Pipilotti Rist and Ryan Trecartin

Pipilotti Rist

"I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much"
This video is a performance art piece enhanced by video art techniques such as the speeding and slowing down of the video and audio. The way that we perceive the video is changed by whether the performance is fast-forwarded or slowed down. When fast-forwarded, it seems manic and almost child-like. Also, when the screen slowly stops the frame from left to right as she is moving, she is creating a whole new image; she is using her own performance combined with video art techniques to use the television screen as a canvas for her art. The reveal at the end that she was referencing the well-known Beatles song "Happiness is a Warm Gun" was a surprise to me because I didn't recognize it with the audio sped up.

"Sexy Sad I"
Another reference to a Beatles song; this time it is "Sexy Sadie" and the video seems to play a cover version and transition into the original version and back again. It starts with a green and black animation and then goes into a video of a naked man frolicking in the woods without showing his complete face. Then it shows four hands making signs. Later on, it shows footage of the naked man but upside and black and white. I don't really know what to make of this piece.

"(Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler"
Starts with close up shots of random surroundings with a blur effect applied. Music that features ascending notes are played. We see a woman walking and then the camera starts going around and around with the blur effect, creating a swirl of red and green on the video screen. When the music stops on a note, the video frame freezes. The video goes black and a voice with echo is heard. When music comes in, there is video that is played that syncs with it. The video has lines going across it reminiscent of a VCR. Then the music keeps on playing with video of a person from head to toe, but every time the music stops, the person falls to the ground. This is done in different locations each time. This keeps on going with different images showing up when the music is playing but the consistent theme is that the person falls every time the music stops (ex. flat color, fast-forward of eating). The video is overwhelmed by lines.

"Als der Bruder meiner Mutter geboren wurde, duftete es nach wilden Birnenbluten vor dem braungebrannten Sims"
The camera is twirling around to a snowy area while a superimposed video screen is present near the bottom of the screen. The music seems upbeat but the footage playing in the tiny video screen transitions from random shots of birds to a woman giving birth.

"Pickelporno"

Utilizes close-ups a woman's feet in high heels. Music is playing and she approaches a man and they bow to each other. Where it really gets interesting is when is uses a green screen with images of blue and purple leaves on it while a camera rotates around a man; it makes it look like he is floating around in this psychedelic world. The piece continues with the extreme close-ups such as the man's finger. A bass groove is featured prominently in this section.

Ryan Trecartin

"Kitchen Girl"

A woman is heard shrieking and walking up stairs with a baby carriage/dolly. She is seen talking to her plush toys. She plugs in a microphone and claps are heard when she puts food into a pot. She throws one of the plush toys out of the window and continues to yell. I thought this video was absolutely demented.

Video Art Project

This project was inspired by David Hall's piece, "This is a Television Receiver," in which he presented a video and subsequently filmed a television screen playing the video and filmed the recording of the television screen playing that video and so on, until the image of the television screen at the end is distorted. For my project, I wanted the concept to be about the errors in recollection of events in the past. When relating events to each other, we tend to embellish or distort the events to our own liking or to how we see fit. Like in the game of telephone, events can resemble something different than it was originally with the passage of time. I wanted each video to be a little different from the one preceding it but with the core actions being performed in each to be the same. I used a recording of a video meant to be played in reverse that a friend and I made a while ago as the basis of my project. Then, I wanted us to reenact the actions but with different clothes each time. After we made videos of each reenactment, the videos were played on his laptop and I recorded that. With each consecutive video, I recorded the recording. This made it so by the fifth video, the actions on the screen are less clear and is harder to make out; this resembles how the recollection of events changes through time and from person to person and how the actual reality and origins of events become unclear.

Television Delivers People

Richard Serra's video art piece "Television Delivers People" really does deliver its message in a clear and direct way. It is presented in the form of a harmless television announcement and its peppy music also helps reinforce the way that it parodies infomercials and public service announcements. The points that the piece brings up is one that should seem obvious but is commonly forgotten; that television exists solely for the advertising and the money made from them and for them. It really did provide a revelation though in its simple statement that "In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold." The use of the word "himself" in this statement speaks volumes due to the fact that it is often cited that the most valued demographic that advertisements are targeting are 18-35 year old males. Television programming exists as bait for people to be exposed to advertisements. The statement that "You are the product of TV" is very powerful; the way it describes how advertisers are the customers for our loyalty and currency to their brands by buying space for commercials and sponsoring television programming is very true. This piece has the ability to show something that is commonplace in a completely new light by stating simple messages is something that I applaud. Also the "Propaganda for Profit" line is a truth about television that still has not lost its relevancy with the existence and popularity of corporation-owned news outlets such as Fox News. The way in which broadcasting can dictate what people think and in essence, decides what they should and shouldn't know, is a scary thought.

Nam June Paik/The Residents

Nam June Paik was a true purveyor of originality. His avant-garde leanings and privileged upbringing that allowed him to play pianos by banging nails with a hammer and play violins by dragging them on the ground made for a lot of interesting imagery and concepts to how music is played. In his obituary in the New York Times, it was said that he grew up studying classical piano and more traditional music composition. It is truly fascinating to see how someone goes from interest in classical musical composition to the avant-garde. Also, his video installation of a giant magnet attached to the top of a television set was great in how it turned the television screen itself into a canvas for his art. In the video we saw in class, it was shown that he incorporated his discoveries in experimenting with the television into his video art; I remember seeing a video in which a woman is playing an instrument with the background consisting of jagged yellow lines.
I really enjoyed the works of the Residents that we saw in class. I thought "Harry the Head" was a very catchy little number and the accompanying video, which was said was part of a video game that the Residents were involved in, was fun to watch. The "One-Minute Videos" that we also saw was a clever spin on the pop song. It is true that the "ideal pop song" length is about 2 minutes and 50 seconds in length. Since most pop songs just repeat the proven formula of verse and chorus repeated ad nauseum, why not cut the fat and leave the core of it intact? It reminds me of the album "Pink Flag" by Wire, which also kept the songs at a short length with the intention of only keeping what is necessary for the song. It was also cool to see how the Residents embraced digital art in their work. The man with the crazy facial expressions having glowing tubes sticking out from him was an example of this and jump started the ubiquity of digital art in music videos for decades to come.

Performance Art Video

"Some at MoMA Show Forget ‘Look but Don’t Touch’ "

The instances of spectators inappropriately touching the performers participating in a Marina Abramovic retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art can be traced to the idea that in performance art, the performer's own body acts as the object of the art piece. Due to the context of a museum gallery and the disconnect that people feel toward objects, some spectators seem to feel that their participation in the form of cat-calling and uncomfortable touching is fair play. The performers have also recalled fun, but unusual moments with spectators in the form of dancing, "thank you's," and innocent touching of bare skin. The pros and cons of interaction in these specific performance art pieces are all a result of how people view other people when they are redefined as an object in their performance art pieces.

The Post-Modern Crisis

The ways in which modern musicians try to crack new ground was very inventive as seen in Monday's class. Iannis Xenakis' "Mycenae Alpha" was a great example of this; a machine that interprets his drawings into sound is such a forward thinking idea. Another invention along the same lines was the scoreLight which used laser beams, as dictated by a drawing's shape, to make interesting sounds. To see and hear these inventions work prove that a dead end in the post-modern crisis is not soon approaching.
Stockhausen's "Helicopter String Quartet" was fascinating in that it played with the usual conventions in how music is played and how musicians interact with each other to produce music. Since each violinist was wearing headphones, they were able to capably interact with each other in their playing. I liked how the music echoed the drama of flying in a helicopter itself.

Gilbert & George/Orlan

Gilbert and George's idea that our own bodies can be used as objects of our art is pretty clever and its introduction into art galleries as "living sculptures" really provided a fascinating spin on what was commonly thought of as art. The transition from everyday objects being gazed on in a whole new light with the introduction of readymades to the works of Gilbert and George which used their own bodies in the context of art is an example of what makes art so fascinating because it constantly redefines itself and only exists through the common influx of groundbreaking new ideas and interpretations. Fr them to exist as the sculptures themselves makes the art carry a whole new meaning; they spoke of how human beings have living souls while traditional art materials do not. Their works were cited to have influence on musicians like David Bowie (I like the idea of art bleeding through from an underground phenomenon to a mainstream one; one can see the evolution of how an idea becomes palatable for a wide audience). In the case of "The Singing Sculpture," the idea of a person just singing to a pre-recorded tape and calling it art must have been radical to a lot of people at the time (as in not accepted as a legitimate art form). In the case of people like David Bowie, who presented his music as well as his own body image as art (Ziggy Stardust), found widespread success by redefining what people think of when they think of musicians (music as well as their own bodies as "objects"). Any idea that can seem radical to unsuspecting eyes can become instantly palatable through an easy pill called Pop music. In fact, the whole phenomenon of performance art intertwined with music can by traced to such events as the Who destroying their instruments after every performance in the mid 1960's and even further than that I'm sure. Gilbert and George's influence on the art world as well as the music world still reverberates today. An example of this is British Sea Power's music video for "Remember Me," which I thought of immediately when seeing the video of the "living sculptures" in Thursday's class.



Orlan is an artist whose early work was radical at the time (her own body being treated as the art itself, which is perfectly exemplified by her being photographed within a frame in the "corps sculptures" series), but the video of her going under the knife while reading text that related to body image was a bit shocking. Her latest work in which she has her own image dictated by a certain culture is an interesting idea. It provides a nice contrast to what different society's believe is that standard for beauty and body image and it uses her own image as a starting point for each one.

Xerox Project

Juan Parada

Juan Parada's presentation on was very interesting; it was fascinating to hear that some of the freelancers who have worked for him for several years have never met him in person. The proliferation of telecommuting in the way businesses are run has put cracks in the widely-held image of employees gathering around a giant wooden table to do business.
The story of how the founders of LatinRed.com fabricated the existence of a president and other authority figures by creating fake e-mail addresses is a great metaphor to how a new style of running a company is rising due to the ubiquity of the internet; the fact that two ambitious people were able to start a wildly successful organization but thought they had to present themselves under the guise of what is commonly thought of as a legitimate business (i.e. having presidents, vice presidents, etc.) in order to be taken seriously is a prime example of how the internet has changed the rules of the game. Two ambitious people have as much as a chance of taking their claim of a market as does a huge corporation. This mindset was exemplified by Juan Parada's style of business. I loved the D.I.Y. ethics that he put forth and how he said that his ideals were set by his attitude in youth (his citing the punk movement as a great influence was very surprising and reminds me of how the hippies in Woodstock had to grow up someday). From his speech, I learned that one might as well apply their attitudes towards living to how they conduct business and with access to an ever-increasing global network, the future is only looking ripe for the truly ambitious.
Also, I coincidentally saw this video over the weekend that dealt with telecommuting in a pretty funny way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFWdCs1nqSk

The Beatniks

William S. Burroughs work shown in class has really intrigued me and I'm looking forward to reading his writing. I've always recognized his name as an influential author but I never got around to actually checking out his work. The same can be said of Allen Ginsberg. I've only heard of his poem "Howl" and know him as a famous poet. However, I read "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac when I was in high school but I don't remember the contents that well. I do remember that the man who inspired the character of "Dean Moriarty," Neal Cassady, also appears in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Interestingly, I see these two books bridging the gap between the beatnik and hippie generations with the appearance of Cassady.
The definition of the beatnik generation in class as a bit of a "lost generation" defeated by the high standards set by the "American Dream" was very fascinating. I never thought of the beatniks as being "beat down" and I only thought of the connotation of jazz music. The definition does fit as applied to "On the Road" because I actually do remember the opening page having Sal Paradise reveal that he went through a divorce (which could be seen as failure to start the perfect nuclear family). I never really thought about how "On the Road" was a revolutionary book for its time and I'm looking forward to reading "Naked Lunch" and "Howl" with this new perspective on how these works came to be (also, Burroughs' cut-up technique sounds absolutely wild!).

"L.H.O.O.Q." & "Un Chien Andalou"

"L.H.O.O.Q." by Marcel Duchamp is an example of what I love about art; to me, art is about consistently breaking boundaries and unspoken rules. It is about expressing individuality at every turn and presenting new ideas. In the case of this specific piece, the reappropriation of a famous art piece (in this case, the "Mona Lisa") results in what was a refreshingly new idea at the time. With the simple idea of placing a mustache on the subject of the iconic piece (which was printed on a postcard) with the letters "L.H.O.O.Q." printed underneath, Duchamp had presented his own art by manipulating an an already-existing and highly recognizable image with humor. The concept is like art folding into itself and an example of this concept in more modern times can be seen in the ubiquity of sampling in music.

The experimental short film "Un Chien Andalou," a collaboration between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, was certainly one of the strangest films I've ever seen (it definitely didn't hold back as one of the first images was of a woman getting her eye sliced open). Honestly, the film seemed to surreal for me when we were watching it in class but when I read that it was based on actual dreams I started to open up to it more. Sometimes I just need to know the intention behind certain pieces of art to appreciate them because without it, it may seem like absurdity for the sake of being absurd.

Grid Project

The MZTV Museum of Television

On mztv.com, there is a section that defines television by numerous quotes; I found this to be a very interesting approach, considering that a good portion of the quotes were actually derisive toward the television industry, the concept of television itself, or other aspects. For example, there are a few quotes that heavily favor literature over the television as demonstrated by quotes by people such as Groucho Marx and Andrew Ross. The monumental shift brought by the television and its subsequent impact is also cleverly referred to by these quotes; Tennessee Williams laments how the focus on television has shrunken the cultural support and growth of writers such as himself.
The New York World's Fair's theme of "Building the World of Tomorrow" really puts things in perspective for me and how I take for granted the advanced technology that seems to blend into the background in my life.

Radio Days

I have to say, otr.com is a very impressive archive of classic radio broadcasts. The coverage of the important news events are essential documents to understanding the context and atmosphere of the times when they occurred, as we move forward and are farther removed from these turning points in history.
It's not hard to understand how radio could provide the endless hours of entertainment, similar to how television does today (and with the depth of the internet, the ability to hear or see endless hours of past radio and television broadcasts is a pleasure that I exploit all the time).
I am listening to the first episode of Captain Midnight and am loving the voice actors portraying the characters. The vibrant performances help paint a picture of what is going on in the scene. Of course, the dialogue is very important in setting the scene, with Captain Midnight pointing out the wounds of another character ad the character describing how he got them in clear language. You can see how the absence of visuals makes the dialogue that much more important.
Speaking of entertainment through the radio, the next evolutionary step to me is the podcast. I listen to radio broadcasts in podcast form all the time due to my long commute to UT everyday and while I'm delivering pizzas on the job. I implore anyone interested in radio comedy to check out a duo by the names of Scharpling & Wurster; Jon Wurster (drummer of the band Superchunk) calls into Tom Scharpling's radio show (The Best Show on WFMU) as a wide range of absurd characters. Here's a link if you'd like to check it out: http://www.scharplingandwurster.com/index.php?cat=7

Flipbook

A Clockwork Orange

Coincidentally, a few days after I decide to rent A Clockwork Orange from my local library, we discuss the movie in class(maybe I subconsciously decided to watch it again after looking at the syllabus). The bit in which Alex DeLarge recites "Singin' in the Rain" as he commits acts of extreme violence is inverting the main purpose of the song itself; it's ironic to sing this song, which is almost the epitome of cheeriness, within the context of breaking inside a home and committing heinous acts of violence. It resembles the ending of another Stanley Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket, where soldiers in Vietnam chant the "Mickey Mouse" song in unison against the backdrop of a war torn country.

2/9/2010

I really enjoyed yesterday's class, especially the clips from Singin' in the Rain which I found hilarious. I've never watched this movie before but I saw it in my local library while looking for a copy of Madame Butterfly for the Opera project, so I'll be sure to rent it sometime in the future. I ended up renting Madame Butterfly and a movie that's tangentially related to Singin' in the Rain, A Clockwork Orange(which has a scene that completely recontextualizes the title song in one of its scenes which I won't spoil in this blog post.) I decided to read more into Singin' in the Rain after yesterday's class and an interesting tidbit I learned about that famous scene where Grace Kelly is literally singing in the rain was that the scene that looked absolutely seamless on first viewing actually took two to three days to achieve.
The growth of silent films from simple camera shots such as Nosferatu to the sense of pandemonium created in the film The Battleship Potemkin was a shining example of how important editing and camera movement can be in creating a captivating narrative. The frequent cuts in The Passion of Joan of Arc was very effective in adding to the heavy drama of Joan's demise by focusing on her as she was being executed and circumnavigating around her direct environment for the reactions from the crowd.

Steve Jobs Apple Tablet

I think that when a company's name is synonymous with innovation, that could only mean good things for its future. Of course, Apple is one such company that is actually innovating in more ways than I even imagined; the small aside about Apple computers being made with relatively more environmentally friendly materials is a fact that I find very interesting. I am guilty of incorporating one of their products (my iPod) into my day-to-day life and almost tricking myself into believing that it is an absolute necessity on par with wearing clothes. The fact that I can carry my whole music library around in my pocket still astounds me to this day.

Now, Steve Jobs' words that the Apple Tablet is "the most important thing" he's "ever done" is sure to provide a steady growth of hysterical anticipation; it reminds me of the press that explicitly stated that the 3-D technology surrounding James Cameron's Avatar would revolutionize the movie industry in the months leading up to its release. I think in retrospect, now that Avatar has single-handedly become the highest-grossing movie of all time and still looks to be unstoppable, it is safe to say that we shouldn't mince the words of people with good track records. Especially when the hype is also ballooning due to the words from Jobs' peers such as Michael Arrington.