Rhythmic Collage

I researched the applications of video to still-frame art. This project attempts to bridge the gap between photography, animation, collage, and video art. The final piece became a mode of video art that I call rhythmic collage. The idea of collage carries the implication of found or appropriated images. I took found images from stock photos labeled for reuse and screenshots from Google street view. The sound was appropriated from other online sources and edited. The different buildings were digitally cut out and layered on top of the landscape background. The chosen pacing was inspired by the game ‘Tetris’. The pacing of the collage layers was important to the narrative of the piece, so the most challenging part of the project was editing the appropriate rhythm. Through a lot of experimentation, I was able select a layered pacing that begins slowly and exponentially increases as the screen begins to fill. The final result of my research was a rhythmic collage showing the transformation of a greenspace into a cityscape. The technique of rhythmic montage paired with motion collage works to create an aesthetic piece with story and meaning behind the motion. One thing that did not work, and that I have yet to find a solution to, is seamlessly matching the transition motion of the collage pieces over distances within the frame to match the pacing of the video. This failure is noticeable towards the end when a piece slides into the upper center of the frame after the pace has quickened. The jarring speed of motion over the distance causes that motion to stand apart. This video will guide my future projects in video art. There is still a lot of art work that has yet to be created that intentionally blurs the lines of material/medium specificity, and rhythmic collage is a method that will guide my future research into dismantling the medium specificity of two dimensional work and video art

In Still Time

In Still Time is an experimental animation that investigates the catastrophic image and spectacle through direct animation of still images onto 16mm film. The film uses still images found on the internet from the current Syrian civil war; these were laser printed directly onto the film, simultaneously abstracting these images and re-animating them. These images are juxtaposed with audio from news sources, interviews and YouTube videos posted by Syrian civilians, activists and journalists on the ground of different events that have taken place during the crisis. Through clues of shape, line, colour, and sound these abstracted images of catastrophe attempt to facilitate questions about the moral imperative to look, our ability or inability to bear witness to unthinkable human suffering and our complicity in the violence documented in the image. What are the limits of the catastrophic image? How can trauma and the unthinkable ever be properly represented? How do we give meaning to an event that stops and disrupts time

Bodies in Transition: Somatechnics and the Experimental Art of Liselotte Wajstedt’s Sámi Nieida Jojk (Sámi Daughter Yoik, 2007)

Swedish-Sámi filmmaker and artist Liselotte Wajstedt and her experimental road movie documentary Sámi Nieida Jojk (Sámi Daughter Yoik, 2007) provide unique insight into displaced Indigenous identity. To explore her mother’s repressed Sámi ancestry, Wajstedt uses an eclectic mix of techniques, including animation, collage illustrations, photographs, and superimposition. Throughout the film, Wajstedt uses her body as a physical canvas, projecting images of her autobiographical journey onto herself. These methods contribute to a sense of metamorphosis, where the filmmaker plays with and challenges conventional Sámi representations through film form. I propose that somatechnics, a concept that describes a reciprocal relationship between the body and technology, provides a helpful way of understanding Wajstedt’s work. I argue that cinema can work as a somatechnic tool that can help unpack the Indigenous body as a symbol of cultural, geopolitical, and ethnic identity politics. I also explore Sámi Daughter Yoik as a nomadic film, arguing that the somatechnic potential of cinema is most evident when themes of space, transition, and the body converge to create a more fluid understanding of Sámi identity onscreen

ID: an Animation with an Environment about the Ego and the Id

When people discover their inner worlds, they would feel different psyches inside. According to the human psyche conception of Sigmund Freud, there are three kinds of psyches in human minds. They are the id, ego, and super-ego, representing instinct, reality, and morality. What is worth noticing is the relationship between the ego and id. While the ego is the part people know most because it is generally conscious, the id is the most mysterious, because it is enormous and completely subconscious. Also, they talk because the ego is a mediator between the id and the real world. However, while the role of the ego is widely appreciated, the id is always repressed and demonized, because it is considered as a collection of human darkness. It has been found that the id, the dark side, can have more positive aspects. Being called “shadow” by Carl Jung, the id also shows vitality, creativity, spirit, and prodigious powers. When the id is profoundly repressed, it leads to tragedies such as neurosis, psychosis, and violence. Once people take the advantages of the id, it would provide humans with creativity, passion, and powerful intuition. Thus, the id and ego both conflict and rely on each other. Since they are influencing people’s inner world, it is crucial to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the id and the ego. This project is an animation with the environment to talk about such a complementary relationship. In the short narrative animation, the two main characters are a girl and a mysterious creature representing the ego and the id. They might hide, meet, fight, and then integrate. Metaphors will be widely used in this story to show their relationship. Although other works show the id as a simple devil stereotype, this short animation indicates the complexity of the id and emphasizes its positive aspect. In order to impress audiences, an exhibition would be created to show the film

Spectacular Evidence: Theatres of the Observed Mind

A one-day symposium, Spectacular Evidence, included presentations, performances, screenings and talks from the fields of visual art, medicine and critical theory. Drawing upon histories of madness and its exhibition, and considering how it has been staged as cultural performance, this event considered behaviours and ‘performances’ exchanged between viewer and physician in relation to patient. Spectacular Evidence brought together researchers from clinical and cultural fields in mutual observation; relating ideas and practices towards a contemporary psycho-cultural reading of performances integral to psychiatric space, practice, theory and histories. In considering historical constructions of exchanges between inmate/patient and observer it is possible to see the beginnings of a collective cultural (re)performing of madness; an exchange between observed and observer, which has often masked the actualities of pathologies, complicated diagnostics and exacerbated a collective thirst for a spectacular or entertaining version of disorder… creating a quandary of a missing subject and leaving a refracted set of materials, interpretations or artefacts. Spectacular Evidence took place in the theatre at Toynbee Studios on 24 March 2017 and was curated/convened by Dr Zoë Mendelson and presented by Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Graduate School Public Programme

Diagramma Enflamma

'Enflamma Diagra' is a video/sound installation, a contribution for a group exhibition: The event explores diagrams as actual/virtual machines that while taking material form and indexing existing relations and objects, point to other arrangements. As Gilles Châtelet declared, diagrams are gestures that invite other gestures. This is a vision of diagrams as abstract machines activated through performance or thought; a notion of diagrams as relays that connect or traverse different times and spaces. It is a conception of diagrams as critical and logical exploratory devices that, in presenting what is not apparent or visible – real abstractions, potential modes of being, hidden relations – paradoxically depend on the register of the imaginary and the inventive production of images, figures and gestures. Since the Enlightenment, when diagrams facilitated scientific and technical breakthroughs, to cybernetic research of the twentieth century, to the algorithmic devices that govern relations and economies today, diagrams have extended and organised human culture. The danger of this proliferation might be that while diagrams are everywhere they are often reductive rather than exploratory, functioning merely as organisational machines or as influential figures of control and efficiency. In response, Plague of Diagrams addresses not just the critical and organisation functions of diagrams but the art of diagramming too

Overlooked opportunities: Addressing global challenges through cross-cultural political and ecological digital art by reinterpretation of traditional Eastern art and philosophy

This paper is informed by a series of digital moving image art works that address current global challenges such as climate change or decline of democracy in an alternative way to word-wide audiences in the East and West by re-investigating and celebrating some values and traditions of Eastern art and culture as an overlooked, rich resource. The research process is practice-based and cross-cultural artefacts are created which are informed by aesthetic and philosophical tradition of Eastern art as well as critical approach of Western contemporary practice. Using digital media technologies idea and materiality of traditional Chinese scrolls of landscape and cityscape are adapted and remediated into animated video scrolls or video paintings. By inclusion of documentary video footage each makes a critical comment on a different subject such as the Tsunami 2011 in Japan or Tianamen Square Events 2009 in Beijing. Adopting Eastern scroll paintings to digital moving image has become quite common for Eastern artists. The body of work presented here was made by a Western artist and therefore engages additionally in translation and interpretation of cultural heritage into different contexts and cultural paradigms. These cross-cultural artefacts act as agents to foster discussion about the nature of global art practice as well as new forms of digital moving image. It results in intermedia practice that provides slow moving, contemplative narrative progression and invites the viewer to reflect on habituated pattern of media reception and to see its contents with ‘fresh eyes’

General-television programming in Europe (UE5) : public versus commercial channels

Technological convergence has affected the media context of generalist television, modifying access and the consumption of content. The design of the scheduling of the general-interest linear television is a key element in understanding the policies that the operators follow when offering genres and formats, and in observing the similarities and differences between public and private ownership. This article analyses the television schedules of 25 generalist channels, public and commercial, operating in Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. Some of the findings of this investigation show a) little diversity of genres, b) that the editorial policy of public broadcasters clearly differentiates them from private ones by prioritizing informational offerings, national fiction, and documentary info-shows, and c) strategic differences of genres by ownership in each country.El acceso y el consumo de la televisión generalista ha variado tras la convergencia tecnológica. El diseño de las programaciones de la televisión lineal generalista es clave para entender las políticas que los operadores están aplicando en la oferta de géneros y formatos, y observar las divergencias y similitudes entre cadenas de titularidad pública o privada. Este artículo analiza la oferta televisiva de 25 cadenas generalistas, públicas y privadas, que operan en Alemania, España, Francia, Italia y el Reino Unido. Algunos de los hallazgos de esta investigación muestran: a) escasa diversidad de géneros, b) la política editorial de las emisoras públicas se diferencia nítidamente de las privadas privilegiando la oferta de información, la ficción de producción nacional, y los info-shows de tipo documental, y c) apuestas de géneros diferenciadas por titularidades según los países

The Nearness Of You

The Nearness Of You is an animated 2D graduate thesis film. The entire film, including the credits, is 4 minutes 55 seconds long. The production phase went from September 2016 to May 2017. This is a love story about two mannequins. The story takes place in a European looking city. The male mannequin meets the female mannequin under a romantic scenario.They fall in love as the time pass by. However, in the end, they don’t get to actually end up together. As a result, the male mannequin gets to have a symbolic figure as the female mannequin and they spend the rest of their lives happily ever after. The Nearness Of You is a 2D animation that made out of lots of software, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, TVPaint Animation 11. The final output format is 1080P HD with a high-quality stereophonic track. This thesis is a combination of challenges, creativity, techniques, and strong personal feelings