[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
What do you care about?
Sometimes you have to break rules; just to make sure you’re still alive.
In my time studio class, we’re making videos, utilizing green-screen techniques. This is a collaborative project, in which my class is teaming up with a Space research class to shoot video of backgrounds that the Space-class has provided. It’s a really exciting project; exciting and frustrating. I’ve gone through the same process that I carry out with almost all of my projects. Let me explain:
When I get an assignment, I’m almost always excited. A lot of the time, an assignment will provide a really awesome outlet for an idea that I’ve put on the back burner, so, often, I can start out pretty quickly with a general idea. Right away, I start to figure out what I want to accomplish. Then I think about all the problems I’ll encounter (Counter-arguments about my idea, getting all the supplies I’ll need, time management, etc.) I try to identify all possible problems and find solutions to them before they even occur.
Then I actually start to work, and countless problems arise that I never saw coming. What’s worse is that some of the solutions that I devised to remedy problems, before actually encountering those problems, aren’t even solutions at all! A lot of times, this is when I resort to improvisation, which has a round-about way of facilitating learning. Through accidents, both happy and tragic, I find out what works. By this point, however, I have long since abandoned my original plan, and the project has taken on its own sort of organic direction; for better or for worse.
The cool thing about this process is its inevitability. It also has an uncanny way of finding a good middle ground between my initial confined and over-planned approach, and a completely improvised, accidental product.
With this video project, I have already let go of some of my preprogrammed plans, and opened myself up to possibilities that I’m actively discovering, during the project. I think that’s a much better way of working, and I think the final video will reflect that.
After struggling over such a simple green-screen project, I’ll never watch a masterpiece like The Lord of the Rings the same way.
Way late on this:
I havent posted anything on here in the past few weeks. Sometimes it’s hard to just slow down enough, or take the time to type my thoughts out. I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing, though. For me, the blog is like a diary, and I type things into it to have an internal conversation; just as much as I try to communicate something to other people. By typing something out, or posting a picture that I’ve taken, I get to take a retrospective look at whatever it is, break it apart in my mind, and understand it on a deeper level. That being said, I don’t think that it’s important to constantly post information on the internet in order to understand, or appreciate, it.
With tumblr, I started out taking and posting pictures almost all of the time. I was excited (and in a way, hooked) by the learning that I achieved every time I posted something. For a short while, my life became totally about documentation. I would post something as soon as I could, so that I could analyze it and put it in my growing database of realizations and ideas. Since this phase, I have gradually lost my infatuation with blogging, but not without learning something valuable. That is, my excitement and enthusiasm about life and the world, that I experienced from blogging, can exist with or without tumblr. I have realized that it’s easy to apply that same kind of thinking to life, to have that learning experience, without taking a picture of something. It’s one thing to be able to succeed in one area, and something entirely different to see how that success can work elsewhere. To be able to cross-over skills or ideas, and apply them to any situation, is so valuable. I think that if you can do that, you can do anything.
I think tumblr is a great tool.
I went on a camping trip, this past month. These are some of the pictures.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
NOVEMBER 9, 2011 - 4:45 pm
In order to get water, I have braved an excursion to a nearby fueling station. Fascinated as I am terrified by the people around me, I am documenting my observations for later study.
Vehicle fuel was sold outside, human fuel inside, and little else. The station promoted minimal human interaction as the attendant’s desk was located inside a protective glass case. The station disconnected the attendant from the customers, providing just enough tools (speaker-communication system) to facilitate a monetary transaction. I completed my purchase with little difficulty, and departed the station. I found a secluded alcove where I felt it would be safe to drink. My location was quickly discovered, and I was forced to relocate. Unable to find a suitable exit, and feeling increasingly anxious, I have deployed my cloaking mechanism in a relatively secluded alleyway where I am waiting for a safe opportunity to continue, back to my base; possibly until nightfall.
I took an adventure-walk through the residential streets of Richmond with my roommate. We came across this awesome row of historic looking houses. Many of the neighborhoods in Richmond have similar streets with rows of tall, skinny houses; each only separated by about ten feet of space. This was the case with the two houses that Moaz and I stood in front of.
The houses were only separated by a narrow alley, making them a perfect candidate for a roof-jump. I gave Moaz my phone and started looking for a way to climb on top of one of the houses so that I could jump the gap. Almost as if it had been planned; behind the row of houses there was some workers’ scaffolding set up, leading straight to the roof. No sooner had I reached the top of the scaffolding when a woman, maybe only 5 years older than me, exploded from her back fire-escape door.
I don’t think I’ve been yelled at like that before. I was so startled that I just obeyed her commands of “get the fuck down” and sheepishly climbed back down the ladder. I got a little nerve after a few seconds and asked that she not tell me what to do. That was lame.
I wish I could go back and have a conversation with her.
I went down to Broad street last Friday night for the festivities that happen the first Friday of every month. wandering around from gallery to gallery, I saw some really awesome stuff.
Is it in poor taste to have my cell phone out in the galleries, taking pictures of the art? I only really like to be classless when I know that what I’m doing is wrong.
If you’re an artist in Richmond, and you’re not checking out First Fridays, you’re blowing it.
I took this photo in CVS the day before Halloween.
To me, this kind of overzealous approach to the holidays, in such a consumerist way, takes away the importance of Christmas, or any other holiday for that matter.
It’s a bit of a jump, but this makes me think of globalization, and the general idea of progress. Humans, as a species, have been increasingly developing ways of making things easier, faster, more efficient, convenient, etc. That idea makes sense, but I think in some situations, there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed, and I think we’ve crossed it in some of those situations.
I think there is value in the process of doing something or making something, and you lose that, living in a “high-speed”, “automatic”, “Fast-and-Simple” world. If you never experience anything or work for anything, I don’t think you could help but become an apathetic slob. That’s it: it’s the numbness that this kind of attitude promotes and imposes on people. I can’t stand that. Who wants everything at their fingertips all the time? I want to reach for something. It’s all about balance. In an effort to make something easier, we often make something else more complicated anyway.
There are way too many of us.
Last week, my surface class took a field trip to the wallpaper “factory,” Carter & Company, that specializes in recreating vintage and historic wallpaper patterns.
This kind of work occupies a small niche, so the people at C&C often get commissioned to recreate patterns for projects that require historically accurate details. Currently, they are making wall paper that will be used in the set for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film, Lincoln.
One of the most interesting parts of their work is that they often have to dig through a lot of books and images, and put different pieces of information together to recreate very old patterns. For instance, the only reference they were given to recreate a pattern for Lincoln was a grainy copy of a grainy photograph, shot of Abraham Lincoln, in a dark room.
I’m really interested in the work behind the work; the story or the process that gives an object energy.
