collage blog

a couple notes

2004-05-05T12:03:00.000-04:00

so i was thinking back on conceptual art...
and i can't remember the title of the piece, nor do i have the motivation at this moment to go back and look it up, but anyways, the piece with the copious numbers of boots bought from the salvation army and then photographed in numerous places...
well anyways, the point is that it reminded me (shallowly) of the expedia ads that have the garden gnome pictured in all the different parts of the world (like in amelie as well).
and it also reminded me (less shallowly) of this series of photographs that my aunt published back in the '80's that were of a huge canvas tarp that she took to all these different places and photographed with things and people. the series was called 'traveller,' and i can't find any trace of it online, sorry.
but anyways, those were a couple things i wanted to note.
also, i've been working on everything to have a final draft to turn in tomorrow. hypertext response [check]; blog [check]; final project/portfolio [mostly there - there're a couple more things i want to add to it if i have the time, but if not, it's no big deal]... so now i just haveta link everything to the main pages. oh and then there's one video clip that i've tried and tried to upload and it just won't. so hopefully i'll get that to work.
good luck to everyone else on their projects!

sum up

2004-04-29T13:24:00.000-04:00

some ideas i came away from class on tuesday with:
-classifying elements of collage include intent, terminology, and cultural context
-ben and aaron's idea that maybe collage is just what we call something without another term or greater category - thus explaining why film collage is usually just called film, music collage usually just music, etc. because they fall into a broader category. as opposed to the old-fashioned cut-and-paste collage of yesterday, which can't really be classified as anything greater (not qualitatively) than collage.
-collage aesthetic vs. collage - the idea that film, etc. can be said to incorporate the collage aesthetic, but wouldn't necessarily be considered collage bc of above reason

on a different note, sorry i missed seeing what seth's class ended up with - i had a meeting to attend.

also, i really enjoyed the mccoys. the seemed like such genial people in general. plus their study of tv was accomplished with such an interesting perspective, esp. considering their love for at least one of the shows that they then broke down. the mission statement-type thing was incredible - using only words with four letters or less. i still have a little bit of trouble seeing what they do as collage however....

examples

2004-04-20T14:56:00.000-04:00

oh, but also, some specific examples of conceptual/installation art that i fould particularly pleasing are as follows:
-the fluxus performance workbook was pretty interesting. the musical theme made it more so. it's stange just reading the ideas and never seeing the outcome though. kind of makes it into a whole other form of art. maybe.
-allegories of debrisis one that i can't get my mind around. maybe i'm just missing the point, but it seems to just want to draw attention to itself and not have a clearly ascretainable idea behind it, or at least not a successful idea for me.
-i really liked the description and few samples of robert irwin's work, but wish i could see more...
-cindy sherman's 'untitled film stills' is a cool idea and she admittedly pulled it off quite well - a lot of them are convincingly realistic as far as style, etc. is concerned. and i always think its interesting when people use themselves as the star of their own art in such an overt manner...
-and i remember looking at nikki s. lee's 'young japanese project' before. i still think its an interesting idea, although the same ego point applies here as with cindy sherman
-and finally, i really like richard long's works. they demonstrate an interesting idea and the photographic style is just very appealing to me for some reason (probably because it's more of a traditional style that i'm more comfortable with?)

conceptual art...perhaps

2004-04-20T14:02:00.000-04:00

From the 'Guidelines for Happenings' excerpt:
"The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible. Something will always happen at this juncture, which if it is not revolutionary, will not be merely bad art - for no one can easily compare it with this or that accepted masterpiece."
"It follows that audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements - people, space, the particular materials and characters of the environment, time - can in this way be integrated."
-flashmob = a Happening?

From 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' excerpt:
Sol Lewitt:"In conceptual art the idea of concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless." which is funny, because i've always gotten the impression that conceptual and performance art are so intellectual and at times thematically impenetrable...
"Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple." awesome. case in point: christian marclay's installation piece of just gluing cds or records to the floor, or his work which was a record with no grooves on it. i feel like so much conceptual or installation art is very simplistic and that that's part of why people have a hard time accepting it as art, or even anything other than just bs.
"Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color art."
"It doesn't really matter if the viewer understands the concepts of the artist by seeing the art. Once out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way."
"Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the viewer in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device." this makes sense, but i feel it goes against my own personal experiences with installation art at least, but i can't think of any specific examples....one moment...
"Conceptual art is only good when the idea is good."

From 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' excerpt:
"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations." does the same go for 'collage'? and if so, in this case, is that even a bad thing? and for that matter, how is conceptual art a collage really?
"For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not."
"All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art."
"One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past."
"The conventions of art are altered by works of art."
"Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions."
"Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution."

um, so at the moment, there's not too much analysis or anything on my part dealing with this week's topic. and that's mainly because i'm way too hazy on it still. i've read about it and i've looked at some of the sites/pictures online, but i just can't grasp it. so anyways, more thoughts will follow after tonight's demonstration i'd assume.

note

2004-04-20T11:21:00.000-04:00

so i updated my webpage a tiny little bit. i meant to do more, but then i forgot exactly what i wanted to add to it. oh well, more later.

musings on movies

2004-04-19T18:18:00.000-04:00

so i meant to do this last week, right after class, but as always, i got distracted by other stuff and am just now getting around to trying to sum up some very vague thoughts on last week's discussion of film and video.
i don't remember who brought it up (maybe jim?), but i really liked the question of whether collage is inherently avant-garde. and while i disagree that that statement is true, i do feel like it helps me define some of my thought processes toward art in general. i know one of the main topics we tend to get off on during class is whether the week's given collage topic is art or not, and really, what is art after all? and well, i realized last week that i tend to only consider avant-garde art to be "real art" or "High Art" or something along those lines. it's kind of like that indie cred that's such a big deal to lots of people, but the more obscure and challenging and innovative something is, then the more artsy it is. which i think, looking at it consciously at least, is a crap way to define art. so yeah, now i'm back to the question of what, then, is art? which i obviously can't define, because no one really can. but i just really liked being able to dissec that logic a bit. sorry for the rambling. okay, onto other things brought up last week:
ben mentioned (and then many others added onto) the contrast between visual collage and narrative collage in film. another good point i thought. however, as was mentioned, i'm inclined to feel that all narrative is narrative collage and that there isn't any way of judging what degree of collage one is versus another. and yeah, technically all visuals are collage as well, but i feel there's more of an overtly collaged nature possible in visuals and that a range of degree can be set up for visuals in a more effective manner than with narrative collage comparisons...if that makes sense...
i made a note that jim brought up dogme 95 films with regards to film collage, but didn't write down what relationship between the two he suggested. so upon thinking over it, all i can come up with is that it's a more starkly realized collage of reality with filmic reality than most other film styles, perhaps? just because there so much more of an emphasis on maintaining the constraints of reality, down even to found objects as props, etc. but i don't like that link. so i'm going to keep mulling it over and try to come up with some other dogme 95/collage thoughts. i'm sure it's a really obvious connection that i'm completely missing...
and finally, i must applaud people's choices of clips to show. i agree with roody's judgment on 'american splendor' - it is after all a great movie. and then i always enjoy watching 'waking life.' and the rhcp video is pretty cool, especially since i hadn't realized when i saw it previous times that it was based on wurm's sculptures. and i liked other stuff as well, but my memory sucks - sorry.
the end.

prelinger

2004-04-19T18:15:00.000-04:00

so i played around with the prelinger archive a little yesterday and i put one of the results in my portfolio on my homepage. the editing in the beginning is rough and doesn't quite match up as well as i'd like quite yet. but by the end, it matches fairly well. and yeah, if you think it's crap, i'm not offended, it was just playing around. anyways, can't really think of anything else to say on that topic at the moment...

2004-04-14T19:47:00.000-04:00

so, i'm impressed with all the projects that people showed at the mdst meeting thing tonight. really, genuinely impressed.

malt liquor

2004-04-09T14:34:00.000-04:00

oh, and sidenote, it was malt liquor that the spoof of 'song of the south' had in it....

showdown, continued...(shortly)

2004-04-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

okay, the lost film festival... i saw it last weekend at jmu. it was cool as well. it has a distinct political slant that is lacking in the black maria film festival. it also used a lot of found-footage films though. there was one that did the oft-seen trick of taking bush public addresses and cutting and pasting to make him seem stupid (how clever) - i think this one was called 'terror, weapons, irag' or something along those lines and just had him saying those three words repeatedly. eh. there was a really scary vegan movie. showing cows with rotted out eyes, pigs being beaten with cinder blocks, etc - all the peta propaganda we're used to, but then meshed it with what is borderline softore porn, which made for a really disturbing association of flesh, violence, sex, and food. it still makes me cringe a little. then, what else? hmmm.... there was one that used found footage of people in a pie fight, but that movie seemed a little pointless. then, there was also hmmm, yeah i dunno. i don't remember it all that well at this point - it WAS a whole week ago afterall. but anyways, you can check it out at their website, which i posted to the links page of this week's site. oh, and a link i was going to add, but seems somewhat moot at this point is for the black maria film festival. but yeah, the lost film festival had distinctly lower production quality. but more of an agenda, so who's to judge which was better. they were both pretty good. that's all for now.

showdown

2004-04-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

round 1: black maria film festival vs. the lost film festival

so i saw the black maria film fest last night at vinegar hill. pretty swank. there was a heavy reliance on found-footage films and collage-y films (courtesy of a one mr. richard herskowitz's request to comply with the va film society's collage theme of the spring). i had quite a penchant for found-footage films last year, really enjoying bill morrison's 'decasia' and just in general liking the idea of reuse and reinterpretation. my adoration however has been worn a bit thin. the festival was commandeered by john columbus. he showed bill morrison's 'light is calling' which was, um, yeah really similar to 'decasia.' other found-footage pieces that i didn't particularly enjoy were included as well, but i won't call anyone out on it. i mean they weren't bad, i just lost interest after the first minute or so. on the other hand, there were some really awesome pieces included too. 'bird bath and beyond' was fantastic, i thought. it was a meshing of semi-autobiographical films by mike kuchar, with voiceover narration by him as well, although the film was actually made by marie losier. first, it was just really amusing. but it was also a really cool use of collage as it excerpted parts of hitchcock's 'the birds' to overlay on kuchar's film as he told a story about lulu, the parakeet that he had as a child (presumably) and would put on a spinning turntable in order to let her exercise. the next film used pieces of 'citizen kane' and used the associated sound clips to create a song of sorts, as the video clips flashed on the screen as their samples were used in the music. (man, i suck at describing all of these, sorry.) then there was a really funny piece that was a german guy singing along to 'stairway to heaven,' but he had sung it all backwards and then played the tape backwards in order to make it come out correctly and it was really hilarious. then there was 'famous irish americans' which was a really great commentary on racial stereotyping. then three films by our very own kevin everson - of which the standout in my mind was 'chemistry,' for the sole reason that some of the found footage of it was from roanoke (my hometown, of sorts) from during the attempts at bussing and integration, etc. 'tender bodies' embodied everything i hate about animation. but then, 'fast film' and 'the spirit of gravity' redeemed animation and the collage film in general. 'the spirit of gravity' was just a funny little song-and-dance type thing. 'fast film' was amazing! by far one of my favorite films i've seen this year! it used all these clips from movies and folded them up into origami and then had everything mesh together and tell the story and i can't possibly put it into words... if you get a chance to see it, go! it's by virgil widrich, from austria.
okay, i'm tired of typing for now, so i'll get around to the contender, the lost film festival' sometime later...

gondry and remus

2004-04-08T15:15:00.000-04:00

updates the film page this morning/afternoon. not too much: just added some links and changed around the formatting a little. feel free to change it back if you don't like it. hmmm, what else? yeah, i dunno, i'll keep looking for stuff to add to the page or talk about in class... oh, i'm gonna bring in a michel gondry dvd for tuesday, so that'll be fun to look at. um, i believe that's all for now.

oh! just a little review, since i left class early for it and all, but seeing 'the song of the south' was a really weird experience. i realized after about a minute of watching it that this was one of my favorite movies as a little kid. i vividly remember annoying the crap out of everyone i knew by singing that 'bluebird on my shoulder' song incessantly. but anyways, of course at that age, i didn't get any of the racial connotations that make the film so controversial, and watching it now, i'm really kinda disturbed by the fact that those stereotypes were so blatantly put into my psyche at such a young age by none other than disney. but yeah, on the topic of collage, it was interesting to see how the combination of live-action with animation worked really well, even at such an early time as when this film was made. the eyelines matched up somewhat consistently and altogether it was effective as a collage. definitely not groundbreaking at this point in time, but when it was made, i'm not sure - i'd still assume not. anyways, yeah, the mixture of the two formats reminded me of 'mary poppins' and between the two films, i like how the animation is used to denote a fantastical world outside of everyday existence (excluding of course the final scene of 'song of the south' when uncle remus apparently loses it and starts seeing animation). it's funny too, because i vaguely remember seeing either an snl or madtv sketch where they spoofed 'song of the south' and made it an ad for lsd or something and thus explained the animation as hallucinations - which still are i guess fantastical experiences of the imagination, just of a less innocent sort. okay, i've totally lost my train of thought now, so i'll stop. more later perhaps.

activity update

2004-04-08T02:13:00.000-04:00

revamped my website and continued collecting some stuff to dump on the film page (hopefully tomorrow).

spooky

2004-04-06T14:17:00.000-04:00

"Think of DJ culture as a kind of archival impulse put to a kind of hunter-gatherer milieu - textual poaching, becomes zero-paid, becomes no-logo, becomes brand X." i like this summation. it makes smpling and plunderphonics seem like the revolutionary action that it can, in some instances, be. it turns music into a form of culture jamming almost. it also presents the idea that it is adverse to branded music, which is really the problem with music in our culture - that you can't just get the form, you have to subscribe to the image and marketing of it as well... and i'm not going to get on a high horse or anything and say that music shouldn't be a business - otherwise how would musicians be able to survive? - but the industry as it is now seems very unconcerned with the quality of product, only with the qunatity and momentary popularity of it. and it's nice to have the alternative of this still represented and shared by a dj culture of sorts.

"It's that archive fervor that makes the info world go around, and as an artist you're only as good as your archive - it's that minimalist, and that simple." this goes back to the idea that everything could be considered a collage, really. because it's like that adage that there aren't any more original ideas left - that everything draws on something else for inspiration. and at least in music sampling, this is expressly acknowledged.

"But if this essay has done one thing, then I hope it has been to move us to think as the objects move: to make us remember that we are warm-blooded mammals, and that the cold information we generate is a product of our desires, and manifests some deep elements of our being." i'm still processing this one, but i like the general message that it puts forth...

all the quotes from above are from Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky.
oh and i was expecting a great hypertext literature-style presentation of this article when it offered to present itself to me in flash, but either my computer didn't do it justice, or it just was a disappointment.

2004-04-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

oh and also as another afterthought - my deepest apologies for not contributing to any of the setlists other than the first - i'll post some more music as soon as i get a chance to find some worthy pieces. also, my setlist isn't on the main setlist page, and when i get a chance, i'll put it back up there (it was there for a bit and then disappeared...). until then, it's in the blog below somewhere....

2004-04-06T13:32:00.000-04:00

the 'history of sampling' (or at least the shortened version that was linked up) was informative, pretty cut and dry. from the other shortened, linked article: "Collage in music should be considered as more than just a collection of other people's music used in another composer's piece. By expanding the idea of collage to include cultural explosions and reconstitutions, unilateral use of European and American ideas by each other, access to art and ideas of the non-Western world, and the mixture of culture and music theory, a strong transition between Modernism and Postmodernism can be followed." i like what ben siad about this article as well, summing it up as the idea that music collage can be combing the evoked styles of various music - the naqoyqatsi reference was perfect in my opinion. but i still don't get how collaged music is any different from plunderphonics - is it even? and on an even more basic level, like we discussed last week, what's the distinction between plunderphonics and music - just legality and economics? i guess so. bobby made the comment in his blog that he doesn't think of plunderphonics as a musical creation ("something that is not musical"). and i wonder if that's more of the distinction, that Music is what everyone agrees upon as music, while plunderphonics includes music that is at certain points questionably musical, what with all the dialogue clips and such that are incorporated into some of the pieces... the quote from oswald on jim's blog, states that: "A plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something familiar which has already been recorded. Whistling a bar of "Density 21.5" is a traditional musical quote. Taking Madonna singing "Like a Virgin" and rerecording it backwards or slower is plunderphonics, as long as you can reasonably recognize the source. The plundering has to be blatant though. There's a lot of samplepocketing, parroting, plagiarism and tune thievery going on these days which is not what we're doing." hmm...so it has to be recognizable? at least in oswald's opinion. do people agree with this? i think it's more likely to gain momentary pop culture phenomenon status if the plundered pieces are recognizable because then we can all laugh at how different it sounds from the original. but to say that discreetly used samples are a different category of work...that just doesn't seem quite right... i more readily agree with bennett's comment that: "I don't think there is any kind of music that isn't plunderphonics; all music is taking from a previous source, and using previous inlfluences, whether that be an audio influence, or the influence of a person in your life." and this ties back to the article mentioned earlier as well.
and finally, i really like megan's comment that: "The question becomes then, should culture be owned? And the answer is…No way."

on a more experiential note, this past weekend i went and saw a band/group/whatever called All Night Radio. they're kinda collage-y. they had two synthesizers, and an ibook playing samples in addition to the traditional guitar, bass, and drums set up. also, the singer used an echo effect in the mic. the end result was a live performance that was so multilayered it was amazing. it was amazing to see that only three people were up on stage producing this kind of sound. the ibook samples matched up really well and augmented the sound the band already had going...at times it sounded like there were two drummers, because the live drumming was overlapped with the sample. i'm doing a horrible job of describing this. but anyways, my two points are that a)they're a band to listen to (if i could find any of their mp3s or cd's i'd upload some, but as of now, i'm at a loss), and b)i think that this is a good example of one of my qualifiers of good collage - it is essentially a remediation of another medium and therefore it needs to actually improve upon the medium. plunderphonics and sampling can be shitty sounding and worthless as a work. but if it takes music and uses it to create a sound that wasn't available originally, or makes it easier to make that sound, then it seems like a pretty impressive achievement.

okay, no more. i'll stop talking now.

oh, and as an afterthought, but nonetheless still worth mentioning: the link on jim's blog to the google breakdown and how looking up 'miserable failure' on google brings up dubya results was great. i've heard many examples of stuff like that happening over the past couple years and this is by far one of the funnier ones.

catching up

2004-04-05T19:40:00.000-04:00

so i've been neglecting blogging duties of late. sorry bout that. anyways, here're a few thoughts to get up to speed with:
- i wholeheartedly agree w/ kennedy's suggestion of keeping the music sharing going throughout the rest of the semester...it's been great hearing such a mix of music!
-i liked dan's definition of art in class last week: "a form of social commentary." i think we have tended to neglect looking at how the different forms of collage comment on and affect culture as a whole, instead, just focusing on trying to define them. not that that's a bad goal either though. similarly, i liked kennedy's commentary on art as it is tied to economics.
- i won't admit to a complete 180 in my opinion towards animation, but will concede that i would like to reword some stuff: art can be whatever anyone wants it to be. i can think that a crappy snapshot is art if i want to, and you could think that a little kid's drawing of their house or something is art. and so just because you think animation is art, doesn't mean i have to think that, and likewise, just because i don't think it is, doesn't mean that i'm challenging you - it's just my opinion. i'm sure there are things that i would consider art that others might question - and that's fine. also, i never said i thought animation was easy or wasn't a skill. i think it's an amazing skill, and one that i admittedly don't have. and maybe it's the fact that i can't use the craft that allows me to neglect it as an art - maybe it is sheer stupidity and naivete on my part. but i just don't have the right perspective to see it. it's a tool to me. and there are certain instances of animation that i would certainly consider pieces of art. and really, isn't that how art should be evaluated? - not saying that one given category of creation is an art, but that certain examples from any given category are. there are so many paintings and photographs and films that i wouldn't even begin to consider art, yet they're still made with care and talent and are acts and pieces of creation. yeah, i know this is a can of worms i shouldn't keep open, but at the same time, i'm still trying to figureo ut what i think about it. i mean, in all honesty that's all that these blogs are - thinking out loud in a way. and now i'll stop. and i'll probably take back everything i just said once i read over it again in a week or so.

more on this later...

2004-03-31T00:31:00.000-05:00

"The literary or artistic field is at all times the site of a struggle between the two principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous principle, favourable to those who dominate the field economically and politically (e.g. 'bourgeois art') and the autonomous principle (e.g. 'art for art's sake'), which those of its advocates who are least endowed with specific capital tend to identify with degree of independence from the economy, seeing temporal failure as a sign of election and success as a sign of compromise." -Pierre Bourdieu, 'The Field of Cultural Production'

set list

2004-03-28T23:35:00.000-05:00

in no particular order:
air: alpha beta gaga
radio 4: certain tragedy
the fitness: chaffeur
dj danger mouse: dirt off your shoulder, 99 problems, december 4th
mc sleazy: don't call me blur
arthur russell: loose joints
luscious jackson: naked eye remix
sneaker pimps: six underground
cornelius: smoke
beck: mixed bizness
dj shadow & cut chemist: milk: the basic, part one
dimitri from paris: une very stylish fille
philip glass: rubric
sufjan stevens: detroit...

some thoughts on animation

2004-03-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

on the cg channel site, the finger bee was especially shocking in its realism. on the other hand, that site also linked to the preview for will smith's new movie, 'I, Robot,' which just supports my previous idea of animation as really fake-looking and lame. ditto for 'Hellboy.' but okay, then again, it could just be that i don't like the mixture of animation with live-action, because KDLAB's iSPEC was awesome! a reconception of kubrick's 'The Shining,' or rather, one setting from it, this short clip was so realistic-looking and well-conceived. i liked the idea of perceived interaction through showing essentially the menu options to get to that clip. i also can't help but admire the glare on the framed photos and the tables. still at the cg channel site, i looked through the gallery, and realized i've neglected the idea of animated stills. and i guess my opinion of animated static art is kind of that it takes a lot of skill and i consider the creators very talented people, but i don't consider it art, just because it doesn't have a certain human quality to it that i consider inherent to art, or at least art that i like. again, i think the judgment of art boils down to nothing more than whether you like it or not usually. also i think part of my problem with it is that it seems to attempt one of two things: a)attempting to portray reality, or b)attempting to portray fantasy worlds - usually inhabited by imaginary creatures and such. and i just don't understand the effort behind trying to mimic reality (ex: coins image) through any means other than photography. i've never enjoyed realistic art, probably never will. that's just me. and then, fantasy worlds always seem softly-lit and pristine or stark and dangerous, and both of those looks bug me and i like having some aspects of realism. so, now that i've got my nasty anime stereotypes out of the way, i'll continue. oh, wait, there's a difference between animation and anime? i will admit that i was amused by the fact that there weren't any entries under the gallery heading of 'arts,culture.'
moving on to the albino blacksheep website, okay yeah who doesn't love retarded animations like 'Miko Miko Nurse' that are obviously just annoying crap. if nothing else, they're great for annoying the people you live with. the themes behind 'em are usually pretty interesting also if you look for it. and 'Nintendo Cartoon Hour' might very well be the coolest little clip ever. okay, not really, but it was really funny and quite a superb example of collage especially. so the lesson might be that it's asier for me to accept animation if it's funny or stupid than if it's trying to be something higher. the haven website proved this theory untrue though, as the stuff they had was just too stupid to be likable (case in point, 'We Drink Ritalin' - i don't care how self-aware it gets near the end, it's still just dumb.)
moving on, i really like the simplified, flash-like, pop-arty animations like those found on the o-matic website. personal favorite: parthenogenesis.
my favorite of all the sites linked off the class site was oculart for reasons i can't really even begin to explain. i really like the depth, i suppose, of the images as well as the collage-iness of them. the colors and general feel of them just appeal to me. the accompanying music is also really good. and i like the elements of interactivity that're incorporated as hypertext literature of sorts. overall, i think it's just entrancing.

catching up

2004-03-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

so yeah, i've got a lot of catching up to do. it's been ages since i added anything to the blog. some quick thoughts on the festival entries from last week. exploring my way around the fluxus site, i particularly liked 'Thou Shalt Not Covet BlueBeards Last Pieces,' although (and actually maybe because) it's so inherently creepy with the superimposition and narration in german, etc. in the torino digital clip fest, 'Their Circular Life' was one of my favs, although not for any particular ingenuity on the creator's part. Mostly I just liked it because all of the places looked like they'd be nice to go to, especially when compared to the frigidity of charlottesville at the moment. I found it particularly interesting though, to let the marker stay in one place for awhile and just listen to the ambient sounds of that place and ignoring or at least not focusing on the image. finally, my favorite works out of all the ones i looked at were at www.holott.org. i can't remember what festival i found this site through, but the festival entry was 'Manawork' - a sleek, presumably flash animation using just red, white, and black blocks of color and with an interesting mixture of music and written word. Some of the other works of interest on the site though are 'Somnambules,' 'Oazo,' 'Zoo,' and 'The Fingernail.'

other random, partially related thoughts: offscreen showed 'Demonlover' last night. and i'd already seen it once, so it didn't have the same shock factor for me as it did for many people. but i thought it was an interesting use of collaging with new(-ish) media. it was one of those films with a heavy emphasis on animation and therefore kept cutting to animated scenes, not unlike 'Kill Bill 1.' and it also integrated the internet and programming. i dunno - it's beyond me at the moment to explain exactly what effect i felt the use of different media had on the final outcome of the film, but i thought it was interesting (maybe it isn't) to note.

controversial?

2004-03-02T13:42:00.000-05:00

I found another news site, but haven't gotten a chance to look at it thoroughly enough to decide whether it is responsible of me to add it to the class list: Khaleej Times

India

2004-03-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

Perusing the different sites for news sources, I have to admit that one of my favorite formats was used by The Times of India, who incorporated a pop-up with a quote of the day on it when you first get to their main page - way to emphasize the hard-hitting news.

Stu

2004-03-02T11:18:00.000-05:00

Stuart Hall - can't get enough of this guy, I've been reading stuff by and about him almost nonstop recently. He does have some really good points though:
"This process of 'making an event intelligible' is a social process - constituted by a number of specific journalistic practices, which embody crucial assumptions about what society is and how it works...because we occupy the same society and belong to roughly the same 'culture,' it is assumed that there is, basically, only one perspective on events: that provided by what is sometimes called the culture, or the 'central value system'" (Hall 55). This consensual view prohibits the presentation of dissenting interpretations in its construction of a consensus.
"The media define for the majority of the population what significant events are taking place, but, also, they offer powerful interpretations of how to understand these events" (Hall 57). The media actively shapes public opinion.
"'The hierarchy of of credibility': the likelihood that those in powerful or high-status positions in society who offer opinions about controversial topics will have their definitions accepted, because such spokesmen are understood to have access to more accurate or more specialised information on particular topics than the majority of the population" (Hall 58).
The mugging example seemed rather intuitive to me though. Actually, most of the article did. Maybe it's just an 'interpreting media' saturation that I'm getting from classes, but it seemed like this stuff is pretty self-explanatory if you take the time to think about what you're watching, reading, absorbing, etc. No offense to Stu though.

Chavez

2004-03-02T11:03:00.000-05:00

Sitting, watching 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' I couldn't help but think of Haiti, obviously. It's really great how relevant that turned out to be for Offscreen. I think it's really interesting to see an alternate view of what happened in Venezuela, and how it apparently was so intentionally mediated by outsiders. Watching the current press coverage on the Haiti situation, with the possible coup there as well, I can't help but question everything they show - the camera angles, the people they interview, the translations they give, etc. - and wonder how the people in Haiti feel about all this. Bush, as usual, comes off poorly in all this. On that note, I think it's also interesting how Venezuela's Chavez, until recently at least, utilized the media so well in his campaign and presidency, having weekly public question-answer sessions and multiple nodes of media access for the people. Bush, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be doing this as effectively, although I guess we're all so firmly entrenched in media that his efforts aren't as out of the ordinary and are mostly invisible to us. I don't want to make us all out to be Stuart Hall's 'dopes,' but it does seem like we, as a culture at least, are far less likely to question news reports unless they seem blatantly biased, like Fox News. Other sources that seem more balanced in their reporting are typically more trusted. At the very least, we presume that the story they're telling is true, even if the way they're telling it might not be. But Chavez' case shows us this isn't necessarily true. I do, however, feel that new media is more likely to be questioned in its presentation of news and information. Anything in physical print, such as a newspaper or book, is usually considered far more truthful and reliable than, say, a website.

p.s. - I found this addition to the Chavez story presented in 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' pretty interesting.

a bit on barthes

2004-02-23T23:10:00.000-05:00

the photographic image. it took me a while to figure out why this was related to ephemera. guess i'm just a bit dense today. anyways, i think i see it now - the whole idea of something (in this case specifically a photograph) having contextual, cultural, and historical meaning and from this being able to define itself as something more than just a literal portrayal of reality. am i anywhere close? who knows. basically the article broke it down - somewhat like an intro media studies class - to say that there's a connoted and denoted message to basically everything (esp. visuals). this is true even for the deceptively realistic photograph, which falls prey to the photographic paradox, which "can be seen as the co-existence of the two messages, the one without a code (the photographic analogue), the other with a code (the 'art,' or the treatment, or the 'writing,' or the rhetoric, of the photograph." The connotative side is broken down and explained to be created through production methods: trick effects, pose, objects, photogenia, aestheticism, and syntax. This "code of connotation" is a historical and cultural product - at least i think that was the point. I did find it interesting that Barthes article expressed that "the reading of the photograph is thus always historical; it depends on the reader's 'knowledge' just as though it were a matter of a real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs." This point aligns itself very nicely with the Derrida that we're reading in MDST350, talking about how physical writing is not the only form of text, and how it seems like practically everything is a text produced by its own kind of writing, in that it's all open to interpretation, and really doesn't exist in its fullest form until it's been interpreted. So it's basically saying that in order to make meaning out of all of this, we, as active audiences, have to be incredibly well-versed in the many languages of connotation. right? anyways, that's all nice and well, but the jump from this to the ephemeral art of air-sickness bags and luggage tags is a bit mystifying to me still. I suppose they're art inasmuch as they are historical objects that can be interpreted as such. And actually, I guess the goal isn't even really to define ephemera as art is it? Well, anyways, I gotta say that one of the coolest links I saw on the class site this week was the Wayback Machine - endless amounts of browsing ensued.

actions taken

2004-02-22T16:25:00.000-05:00

yeah, not that significant amount to report. i'm still foundering a little on a more appropriate system of recording all this, but for now, it's going to remain in this manner. i added a couple of links to this week's ephemera page - sp. the antiques roadshow and the medical ephemera pages. not much, but maybe more will come...

marclay, much later

2004-02-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

much after-the-fact, let me say this: marclay seems capable of coming up with really ingenuous ideas. it's only his portrayals of these ideas that don't necessarily sit well with me. at his slide show, I really liked the idea of the record pressed without any grooves, or the record with the lock on it, etc. but what's the point of it? to me, it's hasn't crossed the line into art, and thus it just seems to be worthless. but on the other hand, the exhibit piece with the reels of tape flowing down onto the floor like a waterfall, while playing water sounds was amazing looking. i wish i could've seen it in person. the same applies to the packing crate music boxes and i'm still intrigued by 'video quartet.' 'recordplayers' on the otherhand, again felt useless and long. okay, enough of that. i'm sure everyone is still unanimously enamored of him and all his work, so i won't stray too far into the negative. i am glad to have been exposed to his work, at the very least.

more marclay

2004-02-17T14:46:00.000-05:00

went to the art museum this morning to hear christian speak about 'telephones.' there wasn't really much said. but he does seem like a genuinely awesome guy. character judgments aside though, the most interesting part of this morning's talk was his admission to not being too great at technology. this came up as he, along with hordes of others tried to remedy the fact that parts of 'telephones' are supposed to be in color and yet the whole piece appears in black and white at the museum. but anyways, i like that he was so upfront about being like "yeah, anyone can do this kinda stuff on your g4 at home." sidenote though, i'm not entirely sure i'd like it if there were color in 'telephones.' having seen it first in this form, i like it better in straight balck and white i think. i feel that the constancy of jump cuts between shots of people on the phone is jarring enough, but shifting between color and b&w would just take me too far out of the experience. but that's just me. i can't wait to see the rest of his work and then for tonight's thing at the jefferson. should be interesting!

rethinking coover.

2004-02-17T10:51:00.000-05:00

so i went back and read coover's 'hyperfiction' again, mainly because i felt i hadn't given it a fair chance. and honestly, i can't say my opinion on the article itself has changed much, although this time i noticed how much more interesting the letters to the editor were. bringing in connections to ted nelson's 'computer lib/dream machines' as well as to the idea of the variability of orality as compared to that of hyperliteracy. i also agree that the oral tradition has many similarities with hypertext in it's arrangement. also, a note that i meant to make regarding the other article, but that also applies here, is that coover seems very steadfast in the belief that hypermedia is so wonderful, at least in part, because it shatters the power of the singular author. yet, there is no such thing as a single author, right? there's always the editor, and the social constructs of the author's society, etc. that influenece any work. so that point is seemingly moot. okay, i'll stop now, as i'm just rambling and regurgitating mdst350 rhetoric at this point anyway.

coover...continued.

2004-02-17T10:03:00.000-05:00

okay, so i'm not a huge fan of coover...obviously. but the second article seemed unbearably propagandistic to me. it didn't really tell me anything i didn't already know about hypermedia, and just kept expounding on how wonderful this new medium is. yeah, it sounds cool. yeah, i like the idea of reading a passage in which a character dies, and then having the window in which the passage appears explode like glass. and i suppose, at the time, these blindedly optimistic and adoring reviews/explanations of hypertext were necessary to get people comfortable with the idea. but, as someone who's comfortable with the idea already, i felt like this article by coover was over the top, especially in the first part where it just summarized a soap operatic text. so anyways, sorry if i'm a little devoid of positive critique, but i just got annoyed by the text. (i also think it's so funny to look at how mediated both of the coover articles are - surrounded by advertisements or essentially collaged together on the same page as another relevant article...)

the end of books?

2004-02-16T23:36:00.000-05:00

coover. coover. coover. what're you thinking? hypertext won't be the end of written text as we know it. well, okay, admittedly, i don't know either. but it hasn't happened yet. That "true freedom from the tyranny of the line is perceived as only really possible now at last with the advent of hypertext, written and read on the computer, where the line in fact does not exist unless one invents and implants it in the text," I can understand. I agree for the most part also. And I guess just the simple fact that I would never be capable of publishing a book on this topic, and yet am free to voice my thoughts online in a form of hypertextuality says something as well. Perhaps we are moving towards the end of the book. But I am more inclined to agree with one of the letters to the editor, that some people, including myself, will always just be inclined to curl up with a paperback novel, regardless of what great new technological breakthroughs have been made in the fields of literature. On the topic of letters to the editor, I felt these were the standout parts of the article, personally. The mention of John Cage was well-deserved. Brian Robinson's comment that most people wouldnt have computers in his lifetime is simply humorous to today's reader, especially considering the fact that I was reading his letter on my computer. But the best, by far, was J. E. Edwards' claim that we should shoot hypertext advocates to the moon with a limited supply of Tang. Why Tang? So that they can get their daily required amounts of Vitamin C before they die on the surface of the moon?

marclay

2004-02-16T23:27:00.000-05:00

i'm definitely excited about christian marclay. well, definitely maybe. i like 'telephones.' but it's nothing more than just a cool idea. there's nothing substantial to it. i don't know what i'd change or add, but nonetheless, i feel it's just eh. 'video quartet' sounds like it might be the same - cool idea, but not necessarily that much meaning, etc. to be gained from it. alternatively though, it is always impressive to see what people are capable of creating just with final cut. also, i'd really love to experience the piece described in the marclay article with the broken and reglued vinyl records.

where was i?

2004-02-16T22:16:00.000-05:00

well after a week in the hell of family death, it's time to get back to work. i promise i'll post some thoughts on last week's material eventually, and i'll make sure to check out everyone else's blogs regarding all of that as well. but in the mean time, i'm gonna deal with the material at hand, which is seemingly hypertext media. i finally got around to updating my previously added links on this week's page, so the links work and are described and all now. and at the moment, i'm going to go read some of this week's materials. and i'll get back to you with thoughts on them in a bit.

2004-02-05T17:51:00.000-05:00

so last night i added some links to the hypertext literature page, although they need more detail in their descriptions in order to be useful. i also set up a preliminary version of my artists page.

mudhouse

2004-02-03T17:24:00.000-05:00

went in to work today, only to see the new art exhibit we have up and to be utterly amazed. monty montgomery. really cool collage pieces. some more traditionally collage than others. but anyways, i linked his site to this week's page on the main site. along with of course a little pr for mudhouse.

2004-02-03T11:36:00.000-05:00

presented a mild web presence: staked a partial claim on the film page of the collage site, added an offscreen and matt mccormick link. plan on doing more, just not at this precise moment. also added res to the festivals page, although can't be sure when it'll be again. oh, note to self: add the raindance film festival to that page, assuming it's not already there. i've tried looking into creating my own blog, rather than thru blogger. it'll be attempted, that i swear, i just don't know when, because the php stuff is a little tricky for me. what else? not really sure.

2004-02-03T10:27:00.000-05:00

"Poets, as idealized by chirographic cultures and even more by typographic cultures, were not expected to use prefabricated materials...The competent poet was supposed to generate his own metrically fitted phrases...The meaning of the Greek term 'rhapsodize', rhapsoidein, 'to stitch song together' (rhaptein, to stitch; oide, song), became ominous: Homer stitched together prefabricated parts. Instead of a creator, you had an assembly-line worker." - Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, p 21-22

I thought this was an interesting little tidbit from another class which dealt somewhat with the topic of collage. I find it especially interesting that the problem discussed here - the question of original artistry being superior to combinatoric - is still an issue alive and well in today's culture, with both music and visual art, and i'm sure many others.

2004-01-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

Not entirely sure if this belongs in this blog, or if it'd be more appropriately placed in the 'Responses' category, but here are some general notes of interest I'd like to keep track of from reading:
Rosenberg's 'Collage: Philosophy of Put-Togethers' - I'm still trying to digest the idea that "in itself, collage has no aesthetic or intellectual character." I suppose Rosenberg is refering to the idea that collage is more the sum total of its parts, as far as meaning goes. But I'm not sure. And I definitely don't agree with that viewpoint if that is what is being attempted to be said. It seems to me that lots of new meanings are created through the act of grouping seemingly unrelated images, objects, texts, etc. (Rosenberg later states that "in the vision of collage, the identity of an object is suspended between its practical reality and the conceptual whole in which it is set," which seems to find a nice middle ground between his previous statement and my interpretation thereof.) I also find the view that collages reflect the fact that, "art no longer copies nature or seeks equivalents to it; it appropriates the external world on the basis that it is already partly changed into art," a little hard to swallow. I suppose it's just pickiness on my part, but I think there are certain collagists that prove to be exceptions to this rule (like Hockney's 'Pearblossom Highway' which attempts to recreate a realistic image through collage) and that Rosenberg was perhaps a little hasty to make such a sweeping and unqualified judgment. At the same time though, I agree with the main gist of the idea - that art has certainly moved past simple realism. The "inherent element of mockery in collage" is something I really want to explore more. It links in my mind to the practice of jamming the media - appropriating images and ideas and using them against or in modified ideologies than they were orignally created to portray. But also, I find it interesting just because it reminds me again how rusty my interpretive skills have gotten, and how amusing the different levels of interpretation can get.
This leads me to the Barthes essay, 'Rhetoric of the Image.' Concepts in this crossed over nicely into another class I'm taking, but for the most part, I found the essay a little on the tiresome side to read. However I feel I was able to cull a few notable points from Barthes' words. The different levels of interpretation inherent in reading an image proved to be an interesting topic. The linguistic, coded iconic, and non-coded iconic message levels all offer new layers of meaning, I suppose. I like the statement of this idea in the following terms: "the image is penetrated through and through by the system of meaning, in exactly the same way as man is articulated to the very depths of his being in distinct languages."
Finally, after seeing Matthew Barney's 'Cremaster' films, I read up on this seemingly-almost-cult phenomenon in some articles that were posted on the class site. I can only say that I regret not reading them before seeing the films, as they would have aided greatly in my attempts at interpretation. However, I now have an evern greater motivation to see all five films again. But the point of this all is that I went into the films not really thinking they would reflect collage work too intensely. I came out after viewing them, feeling less certain of this stance, and leaning towards the idea that Barney's construction was almost entirely based on collage. And I just like the way that Charmaine Picard described the entire 'Cremaster' cycle as a collage: "Barney views the entire universe of forms within the constellation of the cycle as one multidimensional artwork" (ArtNexus Magazine).

2004-01-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

Added links to this week's page on the class site, for Lichtenstein and Cornell.
Looked at some of the gallery images. I've always enjoyed Joe Cornell's works, and looking through the other creators, I found some other works by which I am enthralled:
David Hockney's 'Pearblossom Highway' - always wanted to try something along these lines, and my first and only attempt at it was of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it just didn't look right, so that was the end of that.
Natsuki Kimura's 'Gone' - I can't pin down exactly why I like this piece, but I think it has something to do with the strong meaning implicit in the empty space, that and the fact that the simplicity of the blankness is at least mildly appealing.
Dan Levin's Assemblages - especially this one ('Home') - The dimensionality of found objects in sculpture is something I tend to forget about when considering collage work, but I always really enjoy it when it is pulled off successfully. I just wish I had access to the actual piece, instead of the image of it, which is an entirely different object in itself (as was discussed briefly in the Rosenberg article, I believe).
Scot F. Hacker - so detailed, and vaguely reminiscent, for me at least, of the film 'Metropolis,' I suppose because of the mechanical theme.
Michelle Weinberg's 'Satellite' - I love her use of color, and this particular piece is enjoyable because it reminds me of a combination of Disney's animated film, 'Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land' (the eyes everywhere) and Bosch's painting, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' (the landscapes and parcelling of space).
And finally, I really liked exploring all the pieces in the Siggraph 2003 Web Graphics Expo. Gicheol Lee's 'Typorganism' was especially fun to play with. The interactivity reminded me somewhat of parts of the Kraftwerk website.

2004-01-27T01:10:00.000-05:00

Trying this out a bit:
Added my name to the class website, linking to my site.
Went to the opening of the collage exhibit on Friday. The Marclay piece, 'Telephones,' was definitely the highlight for me. Not much else was all that impressive - the exhibit is significantly smaller than I was expecting, and many of the pieces were in the museum already (por ejemplo: the warhol boxes). Oh, and I guess I can't very well leave out mention of the Cornell collage boxes - great, as is all of his stuff.
Reformatted my site - to reflect the needs for class, mostly. It still needs a whole lotta work. But I suppose it's okay for now. Tried to make interesting focal point of a collage for the main page - eh.