Wish you could see it but a video that is so huge (conceptually) just takes a while to upload. (generations).
Anyways it turns out you cant really make a good movie if you don't give yourself any themes or constraints and have unlimited footage! There's some good stuff though.
Tooot toot!
Who's that coming around the bend??
Its Werner Herzog in his big steam boat!
Say hello to Werner everyone!
Here he comes, chuggin round the bend.
I wonder off to what new world he'll send!
Werner Herzog was a filmmaker (RIP) from Germany. He was also one of the best sea captains that have ever lived. His exploits as a seaman far exceed those of his film making, even though he had directed 68 films over the course of his short life. His life was cut short while filming a documentary about sailing in the Bermuda triangle. He was posthumously awarded with the Lindbergh Baby Award by President John F Kennedy in 1967 at his funeral.
The young sailor's parents on their honeymoon (1939)
How do you put feeling into banality? There's no need to be original. The most beautiful things are already here.
Scott Carrier stitches together a beautiful and nostalgic soundscape through meaningless records.
8:00
These newer mediums invested in objective reproduction of reality have their philosophical problems, but they are good for this project of remembrance.
Carrier's project was inspired by Bill Owens' photo book Suburbia
What a great book. Check it out from the Seeley G. Mudd Library where I work!
Robert Adams (1937-still alive as of Jan 28, 2018 11:51 PM)
Capturing an even more banal and sinister beauty in the growing American suburbs.
Saint Anthony of Padua, the Patron saint of travel and lost things.
And here is the container holding his tongue!
Ah but what can we do for these lost things!
Find them! And remember them. And ask other to remember.
Andrei Platonov's Voshchev from The Foundation Pit
"It was hot, a day wind was blowing and cocks were crowing in some village–––
everything had abandoned itself to meek existence, only Voshchev had made himself separate and silent. A dead, fallen leaf lay beside Voshchev's head; the wind had brought it there from a distant tree, and now this leaf faced humility in the earth. Voshchev picked up the leaf that had withered and hid it away in a secret compartment of his bag, where he took care of all kinds of objects of unhappiness and obscurity. 'You did not possess the meaning of life,' supposed Voshchev with the miserliness of compassion. 'Stay here––and I'll find out what you lived and perished for. Since no one needs you and you lie about amidst the whole world, then I shall store and remember you. ... He laid under his head the bag where he collected every kind of obscurity for memory and vengance, felt sad, and so fell asleep."
I can't edit at home, I discovered, but I've organized many files and been rewatching, making mental sketches and associations. Rewatching this footage I'm glad I'm a few months removed from it, editing it in winter. I want to begin with this audio of my drive from Appleton to Minneapolis in June this summer.
Bugs, dead things, planes, clouds, shadows, and transparencies seemed to be what interested me this summer. The footage is beautiful but sloppy. I am getting exactly the feeling I felt when filming this summer, so I'm confident I can come up with a successful project.
The things I'm most worried about is the discontinuity between different settings. Specifically, I think there is an obvious difference in the footage I took while in Canada vs. while at home. The light and foliage is very different, but most of all it seems I was thinking of different things when filming.
Below are screengrabs from footage I'll be using, and below is the audio of radio interference.
Play until 1:30 and then skip to 9:11 and then stop at like 10:30
Nelson was a quiet and warm guy. I went to the lunch with him and his benefactors where they expounded the downfall of his once beautiful country. His disagreement was apparent from small faces and sounds and polite contradictions. We had a long and vague conversation about the American embassy diplomats who got sick in Havana. Everyone seemed to be talking in euphemisms, hinting at what they thought happened, while many at the table didn't seem to have heard of the incident at all. I kept muttering that it was probably the CIA and it was like a USS Maine type of deal but no one was listening to me, the nut.
His presentation was great. He simply went through the history of photography in Cuba which situated his work in that specific cultural historical context. What a great way to do it.
The show itself reaffirmed my appreciation for documentary photography. Those were by far my favorite pieces in the show. In class I recently accused photography as capturing, not creating. I meant it as an insult but its really a powerful thing. No artist can create anything as beautiful as the little magical moments of coincidence and beauty that happen in the real world, and photography comes with the understanding that it represents reality. Yeah I liked Nelson's print pretty good but it doesn't compare to the documentary photography.
Tomorrow: watch all my footage with a notebook in a relaxed mindset :)
Monday: a five minute sound collage
Wednesday: initial visualization
Repeat until week 8 and then attempt Consolidation!
Hello my Friends. A lot of people ask me.. “what do
you want your art to do, jack?” I want my art to fuck you up. I want my art to
scare you senseless. I want my art to take your mind on a vacation from “Instagram”
and “facebook” and show you the real fucking shit. Im talking about giving you
a trip your mind won’t be able to recover from. I’m talking about a sort of
metaphysical journey that creates a rift between your mind and your body that
you will never be able to repair. Im talking astral birthright.
But most of all. I want my art to heal. I want to help you. but to help you. you have to follow me. I love you all but you must trust my wisdom before you see it.
A lot of people want me to define consciousness for them.
The problem is you have to be ready to know what im talking about. You have to have bigger
eyes to see the bigger truth. Im not talking about any of that third eye
shit.Im talking bigger eyes. Our
eyes should be bigger, and that’s what I can give you if you trust me. and love me.
The show was a big hit. My book was the biggest which was a little embarrassing. And the gallery presented my prints at half the asking price I had requested. (No one bought them obviously, because people hate cheap art.) But everyone loved my work so I don't have to worry about my financial future at least. Thats a start! I brought feta cheese, baby dill pickles, pastries, and wine to the show. I left with oreos and hint of lime tostitos. What a haul!
With regards to my photos, I made some changes since the flickr album. I brought the title down a notch. And I did some cool things with zooming in on parts of the photos I liked and putting that on the opposite page. I'm pretty happy with it. Some of it printed a little dark. And it feels a little boring but I still like it. Overall I think it was a good exercise in self editing and self curation. I have trouble being concise or specific with my photographs.
McLuhan was an inspiration and mentor to John Cage even though McLuhan was only a year older than the experimental composer. Later in life they became friends. Among Cage's other inspirations/mentors/friends was Marcel Duchamp.
Both McLuhan and Cage agree that the eye has dominated the western mind. That we should take sounds more seriously. Both are interested in the fact that you cannot shut your ears. Both are frustrated with the rigidness of understanding space within western culture. “When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating." This is an excerpt from an essay Cage wrote in ___. He explains his reasons for using chance operations in his compositions and expands on his ideas behind sound. After this essay the critical and academic worlds spent much less time on the content of Cage's art and mainly focused on his ideas about art and sound. This contradicts one of his main ideas that the intention of the artist is not important to the finished work. For example, 4’33’’, probably his most famous piece, is usually talked about with regards to the ideas behind it; There is no silence. Listen to the sounds around you. The audience is part of the song... But they don't talk about the song.
"I have nothing to say and I am saying it." - John Cage Maybe the critics prove him wrong. Is his work only valuable for the theoretical point it makes? By using computer systems that run chance operations to determine what Cage does in his art, he is very literally using circuitry as an extension of the nervous system, like McLuhan says.
“Using chance operations assumes that each thing that happens is the best.”
I was sad yesterday and I didn't think I was gonna be... But i started looking through sounds I recorded on my voice memos app over tha past few years and it made it a lot worse. I made a short peice out of these sounds .. I found the process very therapeutic but I feel a deep sadness when I listen to this piece. Much of that is due to my connection to the individual sounds. When I listen to it I feel I have died. I hope some of this feeling can be picked up on by the audience.
"The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation." - John Cage
I cant think this way.. I feel so idle .. I love to do nothing and observe but it also makes me feel purposeless, useless... bad. Here in many of these recordings I am idle, observing.. and still compulsively recording. appropriating. *Insert Sontag quote here*
I like the sounds of me holding the phone while recording too. the clicks and scratches and static. It creates a strange feeling of point of view and a feeling that reminds me of listening to an old tape recorder. It's amature nature. It makes it feel more autobiographical. I thought it was an interesting interplay of forms where I record a tape recorder playing old tapes of my grandpa taking voice memos, on my digital voice memo app.
Once again the guest speaker's talk made this passage come to mind immediately: "Primitive and pre-alphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in an acoustic, horizonless, boundless, olfactory space, rather than in visual space. Their graphic presentation is like an x-ray. They put in everything they know, rather than only what they see. ... the primitive artist twists and tilts the various possible visual aspects until they fully explain what he wishes to represent." McLuhan 56/7
He continues to talk about the how the new media artist now works in this way again. I saw this in the video and visual collages of Rashaad Newsome.
I found it very interesting when he said he wanted to represent the body through architecture although I'm not sure how he meant that or whether or not I thought he was completely successful.
I like what he said about everything being collage. Its funny he got knighted and I like that in the video he went back and got knighted by people he respected instead. After the third video of the trilogy I was kind of wondering why he was using himself in the videos. It seems so.... something lol.
As much as I liked the collages, I found the video art more affecting. "Icon" gave me chills. The interplay of sound and dance as well as digital collage was really effective.
The digital world wide Net has not created a global village. What it has created is closer to a masquerade themed orgy. And at the expense of the destruction of the public square. No longer can the Lenin's of this world stand on a soap box in the town square and call the masses to action. No longer can the workers of the shop floor and the owners walk by the same man preaching the word of Marx. The Digital Net has ensnared us yet atomized us. Pushed us further into niche of niche.
What to do?
Start with the children of course.
Children are less susceptible to the atomizing effects of the Net. His vastness is not yet understood nor accessed by the little comrades. They access several websites, but the one traversed by every single one of them is Club Penguin. This is certainly true for todays little ones, as it was for my generation. If only there had been a subversive organization calling the little youths to action when we were young... if...... if only.... no. We act now. The past and Future are simultaneous and we will work for the people here and now.
Club Penguin is the new Town Square
And so CP (club penguin) is where we must do our work if we truly want to build a CP (communist party) capable of taking power in this country, and eventually all over the world. This is where we can meet and discuss and persuade and fight back. Down with technocrats! Down with capital! We will seize the means of production once and for all. No more compromises. Full control by the people! this will be no easy task, but with the children on our side, we can do it.
"Entangled Ecologies: Community, Identity, and the Modern Future of the Medieval Past"
This is what Ann Harris of DePauw University named her sermon. Here is a medieval painting she showed:
Ann Harris described this medieval zodiac painting like this: she says it has a layered sense of time, place, and space. See for yourself. The people in the painting have a permeable sense of self. The two people are parts of the same person, or rather, a more universal representation of humanity. their identity is entangled in the environment and the stars. "Body is contingent, entangled, permeable."
Mchluhan has something to say about art that has abandoned, or rather not yet taken up, perspective:
"Primitive and pre-alphabet people integrate time and space as one and live in an acoustic, horizonless, boundless, olfactory space, rather than in visual space. Their graphic presentation is like an x-ray. They put in everything they know, rather than only what they see. ... the primitive artist twists and tilts the various possible visual aspects until they fully explain what he wishes to represent." 56/7
it obviously is not a primitive or prealphabet painting... but I think that it was obvious this part of the statement was an exaggeration anyways...
she then sagwayed (no idea how ur supposed to spell that)((I really could use some flinks)) into talking about rock raising and tipping and reraising. specifically in the case of some rocks in france (or scotland (I think it was scotland but Johnnie doesn't think so)) ... So these stones had been moved and then raised as some sort of religious thing by some pagan rock folks.. and then the Christians got mad and tore them down. What I thought was the most interesting thing she said was just that the debate around reraising the stones is just as significant as the other two. It simple but I never thought about it like that. history in the making. It actually probably isn't as significant tho.. because the first one is necessary for the other tow events / community decisions. and because we alter our environment much more radically and often in present times..
I’m pretty aimless as an artist. I have specific interests
that I’ve been pursuing laetly in my art (poorly I believe).. I don’t think I
have a clear goal in my art but if I got to choose it would be to help wage
class war… And I do get to choose so what does that say about me. (I’m a lazy apathetic coward?)
I'm asking myself why I make art I'm drawn to the representations of reality. Concrete manifestations of perception
I make art to vent... quiet my mind and fill my head when i'm in pain and to help me feel something when I can't...
or do I just like attention
I've always been obsessed with photographing things. Earlier
because of my fear of forgetting. later for reasons i've recently attributed to
an interest in modes of replicating/representing realiy. And wondering how that
affects perceptions of reality. .. but who knows.. Both impulses direct how i
photograph and record my life now... Theres dread and coveting in the
photos I take.... I remember one night I was on vacation in colorado. Earlier that summer my Grandma had let me pick any book out of barnes and noble and I picked one that was a diary of a zombie apocalypse survivor and on the last page he was eaten and the page was covered in blood.. I developed a profound fear of the coming apocolypse and I was very afraid that my mother, left at home, would be eaten before I could get back.. Me and my older sister were walking in the dark back to our cabin at the YMCA camp in the Rocky Mountains and I lamented the fact that we would never remember any of this in ten years, at least not faithfully.
I save locations on google maps after passing it in a car when I want to return to a place to photograph or film or just revisit or remember why it intrigued me. I almost never do.
I have developed an interest in the aesthetics and ethics of
mass media, surveillance, documentary... and the intersections. and the affects on our perceptions.. I have a doc in progress.
I've very recently become intrigued by the act of talking to
the internet and how that affects me and the way it changes my perceptions of
the ppl around me. I’ve been posting a lot on my first draft of this blog and
pretty quickly decided not to show it to anyone and have it as a kind of diary
or place that I vent. There was something interesting where I could send my
anxieties into a void that is completely public and yet inaccessible because of
the amount of information on the web. I type words on a machine and send it out
to something that I don’t understand at all..
I had this idea about google maps as an analogy to documentary film.. both using a kind of photographic surveillance–atomized propositions of reality–sutured together creating a new reality that is consumed as realer than the world we move through... we'll work on it...
Scars in the simulacrum - screen grab from google streetview
I guess I make art because I don't know what else to do...
I don't even think that I see what I've been doing as art... Art seems like a weird way to categorize it at the moment right now and I can't even begin to know why...
The show was a big hit. My book was the biggest which was a little embarrassing. And the gallery presented my prints at half the asking price I had requested. (No one bought them obviously, because people hate cheap art.) But everyone loved my work so I don't have to worry about my financial future at least. Thats a start! I brought feta cheese, baby dill pickles, pastries, and wine to the show. I left with oreos and hint of lime tostitos. What a haul!
Both McLuhan and Cage agree that the eye has dominated the western mind. That we should take sounds more seriously. Both are interested in the fact that you cannot shut your ears. Both are frustrated with the rigidness of understanding space within western culture. 
