Response to Aesthetics of video

I think this passage was really well written because it was clear and concise. In addition, I like how the authors included movie titles and pictures as examples to explain the topics addressed in the passage because it allowed me to really visualize and grasp the concepts that they were trying to get across. Likewise, I also this article because I learned a few things that I wasn't really aware of until reading this passage. For instance, I never really paid attention to the importance of camera framing and the fourth wall concept. Today I came across J.Cole's new video for his song "Crooked Smile" and I think this video embodied a lot of the concepts discussed in this passage, like camera framing, angles, and being a visual participant instead of being shown a specific scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzzMOMkjm8A

Response to On ***** Media

I thought the bit about Mathew Brady’s documentary Civil War photographs brought up a powerful point. He certainly wasn’t the first person to attempt to capture the aspects of war, but he was different in that his work revealed the realistic, raw side that had long been ignored. While other portrayals expressed glory, heroism, triumph and victory, Brady’s expressed defeat, death and austerity. Generally, many people (today) would agree that the latter are common feelings associated with war, so Brady was successful in using “the camera’s eye to create new mythos;” his work is iconic. It’s interesting how multimedia ties together in that they all are means of communicating something; a feeling, an idea, anything—it’s a language.

http://www.ubu.com/film/rimmer_pizza.html

The video I chose is a compilation of selected moments from eight months of filming the street life outside of a Manhattan pizza parlor. I chose it because the artist is able to capture the mood of an urban setting by filming interactions that bring life to the concrete sidewalks

Response to Video and Intermedia

I really liked how Foster described intermedia as “more a question of finding means of motorizing ideas and expectations in different areas of activity.” I agree that a major focus isn’t exactly the idea themselves, but how they are expressed. It’s interesting how he relates being intermedia to being political. In a way you really are manipulating your audience to feel or do something, and without that the work has no influence—its “powerless,” Foster writes. Video has an extensive amount of influence because it all feels real, i.e. the attitudes conveyed. Intermedia explains how video and writing are similar in that they both express ideas that delineate the extension of one’s self. People have ideas that will always associate with being political and partisan.

Foster said real art “is left an open question.” I found this clip interesting and relevant to the latter statement.

 http://www.ubu.com/film/mitry_pacific.html

The “disclaimer” at the beginning says that the video is not a documentary, but an “attempt to create an atmosphere by associating visual impressions and familiar sounds intimately mingled with a musical score.” This very much reminds me of what intermedia means. The description even states it is a “poetic documentary.” Some of my observations include: instead of the sound of a lazy, slow, chug when a train starts, you hear low brass that kind of conveys a “waddle” that equates to the chug. As the train speeds up and gains momentum, so does the music; it becomes much lighter, using more woodwinds. The clip employed personification quite well with these techniques.

William Kentridge is coming to town!

World renowned artist William Kentridge arrives at UR this week. There will be a lunch time screening at Sage Art Center to screen William Kentridge's work and process: Tuesday, September 16th 12:30-1:15pm Sage Art Center Blackroom (downstairs) We'll watch a documentary about him and talk about the opportunites coming up this week for you to view his work and interact with the artist. Free and open to all. Here are a few links to his work.

Art21

Soho Feeds the Poor

Automatic Writing

Kentridge Documentary

Sage Open Hours

Mon-Thur: 8am-Midnight Fri/Sat: Noon-8am Sunday: 2pm-Midnight This classroom is open and available to you whenever classes are not in session. If a class if using the room please respectfully ask the teacher if you can use one of the computers. Make sure you are using headphone and don't distract from their lectures.

On Media: Media Links

SOUR / 日々の音色 (Hibi no Neiro) MV from Magico Nakamura on Vimeo.

David Rokeby's work plays with the boundary's of art and surveillance, video and programing, high art and low art. Baldassari's I will not make anymore boring art. 1971

review of On **** Media

In the article, Hovagimyan arrayed multimedia, cross media and hybrid media, radio, telegraph, and so on. He started with painting, the oldest media art. In ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptians pursued Immortality by preserving their dead body. In the book, “What is Cinema”, Bazin held a point of Mummy Complex, meaning human beings are all trying to pursue immortality by preserving their perspective. This is the sin of painting, and it is photograph relieve painting from the sin.  There are minimum of human interruption between the preserving processes of photography, the photo was taken by just one click. However, in the article On **** Media, the author has an opinion that opposes Bazin. He thinks painting as a language, a communication rather than a preserving process. He claims that the procedures of photography (lightening and staging) distributing on the mess media are a way to see the art of media.

Later in the article, Hovagimyan asserts the heart of motion picture is the blurred line between recorded and reproduced. Later on, the economic use of time in filming becomes the start of multimedia art. In summery, the construction/deconstruction process of an image creates the basis of multimedia art. Personally, I think multimedia art is the intergrade emotion expression of an image that can only be down with the existing of digital devices.  I agree with what Hovagimyan stated about the multimedia basis.  He used silence cinema as an example to explain cross media and hybrid media.  Film is defiantly the best presentation of multimedia art, because film is from life but more than life. Every video is contrasted by individual images and bit of sound; the sound and image roll together and in a certain speed that created an illation of motion pictures. The beautiful illation is a reproduce of life, but more than life because of the economic use of time in structure of the story.  As a result, film language is the essential subject of multimedia art, and the construction/deconstruction process of an image creates the basis of multimedia art.

In his article, Hovagimyan explains how he thinks that people are culturally entering a, what he calls, "post media" information environment. He touches base on the various forms of media, such as painting, photography, radio and film and then elaborates on what each of them have to offer. Hovagimyan mentions that as technology has advanced art has changed. An example that he used was how people viewed paintings before and after photography came about. Before photography people looked at paintings how the artist depicted them. They were only able to see the artist's view of whatever the painting was. Hovagimyan used the depiction of war paintings and how people saw them as glorious battles because that's how the artist painted them to be. Once photography came along there was no longer this sense of fantasy but rather truth. A photo captures an actual image or scene that happens in the world. A photo of war would show exactly what it is and what goes on. Once people were able to see the truth they no longer were infatuated with the "false" images they had priorly seen.

Once people were able to see the truth through pictures technology sort of accelerated to help people capture the ultimate truth. From paintings to photography and from photography to film. Film was able to capture a motion picture and then evolved into capturing a motion picture with sounds which by its description tells you its beyond just a picture. With other advances in technology like the internet the people that are capturing these "truths" are able to reproduce and communicate their message to people across the globe which is what Hovagimyan is trying to explain when he uses the term "post media". People are able to use this advancement in technology to express themselves and communicate that expression with the rest of the world. They can now depict anything that happens in their lives in just about any way, whether through  a painting, sound recording, video recording, photo, etc. and then share it with millions of people creating a what Hovagimyan calls a "'meta-language' of New Media discourse."

On Media Response

In his essay, "On Media", Hovagimyan says that he believes we are moving into a "Post Media" information environment. He uses painting and photography as an example, stating that, “One could no longer stand in front of a heroic painting of soldiers and generals and fantasize about the glory of battle, or rather one could compare the actuality of war by looking at a photograph”. He goes on to explain that because paintings use a symbolic language that is representational it simply cannot compare with the fact that photography and pictures give the viewer information. What I think he is trying to say here is that the advent of technology changes the ideologies of art and the characteristics of art itself. This is because it allows the viewer to better connect and better understand the piece.

Take news for example, and look at how far news has come. In the past, it used to be that news traveled by word of mouth, and thus was spread from person to person, often very slowly. Then came along print and newspapers, allowing uniformity of distributing the news. This allowed widespread news distribution at a much faster rate. Then came along radio and television, making news traveling even faster than it had before. Now it was instant. When some breaking news story happened, the public knew almost instantly. Now where is news media? A lot of it has taken to social networks. Facebook, twitter, reddit, and other social media websites allow for instantaneous news transfer, and it is often times person to person or person to persons. Not only does social media allows for instant news travel, but it also allows for people to connect, relate, debate, and challenge each other on the information given in whatever news may be the subject.

Hovagimyan states that, “All of these threads of media create a meta-language of New media discourse that I believe is the current climate of arts”.  He goes on to state that, “The new cultural mythos is a mapping out of human society that is extended into its technology and in a sustained symbiosis with that technos”.

What Hovagimyan says relates well with my point about news changing. This is due to the fact that technology has driven both art and news mediums. Technology challenges us as a society to better ourselves and to find new ways of connecting with one another. This is what I believe Hovagimyan means when he coined the term “Post Media”.

Response to On ****Media

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, there's been a meteoric rise in the presence of technology in every sector of our lives. Art is no exception, and it's interesting to see how dramatically the face of the arts have changed in recent decades to meet the demands of an increasingly tech-savvy world. 

Drawing from "On ****Media," I found one aspect of contemporary media art especially striking. With the advent of ever-improving recording technology, the human race has approached a mastery of mimesis. Whereas a still-life painting was the best an 18th century artist could hope for, today we have elaborate cameras and sound recording equipment that can capture the experience of reality with uncanny detail and accuracy. Movies, shot on 70mm film and projected onto an IMAX screen, appear startlingly real and even hyper-real, creating a reality so fine-grained and detailed it almost and sometimes does trump the acuity of actual life. 

Driven by technology rather than purely human devices, the general structure of art has changed. A painter paints what he sees through the aesthetic filter of his mind. A filmmaker, on the other hand, engages the world more actively and corporeally because he has access to a mimetic apparatus separate from himself (i.e. the film camera). With the painter, art and reproduction are one and the same, stemming from the artist himself. With the filmmaker, reproduction is a function of the technology, moving art relatively behind-the-scenes to the rearrangement, selection, and manipulation of the footage, which the artist himself doesn't fundamentally create. As artistic tools, the film camera and its contemporaries are thus vital to their respective art forms in unprecedented ways, surpassing the relationship a brush has to the painter or a chisel to the sculptor. 

Sometimes, mimesis breaks down altogether to become pure sampling, as when rap artists borrow from past songs or YouTube users remix footage to create montages or music videos. This represents a key shift in the appearance of art in the Internet age. Two centuries ago, if you created an artwork, it was yours (questions of intellectual property can be left for another discussion). Now, things are more ambiguous. We live in a collage world, one so completely interconnected by media that it's becoming more and more difficult to separate an artwork from its environment. The Internet immortalizes any and everything it receives, allowing easy access to virtually anything you want to find. The advent of recording technology ensures any particular song can be duplicated and mass distributed without changing any aspect of the original. As a result of all this, our notions of artistic ownership and copyright have shifted drastically over the years, just one of many changes in the artistic sphere brought on by the recent surges in technological innovation.

Art in a techie world. It's fascinating stuff.

Response to On*****Media

The article introduces how different modern technologies are able to capture different pictures from different angles of the real life. Firstly, Hovagimyan talked about how different of a war is presented in people’s perspective by using painting and photography. Painting shows war to people in a form of colorful recreate as the painter can choose whatever forms they like to present the war, heroic, historic or bloodiness etc. However, different from painting, photography cannot be created or modified. It shows to people a realistic scene, which actually happened in the real life. In my opinion, the most significant difference between painting and photography is the way of their present. Painting can transfer a sense of emotion or feeling towards the audiences by the painter. It means the audiences are able to tell the thoughts of the painter.  However; photography is more straightforward to the audience, so the audiences are quite hard to approach the photographer.

With more advance mediums are developed, older mediums are being occupied. Instead of getting to know the world through painting or photography, nowadays we have film, video, TV etc. Those new medium present to audiences not only sound but also information, thus they can present more vivid scene for the audiences. I like new techniques; therefore I quite appreciate the born of the new mediums.

In addition, advance mediums are able to edit the scenes that they capture, such as the technique of filmmaking.  I remember one of the film techniques is called “flashback” which is using the last scene as the beginning and the first scene as the ending. One of the famous “flashback” films I familiar with is called Memento. Memento is a complex and skillful edited film, which has two parallel story lines. One shows up by using flashback in color section and the other appears by using narration in black and white section. The audiences have already known who died at the beginning and the scenes are flashback to track and figure out who is the killer. This is a very technical skill used in the film to capture people’s eyes. I really recommend to take a look at this film. 

Response to On ***** Media

                I enjoyed the piece, but was surprised by the author’s weighted importance on linguistics and language. I, myself, am a visual person. To me, displaying a statement in graphics with bright, bold letters can have more of an effect than the wording of the verbalization. Therefore, I liked the idea of cross media and hybrid media in the early 20^th century, as well as the TV commercial more recently. This part of media interests me the most because I believe even a 30 second visual clip can be powerful. One example of this is a recent article I read with a truly powerful video with the message ‘giving is the best communication’ http://gawker.com/this-three-minute-commercial-puts-full-length-hollywood-1309506149. The article discussed how this three minute Thai commercial was more powerful than a detailed Hollywood movie or the likes. I think this really captures the author’s discussion of commercials defining consumer culture and global media. I agree with that commercials carry globalized messages and have the ability to impact a large group. 

                I also found the notion of “fool[ing] the eye” intriguing because I think it relates well to the project we are currently working on in class (Page 2). What is the difference between using a YouTube video that was taped live and true live footage? I believe it has to do with the author and the editing. The person using their own live footage taped it the way they want it to be. They know how it was edited- or even if it is raw footage. The videographer knows his or her own clips best. Fooling the eye refers to reproducing reality, so that the viewer cannot notice the difference between the original and the copy. I believe this is possible because technology is advancing to make reproduction more possible. In addition, I believe the tech-savvy generation is less aware of their eyes being tricked because we are used to it. With these factors under consideration, the constructed reality is limitless via media.

Response to Hovagimyan's On ***** Media

            In his essay, “On Media,” Hovagimyan posits the idea that society is entering an era of what he calls ‘post-media.’ This essentially means that the traditional ways of thinking about and interacting with media are transforming into something entirely different than what they have been. In the modern world, this process is spurred on and greatly influenced by technology. Because artwork and discourse on artwork are so easily distributed with computer technology, it has the potential to reach more people than ever before. But because of the way in which it is distributed, art is becoming less and less stationary and more variable. It is very easy for other artists to download work that they find on the internet and then manipulate that work to become their own, to make a different statement or social commentary, or simply because they were inspired by the original work and want to show the world their take on it.

            Hovagimyan examines the historical transitions between different types of media as a sort of precursor of what he believes is in the process of happening now. As more and more advanced forms of media become invented, the older ones dramatically change in their presentation and function. The major example he gives of this is the nature of paintings before and after the advent of photography. While paintings traditionally were used to depict reality – battle scenes, aristocratic families, the streets of Paris in the mid 1800s – after photography was invented, it was forced to give this up. Painting had no way of fully capturing the detail and authenticity of the world that photography so effortlessly achieved. Because of this, it became a much more abstract form of art, released from the need to represent reality. We are now in a similar state of flux – the older forms of media cannot keep up with the rushing pace of the information age. Even film, the most “real” of the mediums, must adapt to keep up with what internet culture requires.

            The film I found on UbuWeb this week is a perfect example of the point I made in the first paragraph. It is focused on a famous English graffiti artist, Banksy. In the video, it focuses on a large-scale project he did regarding Paris Hilton and her utter ridiculousness. He took her debut album and switched out the CDs in store with those that he had made with remixes of her songs that commented on the purpose (or lack thereof) of her fame and her life in general. He took her art and manipulated it to make it his own and to make a point about her role in pop culture.

http://www.ubu.com/film/banksy.html

Response to On ***** Media

Hovagimyan talks about how he thinks we, as a culture, are moving into a "post media" environment. He explores the evolution of media in the form of paintings, photography, radio, and film. He talks about how photography can change peoples thoughts and how the radio could be used as a political weapon. However, art is changing. He believes that we are putting more stock into the technological aspect art rather than the art itself. I agree with Havagimyan when he makes this point. Most popular movies nowadays are produced with extremely large budgets just to dazzle the audience. I believe that people have to consciously search for art that has meaning and thought inducing quality. I still have hope for our media culture because if you look hard enough, you can find art that is truly artistic for the sake of being meaningful. Even though artists will have to use "computer algorithms" to compete, they can still put their own unique touch on it. Innovations in technology will continue to come and this will result in new and exciting ways to express one self.