Current State Of Media Making

To me, it seems that the state of media making today is somewhat dead. Originality is gone because there is nothing more to do with film and video. Anything made now is more or less a repeat.

Early Cinema DVDs (Web Exclusive) by Rahul Hamid

In trying to find a final article to write on, I decided to go to older topics, or rather older films to try and learn more about how we got to where we are now. The article is about three DVD's that contain rare early cinema films. These films show how some of the techniques that we take for granted were performed in the early 1900's, such as sound and color. The first half of the article is for the most part a history lesson on how things like optical sound were invented and still used today. While these things are nice to know, what I was looking for was more of the expectations that these new devices brought from black and white silent films. The writer states at one point that the DVD "Discovering Cinema", "...presents a teleological argument that color and sound were the inevitable future of cinema and that each step along the way to the talking, color cinema of today was simply a crude preamble... but it worth noting that audiences and filmmakers alike saw silent film as a complete and perfect art form." I completely agree with this in terms of the silent film being its own perfect art form and that the color, sound films are in their own art form. There are so many differences that are brought with color and sound that make the two impossible to compare. Whether one or the other is better is opinion, but most can agree that they both have their highs and lows. Whether it's color and sound making for the ability to have too much to really make anything look good, or with silent not having enough; it is more based on the skill of the filmmaker and what they can show their viewer. I found this part of the article to be the most interesting, but Hamid shows more about the political history of film on another section "Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film". Another history lesson about how when films first arrived they were used by many filmmakers such as D.W. Griffith to question what it was to be American. This is a tradition that continues today through documentaries by people like Michael Moore and films such as W. Unfortunately film has been and always will be a political tool.

I listened, heard, and responded...

By falling asleep. He said it was o.k., right? "I have always encouraged people to listen with headphones, preferably while lying down in a dark room. As an artist, my ego still demands I list that possibility first." That was what I had heard and that is what he says on his website. So I proceeded to lay back and try to relax, even though being a darkened room with many people I didn't know was quite scary. His first piece started off with a low tone and what sounded like a helicopter or a boat making a repeated chugging sound. It is kind of hard to describe exactly the sound was that I was hearing, but it did have a very soothing effect. I remember that the same sound continued for a while, often moving a little bit in pace, but ultimately the same. Then I fell asleep. Aaron Ximm said that his edited field recordings were supposed to have that kind of effect and that he was very fascinated with it. I also find it very fascinating that his recordings can have that effect on people. There was another man in the crowd that said that he was also lulled to sleep by the first piece that he showed us, but the second piece was received in a much different manner.

I woke up again at the intermission feeling calm and relaxed and not really realizing that i had fallen asleep at all. Aaron Ximm describes his "music" as "pop" in his essay Sound, Art, Music: Searching for a Personal Aesthetic and I believe that in a certain way it is. He says that he found other artists that used field recordings and then tried to recreate something like it and succeeded. The "music" he makes is quite catchy and nice enough to listen to that it can put you to sleep. That is exactly what I would be looking for when listening to this genre of music. However, that is not completely what I got from the second piece that he presented. This one started off slow, like the other, and once more I drifted back to sleep. This time I was not awakened by the bright lights in the theater, but rather the sound of screams and moans. It was like I had stumbled into a nightmare, but when I was awake. Not my idea of calm like what I had expected. The same man that I mentioned from the first part also commented on this. He said that the sounds gave him actual nightmares and that the sound was so real in them. While some of the things he described were quite peculiar, this goes back to how Ximm said he was interested in how his music affects consciousness and the subconscious. This ability was of great interest to me, because even though I had a much less intense experience, I don't remember the sounds when I was sleeping, but I think they effected my subconscious in much the same way as the other man. If that is possible, and it appears to be, I can only speculate what power sound could hold in the future, if it is controlling my subconscious today.

Cineaste - Reading Report One

The reason that I chose this magazine and website is because as I was going through the articles I noticed that they had a lot about contemporary film making, filmmakers, and other subjects. Not just from the U.S. either, but from around the world. Another thing that really interests me is how some more famous filmmakers get their starts. I sometimes have trouble with getting ideas for films and it helps me out a lot to read about other filmmaker's inspirations and stories. Not to copy, but to learn techniques or examples. That is another reason why I picked this website, they have a lot of interviews with accomplished filmmakers and those are very interesting to me.

I decided to read an article about the Berlin School called Intensifying Life: The Cinema of the "Berlin School" and about how they are starting to reappear after being fairly dormant for quite some time. This article was very interesting to me for a few reasons. Since I started learning about film history, the Berlin school was what I had thought to be one of the biggest influences on how I looked at film. After reading this article I realized that they have been sticking close to one topic that works for them, and that is the World War II effect and post war effects. I also found that this wasn't quite the Berlin School I had previously thought. I can't say I have seen a whole lot that has come from Germany in the past sixty years, but most of the films that obtain national or international success seem to be the ones that stick close to the war. Marco Abel points out this fact that the most famous of German films show Hitler, the Stasi, or the reunification period. While it is a highly influential time in the countries history, it is time to move on and try something new. That is what the Berlin School that I read about is trying to do, albeit unsuccessfully right now. Most of the directors of this school seem to be stuck on representing a Germany that is not yet in existence and is more of a hope. At the same time most of those same directors say that they do not want to give in and do political films to rag on the current state of the country, so they are stuck in the middle somewhere and trying to find a way to invent another "New Wave". I felt this article to be very important because it shows something outside of the U.S. and how a new genre of film could eventually be formed out of these beginnings in Germany.

The other article I read was an interview with filmmaker William Klien titled Mr. Freedom: An Interview with William Klien. As I stated before this is one reason why I chose this magazine to write about. Not only is Klien a contemporary filmmaker, but also a historical one. This interview is about his history and how he got started in film in France. He was a writer to begin with and since he couldn't get his work published in New York, he went across seas to France to get it published and there he met Chris Marker, who pushed him into film from there. He ended up meeting Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali and making films on them. To me, this is a great way for new filmmakers to get inspired by all the possibilities there are in the artwork. It is really inspiring to me to read about other people's journeys that are based on an art form that I am also trying to make. While the article is not contemporary, I believe that the ideas and inspirations are there for filmmakers of the future.

Act/React - The only way is to Interact

The two pieces that I saw at the Milwaukee Museum of Art that interested me the most and seemed to need the most interaction to make a finished work or art were Touch Me by Janet Cardiff and Deep Walls by Scott Snibbe. I find it hard to say that the art is just by those two artists because neither of their works are really presented without some kind of outside interaction. Touch Me is unique to this exhibit as it is the only piece of art that has some kind of interface that you must interact with and I think that is why it intrigued me the most. Not only that, but without interacting with this interface, the piece is not really completed. To hear the sounds, which are a part of the art, the table must be touched. Therefore it is not complete until the interaction occurs and even then it takes a while to get to completion as there are many different phrases that have been recorded. Deep Walls on the other hand has no interface and requires at least one person to walk in front of it to complete it. While one is enough, the piece can store up to sixteen interactions at once and play them all back. This is why I say that it is hard to only name two people as the artists for these pieces. Once someone has moved in front of the projection, they have until sixteen more people pass in front of it to keep their contribution in the art and in that respect the artists are always changing.

When compared with Touch Me, the amount of interactions that can take place with different people at the same time is the strongest similarity. They can both be interacted with multiple people and respond differently based on what the person interacting with them does. Touch Me will say different phrases at different times and they are all randomized and the interaction with Deep Walls is based on how the viewer chooses to interact with it. The main difference that these two pieces have is how you interact with them. The table is the only physical interface in the exhibit and that gives it a different feeling when you approach it. Having something that you can actually touch gives a much deeper feeling about the piece, or at least it did when I saw it. These two pieces compared to other mediums in terms of experience is black and white. For other mediums, all the viewer gets to do is look and maybe listen, but what they seem and hear is predetermined. The interactivity brings a real sense of belonging to the art and can make just about anyone an artist. George Fifield emphasizes this point in his summary of this exhibit by saying, "Interactive artist and the viewer/user must work together to create the aesthetic experience, mediated by the art itself. It comes down to a simple verbal distinction: with non-interactive art we are, with interactive art we do." I believe that we could not do without both the artist and the viewer and that is the most important part of the medium of interactive art, that the viewer can now help create the art.

Journal to be Followed

Cineaste - www.cineaste.com

Field Report #1 - Robert Schaller's Film Performance

The first thing that caught my attention about most of Robert Schaller's work was how inconsistent some of the footage he shot was. It did not really seem to have any sort of pattern, meaning, or unison with the rest of the piece. This got me to thinking about the film "What the Water Said", which I had viewed in class. The way the raw film was altered to get the inconsistent effect that the water gave it must have been similar to how Schaller created the look he did. Luckily, he answered why he had such seemingly random images in many of his works. The reason was that those images were just that, random. He enjoys seeing what can come out on film when it is not made through conventional means, just like what I now believe is the reason why David Gatten made "What the Water Said" how he did. While "What the water Said" is straight forward in what it means, many of Robert Schaller's works were not so straight forward in their meaning.

I believe that it was "If not One and One" where he used three projectors, sound, and color to create some order in disorder. The reason I believed that this piece worked well on opposite ends of the spectrum was because while the dancer's moves and the music being played along with her were exact, and after a while by themselves repetitive, the handmade film that went along with it made the piece clash and therefore be far more interesting and captivating. The common factor that these two pieces share is the way that they use not only handmade film, but also add another factor into their piece to give meaning the the inconsistencies. David Gatten does that with the title of the piece and the use of sound created though the process he went through to get the film how it is Robert Schaller gave meaning to randomness through the use of multiple projectors. Not only in "If not One and One", but also in "Phrase", Schaller used multiple projectors to present his piece. Both of the projectors seemed to be showing just random handmade film, like with the other works. however, together the two strips of film created symmetry and gave the piece a more meaningful feel than just one strip on inconsistent film.

This goes back to a discussion in class about how putting film though a camera is not the only way to make a creative work of art or develop a meaningful "story". Robert Schaller and David Gatten both do a great job at proving this point as their work, though inconsistent and unconventional, worked well when adding in different ways of listening to or presenting their work.