8 Dec 2009

Jenny Holzer - Foundation Beyeler in Switzerland

Hands from above - Chris O'Shea


"Hand From Above encourages us to question our normal routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another. Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain?
Unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity.
Hand from Above is a joint co-commission between FACT: Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network. It premiered during the inaugural Abandon Normal Devices Festival."

Extended cinema - Tate modern

"To acknowledge a hundred years of British Cinema, an exhibition of cinematic machines which aims to re-cycle the redundant mechanisms of the British film industry.By building new devices which playfully deconstruct the event of visiting the cinema, this alternative event is an attempt to use a hundred years of language in order to return us to the cinema's fairground origins, with its pure delight of physical presence and wonder.The exhibition consists of "filming machines" as well as "projection machines"; the work plays on the notion that there could be as many different apparatuses to record the world as there are different films, a challenge to an industry founded by the first mechanism invented one hundred years ago.These hybrid machines are sculptural objects in their own right, similar in some respect to the work of Jean Tinguely. The mechanism are both strange and familiar: a machine constructed from cinematic icons like lenses, sprockets, spools, light beams, celluloid, cogs, wheels and a silver screen.The viewer's ability to understand the machine's function is based on familiarity, but the actions of the machine run counter to expectations - in some ways anti-functional - not lending to the illusionist world of Hollywood. They demand attention in their own right as well as pointing towards the potential of a "total cinema" beyond the two dimensions of a solitary screen, and to the demands of the next century.This show is ultimately an opportunity to indulge in nostalgia with fanciful ideas of storytelling and illusion. It exploits the tactile qualities of photo chemistry, light and mechanisms, before the cinema of machines eventually dissolves into cyberspace."

Steve Farrer

Robin Rhode - chalk pipe

MUTO - blublu.org

30 Nov 2009

Scintillation - Xavier Chassaing

Chronophotography










As I've been working with pictures and movement, I thought it would be interesting to try to show the decomposition of movement in one picture and represent stillness and movement in one photo. I used Photoshop for these two photos, but there is a technique that was used in victorian times called chronophotography (pictures of time). Chronophotography is divided into two separate processes: Motography (continuous exposure of the subject) and Strobophotography (intermittent exposure of the subject).









source: http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/iconic

Roman Signer


Roman Signer (swiss artist)

For many years, Roman Signer has defined his own independent and established position as a sculptor within the international art scene, and has influenced following generations of artists. His works are unmistakable, with their fundamental and consistent attempt to position objects of everyday use -and within the framework of his performances, the artist himself - in states subject to simple physical processes and laws. Signer does this with existential intensity, combining the artificial with the natural.
The moving sculptures that Roman Signer puts together sometimes occupy whole rooms and sometimes appear as just fleeting ideas in images, but are all full of potential tension and subject to the same immutable conditions. The object requires physical force so as to become a moving sculpture, and the sensual experience of natural phenomena like the wind, gravity or smoke only becomes visible through their effect on the object. By means of this synthesis, which is also always a process of mutual influence, Roman Signer pro-duces surprising images and experience.
Roman Signer very precisely calculates his staging and ordering of the moving objects and installations, experimenting and rehearsing again and again, so that the chance of failure and possible accident is reduced to nearly zero. But not quite zero, for the ob-server watches these staged events with a sense of the improbability of their success holding out, and feels astonishment, apprehension, and pleasure.

23 Nov 2009

555 KUBIK

Fensterlichter

Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie

The white Stripes - Hardest Button to Button - Michel Gondry video

Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be - Michel Gondry video

Film 3

Film 2

Film 1

11 Nov 2009

Guinness commercial - "rythm of life, evolution"




Seizure by Roger Hiorns 2009




This project is just amazing! Roger Hiorns transformed the interior of an abandoned flat at 151-159 harper road in London into an wonderful world of blue copper sulphate crystals. this is another great example of what the transformation of materials (copper sulphate solution) can do to a space. It all looks quite messy with crystals coming out in every direction, but in fact crystals have a very pure geometry which is very ordered. This vacant space which reminds everyone of the current economical crisis has been completely transformed to become a magical place, a blue cave full of crystals.

10 Nov 2009

Transformation - Ink test November 09


This is my first attempt at recording the process of transformation. A drop of ink dropped into water. Amazingly, the ink travelled very slowly to the bottom allowing me to record the entire process the first time around. I quite like the outcome of this experiment.

Schweppes commercial

Sony Foam City commercial

International Film Festival Breda 2009 Trailer

Electrabel commercial 2009

The main theme - TRANSFORMATION

MC Esher

After long and strenuous hours spent trying to find a theme that links the five sequences together, the word TRANSFORMATION came out during a tutorial. For this introductory project, I would like to focus on the process of transformation by creating a short film illustrating this process through a material called Plasticine. I would like to use a process called still animation, where you take still images and put them together to form a film/animation. I have never used this process before and this makes it more exciting for me. The whole point of the year for me is to take myself out my comfort zone and learn new ways of doing things to find out what interests me most.

Spatial Sequence 5 - 20:50 by Richard Wilson


Richard Wilson's 20:50 was by far one of my favorite installations. In 20:50 the gallery space is filled to waist height with recycled engine oil. A walkway leads from a single entrance, leading the viewer into the space until they are surrounded by oil on all sides. The seemingly impenetrable surface of the oil mirrors the architecture of the room exactly, placing the viewer at the mid-point of a symmetrical visual plane. Here, the piece is installed in an oak-panelled room with seven doors leading from it. The juxtaposition of materials and the way the piece removes the possibility of moving into any of the adjoining rooms is quite special. The open door at the back of the room makes it even more dramatic. It is interesting to see the way the oil transforms the space, giving it this impenetrable depth and and giving the viewer a sensation of disorientation.

Spatial Sequence 4 - Shinichi Maruyama


The KUSHO (writing in the sky) series of photographs by Shinichi Maruyama represent the interplay of black ink and water in mid air. Maruyama captures the two liquids colliding the millisecond before they merge into grey, allowing us tho see in great detail chemical and physical processes invisible to the naked eye. Maruyama's photographs amplify the Japanese concept wabi-sabi - the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. I chose these photographs because they are beautiful and let us into a world we don't know, capturing images we could never otherwise see. These photographs record the process of transformation.

8 Nov 2009

Spatial Sequence 3 - Le Mirroir d'eau by Michel Corajoud


This Piece of landscape architecture has to be one of my favorites. This 'place' in Bordeaux has come to life since the new addition of the 'mirroir'. The 'mirroir' attract people like a magnet. Everyone wants to be part of it. Once you're in it, you suddenly connect with everyone else who is having the same experience and you can't help but observe everyone else's reaction to the space. It is calm and clear, it reflects the city and its people, when suddenly it transforms itself into a fog of energy and life. it is constantly changing and gives very different atmospheres to the space. It is simply magical.

Spatial Sequence 2 - The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

The Alchemist is one of my favorite books. It is the story of Santiago, a boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a hidden treasure. He makes several encounters that lead him to pursue his dream and go to Egypt. On the way he meets the woman of his life and an alchemist who teaches him the language of the world. It is a beautiful story that reminds us of many vital lessons of life. This book is about the transformation of a boy through an incredible journey. I chose the passage of the book where this transformation begins; the moment he decides to take his life in his own hands and follow his destiny.

5 minutes Spatial Sequence 1 - BARAKA (Mark Magidson, Ron Fricke)

Baraka is a non narrative film set to an atmospheric soundtrack inspired by various rituals and nature itself. The film captures the very essence of a man's relationship with the earth, both harmonious and catastrophic. It is a journey of rediscovery. It is the power, the beauty and the rage of life itself. It is the world we live in. I chose this passage from chapter 7 to best illustrate my theme: Transformation. This passage shows the way we transform the planet we live in to adapt to the growth of population and global demand for raw materials.