Light observations

Light observation #1: 

        Driving casually at night has always been one of my favorite experiences visually. At night I am free from the visual cacophony of the day. Free to take in the symphony of lights passing my car and gleaming off of my windshield.

I have distinct memories of squinting into the cheap chandelier overhanging my dining room table one night years ago. I tilted my head and watched the bulbs’ light split through my eyelashes. Driving at night reminds me of that simple, beautiful sight.

Light is more loud when the sun has sunk below the horizon. Streetlights and stoplights paint an emotive picture over each tree and building they touch. Basically, I really like it.

#2:

        I have always found fluorescent lighting to be positively soul crushing. Whether I’m spending countless hours in an over-lit high school classroom or I’m spending 20 minutes in Walmart I always feel as though I am Alex in the infamous scene from A Clockwork Orange when he is having his eyes held open by machines.

        The way I see it, abundant fluorescent lighting is supposed to mimic the effect of the sun – daylight (which I also occasionally detest). Let it go on the record, however, that it is a terrible, phony, representation of sunlight. Fluorescent light lacks character. It forces its way into your eyelids and laughs at your pain.

And it is not even used with good intent. Schools want to keep their students awake – to force their (usually terrible) circadian rhythms into submission. Walmart wants to keep their lifeless employees upright.

        Basically, fluorescent lighting is the devil.

#3:

       

        I find it interesting the way long exposure photography seems not to draw out motion but to smooth it over. In doing my abstract photos I attempted two long exposures in which I aimed to paint patterns with light. One of those photos – the spatula under the rippling water – gave me an unexpected result.

        I expected the camera to see the distortion on the surface of the water, but instead I got what looks to be a spatula sitting in a bathtub with some slight distortion. The film did not pick up a sampling of the water’s motion the way your eye does. The film picked up the collective motion of the course of the exposure and smoothed it out into one (pretty disappointing) image. The same goes for the shot of Kyle in the dark with a phone flashlight on his face.

        I see now why Eggeling and Richter were so drawn to film (motion pictures, that is) as a medium. While you can expose as long as you want to, in the end photography can only create one image – seconds or minute compressed into a single frame. Nothing near the power of the moving image.

Meditations on Sound Design -- Assignment 1B response

Sound design is difficult for me to process.

When I edit sound, art feels like accident. Perhaps it is because I view editing as a visual task. I see the bars of video and sound on the timeline clicking into place like a puzzle. I see the files unwinding frame by frame like a film strip. I see color, I see rhythm and I see time. It is not so with sound.

I can quantify loudness. I can see waveforms and levels -- where sound is and where sound is not -- but I cannot see its texture, tone or timbre. For those I must listen, and my sense of hearing is not nearly as discerning as my sense of sight. I cannot visualize (auralize?) sound before it is created. I have less sound-intuition, if you will.

When I edit sound I do not have an idea that I make into a reality. When I edit sound I place sound on the timeline and I listen, then I add another sound and I listen once more. And so on. Perhaps this means I have no sense for sound. Perhaps this means that sound editing, for me, is true experimentation – free from gaining ideas and preconceptions of taste.

That isn’t to say that I am not discerning about what I hear once I do hear it, of course.  

Over the course of project 1B I learned some things about what I like in sound and what I do not. Some of it was obvious, some of it was not.

I learned that sometimes the least complex sound design is the most satisfying.

I learned that “realistic” soundscapes – unlike realistic images – chase feeling rather than resolution. When I hear sound in my everyday life I am not hearing everything around me at once but rather I am hearing a few things very closely.

I also learned that it is very difficult to describe to someone through words what you see in a sound, or how to arrange a sound in editing. In this way, to collaborate on sound is challenging.

I still enjoy sound, perhaps now a bit more than I did before. I still have a strange relationship with sound too. Sound is a distraction, sound is a formless mud which slips through my fingers as I grab for it. But sound is alright by me. 

A response to "Absolute Film"

As an artist, I am totally on board with the idea of absolute film. Light and motion are the fundamental materials of film as a medium. I think that is easy to forget when you’re watching the expertly obscure films produced by major studios in the United States.

In the years since the birth of absolute film, the medium has gotten more and more complicated. On top of light and motion we added sound and color. While these two elements may seem small they have completely taken over the minds of the film-consuming public.

I think, however, that in this new age of digital filmmaking we have found the possibilities for absolute film (absolute film 2.0, if you will). With the birth of computer animation we now have complete control over our art. Digital film is not comprised of chemicals and particles of silver but rather pixels – 2,073,600 of them in a 1080p video. Using my computer – I can control the specific color of each pixel completely separately and wholly. If this does not allow for a new movement of absolute film I do not know what will. 

A response to 9/9 filmmaker presentations

Jonas Mekas seems like a definite bro. That's my biggest take-away from Samantha's presentation on him. Regardless of what I think about his work, I'd film make with him any day of the week. 

His passion for art, and for artists is inspiring to me personally as an artist. The way he fit film into a constantly busy life gives me hope as someone who often feels stuck in the chaotic world of college life. If he could find time to create on film in the midst of his life, surely I can whip out a phone or camera of any sort and create my art as well. 

I thought Samantha did a great job of presenting on him. I thought the clip she opened with captured his spirit perfectly, and I think seeing all that he did for experimental film-making as a movement is crucial to understanding his effect on the medium.

Viking Eggeling's story reflects some of my fears about myself. He was undoubtedly a talented artist, a man of great ideas, but he died before he ever got to see those ideas become a reality. Part of that was he lived in a pretty rough time and place, but another part of it, I think, is his obsession with perfection. 

That is something I feel in myself. Not deep down but throughout my character. It reflects a struggle I've had throughout my life, and in the past year in particular. If I stubbornly refuse to create anything less than perfect, I will simply never create. Though I am discerning and I am methodical, if I ever want to be happy with who I am I need to let that go.

It also helps that I probably will not contract syphilis any time soon. 

Harry Smith was a little bit harder to relate to for me. His personality is one I have never really associated with. I am not the sort of artist who cares so intensely about art above all else.

I can associate better with what Patrick said about Smith's life before he got into drugs. I am big on thinking. I like to deconstruct and reconstruct and reorganize thoughts and groups of thoughts. I think that is what the human brain does best. And I think using drugs, while interesting and eye-opening for sure, inhibits that fundamental power of the human brain.

With that said, I thought the works Patrick showed us by Smith (especially the first) were absolutely fascinating and often beautiful. I think as an experimenter Smith's obsession with creating art independently of money or opinion is admirable. Just not something I could ever do. 

Great job on the presentations all around, though!

Synesthesia and Cymatics

The visualization of sound, through cymatics, animation and other technologies, shows to me our obsession with the visual sense. While cymatics may certainly be helpful as a tool to explore sound on a more experiential level, they will always be a hollow representation of the true auditory sense. 

To put an image to sound is to feed our fundamental urge for visual stimulus. The moment an image is associated with a sound, the sound's artistic purity is corrupted by the human mind. 

The same goes for an image. In my exploration of the absolute film movement for my filmmaker presentation I have found that the inherent power of the visuals in Symphonie Diagonale are instantly lessened when paired with a soundtrack of any type. 

This is not to say that cymatics are not interesting themselves; they are most certainly a captivating representation of sound through visuals. Cymatics have the power to give the viewer a new perspective on the idea of sound. To see sound not simply as a perception but as a complex universal force. Sound is not only what we hear, its effects resonate (pun intended) throughout our understanding, Scientific and Spiritual, of the universe.

But it is important to keep in mind that cymatics are but another way for our bodies and minds to perceive the essence of sound. They are no less valid a perception than hearing but they are also no closer to a true understanding of sound itself. 

Sound Recording (1A) Reflection

The experience of sound recording was simultaneously confining and liberating. 

It was liberating because the assignment called only for us to record what we heard. We searched in our recordings not for meaning but rather for the inherent qualities of sound: loudness, pitch, tone, rhythm. Since we were given no topic we were free to act on a whim -- to push and pull and scratch and play as we explored these sounds.

I believe, however, that in such freedom one will undoubtedly find constraint. When given the entire auditory landscape to explore, the immediate options are overwhelming. Where do I go first? How do I pick a direction when there is no path? 

Such is the challenge of all true creativity.