New Year

It looks like the new year is coming in faster than anticipated. Tonight we are having a party at Luna Playhouse (our theatre) all are welcome. It is a pot luck and a raffle will be presented to make money for the theatre. Come and enjoy -the crazies will be there!!! For more info call Luna at 818-500-7200.

Final Crit in Samantha Fields class

Though I have learned more than I can imagine, it seems that I have so much more to understand. The relationship between painting and old water damaged B&W negatives from my past is still unclear. I can only guess that I pursue certain things that interest me, but why do they interest me? As with the stereo images, am I using technique as a crutch or is there a subliminal incentive waiting to be discovered? Self expression is so "Modern" and no longer cuts the creative mustard. So this break I will be looking deep into the reasons for my work and researching those that have come before me.

Robert Fisk

Today I met Robert Fisk, a British Journalist who has been stationed in Beirut for 30 years writing for the "Independent". I showed him the booklet I produced for our Armenian Genocide Project. He said he will be in touch. He is looking for documentary film footage of the actual event. He feels there must be some somewhere because he has seen stills of men with film cameras filming the actual events in 1915. I will help him any way I can.

Class Notes Revisited

Wow, I got 5 comments on the picture from the short stories, I did not think of looking back at blog pages to look up comments. Yes that "ugly dude" is me being a mean and vicious type of Hollywood scoundrel, tempting the poor innocent tourist from Ohio into becoming my wanna-be starlet. This one (published spring 2001) did use photoshop, but most of the others (starting back to the mid-80's) were done as cut and paste before there was photoshop available or affordable. I would cut out images and then use colored markers and retouching inks and pencils to reduce the lines from the cuts. I should make a series and post them all on the net.

Walkthrough

Yesterday's walkthrough seemed to be less stressful than the previous ones. Either I am getting used to it or I have learned enough of the art jargon to convince teachers that I have a plan. John O'Brian always has something useful to say and he helped me realize that the photos I paint on have a freedom lacking in the stereo images. He felt this was because I was working in a new medium ("something highly discouraged usually for MFA candidates") and that this allowed me to explore in areas that the stereo images would not. He felt the eventual marriage of the two would be interesting. Thanks John. Having Michael as a roommate allowed me to sit in on his crits. Ron as usual had great insight into the work and reminded me it was time to make a narrative film. This would be the big secret of my life...Levon Parian the wanna-be film maker....finally realizes his secret desire. (Think that would make a good narrative? Nah.)

Artist Statement

So I am thinking that I need to build an artist's statement for the Walkthrough. Though the work I have put together does not show the break through I have reached in my understanding of why I do what I do. The question to really ask is; does understanding what you do -equate into developing themes for exploration? I think that has been my true quest since I have returned to school. After all, isn't an artist's statement a written justification of the visual work that is being done? No, what I have come to realize is that the artist's statement must develop an artist's character by forcing him or her to realize the possibilities and focus them into realities. Thus,this boldly displayed banner at the foot of my studio door must justify any nuances that has come from the work and allow, for those that bother to read it, a vague understanding of my thoughts. (Oh, is your artist statement supposed to make sense?)

Anyway I'm working on it.

Memory research

I have started researching the meaning of memory... How our brain uses it and how it develops in our own minds. An interesting comparison is human memory verses the image seen when viewing 3-D. The stereo image is also represented in our mind. There is a transformation of the image in the visual process and a mental interpretation that uses the physical image to create a new dimension. The brain interprets the image and sees relationships between space to create a new reality. Not a new concept.

Check out Ivan Sutherland's "head mounted display".
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Sutherland.html

Class Notes

Today in Digital Video I realized that anything is possible. Watching the videos made me feel for the first time that I had a connection to film and video making. It all seemed possible. Even the George Orwell (Orson Welles to the rest of you) film seemed like something I could make. David's clips from the visual narrative reminded me of my short stories that I haven't made in decades. David Lynch's Rabbits and Gummo also were interesting to see. I am not sure how it all fit together, but it did. Thanks to David, Joy and Justin for the clips!

First stereo video

So yesterday I made my first stereo video. Thanks to David who let me borrow two cameras which I taped together and videoed around the house.
("I taped the two video cameras together to tape the stereo video.")

Well the stereo idea works. The question is who is going to sit and watch more than 5 minutes of it. There still are many questions to be answered about the technology. The cameras need to be able to move or angle inwards when extreme closeups are filmed. Well, there are some scenes that work better than others.... It's actually quite a dog of a piece and I even managed to get a pussy cat in.

I also hope I am not re-inventing the wheel. I joined the Stereo Club of Southern California and I'll ask at the next meeting about this type of film making.

First Committee Meeting

At Ron's request, I will spill my guts here about my first and most recent committee meeting. Lesley, Kim and Ron are on my committee. As I look over my notes to this meeting, I realize that my work is still at an early stage.

Kim did not seem to like to deal with the technical aspects of stereo photos and could not get past the "gimmick" quality. As far as painting on images from my past, she did not feel the work was enough about collective memory. She suggested to look at Mary Kelly's work, but even about that she said that a critic had the same response to Mary's work as Kim had to mine: "So what does this have to do with me?" She suggests I explore more biography than auto-biography.

Something was said about fragmentation of images relating to the stereo views.

Lesley suggested reviewing some artists work that I was already aware of and gave me a great lead on a job.

Ron pointed out that all my work had or has some sort of extra thing attached to the photography. Painting on them, stereo etc. it all seems to shy from straight photography. He asked the question: "When does it become 'explorations in how to make your work more arty'" This is true, I have always moved away from straight photographs for the art venue.

So what can I conclude from this meeting?

First no one is going to tell me what to do.
They will tell me they like it or not once they see it.
So basically, it is a production driven process. Something like my painting on photos may not be working at the moment, but with more effort, it could turn into the cat's meow. So it seems you won't know till you do it and present it.

Where will I go from here? Make em bigger! Like I always say, if you can't make em good, make em bigger.

A Clockwork Orange Revisited

In class on Tuesday showing bits of the movie felt very odd. Not only because I was revealing my past, but also because I was discovering just how much this movie had affected my perception of Art and the vision which I have come to think of as my own. Ludwig has been haunting me regularly, I will be raking the leaves and suddenly from no where I will find myself humming the 9th. I have been re-possesed by the shear power of the fight/rape scene that overcame me nearly 3 decades ago! The desire to commit visual mayhem is overpowering.

I wanted to have a conversation with Ron about "making a film". I was wondering if you could expound on your thoughts so that I could focus this raw energy that I have re-discovered.

Finally figured out why

So there you are! Now I know what was wrong. I changed my server to firefox and everything started working! It was my Safari server that has been giving me trouble. I could not upload images or publish my posts. Only until I noticed that I could not pay with paypal and or get google maps to work did I realize that it had to be the server or my computer or my DSL line. In fact it could be the DSL line that was the original culprit because it was upgraded and perhaps in doing so, my server became less affective- not working all the time, but giving the illusion that all is well...
11/23/06

Clockwork Orange

For my presentation on Tuesday, I wanted to explore the two films that got me interested in the arts. One was Clockwork Orange that I was able to find in the school library and the other was David Lynch's Erasorhead which I am haveing trouble finding. I was able to watch the first 45 minutes of Kubric's film and was surprised at how timeless it seemed. I will try to watch the rest of it before Tuesday.

Genocide Video

Yesterday I showed the bits and pieces of my unfinished Armenian Genocide video in class. I am unsure of how to proceed with it. The reaction of the class seemed muted, of course the subject is hard to talk about. What I did take away from the discussion was that I needed to strip away the gloves and present the case straight forward and from my perspective. Though it has historical elements, I think the class felt that I was hiding behind that to get my own point across. I will try a re-write for this project.

In the mean time, I asked David if I could borrow a camera for a test to see if my stereo video "freeviewing" idea will work.
I actually need two identical cameras, so if anyone has two identical video cameras let me know.

Change of Plans

Yong is not able to make it today, so I will have to find another camera or wait until Friday to try out the stereo idea.

My first post.

I have not seen any video work done with the "freeviewing" idea. The 3D work has always been with the splitting of images by colors or with polarizing lenses with the viewer wearing glasses for viewing as a single image. If you see the image without the glasses it confuses the mind.

With freeviewing, you will see two separate images and will have no eye apparatus to wear. But there is training involved to get the viewer to understand how each eye has to see to create the stereo affect. I am basing this idea from still photos and am hoping that the information will translate into motion pictures. One of the problems besides getting a person to "find the stereo" is the energy and effort needed to sustain this freeviewing. It may be to difficult to expect an audience to sit for a long period of time and view a film in this way. But we shall see!