Stella

Pin Project – Language of the Flowers

Audio Art – Stairs

Video Assignment – Stella & Marina

ONE SHOT-

For our one-shot, we started by brainstorming something around a “bang” or a “splatter”. Our first attempt was to manipulate the lens of the camera, which then turned into the main subject for this project. What we did was add some colourful paint, reds yellows and blues, to one of our hands and while one of us help a pane of glad, acting as a camera lens, the other hit the pane and splattered the paint. After talking it out we decided to use just black and white paint instead, creating our overall piece.

LOOP-

Next, we did our loop. We quite enjoyed the idea of having one person apply paint and have the other scrape that paint away, creating a constant loop. In our first attempts, we again set up the glass to act as the lens, and used our hands to apply and scrape away the paint. However we ran into some trouble because our hands were not scraping away the paint efficient enough, making the paint harder to see when it was applied again due to all the residue being left over. So we looked around the painting class and found this giant brush to scrape.

EDITED Sequence –

Our initial idea the first few times filming was to have the camera pointed at us, as one person held a canvas, the other would have just their arm in frame, painting with different objects, and we would switch off between who was painting and who was holding the canvas. However, it was too messy in the end and we needed to come up with another alternative. Instead, we used different objects to paint, and made reference to Pipilotti Rist as Marina smooshed her face against the pane of glass, painting with her face.

The trip to Toronto was really cool and getting to see all different kinds of art was awesome! The one that I wanted to share was this cool sound proof little room and within was a glass display of all these little seemingly ordinary artifacts. I took a picture of this because it spoke to me for a couple reasons. Photographed you can see there is an original edition of Midnight Sun a Twilight book written from Edward’s point of view. I found myself drawn to this area because I was actually reading Midnight Sun on the bus on the way to this trip! Also right next to the novel are these 2 cat bottles and I find them quite special because when I was little I was given a cat bottle just like those ones except mine was purple and I always loved it so much. So this area within the gallery really drew me in. I loved the way everything was chaotically arranged and it was a really immersive piece since you actually had to walk within it to experience it!

Rist performing “Open My Glade (flatten)” for times square.

I found this quite cool because the framing and everything with the way she is pushing herself against glass has a really interesting effect on the audience. It makes us feel as though she is truly stuck in there demanding to be watched by everyone that passes by. The work definitely strikes me as it forces the audience to look up from their lives and see something so out of the ordinary.

I think her video art is relative to the kinds of videos that we consume on the internet everyday because they are performances that at first glance might hardly mean much but when you sit with it you can attribute true deeper meaning. I think her ideas come through in seemingly subtle ways but with something like Open My Glade (flatten), I can feel the vulnerability and rawness of pushing herself up against the glass. It could represent the ways in which women have to push themselves everyday, and the aggressive tone could seem strange and it is meant to. When we are watching videos everyday at a rapid pace we usually do not take things in, with this being perfomed at a large scale in a very public place it forces one to take it all in.

With wearing my shirt inside out felt strange… It is a weird thing to do and definitely a performance but I would say this performance went unnoticed by the peers around me on campus. Everyone is focused on themselves, wearing my shirt inside out just made me more conscious of this. I definitely felt a little embarrassed but that was fleeting when I really realized everyone is too focused on their own lives to even bat an eye.