Methaven are GREAT! Thanks Sarah Rodigari! @sarahrodigariadad2018

Excellent thinking for assignment 1.

Interview with Methaven:

http://www.thefader.com/2016/05/06/metahaven-the-sprawl-propaganda-interview

Metahaven discuss aesthetics as a weapon:

Assessment Task 2 - ‘Perception’ [FINAL]

For this group task, we were inspired by Nam June Paik’s installation Random Access (1963/2000) and chose to address the idea of vagueness. For his installation, Nam June Paik invites the audience to interact with pieces of the tape recorder, creating random, directionless vectors. With the intention of emulating his techniques, we chose a different ordinary object—an umbrella—to portray the idea of vagueness, subverting the conventional purpose of an umbrella. To begin, we created a rough storyboard, which highlighted the main ideas we wanted to explore. The video itself, which went on to become our final artwork, showcases an engagement with the umbrella that is incredibly vague—from the very start, the umbrella is being used despite the lack of rain or sunshine. Throughout the video, this engagement becomes more and more erratic—the umbrella itself is taken apart and the different sections of it are used to create new meanings: the chaotic editing and harsh sounds combine to form an atmosphere of distress and disorder as the umbrella is deconstructed; a metal rod becomes an instrument by being dragged along a fence or along the ground; bending the umbrella wire, we replicated the shapes of the heart monitor waves; the spokes are used to stab repeatedly into the fabric so that the umbrella is effectively destroying itself, et cetera. As such, the umbrella gradually becomes a symbol for aggression and confusion—both contributing factors to the very vague emotion of sadness. This entire, complex process merges to embody the notion of vagueness, becoming a work of art in and of itself, as is the case with Random Access. 

Group members: @adaxucofa @jasminemunder @cofa-bonniekim @monikacofa

Bibliography

Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001. ‘Installing “Random Access” - Nam June Paik: Global Visionary - Time-lapse’, Nam June Paik Estate. Accessed on 10/04/2018. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVGl6DoOIVc

As we’re edging our way towards Week 9 and things are gearing up for our presentations of assessment 2, it’s a good time to revisit the assessment brief in the course outline. Make sure you read it through with your group and identify what the criteria is so that you can be sure you are adhering to the requirements.

For now I wanted to point out a few things that people might be neglecting. Particularly these clear steps that have been outlined in the brief:

1. Choose an artwork or design featured in any weekly course concept resource on Moodle. 

2. Reflect on how that work or design has engaged with the weekly course concept. 

2. Develop a collaborative artwork or design in response to your chosen work. You may like to remake, refute, update, remix, extend, continue, deform, erase, or deconstruct the work.

So far, groups seemed to have developed a clear rationale about how they are responding to the weekly theme, but they haven’t done enough research about the work they are choosing to respond to. If you read the brief you will notice that the theme has little to no significance on the assessment. Some people can’t even remember the title of the work and the artist/designer who made it. Eek! It’s really important to developing an understanding about this work because you are “responding” to it. Take some responsibility for this. It might be worth doing some preliminary research on the work and the artist, just as when we present works to you in class, we give you details about its context. 

Here’s a mental exercise: Imagine that the artist/designer responsible for the work you are responding to is coming to see your presentation. They might be surprised about the connections you make, but you wouldn’t want to appear ignorant or uncaring about those connections. It’s great to take agency here and make a critique or some kind of controversial or provocative gesture against the work, if you like, but you want to be doing that with full knowledge of why. Take creative agency here, but responsibly!

02/05/18 Assessment 2 Presentation

Experiment 3: Documentation and editing 

As ‘The Little Mermaid’ is an animated film, I thought I could look into animation

I’m not very skilled with animation and so I went to research for other ways of presenting something similar

Looking at Randy Haycock, an animator for Disney, and some of his animation tests, I thought I could possibly make my final work into an animatic

Haycock’s work includes him drawing frame by frame creating a smooth transition between each drawing and so making it look animated

I did a very very very rough test of an animatic which I want to look into for the final work

For the final work, I want to grab a clip from ‘The Little Mermaid’ and possibly make it into an animatic made from some of my erasure drawings

It will be put together in iMovie or Premiere Pro and some edited audio will accompany it