Homework: Video

train experiment #1 from michelle lee on Vimeo.



I'd like to experiment with splicing these videos together and playing with how the light flickers on and off.
train experiment #2 from michelle lee on Vimeo.

Research, Video Artist: Callum Cooper

Paradoxical Plane (Excerpt) from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Full Circle from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Callum Cooper is an artist from London. He distinguishes between artist and filmmaker - and the video "Full Circle" is actually for a fashion label - but I find it interesting that there are relationships between his sculptures and his videos. The motion of the camera is really enticing visually and the way one views spaces and plane, especially in "Paradoxical Plane." He shows different points of view in a way that really has you questioning, how did he shoot this video? how much of it is edited? It also gives you the notion of going in 360. 

Research, Video Artist: Len Lye

Len Lye (1901 - 1980) was one of the first artists to experiment with film and animation as an artistic process. He was also a kinetic sculptor. "Free Radicals" was created by scratching into black film stock. "A Colour Box" was actually made for the British General Post. I like how he uses a direct process with the film and is able to create these abstract, but musical and actually quite tangible animations paired with music.His work is a great reference for students who are just starting out in animation, and to discuss the pairing of music and sound. It is also a good example of how one can manipulate physical film by hand, and really explore how many ways it can be altered and changed in a playful manner.

Homework #7 (3.) Scanning in artistic practice

Using the scanner in art can be likened to photography and print/digital print in a sense. When I used it for our project, it reminded me more of printmaking than photography. One way to view it is that the scanner takes our three-dimensional understandings of objects and forms and flattens them into two-dimensional surfaces, allowing us to see textures and shapes in a new way. It reminds me of a mixed media collograph where you use different textures and objects, only to print them and discover how different they appear once rolled with ink. When you are putting objects onto the surface of the scanner - it is blank, like a piece of paper or a canvas. Unlike photography, where you are capturing existing spaces, or creating a three-dimensionality through the use of light in a studio set up, a scan is devoid of those "environmental" elements. Instead, it is an isolated study of objects, with certain parameters of how you can view it and change it. It can be likened to running the textures of a plastic bag through a printing press, or creating rubbings of different surfaces. 

Homework #7 (2.): SCANNER ART 3

Homework #7 (2.): SCANNER ART 2

Homework #7 (2.): SCANNER ART

Homework #7 (1.): Scanner Artists/Artists who use Scanners

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor is an artist who uses scanners (and photoshop) to make her highly surreal/fantastical imagery. She collects objects, tin types, various flora, etc, scans them, and then combines them via layers in photoshop until they have been taking completely out of context into her own world. Many of these images recollect notions of memory and nostalgia, despite how fantastical they are and futuristic in their layering. Much of it maybe has to do with the antiquarian photographs she uses that give her photos that "old" look, making it seem out of sync with how highly digital her works are. However, I think it's interesting how she appropriate her found images and objects to the point where they are unrecognizable beyond their purpose in her images themselves. They also create narratives that interweave and interrupt our ideas of what happens usually in these photographs - reminding us of childhood stories, etc.

Leanne Eisen is an artist based in Toronto, ON. She created these artworks using a flatbed scanner, experiementing with different surfaces - these were made with the surfaces of CDs and DVDs, "introducing the digital storage medium back into the scanning process." The surfaces create a reflection that then become an abstract shape and form against the stark blackness of her scanned images. I like how they remind me of flattened prints or abstract paintings, but are digital, reflected scans.The surface also gives the scan a strange sense of depth, and the light reflected gives it a very digital "technological" range of colors - how we imagine technology to look like in a way - in a physical sense. 

Homework #6 (4.) Lesson Plan: Old and New

Lesson Plan, Old and New: Video and Sculpture

Objective: Through the creation of a mixed media sculpture and experimentation with a digital video camera and editing, students learn to experiment with video manipulation and taking their sculptures one step further with digital media.

1. Mixed media sculpture. Using found and recycled objects, students will create a structure exploring view points - may be related to a house, or model (?). Exploring the materials and how they can create "spaces" that we will later explore with the camera.

2. Exploration: Change the Photo. Exploring the upclose - what happens when we zoom in? Crop things out? Using found images, students will experiment in their sketchbooks with different ways of cropping, rotating, and transforming (analog) with scissors. Students should reflect verbally or written about how the image and its meaning changed.

3. Video: Initial shooting. Students pair up and explore their sculpture with video - can incorporate moving objects but should focus on exploring how the sculpture changes from different perspectives, view points, and angles using the video camera.

4. Editing: Manipulation via iMovie. Students take footage from the sculpture and learn to manipulate and edit in iMovie, creating a new way of looking and interpreting their sculpture, perhaps structuring a narrative or else pairing the video with music to create an entirely new work.

Homework #6 (2.) Photo-Narrative

all images found on google image search.

Homework #6 (3.) Photography and Children

left: self-portrait no. 3, digital print, 2006

right: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #282, chromogenic print, 1993 (Carnegie Museum of Art)

One of my first assignments was to copy an artist's work in my undergraduate program - so I copied Cindy Sherman. It was my first time experimenting with photography. Although later on I began to use film, my first experimentations in photo were all digital. Though I think understanding manual/analog photography is very important, for children I believe digital can also be a great entry way to using photography as a medium.

Possible connections to students:

1. Self-portraiture and fantasy. Cindy Sherman's works can be used a reference here. Also my old professor, Elizabeth Raymer-Griffin, and, well, many more. Identity development is a major component of adolescence, and the idea of self-portrait and playing with both costume and deformity, restraint, and body expression are things students could really make their own through a series of lessons and practices. Digital or film, the main objectives would be to explore what a portrait is and how we can either play to it or disorient it. For example, in the Cindy Sherman photograph above, she is playing with the idea of direct gaze, as well as the mythical Medusa. Students might look at traditional paintings as reference, as well as other portrait photographers, both commercial and fine art (maybe they are both!)

Other artists: 

Carrie Mae Weems, The Louisiana Project

Nikki S. Lee

2. Documentary. Using photography to document their friends, family, and everyday lives. While we do use photography as a documentary format all the time now with our iPhones and digital cameras, it's often that we take many instead of just one - in the classroom, part of this would be learning to examine narrative through the use of only several pictures - placing constraints on how you might tell a story - perhaps only through object, or only through landscapes, and what can be conveyed if you mix them together. Another important component might be talking about layout.

Documentary/fine art photographers

The Teenie Harris Archive (CMoA)

Alec Soth

Dylan Vitone (panoramic imagery)

3. Journalism. Recording events but also using text - similar to documentary, but a different approach and could be integrated with Language Arts.

James Nachtwey

4. The Complete Imaginary - Creating scenes, sculptures, and works solely for photographic work, i.e. Thomas Demand. What changes when it is photographed versus as a sculptural work? 

Homework #6 (1.)

How I might alter the use of the image:

I liked the idea Annie had to make a three-dimensional form of the photograph using paper - I think it could be applicable to the idea I had about textures - after students photograph a texture, they find a way to translate it in a physical dimension - moving from digital to three-dimensional and perhaps back to digital.

Another idea:

"Continuing the image" - similar to short activities such as "what can you turn this shape into?," using the photograph as a starting point for a drawing / artwork where you use collage, paint, or pencil to continue the lines and spaces found in your photograph.