting point then to an end point it has some sort of narrative doesn't it? Well in the case of "Duck Soup" it is hard to tell. The Main focus on this film was small gags or skits that happened to take your mind off the rest of the content, but as these events play out a backing story is still being displayed so in a sense I feel this fits as a fine narrative. Now when looking more at a piece like "The Way Things Go" the standard view of what is narrative and what is non conventional is skewed slightly. WE have a film that is played out similar to a game of Mouse Trap or a domino set up, one object hits another and causes a chain reaction of events, but then you have to ask yourself isnt that what a narrative is? Certainly it has a beginning a build up, a end point events, time, things that make up a story are all there... so why do some feel differently? It deserves to be called a narrative just as Duck Soup does, just because we dont exactly have a antagonist and a protagonist and a plot twist in Way things go, or a solid story structure or non fiction terms as seen in Duck Soup, they both still constitute a story in my book. Even though that might seem hard to understand for most I feel it is crucial in todays world where so many non linear film works are appearing and becoming a lot more prominent.

Kennedy's Revival

This weeks class was quite two sided to say the least. Starting off with the film Media Burn was a bit on the lighter side as it did a parody of President Kennedy and his speech that introduces the special built car to drive through a stack of TV sets. This while pretty funny and light hearted it did have a good message and presentation of it. The sale of novelties among other things were quite funny for such an event. But the real film of the class that I feel had a significant impact on me was by far the "Kennedy Report." This film... where to start with it. The fact that it started with a lot of audio and little to no video was haunting for the most part. The film consisted mostly of audio clippings from news broadcasts or interviews regarding the Kennedy Assassination and the events leading up to it. The film itself had this nerve racking feel though.. emphasized even more by certain elements, the countdown for one was very disturbing to watch actually due to the fact that you get into this rhythm that it will reach one and possibly something will happen. At that moment I truly did think the movie would show the infamous clip of JFK being shot, which more or less I did not really want to see, but with these build ups and countdowns, not to mention the audio discussing the shooting it was hard not to think about how it was all going to end. It was unsettling to say the least but also very well done in its presentation. The audio/video matching was amazing (really liked the old commercial footage spliced with presidential audio).

Over all going from Media Burn to the Report was pretty two sided, but it was good to see a different side maybe even different interpretation of each event in completely different contexts. Over all though I really did enjoy these films.

This is a Blog about an outside event I saw

Since I will most likely be one blog short this semester I will write a little bit about the show I saw over the weekend. The show in question that I saw was by a electronic Musician by the name of Meat Beat Manifesto aka Jack Dangers. The reason I decided to discuss this performance was that it was not played out like most concerts. First off the entire stage area was covered with two giant Projector screens. Then they had three people behind this screen for the performance. First off obviously Jack Dangers was behind there as he is the man behind the music, next there was Lin Farmer who was doing live drums in the center stage area, then there was the man who I would like to discuss, Ben Stokes is the man behind the visuals. Ben has done visuals for almost all Jack Dangers shows and DVD's and other artists including DJ Shadow, and Cut Chemist. Here is a small example of the stage layout so you can have a visual.



The thing that makes these visuals so incredible is that Jack Dangers emphasizes the use of 100's of samples and clips that he uses in his music. The thing that blows me away is Ben Stokes has a visual clip of every single sample used in the music and plays them live with Video DJ software and hardware. It is a surreal experience to be real honest. Seeing all these visuals played out while the music plays with a very large amount of bass. I have seen a couple shows now that have had Ben doing live visuals and every time he blows me away even more... The amount of time and editing and practice it must take to be able to perform this live visual performance is unimaginable. It reminds me a lot of NegativeLands style of performance and they both are quite similar. Negative land tends to use a lot more audio samples and Ben obviously is more visual, but both of their use of samples is very close in nature and I think that over all cluster montage style is something I would really like to mess around with myself. I will end this with some photos and videos of the show for people to get an idea of what I saw.

Negativland

Most people even after watching this film will probably be still asking "what exactly is negativeland?" Well to be honest its hard to describe them, they wouldnt really be classified as a "band" perse, but more of a group of artists. This is confusing because most people can buy their Cd's in record stores these days so why are they not considered a band? The group portrays "bootleg" collage's in an audio and visual assault on the senses. They are activists in a sense as they portray a ton of anti corporate and anti governmental information thrown together into a so called "media blender." In reference to their website., "their art and media interventions have (often naively) posed questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda and perception, with the results of these questions and explorations being what they release to the public." The group also would like to point out they are artists first, and activists second, never the other way around.

"Without ideological preaching, Negativland often becomes a subliminal culture sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice." This statement alone can sum up a lot of what Negativeland's goal is. They take media that is easily accessible, then use unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions, to completely re construct their meanings. "Negativland re-arranges these bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural opposition and "culture jamming." (quoted from negativeland's website)

Lastly I would like to post a example of a piece of their work entitled "Truth in advertising" which plays on the idea of censorship in advertisements and the media, and it uses a lot of audio/video samples from outside sources just like explained above.

Infinite Possibilities

At first this lecture just completely caught me off guard. This film maker walks into a film class and starts off by just stating " I could explain to you how this applies to film, but that will take to long, so I'm going to just do math." Now dont get me wrong I was way more into this then the last guest speaker we had, just for the fact that even if he wasnt 100% talking of film, his methods of thinkign and problem solving kept me listening. This whole lecture he did on explaining algebra and numbers really got the class discussing problem solving as a whole. This is where I believe he truly shined as a lecturer. I thought past all the numbers he was discussing and took more of a look at how he was solving problems and the methods he used. It almost irritated me when someone would ask a question regarding numbers being right or wrong in his equations, because I feel that wasnt the point at all. He took a very unique approach to a subject most reject and hate. Not only did I approve of this method, its how my brain wanted to think since I ever started math of this caliber. Why cant I divide by this number? Why cant I put this into that equation? All things I felt restricted by in math classes he just came and tore those barriers down, especially when he got into infinite and imaginary numbers. I heard a few people discuss how they felt it was annoying that he would stop in the middle of an equation and go to a new idea or thought and not conclude the previous steps. I truly liked this because it truly shows that his mind is racing with new ideas and processes, and he can change those in a snap (much like directing). This all boils down to how I feel that the creative nature and random changing of thoughts and ideas, bundled with amazing problem solving and an open mind is what make James Benning a truly gifted film maker and more importantly a teacher.

A sound in Motion - Spiral Jetty

This film more so then others just really took me by surprise. I don't know if it was the length, the content, or maybe just the narrators voice, but I was quite interested. More importantly I was really interested in one aspect more then others... the overall randomness of the films cuts were what really got me. You would see this working with tools and machines with the dirt and lake and rocks, then randomly it would cut audio and would cut to an image of a horned lizard. I tried to think of this for the entire film on why he would choose to do something like this. He also cut to images of dinosaurs among other things. One thing I did deduce from this is something I brought up and not a lot of my peers seemed to have the same idea. When watching this film I felt the overall look/feel of the design and final product felt very prehistoric. This would actually explain the dinosaur reference, and even the lizard and larger lizards such as the one shown are often talked about as descendants of the dinosaurs. I really do not know if this was his intention whats so ever but it made me think this, and I really could not see any other connection between the things shown. This being said it seemed to go well with the narrative he included with the "rocks,sand, salt to the west" that whole statement was very similar to the whole prehistoric feel and helped strengthen this idea even more.

Table Tops Galore

I would like to be 100% honest with my artist statement as at this point in my college career I am getting tired of writing for what people want to hear and what I actually mean. This being said I would like to state I really had a tough time with this project. First off the over all Idea I had for mine was a little more elaborate, it was more of showing the differences in the deep sub genres of electronic music, by playing clips of songs of those genres made by myself but I was having issues with projecting some kind of visual, not to mention having to write a bunch of different pieces of music within a small time frame with so much else on my plate. This being said I looked towards my second joy in this world and that is illustration. My concept was that it would be an artist drawing a character that was interacting with the camera and the artist by saying things he didn't mean to write. I tried to capture that feel that artists share when drawing a character of theirs. After two semesters of animation I was so used to drawing the same character that he happens to find his way into all my pages of my notebooks and sketchbooks. I cant tell if others know this feeling that I am referring to but this feel that I express when I draw a character so much it seems to grow on you. That being said, I feel my performance of this was a tad poor. I got the idea across but it is really a lot harder then it looks to cram this into 2:30 of footage, I saw so many students killing time near the end and I saw this nearly impossible on mine. The drawings were executed a tad sloppy and there wasn't much time to move the paper to the camera for a zoom in, which took away from my "live animation" effect. Building off time management I realized you really have to think out every detail of the shot or you will just be losing time near the end when you want that buffer for screw ups. Granted I would probably prefer to edit things like this, it is a god practice to get into performing something right the first time or learning from your mistakes. Overall I feel that was the most important part of this exercise was that, it is easy to edit film and make everything look nice but it all boils down to the raw footage and capturing that one great thing, and I feel that this is the true essence of experimental film.

Deadpan

When first entering the class here now into week three I already had this idea of what we were going to see... Although I might personally tend to find most of these films we watch rather boring or repetitive, I really had a slight change of heart this time around. When reading the 3 page blurb about Acconci's work, it gave me a different perspective on experimental work as a whole. One quote in particular intrigued me, "Acconci's body comes to replace the traditional art object, even as it performs the disappearance of a "productive" laboring body." It was brought up a few times I believe in lecture and in this reading that when using himself as an "art work" even though he is sending out these progress report types.. he himself still becomes sort of the center of the work as well. Touching on the other films we watched, I brought this up in discussion that I feel these films seem to grab my attention with a awesome shot or even an idea, but tend to lose me by not taking it anywhere. Maybe I just dont have the patience for experimental film, but after watching the mirror I do have somethign to say about it. I really liked the whole idea and look to the Mirror film, it played with my thoughts and views by making it almost like the man is holding a tv screen or a moving image... but my only complaint was I wish they would have done more with it. It was like I said an awesome idea, but they took it to slow and didnt do the zoom out till way later which was a rather cool effect. Ending this piece Id just like to say that before this class I really had no interest in experimental film, but after analyzing it a bit more, some things still bug me, but I am a bit more open after these last films. We will have to see as the class goes on...

From July To Keaton and All the Roads Between.

First off I would like to state I have yet to really be moved by any sort of "experimental" film of any kind, so just to get the frame of mind of where I am coming from on this.

Anyways back on topic. I would like to start with a quote that I feel had a great application to what we watched in lecture. "A joke is the arbitrary connecting or linking, usually by means of verbal association, of two ideas which in some way contrast with each other." Freud made reference to this quote in his work "Jokes and there relation to the unconscious." I think this is a great way to look at July's film The Amateurist. At first I didnt know what to think of this film and it really stumped me. First off I thought it was maybe supposed to be humorous with the numbers and the reflection of those shapes from the person shown on camera, but as I watched further I got a eerie feeling, and was confused. I kept trying to look deeper into the film to understand its meaning as a viewer. Which brings me back to the quote, was the reaction from the woman talking to a woman on a TV and thinking she could hear her the kind of association Freud was referring to? Freud also refers to looking at a joke from new angles and perceiving it as something more, which ironically was what I was trying to do the whole time, it really puts the point Freud was trying to make into perspective. I was talking with someone after the screening about his views on it and we discussed the discovery of what if we are what she refers to as amateurs , and when we try to find a deeper meaning in something that is foreign to us if that was the intention of the film. Since she discusses with an off camera person about how she is a professional... it really made me think more of her intentions and actually sparked some interest in me. Overall I am glad I got to see this piece of work and actually enjoyed analyzing it more then Keaton's film.