Week Fourteen (5-5-08)

The work we saw this week was odd and interesting at the very least. George Kuchar's films were strange, but they definitely had something to them. It was quite a contrast to see him so young in Hold Me While I'm Naked and then to see him more than thirty years later in The Inmate. I actually liked both of these films. The Inmate at first seemed really slow and tedious and I thought I would get bored with it, but after a certain point I kind of enjoyed it - and then it ended. I didn't quite understand the meaning behind this film - other than it being a some sort of document of Kuchar's travels. The whole thing had a very handheld amateurish feel to it. Kuchar's narration was funny, though. This definitely added to the film and I think it gave the audience a sense of who Kuchar is. Even in his older age, he still has a sense of humor. Hold Me While I'm Naked was pretty odd and I didn't really understand it fully. I did like the way it was shot - really good cinematography. It had some great use of color. And, like The Inmate, it gave us a glimpse of Kuchar's humor. He seemed to have a very deadpan way about him. It's basically a film within a film with Kuchar playing the director in the film. From what I could get from the film is that his character was unable to make the film he wanted to. I think the film tries to be ridiculous and borders on camp. There are a lot of example of over-the-top elements - the mise en scene, the acting, the costumes, even the fake bird. And I think that the overt sexual tones help it seem more like camp than anything else. But I think that is what Kuchar was going for.

Week Thirteen (Monday 4-28-08)

Duck Soup is a narrative film in a way; it does lead us from point A to point B. It has characters that drive the story forward and some of the events are cause and effect. These are all indicators of narrative film so Duck Soup, in a way, is narrative. However, the film is also unconventional because of the manner in which in intervenes into and alters the idea of narrative. It is on one hand a slapstick comedy, but on another hand one could see it as a sort of abstract statement against war. There are many hilarious visual gags throughout the film. And perhaps some of these gags, in particular the more ridiculous ones, show how senseless and stupid war really is. This is especially abundant in the final sequence when all the characters are trapped in the house fighting off the enemy. We see several very silly things (such as Harpo getting stuck in the closet full of explosives which eventually go off, and Groucho getting an giant pot stuck on top of his head). We see these acts as funny and ridiculous - but maybe the Marx brothers were trying to make a statement about war with these absurd visual gags. I think to a casual viewer, Duck Soup is really more about the individual jokes and gags then the film as a whole. But to someone who pays close attention to the film and its structure, I think that he or she will find a narrative path. Although, I do see how someone might not consider this film a narrative - instead he or she might just see a series of funny vignettes or skits that are loosely tied together. Using Frampton's formula on Duck Soup, I can say that the film seems to be about chaos, disorder, anarchy, or whatever you want to call it. There is a lot of craziness in the film, all provided by the Marx brothers. There don't seem to be any kind of rules or restrictions - anything can happen, no matter how absurd.

The Way Things Go is also a narrative film of sorts - in a way it is and in a way it isn't. It is similar to Duck Soup in this way. They are both semi-narrative films. Duck Soup has continuous and established characters, but has a disorderly story with some blurred lines between cause and effect (the anarchy and visual comedy of the film rule over the plot). The Way Things Go is quite the opposite. The entire film is cause and effect - we always know that one thing will lead to another and we continually see how it happens. It is like a narrative film in this way. However, one could argue that the film has no characters - or at least not characters like in Duck Soup. We see tires rolling, bottles pouring, fuses lighting, boards tilting, liquid flowing, fire burning, and much more. These are all objects and they tell the story. So I suppose that you could say that these objects are the characters. But at this point it's really up for grabs because can you really compare people and objects both as narrative characters. I think that this is really up to personal opinion. I think that the objects are not characters so much as they are pieces in the giant narrative puzzle machine that is The Way Things Go. True, the objects do drive the story or the action forward, but they don't really 'act' like characters. They are more like placeholders - but the film could not work without them. Going by Frampton's formula, I would say that this film is about how common objects can organized and arranged to tell a complete story all on their own. It really is entirely about cause and effect - the first thing will always lead to the second thing and so on. And the second thing could never happen without the first thing.

Week Twelve (Monday 4-21-08)

Both of the films we watched in class this week involved JFK in some way. Ant Farm's Media Burn had a JFK impersonator playing an "artist president". This was much lighter than the second film involving JFK. Bruce Connor's Report was a very odd, yet very intense film about Kennedy's assassination. The film was unconventional throughout. It was essentially a document of the assassination, just done in a very non-traditional way. Probably the oddest section of the film for me at least was when the film didn't actually show us anything at all. It was just blank frames with a black flicker backed up by audio of the actual assassination. We hear a reporter or newsman commentating in terror as the assassination played out. The flicker was very rapid and was difficult to look at for a long period of time. But perhaps this was Connor's intention. Instead of actually showing us the footage of JFK being shot, having this white screen with a rapid flicker is more subliminally unsettling. I mean, obviously, actually seeing the assassination would certainly be disturbing, but I think that this choice to not show anything makes us try and envision the scene for ourselves - which in some cases can be just as disturbing. The second half of the film was equally as odd. We saw several images that had nothing to do with Kennedy's assassination - a bullfight, a 60s refrigerator commercial. The bullfight, for example, could be taken as a symbol for the killing of JFK. The bull, like Kennedy, was essentially innocent and unaware that it would be killed. We see a shot of the bull being speared, and it is visually disturbing. This is a counter-balance to the blank screen from the first half of the film. In that, we didn't see the killing but with the bull, we do see the killing. Also, another violent image was quickly shown in the second half of the film - the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. This could have been inserted for many reasons. I personally think this is some kind of comment of the endless cycle of violence in our culture. The killer himself is killed by someone who thus becomes a killer. Overall, Report, was a very unique document or artistic look at one of the most controversial and iconic events in American history.

Week Eleven (Monday 4-14-08)

ANDY WARHOL

He was involved in many different areas of art - painting, filmmaking, writing, and even music producing. His range is so wide it is difficult to just talk about one or two aspects of his art career. However, he is probably best known for his painting and filmmaking. He was a central figure in the movement known as Pop Art, and his painting played a big role in that.

Point 1
As a Pop Artist, Warhol's paintings contained images from cartoons and advertisements of the time (1960s). One of his most famous Pop Art paintings was the Campbell's Soup cans.

Point 2
Warhol is said to have a unifying element of deadpan style in all of his work. He would also play "dumb" for the media and refuse to explain his work. He was famous for saying that everything you need to know about him and his work is already there, "on the surface". He had a series of "do it yourself" paintings and Rorschach blots that were said to be pop comments about art and what art could be.

Point 3
Here is Warhol's Campbell's Soup painting:

As a music producer, Warhol worked with The Velvet Underground and created their first album cover:

Week Ten (Monday 4-7-08)

Frampton's formula for determining what a film is about is an interesting concept. He basically says that a film is about whatever appears most often in it. This can be applied to many films, but I don't think it always works. Certainly, many narrative films are about much more than just what appears frequently in them. However, regarding the films we saw in class this week, Frampton's idea is applicable. In Dorsky's film, Love's Refrain, there is definitely a common thread I noticed. This thread runs throughout the entire film. In many shots, we are shown living things in their various forms - people, animals, and nature. I think this is really what Dorsky's film is about. A good number of his shots contain average people going about their daily lives (almost as if they don't even know they're being filmed). There were also many shots of birds (some perched, some flying). And then Dorsky made use of several nature shots - these were of trees as well as various plants and vegetation. I think he was just trying to capture life from as many different angles, both figuratively and literally. The former was covered by having different types/species of life while the latter was accomplished by using a variety of actual camera angles. In between these shots, there were others that captured such things as buildings. I can't quite remember what else Dorsky shot but I definitely remember that he had a few shots of what looked like apartment complexes. Perhaps these shots supplemented the life shots. First off, in an obvious way, these shots were transitions between the others. Secondly, there might have been a deeper reason for Dorsky to use these shots. Maybe he was trying to show the habitats of the various forms of life. He shows us apartment complexes, which house people. He shows us natural spaces, which house all forms of nature. And he shows us trees and other places were birds perch and make their homes.

I think that these facts do help me understand the film better. Since I have some idea of what Dorsky was trying to do, the film itself has more meaning. It doesn't seem like just a bunch of different shots strung together for no apparent reason. The fact that the film had no soundtrack made watching the images a much more delicate affair. It had a slight calming effect, I think. Overall, I feel like I have a fairly good grasp on what Dorsky was doing with Love's Refrain. And Frampton's formula absolutely plays a major role in that.

Week Nine (Monday 3-31-08)

James Benning, if anything, was definitely unique. If I hadn't been previously informed, I would have never guessed that a visiting filmmaker would perform a math demonstration. The fact that he used math as a way of articulating a sense of art was interesting. He made some points that made sense to me and a few that didn't. But I think that's okay - I don't think that the demonstration was meant for everyone to understand in its entirety. His connection between math and art was occasionally not clear, but that might be because of the way that he performed. Benning jumped from concept to concept quite rapidly, not always finishing one idea. I did, however, really connect with his work with the square root of 2 proof. The main point of that proof was the idea of solving a complex problem through very simple means. I liked that. I can absolutely see applying that to an art form, especially filmmaking. If one is having trouble with a certain aspect of filmmaking that seems too complicated, there is most likely a simple way of getting around it. I would consider myself to be fairly proficient with math, so most of the equations he did made sense to me. Although, despite this, math is not one of my favorite things - I might have been good with it, but I never really liked it. It may have been a little easier for me to understand his concepts than someone who was less proficient with math, but I don't think that was the point. It doesn't matter who is better at math, Benning's point could be received by anyone, regardless of his or her math skill. Like we said in discussion, people got what they wanted to from Benning's performance. I definitely liked how Benning never directly related math to art - it was more abstract. I think that this made the performance more interesting. It forced to audience (if they wanted) to think about Benning's concepts and work out for themselves what it all meant. The idea of coming full circle was a good way to end the performance. I only wish that Benning had been my math teacher.

Week Seven (Monday 3-10-08)

"AIR ACOUSTICS"

In the beginning, I really had no idea what kind of work I wanted to do. However, I knew that I wanted it to involve sound or music somehow. So that is really what led me to my final idea. I play both the guitar and the piano and I wanted to implement one or the other. The guitar ended up being easier for me to demonstrate seeing as I could physically bring it into the video. My intention was threefold. Firstly, I wanted give a decent range of acoustic sounds emitted from a guitar. Secondly, I wanted to have sound pre-recorded so that I could essentially pick and strum the air. Thirdly, I periodically wanted my strumming to not always line up with what the sound was producing - this was supposed to represent the discord between playing the air and playing the actual guitar. The distance (or air) between the pick and the strings was supposed to prevent the two from lining up. I wanted to break some expectations about what one sees and what one hears. It was basically a demonstration about how one can't always predict or know what he or she will hear based on what he or she is seeing.


FOR CONSIDERATION
(regarding the performance)

Overall, the performance mostly went the way I had hoped it would. There were a couple problems that I didn't anticipate. The first one was that the guitar kept sliding around under my arm. This took away from my concentration on the performance. I was trying to steady the guitar and keep it upright occasionally instead of focusing on the performance. I think this took away from it at times. Also, I did intend for my picking and strumming to not match up with the sound periodically, but I think that happened too often. I wanted to keep them matched for the majority of the video and then not matched from time to time. I don't know if this affected the video in a largely negative way - I would have to see it to know for sure. But I definitely think that the non-sync was more than I wanted it to be. I did, however, think the ending of the video worked really well. Right when the time ran out, I was able to finish exactly how I wanted to.

Week Six (Monday 3-3-08)

Follow the link to see the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWIONTiiYA

I think that this video, titled "The Identity Monologue", echoes Alex Bag's work in more than one way. Regarding Bag's portrayal of the student telling her story through her four years in art school is similar to this video in the sense than it has a narrative of sorts. In "The Identity Monologue" the performer tells his story of struggling with identity in a very loose narrative, but still a narrative regardless. The performer in this video using the form of eight different characters with different accents and ethnicities to get his point across. This is also similar to Bag in the sense that we don't know exactly which character is the real artist, if any at all. In Bag's work as the student, it was very well acted to the point that I couldn't really know for sure if she was purely acting or if she was reliving her own experiences at school. Also, Bag's character struggles with figuring out who she is and how she fits into her world. In "The Identity Monologue" the perfomer is also telling how he stuggled with identity for a period of his life. So the concept of knowing and accepting oneself is a major theme in both pieces. Bag uses costumes and wigs to disguise herself throughout her performance while the performer in "The Identity Monologue" uses different voices and characters to do the same thing. Also, a very obvious comparison and similarity is that both videos are set up in the form of a personal confession. Both performers are addressing the audience directly.

Week Five (Monday 2-25-08)

Between last week's topic (Thauberger) and this week, it seems that authorship was a running theme. All of the films that we saw and pieces that we heard this week I think were very much about authorship. More specifically, I felt that Chris Welsby's "Tree" was actually the best example of authorship (or perhaps lackthereof - I'll explain later). The concept behind "Tree" is very simple; it's just nature capturing nature by means of a camera. Welsby attaches his camera to a tree branch so it's facing tall grass and other trees. Beyond that, though, the rest of the control in the film is held by the tree itself. I saw that there is a lack of authorship in this film because of the fact that the tree seems to be the true author of this film. This is not a bad thing at all - in fact, I think that this makes "Tree" more interesting. I like the fact that the filmmaking is putting the direction and control of his film in the hands (or branches) of a natural object. The only real authoring that Welsby does is choosing where he will place his camera and what direction it will face. As far as what the camera sees and how it moves, that is all up to the tree and the wind. The film might seem tedious and boring at times because it really doesn't show much. But I think it becomes more interesting when you really think about the circumstances. It's essentially a silent nature film that is being filmed and controlled entirely by nature (the tree and the wind). In my opinion, this is the most compelling aspect of the film. I do think that Welsby does retain some authorship of this film, but the majority of it goes to the tree. The filmmaker is not sacrificing control as much as he is giving it to the tree willingly. He wants the tree to be in control. Also, this is interesting considering the title of the film. It's called "Tree" and that could refer to two things. It could be a reference to the fact that the camera is being held by a tree or it could be that the camera is capturing other trees. Overall, I found the film to be quite peaceful and serene. Although, I think it could have benefited from some kind of soundtrack. It could have been ambient sounds or a ambient, downbeat musical accompaniment. But who knows, that may have completely changed the filmmaker's intentions.

Week One (Monday 1-28-08)

Looking at the films of Buster Keaton (specifically, The Boat, in this context), I really think that his work is all about performance. There are definitely some aspects of play and perhaps even intervention, but the bulk of what he does is completely ingrained in the art of performing. With any of his films, The Boat included, a viewer will see within less than five minutes that Buster Keaton himself is constantly working with some kind of performance. His films are silent, so the only way he can convey ideas and humor is through his physical actions. Thus, he must use his whole body to perform the various scenes and situations that his characters find themselves in. Is Keaton a performance artist, then? In some way, I think he is. He is obviously a very skilled silent actor who pioneered the art of slapstick comedy. But I also believe that Keaton portrays perfectly solely with his physical performance what many non-silent actors can do with voice. Though we never hear him speak, we still know his emotions and perhaps his motives.

Keaton's performance is the definitive root of his humor. I think this ties in nicely with Freud's passage about jokes. Of all the categories of considerations of jokes that Freud writes about, Keaton's work best fits with Theodor Lipps' theory. Lipps describes it as something comic "which we produce, which is attached to action of ours as such, to which we invariably stand in the reaction of subject and never of object, not even of voluntary object". This is humor of activity. Buster Keaton's characters' actions in The Boat are what makes it funny. We see him do one ridiculous thing after another, and it produces comedy. Keaton is the subject, so according to Lipps, all of the jokes and humor emanates from him. His character makes conscious choices that result in funny outcomes.