invisible cities

The way that this reading used imagery to describe this place was unlike anything i’ve ever read before. I like the fact that it uses time as a way to also describe as saying that the way the city of valanda is measured and based off of the past events that have occurred there. The city of sophoria was also described in much depth and in very specific details. i’ve never heard of a city being represented by two sides with one being a rollercoaster. this gives a lot of imagery to the way the city is set up and feels. It then says that one side is permanent and one is temporary, it’s odd because you don’t think of places and time together. but this makes me think about how i can describe a place within a time for the sound and video assignment i am about to be creating.

Smashed cars and Chinese chewing: the five masterpieces of video art

This article focuses on 5 different artists who are essential to video art and explore it each differently. The first artist talked about was Pipilotti Rist, and her video “Ever is All Over” is what is discussed. I have already seen this video, actually quite recently for the first time in class. It was interesting to see her create this video in a time where video was just beginning and portable devices were just starting to become slightly available. 

“TV Buddha” by Nam June Paik, is a piece that I have seen before but did not know much about. It was nice to read this blurb about it because it actually has a great thought provoking meaning. The buddha is staring at a tv with a camera pointed at him. It appears as tho it is a live recording, but the image stays still as a mirror image with nothing moving in the background. This presses the question: is the buddha staring into the present as a live image or the past by it being a recording. 

I’ve never heard of Joan Jonas not have I ever seen this work “vertical roll” It seems like an interesting concept to recreate the effect that an old tv would naturally create. I also think it was successful to never show the figure fully, and instead show piece by piece and let the imagination put those pieces together into a full figure.

The next artist showcased is Bill Viola with his work “He Weeps for You.” I actually saw this piece very recently while I was researching interesting video art. I think this is very cool because he uses a water droplet as a way to capture images instead of showing a room or image from a still shot. We talked recently about how you can project your art on many surfaces and I think this relates to that even though this isn’t the presentation.

Lastly Zhang Peili’s video “Eating” is interesting to me because it is shown as a triple stack of videos.  It shows three different views of one act occurring: eating. One is of the cheek/jaw, one of the mouth and one of the plate of food. I like the way this was presented and how the use of sculpture was incorporated to make it more visually appealing and interesting.

Assignment One

With this work I decided to explore the idea of waiting and inner thoughts. Waiting is a thing that every human does daily, even multiple times a day. Not much thought is put into the act of waiting, but here I decided to really dissect it. People tend to not enjoy waiting, they think it's annoying and a waste of time. Time is another thing, people tend to get bored very easily and waiting for someone causes time to pass, but the time can feel like forever in the moment. If a person is sitting alone waiting, they tend to get restless. I decided to show this through this video by using the thoughts that pop into my head as I wait for someone, while showing off my restless tapping of my feet and fingers, as well as the way I constantly am looking around to avoid the act of just sitting still. It is very hard and nearly impossible for most people to sit still, silently with no inner thoughts. This is something that I have realized and I wanted to point out, as I now am trying to be one of the few who are able to sit silently with no inner thoughts.

Loop Reading Response

Looping is a very intersecting idea to further explore in video art. I have never created a piece of video art, nor have I ever even thought about creating a loop. I definitely have seen loops, but I never thought much about them. There can be loops that simply just loop, but also there are loops that loop seamlessly. When they loop seamlessly, it creates the idea of no longer having a start or a stop. This idea is very cool because that means a viewer is able to start watching at any point and still see some sort of resolution or a story being made.
This reading explained the idea of being able to warp time with this concept. With time being a temporary thing, a loop video is able to have people experience more than one thing all within the same amount of time.
“The experience of the artwork is inescapably structured by the first moment of the story that is encountered.” 
As the video loops back upon itself, at this moment the viewer is tacitly addressed and their viewing position potentially shifts, opening up space for critical reflection beyond the closed-cycle”
“viewers’ understanding of both cyclical and linear temporal structures—or as Fast says, a “notion of time that is both dysfunctional and liberating””
These quotes I pulled from the reading explain very well what the loops are able to do for a viewer through time and deception of time. 

TMA Library from jazele rabbani on Vimeo.

Here is my trial of creating a video with creative camera shots and angles.

storyboard

this is a general idea of what i’m going to create in my video

video art examples

https://vimeo.com/123234110
this work I enjoyed because i like the way that the whole thing is very calming, and that is all white with nice sounds in the background.
https://vimeo.com/18457837
This one I thought was super cool because it shows oil in a different way. Oil is something everyday that reacts in interesting ways so it was cool to watch a video of it reacting and being interesting.
https://vimeo.com/61179431
For this one I like the fact that this has multiple views of the same thing or same spot. It is shown very interesting by making the vies all shot differently with one being blurred and then it is also interesting that there is like a layer on top of the videos showing you lines or word or the "behind the scenes" looking stuff.