16mm Resources

Hi Everyone,

I just got tuned in to a new website that has several different bits of information you may find useful if you work with 16mm in the future. This is maintained by a filmmaker named David Tetzlaff (who recently answered a question for me about diy repairs on Eiki focus knobs.)

http://djt16.110mb.com/

Also, for all things experimental film, you should know about the Flicker website. It's sort of the hub for this kind of work on the internet: www.hi-beam.net

IARTA lecture

I went to the lecture on Thursday night and Friday morning in the music building. David Dunn and Paul Demannis were the speakers. David Dunn is an artist/scientist how has done extensive research recording small insects such as the bark beetle in their natural habitats. He believes that they communicate with each other in a much more complex way than people have perceived and he makes it a point to listen to the environment in ways that no one ever has before. Because of this, a lot of his discoveries are really quite groundbreaking.

Paul Demannis is an artist and musician who teaches at Stanford University. His artworks are incredibly interesting and beautiful. He is interested mainly in communication technology and how they actually separate people from each other. A piece of his that I found really cool is called the Pygmy Gamelan '73. It is some electronic conductor that picks up wavelengths from surrounding signals to create beautiful tones. He tried to sell it as an alternative to car radio and it became a sound art installation piece. He also has managed to do things like play holograms of records with lasers.

Seeing these artists/scientists/musicians just made me want to learn more about everything that i'm not currently studying.

Gunning Reading

I like the idea that Cinema is an attraction, like an amusement park ride. The first people to see projected films were frightened and intrigued by them, as noted in Gunning's essay. "Confrontation rules the cinema of attractions in both the form of its films and the mode of exhibition". This suggests that people then and now enjoy seeing films because they like being confronted with the action and conflicts presented there in. This "thrill" allows people to live in the fast lane without actually being put in danger. Gunning enjoys the example of the train films, and the excitement and the rush of experiencing that powerful machine through film.

Gunning....

An interesting passage is at the end of page 119 when Gunning states that as in the magic theater, the apparent realism of an image makes it a successful illusion but one understood as an illusion nonetheless. Gunning goes on to elaborate further but I can see the relevance of his point today in term of the videos, projections and so on that we have developed. Even an abstract work follows his statement in that as it is animated, it gains life and we relate to it as real, albeit an illusion of real.

TomGunning Response

Gunning is a little dense with his wording, but from what I can tell, he begins by breaking down the short film "A train arriving at the station" which is pretty much just a demo for this new piece of technology. Gunning then analyzes the somewhat comical reaction the film received from the audience, which was pure terror. Apparently people actually thought the grainy black and white moving image of a train was going to burst through the theater walls, crushing them in a violent display of mayhem and destruction.

Gunning then goes on to discuss how the invention of film evolved from there, such as its uses in shows to create illusions and apparent miracles. As he goes on to describe these shows, Gunning not only portrays the aesthetics of these attractions as well as their meanings, but also goes into great detail on the impacts and impressions these types of shows had on minds of the audience. He explains how these types of phenomena have shaped cultures and fueled various areas of our market throughout the nineteenth century.

Part 5

It is interesting how video art and film have a way of finding, connecting, and reconnecting with each other. After getting a better understanding of analog technology when Lars visited and viewing examples of the machines capability it is easy to see how videographic technology works hand-in-hand with music, which I deduced is mainly through the psychedelic counterculture. Like Lars working currently with the neo-psychedelic band Neon Indian and occasionally with the Flaming Lips, Scott Barlett was also approached by classic psychedelic bands, like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. The appeal of the videographics is obvious when making the connection to psychedelic drugs and the visual experience that accompanies it. But I found it most interesting that the psychedelic bands, no matter the era, are interesting in analog video synthesizers and their vast capabilities in terms of a "visual experience" to go along with the soundtrack they provide.

Part 5

Youngblood describes the convince in how television has allowed us to see many historic events right from our own sofa. It is interesting how you don't actually have to be anywhere, you can just turn on the tv and let your mind wonder. I also find chroma-keying to be interesting use for artists to allow different colors to be omited out.

Part 5

I like how Youngblood describes television as a "powerful extension of man's central nervous system". I think this is a pretty accurate statement given the way we use technology, especially in this day in age.

In the section about videographic cinema I find it interesting how popular culture plays its part in the films of Jud Yalkut and Ture Sjolander and Lars Weck amongst others. Extremely distorted images of celebrities reconstruct the appearances of these idols "until little remains of the original icon". I'm assuming the music industry was a big "in" for a lot of these video artists as it still remains presently.

The idea of television as art is also thought provoking. I especially like Les Levine's philosophy that "all of television, even broadcast television, is to some degree showing the human race to itself as a working model." In some ways television can seem more like inserting a computer chip into your head that tells you who you should be, how you should dress and what kinds of things you should say and do. Les Levine's piece, Iris, was created more as a mirror for people to see themselves the way they really look, which is often different than the way people think they represent themselves.

Interesting IP project

I stumbled on this when poking around facebook and thought you all might find it interesting. An artist named Amy Karle is working on a project using a Sandin IP to generate a video waveform from her body's energy.

In her words:

"The instrument featured here is a Sandin IP - an analog computer that processes sound and video in real-time (learn more about it @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandin_Image_Processor). The instrument "reads" wave-form energy. My energy is the input here and as I meditate, the image and sound fluctuates with my "vibrations". This was just the first test in-house. I'll be showing publicly soon ~ it will include projections and be more of an "immersive" experience for the viewer too! The first show will be in August in Detroit - hope to see you there!"

Really Sweet DIY 16mm guide

http://filmwerkplaats.wormweb.nl/pdf/to%20boldly%20go.pdf

Also found this half hand written, DIY "DIY 16mm Guide"

http://www.angoleiro.com/cine_texts/recipes_for_disaster_hill.pdf

Not sure how I found this, but I did.

Nic Collins and McLuhan

I really enjoyed reading this chapter on video music/translating signals into sound, hacking etc. It was all pretty fascinating although, it took me a couple of times to read over each paragraph . The coolest projects I think he mentioned were creating video-free video with a raw loudspeaker and filling it with sand and connecting it to an amplifier. I also like the idea of taking a bar code "wand" and passing it over a variety of dark/light bar code like images. Also playing with magnets and old TVs looks so cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI6Ya73ykI

From the first paragraph of the McLuhan reading I am more interested as to what makes this person so nerdy than what he's actually saying. So I looked him up....and he went to Cambridge. Enough said.