Medium is the Message - Ekin Erkan

"The medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action by controlling and conveying content. Artists's mediums used to convey particular aesthetic messages have grown rather intellectualized and progressed from simply representational art of romanticism and impressionism recently, heralding power to modernism and postmodernism's progression in medium manipulation. Thus, as as the content of the movie is always a novel, play, or opera, it is the effect of the movie's medium form that is not related to its program content, but rather to the medium itself. An example of this evolution in a medium's use is best exemplified by video art, but has been less radically exemplified by reactionary art movements in the early twentieth century. Fore example, the Dutch art movement De Stijl's utopian program resulted as a reaction of Art Nouvea's medium of decorative excess, with De Stijl creating a universal aesthetic favoring a simple and logical style posited on geometry (construction and function), which Theo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrain considered more relevant to their modern aesthetic culture. De Stijl utilized a function of medium - with strong asymmetrically, predominance in pure primary color usage with blacks and whites, and non-objective forms/lines. In doing so, De Stijl achieved the crux of modernism that, to quote art historian Rosalind Krauss regarding Piet Mondrian, was effectively able "to represent properties of materials or perception while also resopnding to a higher spiritual call."
By combining a variety of mediums, Pipilotti Rist has experimented with electronic media production in video installations of the early 1990s. Her video aesthetic combines various television and advertising cues, with thematic influence from Name June Paik's hyper-kinetic aesthetic. Aesthetically, Rists's particular medium of video art exploits pop culture's fantastical elements, taking culture's foundational investment with feminity and transmuting it into visual weaponary, well exemplified by "I'm a Victim of This Song."

Public Domain Music

This is just the start of this post. I'll be adding to it as my friends get back to me with more resources. Enjoy!

http://www.mobygratis.com

Check out this site for free music downloads for student filmmakers. Seems like a great resource.

http://triplescoopmusic.com/BrowseMusic.aspx

This is a much more commercial site. If you're looking for more pop/rock songs. You will have to pay for these.

https://soundcloud.com

Soundcloud also has a bunch of free downloads. Although, I'm not sure of the quality.

http://audiojungle.net

https://archive.org

This site is for video stock footage... probably not appropriate for this class, but cool none the less.

http://dissolve.com

Performance Piece "Spinning Places"(Improved) by Agnes

Spinning Places (Improved) from Agnes Xinyi Chen on Vimeo.


Thanks everyone for those great comments on this performance piece:) I took away the background music and made adjustments to the titles and transitions.

Documentary, the means of presenting

I feel I must say something about those poetic artisans. They are so interesting. Each of them is a combination of paradoxes. They are such amusing cranks that they design and present their brilliant thoughts and emotions with sincerest intention while in a most confusing way. Let’s take a look of some examples mentioned in the article:

If Laszlo Moholy’s Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930) (http://youtu.be/e0x730uP2yI) is an innocent piece filled with boyish naughty, then Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y.( http://youtu.be/ztxuCv5-4D4), it’s even difficult for me to find a proper word to describe. If there’s a word in English that can ever represent that there’s a person with a hole inside his brain, that’s it. Although I found that piece was surprisingly acceptable and entertaining to me, I could prevent myself from shaking my heads with laughs during the process. If we set B,W,G as a ‘romantic’, ‘gentle’ and ‘soft’ visual poetry, then Thompson’s N.Y.,N.Y is definitely strange, imaginary and with signs of mental/physical disorder, either brain or eye problem. This group of people is so amazingly awkward that they refuse to answer, deny the coherence and destroy the normal boundary of our daily world honestly and sincerely.

Well, let’s back to our common world.

Other types of documentary pay obviously much more attention on answering questions and making sense of one object, which seem more comfortable to me. I believe that ART do is needed by our society because it’s one of the most powerful means we have to present as well as observe. It opens a chance for public to pull their blinded and limited focus and attention to something important or valuable according to artisans. In this sense, artisans are also social reformers, since there do have lots of gaps in our society to take care, like distinguish in wealth, marginal groups, inequality, environment…

Here are three good examples I love:

A touch of sin(2013)

Microcosmos(1996)

The cove(2009)

Intro to Documentary Response

Documentary, as a genre, is a simple enough concept to grasp. But the way in which a story is documented is no different in this genre than when it is being created from scratch. The variety of methods available when recording actual event have a profound effect on how they are viewed by the audience. For instance, a simple and short documentary, Toxic Toys looks at a small business dealing with a problem in their industry that put their customers at risk. The set up is simple, with only one interview, in the store, merchandise surrounding the speaker. The close, personal nature helps create this atmosphere of trust. Most documentaries include these interviews, they are the bread and butter of news stations that go to the streets and catch action as it's happening, but it is still just one way in which a documentary is made. In the internet savvy, graphic art inspired modern world, a different approach might be more fitting. The Innovation of Loneliness addresses the effects of our social media consumed world in a way those consumed with social media would be drawn to. The target audience is likely to respond more favorably to the bright colors and fun infographics that older viewers who would take less interest in the subject to begin with. I just find it completely astounding the manner in which the  least 'Hollywood' genre in film can still be glamorous and tell a damn good story. That being said, documentaries that try to take on Hollywood are in a different grouping entirely. March of the for Penguins, for example, take a big name narrator and presents the lives of these arctic birds so melodramatically as to be somewhat of drama. Compare this to the much less popular documentaries not released nationwide in theaters where there lacks this overt attempt to depict the animals as if they were characters on a primetime tv show vying for love and riches. I think from this more commercial form blossomed mockumentaries which have the great aspects of both words while allowing for greater creativity of the filmmakers' part.  

Introduction to Documentary

I love documentaries.  They truly sparked my interest in film, and I value the ability to display a real story or event in an interesting and visually stimulating way.  I've never heard of the different types of documentaries, but I feel like I could've similarly separated them before.  I definitely find that expository, participatory, and observatory style of documentaries to be most popular and available today.

For example, many expository documentaries have been labeled "shockumentaries".  The main point of these is to make people aware of an issue, but usually with a certain bias or persuasion in mind.  Criticism stems from the use of documentary as a medium to make people feel bad or guilty about a certain issue.  Sometimes, like in Food, Inc., fear is instilled in the viewer.  In one scene, a woman who owns a chicken house shows us her chickens, and then we are shown a montage of unhealthy, dying, and dead chickens.  In this scene, very sad music plays, which aims to trigger the emotions of the viewer.  Though these films can sometimes exaggerate the images, they don't hide from the fact that they are biased.  They are filmed with the intent of getting people to think a certain way, and as long as the viewer knows that, they can have a more objective viewing experience.  I find the film Waiting for Superman, a documentary about the poor education system in the US, a more universal film that anyone can understand and advocate for.  Unlike Food, Inc. where many people may feel they can't relate, it shows a glaring problem that affects every child, and involves less personal opinion from the viewer.

Further, I find a relatively new TV show, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, a perfect combination of participatory and observatory.  Chef Anthony Bourdain travels the world and shows the food and cultures of certain areas.  It's participatory in that he has discussions with other chefs, and sometimes goes into their kitchens and immerses himself in the culture in the time that he's there.  It's observatory because we see many images of people cooking and food being prepared, as well as random people going about their daily life in whatever city they're in.  I love this so much because the images are beautiful, which is sometimes rare for documentaries on TV.  Because of this, and the combination of participation and observation, the show is simply beautiful to watch, but is still informative and interesting.
Parts Unknown Clip

Response to Introduction to Documentary

                I read this same excerpt for a class last semester and I’m reminded over and over again that while there can be distinguished six different modes of documentary, they are very rarely independent of one another. That is, almost all documentaries combine modes to tell their story. I’m a little wary of documentary just because it is very easy to skew a situation to fit your own intent in portraying it and somehow it feels dishonest. This is the main criticism levelled against Michael Moore, for example, regarding his film Bowling for Columbine. This documentary explores the extent of gun violence in America and the reasons behind it, as well as trying to come up with solutions for it; as the name of the film indicates, the main tragedy that it focuses on is the shooting at Columbine High School. The reason this movie is criticized as being biased is Moore’s treatment of Charlton Heston, the then-president of the NRA. In a scene where Moore goes to his house and interviews him, it doesn’t seem like Heston had given consent, and Moore then suggests that Heston is upset because he is defensive of his actions (namely, still being pro-gun even after the shootings). There is little acknowledgment that Heston is old, possibly senile, and uncomfortable with a filmmaker coming to his home. This is not to say that Heston is entirely guiltless, of course – but painting all pro-gun people as evil isn’t exactly fair either.

                Most documentaries that I’ve seen have fallen under the general category of expository/participatory mode – that is, there is a voice-of-god or voice-of-authority narration with images that “illustrate, illuminate, evoke, or act in counterpoint to what is said” (107). For example: Bowling for Columbine, Food, Inc., and Blackfish. Another mode of documentary that I find fascinating, however, is the reflexive documentary. One that comes to mind is another film we watched in the same class last semester, the 1989 short film Ilha das Flores (Isle of Flowers), directed by Jorge Furtado. The film tracks the story of a tomato from the farm to someone’s house. What I found really interesting about Ilha das Flores is that it makes political commentary but in a very roundabout way, precisely because it flouts the conventions of most documentaries that make social commentary. The film comments on the poverty of the families living on the Isle of Flowers – they are so poor that their food comes from the rejected pig food, which is literally garbage from nearby areas. But it does so by talking about, for example, the biology of human beings, the meaning of a “second”, the making of perfume, and other seemingly unrelated things that come together to define “freedom”, juxtaposed with shots of garbagemen and a landfill. I think Ilha das Flores makes much more striking commentary on poverty because of its seeming lack of direction, because the unstructured-ness of it suggests a sort of authenticity that somehow, films like Bowling for Columbine don’t.