Originality

     Last week we spent a large amount of time discussing the fact that narration plays a large part in how video artists create their work and how audiences view it.  Even before movies became a popular form of entertainment, humans have had a natural tendency to put things in sequential order.  Now that movies ARE a large part of modern society, humans are not only looking for cause and effect, but are expecting a plot and purpose to all videos they view.  This is in serious contrast to many video artists who attempt to break this story telling barrier by remaking famous movies' scenes or creating videos that have absolutely no story plot.
     However, I am skeptical about the idea that artists can completely remove narration from their work.  After all, they make their videos to express emotions, which are often times best portrayed in a story.  If the story telling aspect of videos can never completely be removed from either the artist making them or the viewer watching them, then is there such a thing as originality?  No matter what movie one watches, there are only a handful of plots emotions, and related expressions to help the viewer interpret these things.  I believe that video art is no different.  All artists only use a handful of devises to get the audience to experience their video in the intended way.

Blog Post # 9

The video art piece by Diego Agulló and Agata Siniarska entitled Tuning Love used a lot of repetition and stopping of time to influence the mood of the piece.  The title explains a lot about this video of a man and women essentially tuning their love for one another and their life together.  The piece is stressful with lots of frustration and anxiety.  The man and women both repeat their actions and their words several times throughout the video in order to get the point across that tuning their love has become a horribly stressful activity.   The link to this video is provided below.  

http://video.videoart.net/vlog/?p=3025

I really like this work because it showed me how different techniques can be used to convey a specific mood and emotion.  Although I do not foresee using continuous repetition in my final piece, it is interesting to think about how that would change message of the piece.  

Reading Response #4

"The Never Ending Process to Communicate" is how Gary Hill defines video art.  This explanation really hit home with me.  I have often wondered, as I'm sure many others have as well, what the point of video art is?  Many of these so-called artistic expressions seem to have no point to them at all.  They tell no story, teach no moral, and sometimes fail to evoke even a strong emotion from the viewer.  What is the point?  For me, this one phrase from Gary Hill answered this mystery.  The point of video art is to attempt to communicate with the rest of humanity in a way that words or pictures can not.  People everywhere, especially artists, often struggle with the idea of identity.  For a world so filled with images of ourselves, we are often unable to define who we are.  What makes me ME and not YOU?  I think video art is a way to explore individual identity and how our original identity cooperates or conflicts with others' identities.  Smith and Steward provide a great example of defining their identity as one entity in a relationship and the frustration, anxiety, and struggle to identify themselves separately from one another.  Maybe that is why their videos are often so unbearable to watch.  They cause themselves and each other physical harm, even preventing one another from breathing, in the efforts to define themselves without the other.

Halloween Horror

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought that this video by Gabrielle Zimmermann was appropriate.  It primarily features the eyes of porcelain dolls.  The artist has manipulated both the color of the dolls themselves as well as the quality and color of the video to make these dolls seem as if they have a life of their own, but a life that is not quite functional, as if they are zombies come to life.  This is very fitting with the title of the piece which in French is "Reves Obscurs: Aux Pays des Poupees".  In English, this translates to "Obscure Dreams: In the Countries of Dolls".  Although I am seriously creeped out by the video the way it is, I do not support the artist's choice of music, which is a strange techno type of elevator music.  I think alternative sounds such as children's voices or babies crying would have evoked more emotion from the piece for me personally.  Here is the link to the video.

http://vimeo.com/77281047

The Art of the Selfie

In class we have frequently discussed what is art and what is not in today's media-filled society.  Our world is constantly being filled with images from advertisements to art to memories.  We have become obsessed with images of ourselves, and through creations of twitter, facebook, snapchat, and a multitude of other media, have been able to perfect the art of the selfie picture.

The Moving Art Fair in London had an art exhibit based on this concept of the selfie in which 22 six second Vine videos were exhibited together in a piece called "Shortest Video Art Ever Sold".  Below is a link to an article written about this and other artists' insight as to whether this is self obsession or artistic self expression.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/17/the-national-selfie-portrait-gallery-at-london-s-moving-image-art-fair.html

Blog Post #6: Further Inspiration for my Final Project

For our final project we are given a LOT of acceptable range with practically no restrictions.  I find this type of work harder than completing structured assignments because there are so many possible options.  After debating on my final assignment topic for a week I have come up with several themes all having to do with nature and science.  As a scientist, I am surrounded by technologies designed to manipulate nature on a regular basis.  I take some of these for granted, and others I probably don't even notice are there because they are so engrained in my life.  For my final project I would like to include video of both my lab and nature so either show their symbiosis or their conflict, or maybe both.

I got this idea from the work discussed last week by Amy Youngs with the fishbowl full of crickets.  Below is a link to another one of her art installations in which technology, humans, and nature must work together for the success of the piece...literally.

http://hypernatural.com/


Amy Youngs does a lot of work connecting human and natural interaction.  Below is a link to another one of her video installation works depicting a pet carrier/cage on top of which is a tv covered in animal fur depicting animals fighting.  This entire work has a very violent theme and shows how nature and humans are often at conflict, with man trying to put nature in a cage.

http://hypernatural.com/whylook.html