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

Blog Post # 5: Ideas for my final project

Since I already have a clear direction for my second video art assignment, I am using this blog post to explore ideas for my future final project.  Below are some images taken from art videos that i found especially intriguing.


This is from an exhibition by Tat Marina called "Finding Face".  Particularly ironic in this scene since everything but the face is visible, I particularly like the tricks the artist plays on the audience.  The scene appears to be underwater, but the subject is wearing jeans and something about the image makes it seems as though the subject isn't really in water up to his neck, but instead that the photographer is manipulating the audience in some way.



This image taken from one of David Hall's galleries is also slightly confusing, but in a completely different mood.  The twilight zone impression given off by the neon lights coming from behind a mysterious door leave much up to the viewer's imagination.  The circle in the middle of the door is also curious. I couldn't find a high enough resolution image in order to tell what that circle is depicting, but this may add even more mystery to the piece.


This installation by Amy Youngs is by far my favorite.  It includes a fish bowl filled with artificial plastic decorations and live crickets.  A microphone at the top of the fish bowl amplifies the crickets' sound and the video projection of grass at the back of the fish bowl makes that set up seem almost four demential.  I love this piece because it is such a creative way to make a clear commentary on the state of nature in our current society.  Here she has used ALL man made objects to represent a "fake" sense of nature to which she has subjected these poor crickets.  Although we would not think of this twice if this fish bowl was filled with water, a mini castle, and some fish, taken out of the standard fishbowl context, the viewer is faced with the reality of how idiotic humans can be to place nature in a bowl...literally.  Although this would be out of the range of acceptable final projects since it is an installation and not an actual video, I will not be able to use it for my final project, but I do like the idea of using nature and man for my final video project.

The Importance of Sound

I have been looking at a lot of the video artists on the UBU website and have been intrigued and surprised by many.  One of the cleverest videos that I came across was titled "Getting In" by Shelly Silver that she made in 1989.  Here is the link to the 2 minutes and 50 second video if you would like to watch it.

http://www.ubu.com/film/silver_getting.html

Her use of sound in this piece transforms the entire video into a completely different meaning, which is something that I would like my second project to be able to do.  At first, her silent images of building doors seems like a simple montage of "getting in" to the building, or maybe even "getting in" to society if a larger meaning were derived.  However, intermittent sound begins to pop up at every door shown and it quickly becomes clear that what the viewer is listening to is the love making sounds of multiple people orgasming.  This gives the video and its title a completely different meaning than it originally portrayed!  Now, the video seems like an invasion of privacy, spying into people's private homes and listening to what they do behind closed doors.

I love how her use of sound was able to transform her video entirely and I would like to be able to do that in my final project if possible.  Keeping in mind that silence is a sound in and of itself, I will look to incorporate both sound and silence in my two pieces to create completely separate emotions from the viewer.

Reading Response # 3

A significant portion of the reading this week focused on “Feminist Actionism” as coined by Valie EXPORT.  It was discussed how, throughout history, women have been suppressed by men in every industry, including art.  “The history of woman is the history of man, for man has determined the image of woman for men and women” (EXPORT in Video Art by Michael Rush, 94).  EXPORT is just one of many examples of women artists who have gone to the extreme in order to get the world to notice her.  She was driven by the need to interrupt this male dominated society and prove that her worth as an artist was equal to, if not greater, than that of any male artist.  However, instead of condemning society for putting women under the rug for so long, should we be thanking it?  Without that male social suppression, I’d be willing to bet that a majority of these phenomenal women artists would not have felt the need to express themselves so strongly, and thus would have never had a reason to create art in the first place!  Some of the greatest ideas, inventions, and endeavors have been undertaken to challenge a social norm.  With nothing to challenge, their work would have no purpose for existing.