More about the video collaboration!

So guys, my film is part of my honors studio art project that is both black and white photography and video titled I am who am. For this film, I had my subject-- who has a background is in contemporary dance- move and interact with my glowing orb of light that is a hard plastic ball 2ft by 2ft for three minutes. After the filming I had her write a brief reflection on the experience as well. This reflection might go into the film, but will definitely go in to the book I'm creating of the still images and production stills of the film. I showed my rough cut to my two composers, Adam and Alex, and they are looking into ideas for me with the scores. Alex and I have already been talking about playing around with some cello and voice sounds. We haven't officially decided how much involvement I'll have in their process, but it sounds like they're pretty open to anything. I'm excited to hear what they come up with! I'll be posting a rough clip of the film soon! 

Project process update!

hello folks!
So just wanted to update you on my project thus far. I've been working on scanning all my negatives from both projects into the computer and photoshopping them to be where I want them. The three images that will be printed 30x30 inches are photoshopped, and I'm printing 8x10 test prints to make sure I've got the saturation and such where I want them. The large printing of those images should start tomorrow or tuesday of next week. The mini books are coming along quite nicely, they should be ready to order in about the same time frame as printing the large images. I have met with my composers for my film project and have made a rough cut of my footage. I will be using a haiku that I wrote for my short film. This is what I've got so far...

Movement dance with light
Essence will seek an understanding
it's I am who am 

Thoughts for Book Design...

After reflecting about different ways to go about book design last week a few aspects stuck out to me for my project. Some of these aspects include picture presentation on page, cover, title/fonts, spacing of images and blank pages, and size of book. There are so many different ways to go about designing a book! At first it was a little overwhelming, I'll have to admit... but as we went through as a class what stuck out to us I couldn't help but piece together what I wanted for my book.

First off, for my senior show, I really want to create small books. I want them to be able to almost fit in your hand and have a simple design. I want them to almost be a flip book so as you view the little images of the figure with the fabric it appears as if he is moving in that space.

For my honors project, I want to create a 12x12 inch hard cover image wrap book. It will be 20 pages in length with bleed off images on every other page. I'm also really interested in having a written statement from one of my subjects as a reflection of their experience doing the project as well as their reflection of the project as a whole. I think having my artist statement along with the others statement would be a nice balance for the project. I also want to have a photograph of just the glowing orb with the used black backdrop as if the space had a presence of someone but is waiting for the connection or that presence has just left. I got this idea from Mona Kuhn's body of work titled "bordeaux series" in it she has portraits of people in a certain space so her cover is just the blank space. I really like this because ultimately this is a documentation of these individuals experience in this space. I'm a little nervous about doing all of this in one term and i've never used InDesign so I"m going to be using BookSmart- supposedly an application that helps you not screw up your final book product in blurb. Thats always a good thing!

more to follow soon! I hope to get a lot done this weekend! yay! Also, just filmed my video stuff and it looks awesome! can't wait to get in the editing room!!!!

peace,
Ali

Cathy Cook Response

(Cathy Cook from www.lorineniedecker.org/ 2011Presenters.cfm )


Last week we had a quest artist/filmmaker come into our digital class to talk about filmmaking in the contemporary art world. Cathy Cook, a filmmaker & professor at University of Maryland is doing a collaboration project with our digital class making 3 minute films based on a piece of literature. These pieces will have scores written for them by fellow composition conservatory students.  Cathy Cook brought up many different aspects of filmmaking, focusing on the component of sound within the film and showing us many examples of different ways one could interpret the project. I'm in the advanced section of the class, which gives me the choice to either pass on this project and focus on my overall long term project for this class or give this film a shot and see if I can incorporate it into my larger project goals. I've decided to give this project a shot.
My film will be a 2-3 minute piece that is branching off of one of the bodies of work I'm doing right now with a glowing orb. I'm going to have a contemporary dancer dance with the glowing orb-imprav. So its basically an performance piece made into a film. My original idea does incorporate aspects of contemporary dance and contemporary art into practice so I think this will be a nice component for my show.
When it comes to reflecting on her presence in the classroom I thought she brought up some interesting components of filmmaking that haven't been discussed much in class so far. Most of the components of filmmaking she brought up I've experienced before from previous filmmaking classes from high school (Interlochen arts academy). Though, considering the type of class she was speaking in I thought it was very relevant. 

Guest Lecturer: Debra Brehmer

Debra Brehmer, a Milwaukee artist, art historian, and gallery director came to lawrence yesterday to give a talk on Milwaukee Painter Bernard Gilardi. During Debra's visit, she also took time out of her schedule to do art critiques with myself and some other art students. I found Debra's talk about Bernard Gilardi really interesting, I thought she did a really nice job of describing the work and really engaging with the audience so we shared in her excitement of finding this major collection of work from a never recognized deceased painter. I also thought the work itself was fascinating! All the works had such loaded imagery and were creatively put together with a corky but intellectual sense of humor. All the religious paintings were especially fascinating, but it was nice to see in the lecture some of his other work to see how his humor and style was a common thread.

Another major aspect of her visit I really enjoyed was when she took time with me to do an art critique of my work for my senior show (May, 2012). I had about 12 prints I showed her with an artist statement and her comments and suggestions were very encouraging and enlightening. For instance, she said that my concept and this body of work could really go somewhere and she thought I was using the nude figure in the landscape in a new way that was worth exploring. She found the more abstract images more interesting and powerful- which I agree with her about. She also said she really liked the water, meadow, and woods combination, and could be a strong triptic. She said my work reminded her of the artists "Eiko and Koma". I looked them up after the critique and they are modern dance performance artists. They are well know for their "dance dramas" which just includes the two of them in the performances. Their performances seem very primitive and raw to me. I like it, I think i'm going to look farther into their works.

If you're interested in seeing one of their performances, here it is!



If your interested in seeing Debra's portrait gallery here's the link. seems really cool, I definitely want to visit!
http://portraitsocietygallery.wordpress.com/