Month: January 2023

Week 3

Lecture: Simple Instruction Videos

Simple/instruction based video art

Assignment: One Feat, Three Ways video project

Video Art: One FEAT, Three Ways*

You will work with a partner to make three videos less than 2-minutes each in length each.

Your videos should be shot at the studio in controlled, illuminated conditions.

Pick yourFEAT. You will repeat variations on your “FEAT” in each video below.

Your FEAT should be an everyday gesture or activity that you can push to its limits. Push yourself to your limits. Push a material to its limits. Do not take ANY risks with your safety – subtle, quiet, funny risks are better and more interesting anyway. Just watching someone smiling as long as they can as hard as you can is fascinating and even painful to watch for its duration.

Examples of gestures from past students include: Eating something, Juggling, Kissing, Blowing up a Balloon, Smiling, Holding an Awkward Pose, Reaching for Things out of Reach… etc.

It might be an absurd thing – something pointless, or an impossible feat that you can’t actually do   

The object is to try to do the thing, not to “act” – and what happens… happens! You, your partner, or someone else may perform. Maintain your concentration and explore how a simple gesture becomes interesting when performed with commitment and intention.

NOTE: Add titles to each video, and videos should be approximately 1-2 minutes in length.

Video #1: The One-Shot 

The video will consist of “one shot” – there will be no editing, other than a black screen to mark the beginning and end of the video. You may focus on camera function, unusual points of view, and framing. You will also add titles and end credits to your videos.

Video #2: The Sequence

The object of this video exercise is to shoot a series of shots with the intention to edit them into a sequence. It may require 5 minutes, an hour, a day, or a week, and you can show it in a series of stills or a time lapse.  Edit your footage to be less than two minutes.

Video #3: The Loop

The object of this video exercise is to create a video that is meant to be played over and over again indefinitely, without stopping. Consider the content of the video when you are shooting your feat, and use looping to complete the meaning of the work. Don’t make a short GIF type video – think of a longer loop – something that could play in a gallery without end.

Edit your loop footage to be less than 2 minutes long, and then play on a loop for the critique.

_______________________________________________________________

Videos will be graded by the degree to which students demonstrate understanding of the key concepts in the assignment including the clarity and originality of ideas, investment of time and contributions to the group, consideration of context for the video, technical success using lighting and professional camera equipment in works, technical success using editing software and exporting gallery-quality video, presentation and openness to feedback during critique.

Students are also expected to post a final work (including any revisions after critique) to the class blog with a title, artist names, and a short description of the work within ONE WEEK of the critique for final marks.

Videos will not receive a grade until a work is posted on the class blog.

Video Artist references:

Yoko Ono

Bruce Nauman

Adrian Piper

Pipilotti Rist

Michelle Pearson Clarke

Lee Walton

William Wegman

Jon Sasaki

Camille Turner

Marina Abramovic

Kelly Mark

Euan MacDonald

Wood and Harrison

Erwin Wurm

Maria Hupfield

**Be safe and respectful to yourself and others at all times! Talk with me if you have any questions about your project. Never perform unsafe activities for your projects in this or any class in Studio Art.

Camera Demo

Lighting Demo

Booking studio time

—

Wednesday: Discuss ideas

Reading:

Turning the Gestures of Everyday Life into Art, Katja Heitmann

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/arts/dance/gesture-archive-art.html

Movement workshop:

(from Yoga, and dance)

Habits of of movement exchange:

  1. Describe the habitual movements/unconscious gestures, tics etc. of 3 people you know well. How do individual body parts move, and how does the whole body interact? What about facial expressions, and emotional valence of the movement? How does body type inform the movement?
  2. WARM UP EXERCISE all together – breathing, bouncing on knees, shaking it out, breathing together.
  3. Teach your partner one of the choreographies. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.
  4. CHANGE PARTNERS. Repeat – Teach another partner another choreography. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.
  5. CHANGE PARTNERS. Repeat – Teach another partner another choreography. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.

At the end, you should have three, 30-second videos of other students performing an archive of movements. Use this footage for your editing workshop.

STUDIO BOOKINGS, DISCUSS IDEAS AND WORK TIME

See Nathan to book studios and lighting, and for technical and camera assistance.

Talk to Rachelle for bookings in the Photo studio – in 406

Simple/instruction based video art

Lee Walton:

If you had to sum up this action in one instructional sentence or formula it would be something like:

Use your hands to feel a diverse range of things in the city.

Notice he takes the common expression “Getting a Feel for Things” literally in this work, and feels things. See how he uses common expressions, and simple instructions as a formula for creating in the following videos.

If conceptually informed artworks are ones in which an idea determines the work, as opposed to the artist’s masterful technique, or the perfect handling of materials. In fact, when you follow directions, things might even turn out badly, things can break down, fail, fall apart. There is tremendous tension in this – when we really don’t know how things are going to go. Watch Jon Sasaki play with attempting to do something, and the possibility (and sometimes the reality) of failing, falling, or otherwise destroying everything.

Kelly Mark:

Sniff:

https://kellymark.com/V_Sniff1Video.html

Hello/Goodbye:

https://kellymark.com/V_HelloGoodbyeVIDEO.html

I love Love Songs but Angry Music Makes me Happy:

https://kellymark.com/V_ILoveLoveSongsVIDEO.html

Jon Sasaki:

Ladder Climb:

http://www.jonsasaki.com/index.php/work/ladder-climb/

Dead End, Eastern Market, Detroit:

http://www.jonsasaki.com/index.php/work/dead-end-eastern-market-detroit/

Harrison and Wood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS50mYKCL_M

Michelle Pearson Clarke:

SUCK TEETH COMPOSITIONS

Lenka Clayton:

Human Beings. 1-100 (2006)

“This is first in a series of four films – People In Order – commissioned by the UK’s Channel 4 in 2006. The concept behind our films was simple: we asked ourselves if you can reveal something about life by simply arranging people according to scales. Three minutes is a very short time to communicate something – perhaps too short to tell a story, or to get to know a character – so we wanted to make this series by setting ourselves some very straightforward rules, and then following them through over a long trip. The rules had to be simple so it would take the audience virtually no time to understand them. We established what scales we’d look at, and then chose how each film would be framed. Then it was a case of getting in a campervan and driving round Britain, filming as many people as we could over 4 weeks in February, coping with microphones crackling and our camera refusing to work.

The experience was exhausting but also life affirming. In our whole trip we were struck by how happy people were to help. Only a handful of our shoots were arranged in advance. We relied instead on the kindness of strangers – and we found that everywhere, from deprived urban estates to rural aristocrats.

The resulting films are like a list of government statistics where the citizens they are referring to have broken out from behind the figures on the page. The people on the screen stop us from seeing them as numbers.

Adad Hannah:

Blackwater Ophelia:

https://adadhannah.com/2013-blackwater-ophelia

The Russians:

https://adadhannah.com/2011-the-russians-videos

Zoe