run wrake

in narrative strategies today, olivia showed this short film called jukebox by run wrake. when i searched for it on youtube, i came across another one of his/her/their movies, rabbit, which i had just recently seen at the animation show…

jukebox

rabbit

narrative strategies: find fable; see doug aitken

assignment 2 part 1 find a 4-5 page narrative, story, fable, or news story that you think best illustrates the kind of stories you are fascinated and inspired by.

assignment 2 part 2 do a narrative analysis of Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers, which is currently being projected outside the MoMA.

narrative strategies: notes from class 2

modes of representation
we spent the first part of class talking about modes of representation, and how did digitization change modes of representation. some notes are below.

• people like stories because it is a famliar mode of representation
• modes of representation could be thought of as ‘the arts’, ‘the media’, ‘ways in which human beings represent themselves.’
• modes of representation emerge out of a particular use of a medium.
• someone called something realistic. to that, mark said that the use of the word ‘realism’ is complicated. he went on to explain that in animation, it’s considered fantasy, or detailing which evokes audience’s familiarity with what they know as realistic but may not expect from an animation.
• animation can now imitate cinema as a result of digitization. the language of cinema, at least in part, is camera movement, and now, animation programs can do that with ease.
• digital photography created a panic. photography was/is representational, and trusted. the creation of programs like photoshop, made it easy to subvert that realistic representation, yet somehow we still trust photography.
• newspapers[front page doesn't carry one single story on the front page], broadcast[voice and image], comic books[ex. writers & readers..?].
• radio & music are modes of representation which liberate us from the image. they use pure voice. radio founded itself on the fact that it could broadcast music.
• mark said he considers music a mode of representation but it is debatable. music is least bound by cultural stereotypes. music is not a representation of the real, it is the antithesis of photography. There can be a translation of the real in the aftermath of music.

at the very end of class we watched a few short avante garde films from the dvd below. i think they were duchamp. maybe they were man ray. i can’t remember.

artists/people that came up in discussion…

janet cardiff
bill viola
ron flaherty

narrative strategies: dünya dunlemiyor, phil collins (smiths karaoke)

assignment “EXAMPLES OF A MULTI-MEDIA NARRATIVE.” Each student is expected to research a 3-5 minute multi-media narrative for presentation and discussion in class. The best source of examples are probably web-archives, but students can also present work by friends and colleagues. Whatever you chose please define why you think it is genuinely multi-media. I am also interested to know what kind of narrative strategy it employs.

phil collins (pictured below). not Phil Collins the 80’s drummer/singer/pop sensation, rather, Phil Collins, British artist, and Turner prize nominee responsible for the video installation, dünya dunlemiyor (the world won’t listen), part two of a trilogy.

i recently saw this piece installed at the SFMOMA, which is how I came to know of it. i was drawn to it by what sounded like the music of The Smiths.. it turned out to be Smiths karaoke sung by fans. Before I knew anything more about the piece, i found it really compelling and stayed and watched for nearly 30 minutes. Of course there was the music that kept me there–but I could listen to it on my iPod, and some of the performers just sounded horrific… so there was something else that was keeping me there, and well, I think it was that these performances were portraits of these people via the music of The Smiths… and there’s something about watching a person, and being allowed to watch a person, entirely unscripted, just being. I suppose that’s what the draw is with reality television.

After doing a little research into Collins, I learned that much of his work has a documentary nature to it, but he express it in a non-traditional way, using popular and youth culture – which includes music (as with The Smiths), but also reality television.

narrative
A little more on this trilogy, the world won’t listen, is that Collins find his participants in cities which stereotypically are viewed as non-Westernized, perhaps anti-modern. The first part of the trilogy took place in Bogota, Columbia, the second part, Dünya Dunlemiyor, took place in Istanbul, Turkey. Through the karaoke videos, he dispells this stereotype, as these fans appear no different from say, a fan in the U.S. or the U.K. This to me is a sort of documentary via portraiture via music, or a universal understanding or love of something, narrative strategy which is being applied. I could be wrong. I probably am.

multimedia
In general, the term multimedia, as I understand it, is acceptable to apply to electronic and digital media, which would include video art. But if it also means that “multiple forms of information content and processing inform or entertain the audience” as wikipedia says, then I would have to bring up a few other elements of this work. Not only is it a video piece, it’s an installation, so the way it’s viewed is important. The bootlegged camera phone videos below won’t do it justice. The audio was very specifically chosen, a very particular album of a very particular band. Furthermore, the piece can be viewed and enjoyed, as i and others did, or it can be participated in. Along with that side of things, the backdrops were designed, as well a karaoke machine, not to forget the flyers that were posted to draw in participants. On top of that, the wording of the flyer was very specific and important.

“the shy, the dissatisfied, and the narcissistic, to come and have their chance to shine,”

the videos
the first video is by far my favorite… i really wish this one was there in its entirety, or that i had thought to tape it when i was saw it at SFMOMA…

i’ve compiled a full list of the cell/camera phone smiths karaoke bootlegs i found on youtube are here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9C91EA9718C0D8CF