Presentation

 

 

 This past weeks work has been chaotic and spread out over too many areas. I am still working by making wide sweeping loops over subjects rather than focusing and pursuing directed goals and need to address this. 

 

I spent some more time this week with the Isadora soft wear. There are some areas I can’t seem to get to function and am checking through to see if this is down to using the demo version so all the functions may not be enabled or if I do not understand the required process.

 

Also tried out the newer version of Korsakow this week, but got stuck as it was conflicting with the Credo soft wear, which seems to have dropped some of its files when installed and placed folders in random areas on the computers memory and now isn’t accessing them properly.

 

I am aiming to use the older version of Korsakow for the project using the pedometer and daily film clips. It has been quite hard to film each day and to wear the pedometer. There have been a couple of days where for one reason or another I haven’t managed to get some video. I am trying to work out how to include these days where I am left with an amount of steps taken but no film. I have a couple of weeks left of filming left as I set the time frame of August for the project. I hope to start editing the clips and resizing them for Korsakow next week. Hoping this process will help start to develop a visual style that Andy recommended I start to create during the online chat I had with him.

 

Photoshop is behaving erratically, taking a long time to find files and shutting down unexpectedly in the middle of a process. Think there may either be a virus on the computer, or that the mother board is going as I am having trouble shutting the computer down and a having to resort to pulling the plug on it. This failing to shut down has been my experience with my previous computer when on its failing.

 

I went back to look at the different video file types to see if I can figure a way of working round the loss of quality when saving video clips. Was trying out different video file types on Microsoft slide share as a possible work round to Korsakow. Found that it has to be windows media or it won’t play… so the camcorder’s file type will work for any project based on Microsoft slide share. Initially I was able to save video files from the camcorder as movie files… but not any more. Going through these work arounds this week is confirming that the computer isn’t doing too well.

 

There is the apple to work on but again this means a new learning curve and it has a lot of preinstalled soft wear so unless I remove some of those programmes I won’t have room to put on things like Photoshop or Credo.

 

This brings about that I need to clear the decks some what to prepare for September and try to resolve these conflicting issues and sharpen my basic understanding of the appropriate technologies to go forward to complete the MA.

 

Did manage to get to the DLI and got to see Sumit Sarkar’s – Ananta

 

http://www.kriksix.com/   

 

 

http://www.ananta8.com/watch/making_of/

 

 

Have been reading Drew Leder’s ‘The Absent Body.’ (University of Chicago Press Cicago and London. 1990)

 

 

He states:

 

‘…my body is indicated as the orientational center in relation to which every thing else takes its place.’

 

(Chapter 1  p.22)

 

Also started to print the autumn issue of Mail Art One. The printer is jamming.

 

Over all it’s felt quite a frustrating week progress wise, but the trade off hopefully will be a more disciplined methodology and out look and well worth the effort. Hope to outline the timetable Andy requested next week when I have a better idea of the way forward with the different areas and issues that are cropping up.

Andy asked us to watch a video of architect Daniel Libeskind to discuss during  Tuesdy’s online chat.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_libeskind_s_17_words_of_architectural_inspiration.html

Libeskind used the phrase ‘space that’s only been entered in the mind.’

I made this short animation last month when I was beginning to think about the disappearing body and began to think about the notion of disappearing physical space in the digital environment.

Was made uncomfortable by some of Libeskind‘s statements such as his vehement refusal to separate his value of buildings from the political setting of their country. 

Went up to the DLI Gallery Wednesday to visit the Laura Ford’s ‘Glory Glory’ and Dean Chapman’s ‘Children of Conflict’

Both artists dealing with issues of conflict and the shows were difficult viewing.

http://county.durham.gov.uk/sites/dli/Pages/Exhibitions.aspx

http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/burma-darkness-in-the-golden-land

Kevin and Jenni were discussing photography and the difference between digital and film.

I mentioned I had seen a documentary about David Hockney recently and that he was using his iphone to create paintings which had interested me because of the more directly physical interaction available in creating the work.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/05/hockney-sl-paintings.html

ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/5252020/David-Hockney-paints-with-his-iPhone.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/mar/13/iphone-art-jorge-columbo?picture=344573381

 

 

 

 

I have been thinking about the body in digital arts and the idea I mentioned a couple of posts ago that digital media have provided me with a wonderful new set of tools to engage in examining physicality and to try to question whether this digital environments impact on our physicality and therefore our identities.

 

It has made me try to re examine an idea of the body as missing or absent in our digital lives impacting and thereby possibly subtly altering our real physical body/identity and expectation, due to the changed mental and physical interaction we experience when engaging in digital media or virtual worlds.

 

It has also made me re examine the query about defining digital art. Is digital art defined as any art work using digital tools like cameras, printers or is it an art form that exists only in digital form, or can it be a hybrid form?

 

I would like to try to look at these questions a little more.

 

During some on line research I came across this online article by professor Alejandro Lleras of the University of Illinois in the  the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Journal, about his findings on how the  body’s movements influence problem solving..

 

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/body_movements_influence_problem_solving_132511.html

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/uoia-bmc051209.php

 

This week has proved quite a challenge and quite draining. But have managed to keep looking in to rotoscoping and Photoshop and try the Credo soft wear down load a little more. So the ideas here are not as clearly expressed as I would like but am posting so as not to loose the thread.

 

At the start of the week  was reading ‘The body in Society’ Alexandra Howson.

 

 Howson puts forward the idea of bodies being used in society as:

 

‘…a natural symbol which different societies use to make classifications between what they consider to be pure / polluted, clean / dirty.’

 

(P80. Chapter 3: The Civilized Body.)

 

Have been thinking about this in relation to virtual life bodies. The virtual world could be seen to create the ultimately acceptable human body in society, a body free of leaking, spewing, and aging.

 

 

I am interested in this idea of how we present ourselves through our real life movements and the differences between our physical real life movement and our virtual life movements where we can make different choices about self representation. Also the idea that virtual reality holds out of non corrupting or aging bodies. How might we be changed if not challenged by the constantly changing physicality and constraints of our bodies?  If we can to some extent represent ourselves in this virtual body to form friendships and interact with others in online communities. Will we feel the discrepancy between physical and virtual greater?  Will we become more ill at ease, dissatisfied and uncomfortable with our physical bodies?

 

 

 

 

So using the Credo down load I have been trying out the idea of combining video and animation together and am looking into the idea of creating a piece that takes place in real time. Looking online have found some more free soft wear trials that may be helpful with this but want to get a little more familiar with the downloads  already have on board before jumping into undertaking to learn more.

 

 

 

Used the programming already provided by Credo to make the figure walk. I am still in the learning  process of learning how to programme figures with Credo.

 

U2 w11

  

 

 Have been exhausted this week and missed Monday’s chat because of  this. Managed some work on the video clips from Dance City and produced some stills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The body is beginning to disappear and remain as an echo or shadow of movement. In doing some research on Youtube I came across a technique called drawing with light and this site for Impacto Criativo who have used drawing with lights. 

 

http://www.impactocriativo.com.br/  

 

Have also been looking at VJing.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJ_(video_performance_artist)

 

 

 

http://www.overlap.co.uk/overlap_music&Visuals.htm 

 

 

 

Have hired a studio at Dance City in a couple of weeks time and also this time a projector. 

 

 

 

 

U2 W10

 

The work that I looked to as a degree student contained a lyrical content.

 

 

This maybe was reflective of the era and society that produced it.  Between or after the wars there was a need for nationalism, romanticism, reassurance and the lyrical with the aim to create a nationalist propaganda identity through drawing on the countries’ folklore and idealistic stereotypes.

 

 

 

A few weeks back when doing the mail art issue I was exchanging some emails with Bob Milner and discussing guillotines for paper cutting. For some reason the imagery in that exchange reminded me of the Little Red Ridding Hood story.

 

So I did some on line research into this folk story using the links below. 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood

 

http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrPathNeedles.html

 

Here is a quote from the  Path of Needles page.

 

‘The bzou (werewolf) gives chase, and soon the girl can hear him on the path just behind her. She runs and runs until she reaches a river that’s swift and deep. Some laundresses work on the river bank. “Please help me cross,” she says to them. They spread a sheet over the water, holding tightly to its ends. She crosses the bridge of cloth and soon she’s safe on the other side.

 

Now the bzou reaches the river, and he bids the women help him cross. They spread a sheet over the water — but as soon as he is halfway across, the laundresses let go. The bzou falls into the water and drowns.

 

 The werewolf is finally destroyed not by a passing woodsman or hunter, but by a group of women engaged in traditional women’s labor. Verdier comments: “This double role held by the laundresses — on the one hand allowing the girl to pass, thereby rescuing her, on the other drowning the wolf, killing him — is consistent with their role in the social reality of village life. In fact the job of assisting in ‘passages,’ of helping in childbirth and helping people to die, is held-at least in the Châtillonnais-by one and the same person, an aged woman, a woman who can at the same time handle the swaddling and the shroud, who washes infants as she washes the dead….If the laundresses bring about the death of the wolf, they bring about the [re-]birth of the girl.” ‘

 

My attention was caught by the laundresses role and symbolism. It tied in with the work of artist Alison Watt who I came across on a search round the National Gallery web site when researching artists who had been of interest when on my degree course. While I was at Chelsea on my Foundation course one of our tutors was artist in residence and I remember visiting the studio  there.

 

I was interested in Alison Watt’s use of fabric and interest in it

 

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/alisonwatt/film/phantom/default.htm

 In ‘Fabric and Flesh’ podcast Watt says 

‘the body becomes a series of lines and creases and folds and becomes abstracted.’

 

This idea began to link to the idea of the traditional role of women outlined in the original Little Red Riding Hood story and my thoughts around identity and movement.

 

I have been looking for smaller movements than those made in the dance studio and that tie in with an identity. 

 

  I spend much time washing and ironing  because of my son’s skin condition so thought to try to draw together some of these references in this small sequence.

 

 

This is a still from the above slide show. I am using slide show as I am having resolution problems when saving video files and need to look to find some solutions to this. I have brought a cheap 2nd hand digital video camera in the hope that the files will provide better resolution videos to work with.

 

 

 

 

 

u1 w18

Have been reading Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning.

Dealing with his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in concentration camps throughout the holocaust and his work as psychoanalyst based on these experiences after the war.

Quite hard reading. At the beginning of the book he speaks of people being striped down and having only the human body.

I am quite daunted by the pile of text books mounting up in-front of me  and also the prospect of the next proposal task.  I would really have liked to take a week out with just the camera and video.

On the positive side I managed to complete a small piece  to be auctioned to raise funds for a church in Notting Hill. The theme was carnival. There are a couple of other small projects coming up I would like to tackle, time allowing.

I would like to finish the thread figure from last term. It is sitting on the work bench as flat and formless as my brain currently feels!

u1 w12

Began to work on a small video of photographic stills  over the weekend.

Reading’ The Body In Society’ Alexandra Howson.2004. Polity.

Howson looks at the shift of view point by sociologists towards the human body from the Marxism understanding of the body as a unit of work to current sociological  understanding which describes the human body as being ‘central to the establishment and maintenance of social life. And ‘the body as a site of knowledge, consciousness and experience.’

 Monday’s chat included further discussion of the essay and outlines tasks for the next four weeks. 

Came across this site while internet searching skin.

http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skin.html

u1 w6

Have been struggling with clarifying my proposal to get to post. It is  getting harder to write. It appears as such a marker and carries a lot of weight. My original proposal submitted to Andy Stiff for my interview was to look for a moment of stillness and balance within movements and I hoped to work with dance practitioners for this as they are more in conscious of using their bodies. But in thinking it round a lot to  of other questions are rising to the surface. I was aiming to create an ebook as the final product.

My instinct is to aim for as much clarity as possible but that might  read as a very bare basic proposal.

Having spent years trying to paint and being told that my work was either graphic or  sculptural and finally slotting in to relief printmaking and using that to make installations lead me going on to study dance in various forms, from a structured dance course and choreography to tai chi and contact improvisation and street dance.

 It has only been by going through this process that I have reached a point that I feel the threads are drawing together and am able to focus on movement as a real force with in my work.

We learn and connect by physical movement to a great extent. I have always been drawn to the abstract expressionists, Rothko and Pollock because of the sheer  physicality of their work. The same is true for Japanese wood block artists. Those prints are there because of the physicality/skill of the men who created them.  The dancer, choreographer Jose Limon began back in the 1930’s to explore gravity and force within his work. His style may seem very inelegant when watched. Very grounded and masculine but he was beginning to think about how the body works in movement and the forces acting upon it.

Somatics, which is a study of the body learning through movement continues this idea and broadens it to a wider base of disciplines.

I personally feel that a lot of how we live today leads us away from learning through our bodies.  I guess there are steps toward this with the interactie golf /tennis games that are now on the market. I am not sure how comfortable I will be living in a holographic environment such as those described in the descriptions of scenes from ’star trek’ in ‘Hamlet on the holodeck’.  how do we know what is true? Does it matter if it is ‘true’ or not? How can you qualify ‘true’.

Interesting one of the 1st things you are told when starting learning any form of dance is NOT to trust what your body tells you about your placement you  must check in the mirror constantly. You might believe that you have your leg or arm in the right place but unless you check in the mirror it most likely wont be until you have trained and trained your muscle memory daily for several months/years to know what that exact position feels like.

Of-course this need to intergrate a physical  approach to my learning rather than a solely cerebal one may mean I am something of a lower intelligence and stuck on the training slopes of learning ! This is not something I am arguing about, but this is who I am and these are the tools I got handed when I turned up.  It sometimes feels rather like the European invaders assumption of  the indigenous peoples of countries such as America and Africa being barbarians because of having an oral tradition rather than a written one, having a different belief structure and having syncopated dance forms rather than engaging dancing a European socially acceptable minuet. This then being their base argument for them the right to decimate their cultural and lives. That of course is far to strong an analogy.

I do appreciate that this course has to be structured and qualified and our input robustly questioned and accessed by our peers and the staff. Never the less it feels very early days to be making assumptions as we are all coming from vastly different backgrounds with a wide range of skills which should mean that this group has a huge wealth of creativity to share and use as a platform.

 It has been hard coming to the group late. rather like a Big Brother contestant who is put in to the house late never really ‘fits in’.  I think although this type of on-line group communication is very familiar in many ways, still we flail around somewhat because often many of the subtleties of communications are lost. I certainly feel hesitant about contributing  and not too confident about leaving messages for others on their blogs for fear of misunderstanding. Also I worry about using this blog as a sort of BB ‘diary room’ .  Which is why I brought forward the idea of using an ongoing on line sketch book for this sort of stuff and the raw ideas so that this blog could act as a page that had more clarity and yet my peers could access the more organic thought process if they wanted to.

I feel very exposed as the only female in our year and some what uncomfortable about it. Not in the sense of wanting to discuss lipstick but in the sense of being a minority and a affecting the group dynamic.

EG: yesterdays on line chat. Asterix were used instead of swearing. Which I found more  upsetting. Would the  group refrain from using swear words in their own blogs in-case a female were to read it?

I did feel like typing:

‘come on guys you’re being all Asterix and no Gauls here’ but women aren’t meant to be funny. And shouldn’t I be grateful that they are being kind and respecting my gender?

 I didn’t want issues of gender on top of everything else here. that’s why I wish there were some more women on here for balance. I am sure things will become more familiar and therefore less looming and large.

But all this stuff is why the proposal isn’t getting published. Typical female, easily side tracked!