On Monday, was our chance to sync audio with video.... which is a lot harder than it sounds, especially if the footage and the audio don't line up.
By that I mean, sometimes the audio has started to record before the cameras have started rolling and the footage was given to us just as the clapper closed, so it was a bit of a challenge to get them to line up but not impossible.
I quite liked a challenge though so its ok.
below is my attempt at putting the first half of the sequence together, with some colour correction
To make it better I need to obviously finish it and colour correct the footage to have continuity.
Going through an article I found called 'Maps for Navigating to a New Perspective' written by Sylvia Gold in 2010, I came across Susan Stockwell, in this exhibition she turned a Victorian-era government maps of Scotland into a 19th-century gown, and named it 'Highland dress'
Described as 'elegant and eerie' by the writer of the article. The exhibition was at the Katonah museum of art. This dress was one of many she did as part of a series of sculptures. Others being; Money dress, Creative compass, Love me tender, Colonial dress, Cartographic dress, Empire dress, and Coffee dress.
Stockwell was born in Manchester, England. She attained her Masters of Art at the royal college of art and her Bachelors of Art at Sheffield Hallam University in fine art. She now teaches fine art as a senior lecturer at the University of East London. Her work addresses political, social, ecological and feminist issues, using her trademark motifs and metaphors of maps, stacks, dresses, money, recycled computer components and other everyday materials and products.
She quite likes her installations, Going through her website under the tab of work, it shows I believe all the work she has done, from 1990 to 2013. One of the pieces that stuck out to me the most was 'Flood, York' an 8m high, recycled computer component, site specific installation, exhibited at St Mary's York. I'm not entierly sure why I liked it so much, I just found it quite interesting, it was meant to be a take on the spire of the church, in an explanation of her piece she explains that it 'references ideas of alters as spaces for prayer and worship' and 'The title 'Flood' refers to York's flooding problem, to floods of information and floods of technology'
Flood, York (2010)
Another piece she did was called 'Pattern of the World' which was exhibited at the V&A Museum in London. In the exhibition 'Mapping the Imagination'. It shows a map of the world made out of dress patterns, pinned together to form a Mercator projection* of the world.
* Mercator Projection - is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.
As exhibited
For those who want to read about the exhibit click here
Other than mainly her work which is always different and has references to political problems, there isn't really much about her life online, but she her work is interesting to look at.
On monday was my first Avid lesson, it was really fun to learn something new!
The lesson was basically just showing us the basics, and playing around with videos provided. Loads of different tools to learn on Avid, but i'm excited for it.
We also get the chance to take an exam in it which I think i'll give a shot at because its not the end of the world if I don't pass, but at least I tried.
I'm excited to see what these next lessons are going to bring and what we are going to learn!
This is a picture of the timeline with different parts of the rushes we got, and keyframes to dip the music in and out!
"With eyes closed I see Happiness" - Marina Abramovic
The artist I was given was Marina Abramovic, she was born in 1946 Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her parents held prominent positions in the communist government. Her father was a Marshall in the elite guard, her mother was an art historian, who oversaw historical monuments. When her father left when Abramovic was 18, her mother took over the family, she was very strict and often violent, however she did support Abramovic's interest in Art. Looking through some of her early work, its very disturbing, from what I have read she struggled with catatonia and schizophrenia. She took drugs in the intention to treat this. In the early 1970's she began creating performative art, initially creating sound installations, but quickly moved on to art that involved the body. In her early work it often places her in dangerous situations both mental and physical. She invited people to abuse her body with a variety of objects, such as a loaded gun (Rhythm 0, 1974) I won't put any of her early work up, purely because it is very intense, but do click the link if you want to have a look at Rhythm 0.
I'm not the biggest fan of her work as its very potent. Which although I do think that art can be as powerful and disturbing as it wants, and its very much to the taste of the viewer, but for me its almost too much.
A year later in 1975 Abramovic created a piece called Thomas Lips which she basically cut her stomach with a razor, whipped her self and then laid of a block of ice..... in an interview she suggested that the inspiration for her art comes from her experience growing up under Tito's communist dictatorship and her relationship with her mother. "All my work in Yugoslavia was very much about rebellion, not against just the family structure but the social structure and the structure of the art system there... My whole energy came from trying to overcome these kinds of limits." A photo of her work from Thomas Lips was put up in the Guggenheim Museum.
She was very constrained in terms of who could influence her art, due to being confined by the communist government, therefore everything was decided to what she could see and artists she could know about. In 1975 whilst in Amsterdam she met Frank Uwe Laysiepen aka Ulay, the next year she moved in with him, and for 12 years the colabed their art, works such as Imponderabilia (1977) where Abramovic and Ulay stood face to face, in a small corridor, forcing people to walk between them or slide between them if you will. As seen below.
After 12 years together as both collaborative artists and lovers. (scandalous) which is probably why they grew apart, with conflicts of interests and wanting to go down different creative paths. The last Collaborative piece they did together was called The Lovers which they both stood on two different sides of The Great Wall of China and walked for three months, and they met in the middle and said goodbye, they had little to no contact after their last project.
Since 1997 she's won many awards for her work, and is considered to be 'the grandmother of performance art'
extreme fear, dread, horror, fear and trembling, fright, trepidation, alarm, panic, shock;
informalfunk
Our Summer project was to create a concept for a video along the theme of 'Political awareness' of course due to all the on going attacks I felt that this would be an interesting yet sensitive subject to touch upon.
A terrorist is defined as 'a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.'
Society already dictated that muslims are terrorists but people forget if we go right back to 1605 the gunpowder plot Guy Fawkes was a terrorist as he attempted to assassinate the King, Guy Fawkes was born and raised in York.
Between 1939 and 2000 almost all documented terrorist attacks in the UK came from the IRA (Irish Republican Army) The most terror attacks by this group was 24 in the 1990's.
This year the UK have been hit hard with the terror attacks starting in Westminster where a man drove in to pedestrians on Westminster bridge and then later stopped by armed officers, This was treated as an act or terrorism motivated by Islamic extremism. Then that same day up in Manchester an explosion went off outside the arena where Ariana Grande held a concert, killing 22 people and injuring 250.
Despite all this, what stood out to me the most was our motivation as a country to not give in to fear and to show we will not back down! As a country we came together in times of hardship and continued on, Even Ariana Grande organised a benefit concert to help raise morale.
I watched a programme called 'Manchester: 100 days after the attack' i've linked part one here (Part 1) I could watch all of it as I found it really hard to watch, but what it showed was a lot of the people affected by the attacks and the days that followed, including injured and the parents of those who died...
One story was of a little girl who had been hit with shrapnel and wasn't breathing, Her parents got her out of the carnage and in to a car park where a police officer found them and blue lighted them to the children hospital in Manchester, she survived and later met the police officer which got her to the hospital.
It told the accounts of the emergency services involved, one of the ambulance crews told the interviewer how the police where such a major help in getting people to hospital by making make-shift stretchers to get people out and into ambulances.
Recently the police have put out a new scheme called 'Run, Hide, Tell' which is what i'm going to name my video, it states that in the event you are in the middle of an attack or see one happening, you sound
Run away
Hide as best you can
Tell someone what is happening if it is safe to do so
This video gives advice on what you should do in the event of a firearms and weapons attack, it was uploaded to youtube by the NPCC or National Police Chief's Council.
This is also very beneficial to University's much like ours to educate both students and teachers on what to do.
My main idea is to basically show our optimism in times of hardship as a country and what to do in the event of an attack, what you can do.
I intend to do this through very short clips at the beginning of news reports but then having longer clips of us as a country banding together, stronger than ever.
Final project of the year! Split screen project using adobe after effects. Has to be a minimum of 1 minute long, showing the relationship between the human body and the digital media. Mine is of a person swimming and getting exercise and in other side is a heart monitor which I made from scratch.
My final piece can be viewed in the video below.
I used you tube to help me make it, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpGt3dtEiXQ) the video tutorial was for a older version of after effects so somethings had changed so I couldn't get it exactly like the video but I did manage to do it and was really proud. It took me 2 hours to do but was worth it.
I also used you tube to help me create a split screen which was really straight forward (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPBkKuvR5-E)
My inspiration came from watching adverts which showed heart monitoring devices such as the apple watch and fitbit. I wanted to visually show what it would look like through these devices.
I had another version of a split screen project which unfortunately was playing up so it wasn't ready in time, that version was basically where I had a video from when I was a baby and everyone was around watching me trying to walk, on the other side had me scrolling through Facebook and being a click away from contacting everyone. As the video played the words 'family time' would pop up on the Facebook screen, and then 'Facebook time' would pop up on the family screen, showing what the person should be doing but isn't.
I also created a glitch effect so I could put it behind the heart monitor, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXKvsnC6DZA)
In conclusion i'm not overly happy with my finished product, my computer wasn't the most powerful with running adobe after effects which made it harder to watch back the video in production, however i'm happy with what I created in terms of the effects I made from scratch although not overly ambitious they were really fun to make.
From the beginning to the end, from Viking burials on the way to Valhalla, to Greek mythology and the River Styx. Water has been around since the beginning of the earth, it gives life, takes life, nourishes, poisons. Waters is such an important factor in all of life, to sustain it. My idea is carrying on from one of my projects of Time, when you are underwater there is no sense of time, it stops, you are weightless in the water, you are free. I want to show that water should not be take for granted and we should be grateful to have easy access to it and for it be clean.
I took my inspiration from installation artists Bill Viola and Leandro Erlich.
Bill Viola is well known for his work with water, As one of my most favorite experimental video artists, he was the biggest inspiration for my piece. A quote from Viola which really summed up what I wanted to say was "the most beautiful world" which came from his experience of drowning as a child. Viola did an installation called 'Dreamers' which showed 7 different people of different ages, gender, and racial backgrounds, following his experience when he was 6. The people are laying in serenity on the bottom of a pond with their eyes closed, the experience was when you walked in to the installation you would be surrounded by these images and ambient sound of being underwater to have the full experience.
Leandro Erlich created The swimming pool illusion in Kanazawa, Japan. Achieved by layering two transparent sheets of glass at the top of the pool, and filling the space in between with about 4 inches of water. Although it has no obvious connect to my final piece, it was mainly to see what beautiful shapes the water can create. The audience can see what its like to be underwater and see the different shapes without have to go scuba diving or swimming, they can also see what its like from above ground looking in to the water and seeing the different shapes.
I researched facts about the use of water and how much gets wasted each year, this helped me choose my shots and how I was got to place them in my time line on premier pro. This also helped me get my messaged across by choosing facts to feature in my film
I made my own soundtrack, not including the royalty free song I found online, using the sounds I got from recording I used audition to put it all together.
What went well? I used inspiration from other artists to help create my final piece, I managed to obtain the diving pool where I work and with the help of Hollie she helped me get different shots. Using my underwater camera and the use of tutorials it helped me think about all the different uses for water. I researched various facts about water from trusted websites to help get my message across.
Even better if? My images were more stable therefore being able to use certain effects in after effects to make it more interesting to watch.
What were my challenges? Trying to get as many different clips as possible to help send the correct message.
What have I learnt? To always try different shots out even if they don't work out I can always try something different.
Special thanks to my Actress and cameraman Hollie Probert.
