Projection Proposal (in progress)

Projection Location 1: Fire Escape Hallway. Library Left, Third Floor.

Audience
- All using campus walkway to access Campus Center.  Heavy traffic during class changes, meal rushes, etc.
- Mostly students, with access to meal plans.  Projections occurring at night will mostly be viewed by younger students, who have access to meal plans, and will be walking to dinner.
- Fellow artists who have attended the event.

Foot Traffic
- Audience will be based heavily upon foot traffic.
- Busy at certain times of day, as location will be viewed from campus walkway primarily.

Lighting Conditions
- Sheltered spot.  Will need to project at night, however.
- Method of projection (reverse projection) will require use of high illumination/low external light conditions.

Social Context
- Located at heart of campus, however, in location often overlooked.
- Will be up high, inaccessible, yet unavoidable.

Scale
- Towering, massive. 
- Large windows, split into frames.
- Inaccessible, impressive, will be viewed from below, typically in motion/while walking to destination.

Placement of Projector 
- In space, projector will need to be placed far enough from window to cover the projection space, but also away from the stairs, and in a spot not occupied by stair railing.
- Actual placement to be fine-tuned, based upon type of projector used. (Wide-throw = closer, Reg.-throw, further)

Architectural Elements
- Fire escape hallway in state of disrepair.  Location previously unknown.  Externally, up high, yet internally, easily accessible by stairwell.  Fire escape used only in emergencies, but typically disregarded in regular/normal day-to-day routines.  Piece should reflect an element of this "unknown" theme.
- Windows, the surface of the projection space, will need to be coated/covered in light-absorbing material.  Window configuration themselves are divided into progressively smaller frames, rising from bottom up, creating interesting opportunities for unique composition of actual piece to be projected. 

Projection Location 2: Faculty Lounge. Library, Third Floor.

Audience
- Fellow artists
- Students, staff, faculty, visitors, who may be aware of the show
- Location is difficult to discover 

Foot Traffic
- Located next to main campus path
- Heavy foot traffic at certain times of the day

Lighting Conditions
- Interior has controlled lighting
- Exterior is mildly light-polluted by path, building lights

Social Context
- Location is hard to detect, unless the viewer is deliberately searching for it
- Adds effect of surveillance

Scale
- Large, yet not overbearing
- Would be reverse projected onto library window

Placement of Projector
- Projector would be placed on counter, behind window, and beam across the room
- Space would be easy to project in: plenty of power outlets
- Minimal keystone would be required 

Architectural Elements
- Window acts as frame
- Frame is split into several regions 
- These regions could display different content, or act as one

project 3: preliminary artist research - Doug Aitken

The assignment for Project 3 requires the class to begin developing an artwork for public display, most likely in an outdoor location, using projectors to create a work geared towards viewing "in passing."  Although excited for the numerous possibilities that are presented in this assignment, I have experienced little outdoor projection art, having only viewed Doug Aitken's work Song 1, which was projected onto the concave surface of the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Having experience with this artist, and interested in investigating his works further to possibly glean information and inspiration on my own, I decided to research his work, with a focus upon his outdoor installation pieces.

Over the years, I've found that Doug Aitken has been extremely active in producing outdoor projection works, often using the environment surrounding the work to inform and strengthen its meaning.  For example, one of his most recent works, entitled Mirror (2013), is a work that was projected in Seattle on the prolific Seattle Museum of scenes taken from Seattle, the location itself.  He spent over 5 years gathering an immense duration of footage of the city in all weather conditions and times of day, which he then projected, according to real-life conditions actually occurring within the city, effectively creating a sort of hyper-realistic, yet cinematic, video immersion experience.

Looking over his famous outdoor installation pieces, I've discovered that the collision between the cinematic (created by the stylized, polished video work) and the realistic (generated by the video's projection into real-world circumstances) create a interesting friction that causes a sort of distortion of the way the viewer engages with both the work, and the location the work is featured within.  The landscape of the image becomes a necessary element of the piece itself, and all who engage and interact with the space are also forced to engage and interact with the art as well.

As well as the location of the projection, Aitken also crafts his works as not only physical pieces, but also as events, which he calls "happenings", a term invented by the Fluxus movement.  These "happenings" are often large-scale in nature, and well-publicized, planned, and funded, creating a dichotomy between the carefully controlled nature of these events, and the sporadic, unpredictable nature of reality.  Mirrors pushes and blurs this boundary, as it uses sensors and cameras focused upon real-life conditions, in order to cue in to pre-recorded video footage that mimics it.   

project 2: self-assessment

Alex Stillson

Professor Billy Friebele

ART314

3/31/14

Project 2: Cyber/Space – Self-Assessment

Start by identifying the central theme of your work. What drove you to create this image? Speak about where your inspiration came from and what you intended from the outset.

The central theme of my work is the subjective passage of time, portrayed through the medium of a GIF file, and subsequently the work’s presentation as an infinite loop.  This image is undoubtedly a product of my impending due date of graduation, facing an uncertain, large world, where time may shrink itself down further and further.  I’ve always found the phrase “time flies when you grow older” to be vaguely disconcerting, and strove to explore the subjectivity of time through this project.  The multiple planes of speed, motion, and stasis contrast each other, and the longer the viewer concentrates upon the work, the more may be revealed.  Also present within the work is a certain element of chance and probability—a snapshot of seemingly random time.

Next talk about how the process unfolded. In every art project there are surprises and unexpected results. As you work with the computer (or any set of tools) you end up compromising to some extent with the limitations you encounter. Reflect on the things that you learned (both technical and conceptual) as you built this artwork.

I began by examining my past work, and questioning my methodology—what do I find interesting?  What is my preferred medium?  How can I push forward in both intention and practice, building both my capacity to craft an idea, and physically portray it? I initially experimented with reversed time in my previous project, beach window, reversing and slowing down certain areas within the frame.  I knew that I wanted to follow a similar technique with this project, so the first shoot I embarked upon focused upon a torrent of rocks, falling down a gorge.  The idea behind this was to create a seamless loop of debris cascading down, but I felt that the idea lacked direction and exigency—it simply didn’t have the same subtle yet urgent undertones as my last project.  I uploaded the footage to my laptop, but eventually became discouraged, and left for Cape Hatteras, which is where I spent my spring break.  After break, I knew that I had only a few days left before the final work was to be critiqued.  Armed with my footage from the gorge, I trudged through the snow on a Tuesday night to work on editing, when it struck me—the snow was a perfect natural element to create a moving image of the subjectivity of time.  

Examine your process. What were your work habits? Were they effective? Can you see any way to improve this in the future? Be honest. Part of this exercise is learning how to get the best results and how to best budget your time.

Stumbling upon the idea to capture falling snow in the dead of night was invigorating, as I felt I had finally found a direction, but also technically challenging.  I needed a light source that was powerful enough to penetrate the darkness, but also without the aid of a recognizable light source, such as a streetlight—I didn’t want my footage to contain obvious visual representations of objects present within the world, but rather to portray abstract images, to drain the artistic conversation from certain associations once may have with a particular object.  For example, the viewer’s knowledge that this footage was shot on the banks of the St. Mary’s River would cause many of the viewers, (most of them college students here at SMCM) to immediately cast their own experiences and associations upon the work.  By working at night, and avoiding recognizable landmarks, I hoped to minimize this effect.  Since I desired objectivity as much as possible, I knew the light source used to illuminate the snow falling would need to be behind the camera as well as relatively small and portable.  I ended up using a headlamp that I had stashed in my backpack.

Actual capturing of the footage was simple—using a tripod and a Canon 7D, I shot two takes of snow falling sideways across the path of the lens, and two takes of snow falling into it, as it was blown by the wind.  In all of the takes, the headlamp was secured to the top of the camera lens, creating a pathway of light as close to the focal point of the viewfinder as possible, to create the illusion of a tunnel of illumination.  I captured the footage using the dark distances of the river as a backdrop, avoiding all visual evidence of the space where the footage was actually gathered.  This was done to create a discombobulating effect where the only measure of space and time was the falling snow, which is a constantly shifting reference point, making it difficult to judge where exactly the camera is located in space.  Thusly, there is no sense of distance within the work that can possibly be completely accurate.  Satisfied with the footage that I had gathered so far, I conducted one more take, this time of a light source located on the college’s waterfront.  However, still wanting to keep associations to a minimum, I used the shallowest depth of field possible, and focusing upon a focal point close to the surface lens.  This created an unexpected effect of a sort of glowing, porous disk, that remains static, while all the other elements within the work are shifting in constant motion.  I wanted to capture something that would highlight the fluxing nature of the work, a static yet unrecognizable image that would act as a visual anchor of sorts.        

Finally, address the finished product. Take a step back and pretend that you did not make this artwork. What would you perceive? Do you think the message is being communicated clearly that you set out to broadcast? How do the formal elements (color, rhythm, composition, line, shape etc.) communicate visually? You should identify areas that seem particularly successful, and others that are less so. How would you fix the issues that are not working as well? The goal is to bridge the gap between the visual qualities of the artwork and the meanings that are being expressed.

Diffusion 1, viewed in the context of a browser, is at once confusing and visually interesting.  The image is presented in pure black and white, with no compromises made through greyscale.  This causes the algorithm used in Photoshop to make frame-by-frame decisions of what subject matter should be portrayed as white, and which should be presented as black, causing a rapid strobing effect in the noise particles which are a result of the high sensitivity the camera sensor was being implemented at.  The effect, if viewed on a large enough screen, is at once overwhelming and soothing, as there is a rapid rate of motion, looping and predictable in some areas, yet seemingly sporadic in others.  This effect gives the viewer a sort of unease, as distance and time seem to operate at different speeds within the work.  Particles are not only appearing randomly at differing areas of the frame, but also moving horizontally and vertically across and toward the frame.  The larger the particle, the easier it is for the viewer to detect a pattern and path, as the loop is only about two and a half seconds.  The multiple planes of motion, in addition to portraying several planes of time simultaneously, create a sense of distance and a multi-dimensionality that suggests a graphical representation of planes of probability, distance, and time.   

Lastly, give yourself a grade for this project. What do you feel, in all honesty, you deserve for your effort and for the outcome.

I feel like I deserve an A for this assignment.  I strove to push myself both conceptually and technically, and although shorter in duration than past works that have led to its creation, I feel that the artwork I produced is conceptually and technically strong, as well as visually interesting. 

Reader Response: "New Media: Guerrilla Culture to Gadget Art" by Krisna Murti

This reading explores the function of new media within contemporary culture, specifically within the context of Indonesian history, and its many varied functions.  Although the reading felt mostly like a re-cap on many of the same themes that have been covered in class, such as the politicization of digital/new media, and the ever-growing prevalence of technology and art within our everyday lives, the fact that it was contextualized within the frame of Indonesian history and culture was interesting and invigorating.  It focuses upon the international, accessible nature of new media, but also brings to light the possible ways it could be politicized.

The author claims that new media is neutral, and it sparked an interesting conversation that we had in class, revolving around the writer's assertion that new media is inherently neutral in nature, but it is only in transmitting the media that it becomes political.  Arguments were made in class that it is not, especially in terms of capitalism, where corporations strive to profit off of every possible financial source.  New media is no exception, as companies such as Adobe and Apple, although spearheading development and technological breakthroughs, strive to make a hefty sum off of the art business.  In this sense, new media itself may not be charged politically, but as of art in the past, it is primarily financially-driven in many ways, particularly in the sense that many of the tools needed to create it are available only to a certain amount of people.  Unlike drawing or even painting, to make a digital artwork requires a considerable amount of resources.

Another interesting topic that was discussed in class, that the reading acknowledged, is that time is a significant factor within new media art--it is only recently that art has had the ability to be time-based, or presented within the fabric of time.  This leads to a subjective time, and therefore a construction of virtual reality.  New media seems to accelerate exponentially, as much has changed within the past decade, and it will be interesting to see what comes next.

project 2: the web-based artwork

diffusion 1, 2014

Project 2: Artist Research; Bill Viola and Sharon Lockhart

Bill Viola is a contemporary video and new media artist, and is considered a defining figure in electronic, sound, and image technology-based art creation.  His works use new media technologies to portray fundamental human experiences such as birth, death, and different aspects of consciousness, and can be categorized into three types: conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the two. 

Viola's work often exhibits a sort of painterly quality, as his use of ultra-slow motion video encourages the viewer to sink into to the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it.  This quality makes his work unusually accessible within a contemporary art context.  

As a result, his work often receives mixed reviews from critics, some of whom have noted a tendency toward grandiosity, obviousness, and excess in some of his works.  Yet it is this very ambitiousness, his striving toward meaning, and attempts to deal with large, sweeping experiences and aspects of human life, that also make his work appreciated by other critics, his audiences and collectors.

Sharon Lockhart is a photographer and video artist based in Los Angeles whose work explores the relationships between photographic and cinematic methods of storytelling.  Themes of her work often include a human subject’s interaction with their environment, and some works, in particular Lunch Break, use ultra-slow motion to bring attention to small details that would often be overlooked within the context of everyday life.    

In Lunch Break, Lockhart uses a single, 80-minute tracking shot to portray the gap of time given to workers for their lunch break within a metalworks factory in Bath, Maine.  Although in real time the shot lasted barely longer than 11 minutes, Lockhart used slow motion to exaggerate and highlight small, previously-unnoticed details about the workers' lives and break.

The manner in which these two contemporary video artists use slow motion to build and portray artistic intention is striking to me, and something that I may be thinking about for my next project, which will continue upon the trajectory of merging photographic and cinematic techniques, as well as slow motion, in order to convey a narrative or artistic intention to the viewer. 

Reader Response: “Distracted Reception,” Peter Osborne; "Artifacts" by Daniel Rourke

This reading focused upon the perceived connection between distraction, and the perceptions of contemporary art within our technology-driven world by Peter Osborne.  Osborne argues that distraction, although usually viewed in a negative light, is actually crucial to the perception and creation of art as a differentiation from everyday life.  However, this assertion is inherently dependent upon the assumption of the exact definition of the word “distraction” and I often found myself unsure in which context Osborne meant to apply the word.  The OED defines distraction as a forcible “splitting” of attention, which is often perceived or received in a negative manner, where Osborne seems to portray it as a selective and deliberate shift in attention.  This is a much more positive portrayal of distraction and its often unproductive function (or lack thereof) in our daily lives.  The fact that in this article he seems to be arguing that it functions within art as not only a positive force, but a crucial one, was surprising to say the least.     

In the article “Artifacts,” much of the phenomena Rourke describes are the technical processes of the gradual loss of data—the inevitable decay of digital files throughout travel, reproduction, or changes in format.  He argues that this is prevalent in most forms of communication, and in all forms of digital production, as files of any sort will be “forced to change and reformat within different states of matter.”  However, although this is an interesting point, I fail to see how uses of non-digital mediums, such as analog film, are “ludicrous” and based upon “nostalgia.”  These mediums may be used to portray differing ideas or perspectives that a digital format may not be able to accomplish with a same effect—perhaps an artist desires their work to remain in its original form, without the warping or gradual degradation over time.  It may be argued that works will change over time inevitably, no matter their medium, but this effect is undoubtedly sped up and amplified by publishing in a digital form. 

The link for the online article "Artifacts" can be found here  

Self-Assessment, Project 1: "beach window"

Self-Assessment, Project 1: beach window

Identify the central theme of your work. What drove you to create this image?

The central themes of my work beach window are the perspectives of the place, or a location, and the way by which they may shift, or remain static.  There’s always a certain aura to a location, and in this project, I wanted to capture the mood of a place.  Adding an extra dimension, I wished to explore the way in which associations will shift and change over time, although the landscape physically may not—essentially, a shifting of perspectives, or a lack thereof.  The inspiration for this particular theme is rooted in my own exploration of St. Mary’s College, and the landscapes surrounding.  Although this particular landscape has physically changed very little, my perception of them has made them, in my eyes, shift drastically.  This project deals essentially with time and memory, inspired in part by my impending graduation, but specifically memories and associations that may be triggered by a certain place, and affected by the duration of time that has occurred since the last memorable event happened.  These “happenings” are mostly personal within this particular project, although in future works I may want to focus upon events that have affected others, not only myself, and may be more politically-charged in nature.

Talk about how the process unfolded.

The actual process of the work itself was a long one, and for the most part, quite sporadic.  A good part of the project was spent simply learning the technical skills needed in order to accomplish slow motion and time-warping video, which were two techniques I knew I wanted to feature within my first project.  However, the process behind the idea of the project was much more abstract, and involved quite a bit of soul-searching and travel.  Initially, I wanted to pick up from a previous project that I had done as an assignment for ART105, in which I strived to portray a “portrait” of time, through the capture of a GIF image.  This image, or “portrait of a moment,” would represent a small snippet of a passed moment within time.  I was interested in the concept of time and memory, and how the two may interact with one another in order to create a series of “portraits” of a place. 

My first actual shoots that went towards the project took place in Washington D.C. with a few friends of mine, as I experimented with slow motion video, specifically the ways in which rising smoke could be captured on slow motion video.  Although I managed to compile decent material, the idea behind them was not fully realized, so the shots that I took have been placed aside for the time being.  I learned a valuable lesson regarding lighting however, as the light requirements for high-speed shooting is much greater than slower exposure times, and if not armed with decent lighting, doing a high-speed shoot at night is virtually impossible, even with a fast lens.  My next shoot, after this venture, took place at Point Lookout State Park, about 18 miles from the college.  The weather was cold, stormy, and snowy, but I was determined to capture footage of the snow and high winds beating against the waves and the grass, as I thought that the overall effect would be mesmerizing in slow motion.  With a friend to help carry my tripod, and a few paper towels to dry my camera from the driving sleet, we went out on the rocks, capturing a few angles before I finally found the angle that allowed a satisfactory view of both the ocean waves breaking on the rocks, and the waving grass along the shoreline, being beaten by the driving sleet.  Using the tripod to create continuity between the alteration between still photography and video shots, and attempt to prevent excessive shaking of the camera from the high winds, I captured a few shots of 60 fps video, each spanning slightly over a minute, and accompanying still shots of the same scene.  My original intention was to layer not two videos on one another, but a still image of a wave breaking, and a separate layer of video featuring the grass waving incessantly, the whole piece a looping video with selective motion, similar to a GIF image.  When I started editing the video, however, I realized that in addition to further portraying my intended theme of memory and time associated with place, the video may more dramatically communicate this to the viewer by reversing the flow of the waves, in direct conflict with the slow forwards-motion of the waving grass.                        

Examine your process. What were your work habits? Were they effective?

My editing process started admittedly quite late into the assignment, as I had little time throughout the week to do shooting specific to the project, and I was also waiting for the desired conditions—I had decided that a high-wind situation would be most visually striking in a slow motion format.  The shoot was finished successfully by Saturday afternoon, but editing still lay ahead.  It did not take me too long to acquire the needed skills and knowledge of Final Cut Pro X in order to complete the multi-layering and time-warping aspects of the project (after watching many, many tutorials) but due to rendering issues with my laptop, it took me hours to export the completed video.  Even while editing, the laptop would crash after running the program for longer than half an hour.  This stretched the time needed to edit the project significantly, and I spent all of Sunday and some of Monday simply attempting to prevent my machine from crashing.  It would take several minutes for the computer to acknowledge even simple tasks.  Since this occurrence, I’ve learned to certainly not wait until the last moment for large assignments such as these, since although I managed to export at least a piece of the completed work, I was still under massive stress having my laptop malfunction on such a frighteningly steady basis.  When dealing with new terrain in terms of software updates and new techniques, it is definitely best to get the shooting done as quickly as possible, leaving plenty of time for the final edit.   

Address the finished product.

            Although I was hard-pressed to complete the project due to computer processing and software troubles, I am immensely satisfied with the final product.  Not only did it allow me to explore previously untouched territory in film editing, but it also conveyed the intended idea in our classes’ crit session.  The end product is visually thought-provoking, in the sense that the slow-moving waves and grass both compliment and contrast one another—one travels forward in time, while the other travels back.  The colors are natural, yet dark—the tones suggest a darker, underlying meaning behind the relatively innocent subject matter.  The relationship between the moving grass and moving water is important, and is highlighted by their manipulated timespan.  On first glance, the viewer may not perceive anything out the ordinary, but rather a simple glimpse into a normal beach scene.  However, upon further examination, it’s apparent that there’s something out of the ordinary—the complete silence builds tension, and the water moving backwards against the tide creates a dreamlike scene.  The rope, although subtle, draws the viewer’s eye around the work.  Although the work is a video, the static camera treats the frame much as still photograph would, allowing a strategic revealing and veiling of elements inside and out of the frame.  The viewer is forced to focus upon this scene, contemplating it, with their associations and perceptions changing the longer they view the piece.     

Lastly, give yourself a grade for this project.

            I would give myself an A on this project.  I spent a good deal of time on it, both conceptually and in practice, and I tried out many ideas before finally settling on one that I thought fit my intention the best.  I was plagued by computer troubles, but learned from it, and was ultimately able to churn out a successful piece.  It seems to me an advancement in the right direction from the work that inspired it, and certainly leaves room for further improvement and refinement.