Monday 31 January 2011
Found Film Footage re-edited
My little film with additional 16 photocopies added. I'm going to complete this film in this technique, IF my printer will allow the print on low ink.
Grasshopper pt1
Bob Sabiston, Grasshopper, date unknown
Rotoscoped short film. Combining the meaning of life with transcendental imagery.
Sabiston describes a typical sequence of steps required to animate a scene:
-Start with original video
-Zoom in to trace the eyes
-colour the eyes
-zoom out, and enlarge the eyes ti create a distorted character for the face. Trace mouth lines and make up side lines for the face
-Colour whole face
-Fill in background for final shot.
Sunday 30 January 2011
Fading images
Film by Me, 40 photocopied film stills from a Home Movie (the ink ran out and created an interesting effect)
Saturday 29 January 2011
Film artist (re-using footage) Oliver Pietsch
To view work visit http://www.nettiehorn.com/
To view work visit http://www.nettiehorn.com/
Oliver Pietsch from Fintan Friel on Vimeo.
Once upon a time in the woods
Benjamin Arthur, Once upon a time in the woods, date unknown
"A rotoscoped animation using unscripted footage from a hike in the woods with my 6 year old brother Julian. I rotoscoped it by hand drawing every frame, using a wacom tablet, even the titles. If you have time, visit my illustration website at: http://vocaleyes.com/benarthur/ ...."
-Benjamin Arthur
Friday 28 January 2011
My Project Proposal
My own work has been largely concerned with an exploration of the animation process – “so what comes next?”
Found footage of home movies - selecting - editing - re-working segments from these short films, which have been acquired from youtube.com and ebay.com - to study conventions and structures of narrative. I understand the value of these little films, made between the 1960’s and 1970s, home movies are the private documents from a generation – petit bourgeois portrayal of one’s own living room, various birthday parties, eating, drinking and being together. Various films address the camera directly – who is this invisible audience they keep communicating with? Is it themselves as future viewers of their own films? Are they addressing friends and relatives? Or are they talking to history itself – to an unspecified “later on,” as they keep reappearing after death.
I want to explore the act of erasure, or reduction of a meaningful object to the point of zero meaning, using techniques such as collage, which involves erasing, removing and tearing off elements of images to reveal and create new combinations. The evaporation of a material thing into a thought or concept – asking the questions: “what is there to see, what to remember?” Hegel suggests that “thinking is always the negation of what we have immediately before us the endless deletion,” (Hegel, 2002, P.245) just as it does with cartoons, the formal mechanism of obliteration of the previous cel.
The influence of Tscherkassky’s experimental films upon my development has facilitated many of my ideas: The discovery of found footage and the re-working of existing film material - His double life as a theoretician as well as practitioner – filmmaker – critic – curator – historian.
“Whilst thinking about the process… one can helplessly describe the result as “beautiful” or even “ridiculous”. The film itself is practically “nothing”, its images do not reveal their secret. The necessary clues are contained in the film’s intellectual and technical structure, in its immaterial aspect… Beauty lies not in the object itself but rather in the train of thought the object gives rise to.” (Horwath, 2005, p.24)
Why should animation be the domain of the few rather than the many? The boundaries and distinctions between artist working in animation and experimental film are fast dissolving. What is interesting and useful about film is what we see, it turns out, is an animated photograph, a film is a hybrid and it is an integral part of my actual art activity.
“…this means you have the opportunity to take control of the medium in the same way as you do, for instance, with the canvas or paint where there is a learning process.” (Schum, 2005, p.23)
Found footage of home movies - selecting - editing - re-working segments from these short films, which have been acquired from youtube.com and ebay.com - to study conventions and structures of narrative. I understand the value of these little films, made between the 1960’s and 1970s, home movies are the private documents from a generation – petit bourgeois portrayal of one’s own living room, various birthday parties, eating, drinking and being together. Various films address the camera directly – who is this invisible audience they keep communicating with? Is it themselves as future viewers of their own films? Are they addressing friends and relatives? Or are they talking to history itself – to an unspecified “later on,” as they keep reappearing after death.
I want to explore the act of erasure, or reduction of a meaningful object to the point of zero meaning, using techniques such as collage, which involves erasing, removing and tearing off elements of images to reveal and create new combinations. The evaporation of a material thing into a thought or concept – asking the questions: “what is there to see, what to remember?” Hegel suggests that “thinking is always the negation of what we have immediately before us the endless deletion,” (Hegel, 2002, P.245) just as it does with cartoons, the formal mechanism of obliteration of the previous cel.
The influence of Tscherkassky’s experimental films upon my development has facilitated many of my ideas: The discovery of found footage and the re-working of existing film material - His double life as a theoretician as well as practitioner – filmmaker – critic – curator – historian.
“Whilst thinking about the process… one can helplessly describe the result as “beautiful” or even “ridiculous”. The film itself is practically “nothing”, its images do not reveal their secret. The necessary clues are contained in the film’s intellectual and technical structure, in its immaterial aspect… Beauty lies not in the object itself but rather in the train of thought the object gives rise to.” (Horwath, 2005, p.24)
Why should animation be the domain of the few rather than the many? The boundaries and distinctions between artist working in animation and experimental film are fast dissolving. What is interesting and useful about film is what we see, it turns out, is an animated photograph, a film is a hybrid and it is an integral part of my actual art activity.
“…this means you have the opportunity to take control of the medium in the same way as you do, for instance, with the canvas or paint where there is a learning process.” (Schum, 2005, p.23)
My Position Statement
“Video art was the solution…it was precisely the opposite of painting. It had no formal burdens at all.” (Video Art, 2006, Pg 8)
My art practice is based on a quite simple premise. It looks at one particular art-form: Animation, in the most traditional sense I have been making drawings that are then set into motion using a computer. The films are self-evidently concerned with movement, yet they are paradoxically made up of stills. My work is research-based, that examines drawing and animation practice. I wanted to explore how animation could be used in contemporary art practice. My animations run on endless loops, with no conclusion, randomly moving actions often with nonsensical audio. An endless loop is variations in speed, rhythm and image recognition. The repetitive characteristic’s is transcended making the beginning and ending of the footage endless. I like its jarring combinations and its attack on the senses.
“It doesn’t go together. But sometimes it does – suddenly the beat of the music, the movement of various films… blend into something meaningful, but before your mind can grab it, it becomes random and confusing again…” (McCombs, 2008, p.109/10)
One of the principal reasons I’m interested in using animation is because it seems to be the media of “now”. Things like cinema and television are really the things that people look at, “…With the television set – both as illusory window and as furniture…” (Hall, 2006, p.42) In considering the space of the monitor as a structural device, using animation like cinema and television is a much more appropriate place to be.
My aim is to re-present how animation is presented - to establish movement in the space of the spectator’s continual moment of reflection.
“The creative act is not formed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” (Duchamp, 1999)
I am fascinated by animations potential in a technical way of what it can do, to explore its powers in what I have available to me. Animation however undefined expands its possibilities in a contemporary world, where aspects of its technology and the versatility of its effects makes possible a more creative way that seems to be without limit.
I am curious as to what is animation? Is my work really animation or something else and did creation really take place?
I found a wider field available to me than I first thought with the term “animation” expanded to incorporate all manner of real-time footage. Usually animation is thought of in terms of cartoons that have been drawn or models moved frame-by-frame, but animation now includes films which have been intensively re-worked with rapid effects and digital manipulations, with digitalization of all media, all forms of production will perhaps be as much animation as anything else.
My art practice is based on a quite simple premise. It looks at one particular art-form: Animation, in the most traditional sense I have been making drawings that are then set into motion using a computer. The films are self-evidently concerned with movement, yet they are paradoxically made up of stills. My work is research-based, that examines drawing and animation practice. I wanted to explore how animation could be used in contemporary art practice. My animations run on endless loops, with no conclusion, randomly moving actions often with nonsensical audio. An endless loop is variations in speed, rhythm and image recognition. The repetitive characteristic’s is transcended making the beginning and ending of the footage endless. I like its jarring combinations and its attack on the senses.
“It doesn’t go together. But sometimes it does – suddenly the beat of the music, the movement of various films… blend into something meaningful, but before your mind can grab it, it becomes random and confusing again…” (McCombs, 2008, p.109/10)
One of the principal reasons I’m interested in using animation is because it seems to be the media of “now”. Things like cinema and television are really the things that people look at, “…With the television set – both as illusory window and as furniture…” (Hall, 2006, p.42) In considering the space of the monitor as a structural device, using animation like cinema and television is a much more appropriate place to be.
My aim is to re-present how animation is presented - to establish movement in the space of the spectator’s continual moment of reflection.
“The creative act is not formed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” (Duchamp, 1999)
I am fascinated by animations potential in a technical way of what it can do, to explore its powers in what I have available to me. Animation however undefined expands its possibilities in a contemporary world, where aspects of its technology and the versatility of its effects makes possible a more creative way that seems to be without limit.
I am curious as to what is animation? Is my work really animation or something else and did creation really take place?
I found a wider field available to me than I first thought with the term “animation” expanded to incorporate all manner of real-time footage. Usually animation is thought of in terms of cartoons that have been drawn or models moved frame-by-frame, but animation now includes films which have been intensively re-worked with rapid effects and digital manipulations, with digitalization of all media, all forms of production will perhaps be as much animation as anything else.
Thursday 20 January 2011
STATEMENT by anton cabaleiro
As an artist I work with every technique that interests me, and in one way or another I always finish by mixing them up. I don’t make distinctions between procedures. I use programming but I am not a programmer, I use video but I am not a filmmaker, I use photography but I am not a photographer, I use motion graphics but I am not a designer, and I feel like I am painting but I am not a painter. In fact my profile is far from any of the above finite art categories. That’s why I haven’t found yet my place within a specific community. It is not that I feel special. I am not that conceited. I am just trying to find my place, one where I might feel comfortable. If I were a plumber I would say it clearly and proudly, “Yes, I am a plumber and I fix pipes! Give me a faucet!” That would be wonderful indeed, but I guess my role is not that obvious.
I am standing in nobody’s territory where resources and concepts are being shared and reused with different purposes, but never defined. I deal with hybrids with no name, and I know that here is my fight.
A few years ago I decided to move to New York, basically for two reasons: Firstly, because I wanted to learn about technologies in the same country that produces these technologies, and secondly because I wanted to see for myself how these technologies affect daily life. In technological terms (which is essentially the same as saying in social terms, following McLuhan’s terminology), I think Europe’s model will be more and more similar to the United States’. It is just a matter of time. For me, being in the U.S. is like having the opportunity to see what the future will look like. I see Europe as a dictionary, where things have to be settled and clearly explained. This makes Europe move slowly, while the U.S. works as a website, being continuously updated, rapidly moving on, even when things are not so clear. “Use it or lose it,” I heard the other day on the street.
They are two similar but different places. Europe is on one side, America is on the other, and I am in the middle, like Clint Eastwood in “A Fistful of Dollars”. I enjoy this
game of pushing the boundaries, because comparison enriches me so much, and I’ve been in the middle of something all my life. Although it is not a very comfortable position, I can handle it.
Perhaps this is why I am so attracted to concepts like the neutral spaces called “non- places” that are places and non- places at the same time. Their product is the “average man”, or in other words the conventional individual- “the everyman”. Both are protagonists in my videos. I’ve been working with video for quite a few years now. From time to time, I’ve inserted my personal work in different mediums, such as TV and publicity. I developed an art-TV-show, directing and producing a project which was on the air for two years in Spain, and I’ve made experimental documentary films released on TV as well. I don’t just want to show my work in a gallery, a museum, or through a fine art video web portal, but rather it is for everybody.
I feel comfortable handling a camera, because when you are shooting someone and you know there is no second take you learn to be quiet, not to ruin the take. In this way a cameraman is like an anthropologist, observing while taking notes, trying to interfere as little as possible. In my work I try to follow this ideal of not imposing a discourse nor taking the residual part of it, called the “spectacle” by Guy Debord. Mass media already does this. It feeds the hungry audience, giving us brand new spectacular messages every second, matching mass expectations, and raising the stakes.
When I started studying fine arts, my wish (same as every novice artist) was to speak in order to change the world, to affect people’s minds. Nowadays, in this society made out of mass media and speedy changes, I don’t think it’s worth provoking another change. I don’t think people need more external changes in their (our) lives. Accordingly, I am convinced that my role is not to give answers. In fact the essence of my work is to question. So how could I give answers? I would rather use the term “opportunity”. The chance to review our own routines. Through my work I examine my own regularity, the issues I am accustomed to, and therefore the things I tend to ignore due to their familiarity. When you get used to something you ignore it. It is a natural
process, like when you are learning a language. There is a moment when you know how to speak it and no longer need to be aware of the grammatical rules, otherwise you’d never be able to articulate a word. In order to achieve this you don’t forget these conventions, you internalize them.
The process is the same with the panopticon’s effect, as explained by Foucault. “Panopticism”, as he called it, is based on the presumption of pre-established rules (not questioning them, as a consequence). What the anthropologist Marc Auge defines as the “average-man” is a kind of human behavior, a product of Panopticism. Sometimes familiarity with certain situations makes us act in a conventional way, following conventions without noticing them, not even knowing we are following them. They are “normalized”. Conventions are predefined-massive determinations that tell us how to react to something. In the end they are answers. The hard work for me is to locate them and find the questions hidden behind them.
My work is based on the issues of daily life, on the routine of the average-man, on patterns of conduct that are similar in all lives. Trying to show these hidden questions is the best way I can encourage the audience to think for themselves. If all we want is just answers, then we have religions, newspapers, magazines and TV among other social artifacts designed for that purpose.
Computers give us answers as well, so I do not rely on my computer. That’s why I feel like I’m continuously fighting with it, and believe me, it is like my third hand. I do not rely on art as an independent tool to change our universe either, because if I do so, assuming this fake freedom, then I would be under the effect of the Panopticon before even starting. Of course I am not out of its radius of action, I have my own average- man inside of me, like everybody else, but I struggle, at least to be aware of it.
I focus my view on the daily affairs -the superfluous actions we usually overlook. But by keeping an eye on them, I can find something new, something unexpected that twists everything and makes me start over from the beginning. One detail changes the entire context around it, and context changes everything, including the context itself.
This task of recognizing the conventions and ignoring them at the same time requires a constant exercise of abstraction, so as not to be caught in a paradox.
I think the world we are living in is full of paradoxes. They surround the average- man and keep him from moving forward, from making decisions. The average man needs a surround sound system, but he listens to compressed music tracks, with no quality at all. The average man has an Internet connection to make him feel he is in the center of the world while living in the outskirts of a city, and he owns an HD-TV with a screen enormous enough to be immersed in a fiction that substitutes reality.
I think the monotony of commuting is a paradigmatic example of this paradoxical situation. Although the commuter travels day after day, he doesn’t go anywhere. Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot” were great commuters. Of course the importance of these commutes is not where you are going or where you are coming from. The relevance is in the commute itself, in how, why and when it is taking place.
As a creator, I see myself as a commuter, trying different approaches to something that is always the same thing and totally different at the same time. Here the journey itself becomes the important issue. That’s why I see my pieces as links in a chain --- eventually my work results in an accumulation of attempts. I can say then that I’m leaving traces of a path built from reconsiderations, reevaluating what seems to be anodyne. Reconsiderations also because I know I cannot avoid interfering in reality. I try to interfere in many ways. In other words, always “ruining the take” at the end to see what happens. Trial and Error. This is my method. The further I go into the impersonality of the every-man, the more personal my visuals become. Maybe this is to balance one with the other. So the more personal, the more impersonal. One extreme denies the other one. It is a part of this process of destruction that is the creation.
I have to deconstruct what I am saying at the same moment I am saying it.
As a creator, I don’t want to sermonize. I think my task is just the opposite, but I was taught artists are supposed to speak as loudly as they can... are they? Are we? Socrates never wrote a word about his thoughts and he is one of the most relevant
pillars of the current-western way of thinking. Isn’t it ironic? When he was waiting for death, surrounded by his pupils, his last words were to remind them to pay a pending debt. Imagine their shocked faces, hearing that while waiting for high-flown words from their dying master.
Sometimes when I visit an exhibition I feel surprised by the work on view, so I know it is possible to reach others in the same way. In fact it is not that I want to reach them, but they’ll reach me instead. I am not fighting for an audience.
Since I’ve mentioned Socrates, he held also that the ignorant always want to teach, whereas the wise always want to learn. I am not a wise man, but through this personal exercise I’m struggling to be less ignorant.
McLuhan said, quoting A. J. Liebling, “a man is not free if he cannot see where is he going, even if he has a gun to help him get there.” Well, I have no idea of where am I going, but I know I don’t want to be a hyper-specialist who works on a little part of a project without knowing what the larger project is about. I will keep on improving my skills not to become a programmer, or a filmmaker, or a photographer, or a designer or a painter, because at the end I think that knowing where you are going is just as important as knowing where you are not going.
I am standing in nobody’s territory where resources and concepts are being shared and reused with different purposes, but never defined. I deal with hybrids with no name, and I know that here is my fight.
A few years ago I decided to move to New York, basically for two reasons: Firstly, because I wanted to learn about technologies in the same country that produces these technologies, and secondly because I wanted to see for myself how these technologies affect daily life. In technological terms (which is essentially the same as saying in social terms, following McLuhan’s terminology), I think Europe’s model will be more and more similar to the United States’. It is just a matter of time. For me, being in the U.S. is like having the opportunity to see what the future will look like. I see Europe as a dictionary, where things have to be settled and clearly explained. This makes Europe move slowly, while the U.S. works as a website, being continuously updated, rapidly moving on, even when things are not so clear. “Use it or lose it,” I heard the other day on the street.
They are two similar but different places. Europe is on one side, America is on the other, and I am in the middle, like Clint Eastwood in “A Fistful of Dollars”. I enjoy this
game of pushing the boundaries, because comparison enriches me so much, and I’ve been in the middle of something all my life. Although it is not a very comfortable position, I can handle it.
Perhaps this is why I am so attracted to concepts like the neutral spaces called “non- places” that are places and non- places at the same time. Their product is the “average man”, or in other words the conventional individual- “the everyman”. Both are protagonists in my videos. I’ve been working with video for quite a few years now. From time to time, I’ve inserted my personal work in different mediums, such as TV and publicity. I developed an art-TV-show, directing and producing a project which was on the air for two years in Spain, and I’ve made experimental documentary films released on TV as well. I don’t just want to show my work in a gallery, a museum, or through a fine art video web portal, but rather it is for everybody.
I feel comfortable handling a camera, because when you are shooting someone and you know there is no second take you learn to be quiet, not to ruin the take. In this way a cameraman is like an anthropologist, observing while taking notes, trying to interfere as little as possible. In my work I try to follow this ideal of not imposing a discourse nor taking the residual part of it, called the “spectacle” by Guy Debord. Mass media already does this. It feeds the hungry audience, giving us brand new spectacular messages every second, matching mass expectations, and raising the stakes.
When I started studying fine arts, my wish (same as every novice artist) was to speak in order to change the world, to affect people’s minds. Nowadays, in this society made out of mass media and speedy changes, I don’t think it’s worth provoking another change. I don’t think people need more external changes in their (our) lives. Accordingly, I am convinced that my role is not to give answers. In fact the essence of my work is to question. So how could I give answers? I would rather use the term “opportunity”. The chance to review our own routines. Through my work I examine my own regularity, the issues I am accustomed to, and therefore the things I tend to ignore due to their familiarity. When you get used to something you ignore it. It is a natural
process, like when you are learning a language. There is a moment when you know how to speak it and no longer need to be aware of the grammatical rules, otherwise you’d never be able to articulate a word. In order to achieve this you don’t forget these conventions, you internalize them.
The process is the same with the panopticon’s effect, as explained by Foucault. “Panopticism”, as he called it, is based on the presumption of pre-established rules (not questioning them, as a consequence). What the anthropologist Marc Auge defines as the “average-man” is a kind of human behavior, a product of Panopticism. Sometimes familiarity with certain situations makes us act in a conventional way, following conventions without noticing them, not even knowing we are following them. They are “normalized”. Conventions are predefined-massive determinations that tell us how to react to something. In the end they are answers. The hard work for me is to locate them and find the questions hidden behind them.
My work is based on the issues of daily life, on the routine of the average-man, on patterns of conduct that are similar in all lives. Trying to show these hidden questions is the best way I can encourage the audience to think for themselves. If all we want is just answers, then we have religions, newspapers, magazines and TV among other social artifacts designed for that purpose.
Computers give us answers as well, so I do not rely on my computer. That’s why I feel like I’m continuously fighting with it, and believe me, it is like my third hand. I do not rely on art as an independent tool to change our universe either, because if I do so, assuming this fake freedom, then I would be under the effect of the Panopticon before even starting. Of course I am not out of its radius of action, I have my own average- man inside of me, like everybody else, but I struggle, at least to be aware of it.
I focus my view on the daily affairs -the superfluous actions we usually overlook. But by keeping an eye on them, I can find something new, something unexpected that twists everything and makes me start over from the beginning. One detail changes the entire context around it, and context changes everything, including the context itself.
This task of recognizing the conventions and ignoring them at the same time requires a constant exercise of abstraction, so as not to be caught in a paradox.
I think the world we are living in is full of paradoxes. They surround the average- man and keep him from moving forward, from making decisions. The average man needs a surround sound system, but he listens to compressed music tracks, with no quality at all. The average man has an Internet connection to make him feel he is in the center of the world while living in the outskirts of a city, and he owns an HD-TV with a screen enormous enough to be immersed in a fiction that substitutes reality.
I think the monotony of commuting is a paradigmatic example of this paradoxical situation. Although the commuter travels day after day, he doesn’t go anywhere. Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot” were great commuters. Of course the importance of these commutes is not where you are going or where you are coming from. The relevance is in the commute itself, in how, why and when it is taking place.
As a creator, I see myself as a commuter, trying different approaches to something that is always the same thing and totally different at the same time. Here the journey itself becomes the important issue. That’s why I see my pieces as links in a chain --- eventually my work results in an accumulation of attempts. I can say then that I’m leaving traces of a path built from reconsiderations, reevaluating what seems to be anodyne. Reconsiderations also because I know I cannot avoid interfering in reality. I try to interfere in many ways. In other words, always “ruining the take” at the end to see what happens. Trial and Error. This is my method. The further I go into the impersonality of the every-man, the more personal my visuals become. Maybe this is to balance one with the other. So the more personal, the more impersonal. One extreme denies the other one. It is a part of this process of destruction that is the creation.
I have to deconstruct what I am saying at the same moment I am saying it.
As a creator, I don’t want to sermonize. I think my task is just the opposite, but I was taught artists are supposed to speak as loudly as they can... are they? Are we? Socrates never wrote a word about his thoughts and he is one of the most relevant
pillars of the current-western way of thinking. Isn’t it ironic? When he was waiting for death, surrounded by his pupils, his last words were to remind them to pay a pending debt. Imagine their shocked faces, hearing that while waiting for high-flown words from their dying master.
Sometimes when I visit an exhibition I feel surprised by the work on view, so I know it is possible to reach others in the same way. In fact it is not that I want to reach them, but they’ll reach me instead. I am not fighting for an audience.
Since I’ve mentioned Socrates, he held also that the ignorant always want to teach, whereas the wise always want to learn. I am not a wise man, but through this personal exercise I’m struggling to be less ignorant.
McLuhan said, quoting A. J. Liebling, “a man is not free if he cannot see where is he going, even if he has a gun to help him get there.” Well, I have no idea of where am I going, but I know I don’t want to be a hyper-specialist who works on a little part of a project without knowing what the larger project is about. I will keep on improving my skills not to become a programmer, or a filmmaker, or a photographer, or a designer or a painter, because at the end I think that knowing where you are going is just as important as knowing where you are not going.
A Scanner Darkly Trailer
Scanner Darkly Trailer, directed by Richard Linklater, 2006
The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug addiction epidemic.
The movie was filmed digitally and then animated using interpolated rotoscoping over the original footage, giving it its distinctive look.
Sunday 16 January 2011
Patrick Bokanowski - L'Ange (The Angel)
Patrick Bokanowski, L'Ange, 1982
Dubbed the artist-alchemist of celluliod avant-garde filmmaker. A unique combination of experimental cinema, photography, animation and painting.
"Magisterial images seething in the amber of transcendent soundscapes. Drink in these films through eyes and ears." -The Brothers Quay.
Thursday 6 January 2011
A Time and A Time (2008) directed by Sarah Cox
Sarah Cox (the animator, not the radio one presenter), A time and A time, 2008
A short film that takes 3 specific locations in Bristol and then recreates each place via collage of archive footage.
"A Time Traveler’s Guide to Bristol" -Sarah Cox
Save Me
Stuart Hilton, Save me, 1994
The found sounds of news time as the domestic meets disaster and survive. An abstract film that attempts to connect to the real experience of everyday life through the partial disclosure of a fantastic event.
"Something has happened and I missed it. I saw that headlines though, so I could probably guess the rest. I wonder if I'll guess correctly. I can guess the rest. I wonder if I guessed correctly."
-Stuart Hilton
Instructions for a Light & Sound Machine (2005) Part 1/2
Peter Tscherkassky, Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine, 2005
"Walking down the street unknowingly, he suddenly realised that he is not only subject to the grusome moods of several spectators but also at the mercy of the filmmaker. He defends himself heroically, but is condemned to the gallows, where he dies a filmic death through a tearing of the film itself.
Our hero then descends into Hades, the realm of shades. Here, in the underground of cinematography, he encounters innumerable printing instructions, the means whereby the existence of every filmic image is made possible. In other words, our hero encounters the conditions of his own possibility, the conditions of his very existence as a filmic shade.
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine is an attempt to transform a Roman Western into a Greek tragedy".
-Peter Tscherkassky
Wednesday 5 January 2011
Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry
Julian Grey, Forgetfulness, movies from the 1960s and 1970s.
In approaching the subject matter of a poem. Grey uses techniques to show our fading memories of childhood and our loss of motor skills. these are evident in his depictions of the act of swimming and the slow alienation from our bodies and emotions.
Peter Tscherkassky - Happy End from Géhém on Vimeo.
Peter Tscherkassky, Happy End, 1996
From an amateur home movie of an unknown Austrian couple, who record their passing years through images of celebration. Tscherkassky re-animates not only the frames of found footage, but also the couples lives as abstract individuals symbolising the common experience of an existence which relentlessly moves through rituals such as birthdays, weddings, public holidays and ultimately death itself.
Outer Space
Peter Tscherkassky, Outer Space, 1999
re-animated found footage in a spirit of challenging classical Hollywood narrative and visual composition. Using film itself to intervene with Hollywood conventions of storytelling and visual representation.
Sunday 2 January 2011
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