Memphis College of Art's own Cinema Six is proud to present to the public an extravagant digital display of awesome. Join Stephen, Jorge, Kaitlyn, Amanda, Aimee, and Jill Wissmiller for a two hour event that will knock your socks off. If you enjoy art and new age media stop in and play with our digital work. Best of all this event is free!
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Isadora Experiments
Working with Isadora has taken some getting used too. It is interesting that with this software there is no need for render time. Resulting in the creation of media at the speed of thought. I love the amount of actors that we are given with Isadora's library of effects. I am a bit confused about some of the later blending modes though. One of the things that I wanted to do was to place a fire video shot on black overlaid on another video. I couldn't just set the layer blending modes to Regular.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Self Critique
1, Title of your project.
- Basics in Motion
2, Main idea you started with.
- Originally my idea dealt with the imagery of antiquated entertainment (fire) meeting and being interacted with in context of the modern age.
3, Source of the idea and its importance to you
- Once the gears got turning and I figured out that I would be working with a circular device, that utilized persistence of vision, creating a zoetrope was the natural next step. I thought about my childhood and this old night light I had that was powered by heat. I thought about zoetropes in historical context, how they were considered toys for adults. As an adult I find it hard to play with simple toys, like a yoyo for instance, because of the expectations that we set on ourselves. I saw this experience as an opportunity to explore what people consider child's play things and what merits a more in depth look.
4, Key emotion or experience that you want your audience to experience.
- I want my audience to feel free to play and to not be limited by what they perceive as adult like behavior.
5, Theme or premise of the piece
- I want a person to pick up my zoetropes and have that connection to being young and having an interesting toy that is both simple and fun to use.
6, Problem areas, include notes on your own and others suggestions for improvements. What can be done to resolve/improve problem areas.
- One of the biggest problems that these final results have is that they are too small. Honestly they look like mockups for real zoetropes. Persistence of vision is not utilized in the way that I had hoped. A way to resolve these issues would be to make the zoetropes double or triple the size to make them work more effectively.
7, Any additional journal-type notes.
- Frame by frame has left me with an extreme desire to get back to working behind a camera. I guess I took this assignment as a challenge to make something more crafted than my usual works. I love working with my hands but building three dimensional paper objects is not my forte.
8, Exhibition strategy, list specific festivals and venues.
- This project was very crafty. I think that pursuing this as an artistic venture would work best as a model for selling these zoetropes. I feel like there is a very nit-ch market for objects created by hand by small time artists. Once you get the template down and you get a size that works with the zoetrope then these things can be made for a consumer setting. One place that I know would help me distribute these sort of crafts would be Etsy.com. This webpage is all about handcrafted and specialty items. I think that there is potential to create stock and turn a profit with these "toys" that are not made anymore. Another great place to take this sort of thing would be The Frisco Festival in Northwest Arkansas. This festival focuses on one of a kind crafted goods sold by local artists who use the money they raise to tone their craft. Since the opening of the Crystal Bridges, the local art museum, Northwest Arkansas has become quite a center for arts and people who want to be recognized as artist.
- Basics in Motion
2, Main idea you started with.
- Originally my idea dealt with the imagery of antiquated entertainment (fire) meeting and being interacted with in context of the modern age.
3, Source of the idea and its importance to you
- Once the gears got turning and I figured out that I would be working with a circular device, that utilized persistence of vision, creating a zoetrope was the natural next step. I thought about my childhood and this old night light I had that was powered by heat. I thought about zoetropes in historical context, how they were considered toys for adults. As an adult I find it hard to play with simple toys, like a yoyo for instance, because of the expectations that we set on ourselves. I saw this experience as an opportunity to explore what people consider child's play things and what merits a more in depth look.
4, Key emotion or experience that you want your audience to experience.
- I want my audience to feel free to play and to not be limited by what they perceive as adult like behavior.
5, Theme or premise of the piece
- I want a person to pick up my zoetropes and have that connection to being young and having an interesting toy that is both simple and fun to use.
6, Problem areas, include notes on your own and others suggestions for improvements. What can be done to resolve/improve problem areas.
- One of the biggest problems that these final results have is that they are too small. Honestly they look like mockups for real zoetropes. Persistence of vision is not utilized in the way that I had hoped. A way to resolve these issues would be to make the zoetropes double or triple the size to make them work more effectively.
7, Any additional journal-type notes.
- Frame by frame has left me with an extreme desire to get back to working behind a camera. I guess I took this assignment as a challenge to make something more crafted than my usual works. I love working with my hands but building three dimensional paper objects is not my forte.
8, Exhibition strategy, list specific festivals and venues.
- This project was very crafty. I think that pursuing this as an artistic venture would work best as a model for selling these zoetropes. I feel like there is a very nit-ch market for objects created by hand by small time artists. Once you get the template down and you get a size that works with the zoetrope then these things can be made for a consumer setting. One place that I know would help me distribute these sort of crafts would be Etsy.com. This webpage is all about handcrafted and specialty items. I think that there is potential to create stock and turn a profit with these "toys" that are not made anymore. Another great place to take this sort of thing would be The Frisco Festival in Northwest Arkansas. This festival focuses on one of a kind crafted goods sold by local artists who use the money they raise to tone their craft. Since the opening of the Crystal Bridges, the local art museum, Northwest Arkansas has become quite a center for arts and people who want to be recognized as artist.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Experimentation failure
Since the last class I built and tested a prototype of what I wanted to make. Overall I feel that the prototype was a failure because it does not work as a zoetrope. Persistence of Vision is not working for my project as I had hoped. I guess today will tell where my direction is now.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Write up for being 50% done
When I unpackaged the idea that i was dealing with I found that I was interested by the idea of motion. What makes us move how we move and what that motion does to us. The Zoetrope is an optical illusion reliant on persistence of vision. So thinking about all of these things and where I was coming from before with fire got me to think about the motions of the three things that humans need to survive, shelter, food, and water. The shelter approach has remained on of the more steady images that I want to use in this project. The idea of hearth and watching a campfire as a unit has always had a mystical quality to it. When considering water and food things always get a little confusing to me. What represents food? How do i convey the idea of water as an essential part of human survival? For food I considered on of the more used products that countries try and secure when starting up, I though of wheat. Bread is basically an image I have strong connotations too when thinking of feeding people or sustaining them. Wheat blowing in a gentile breeze seems like the natural manifestation of it in my quest for reels. Water is the next issue to tackle that I had to think about. The best thing that I was able to come up with the process of water growing grain. Showing the sprouting of a plant speaks a lot about human survival I think.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tripod, Shutter-release Cable, Lighter Fluid
Since I want to play with the imagery of fire I chose to light some shit on fire. I had some lighter fluid lying around and some things that I din't mind setting fire too. Probably the most interesting results came from The wood structure I used, I saw in the results that fire would warp around things that weren't burning, creating an effect on the fire that seemed to give it the look reminiscent of breath. I felt that the way I was moving with the project could be better. I decided to change from a sort of hand crank design and drew inspiration from an old night light that I used to have. I remember it had sliced vents on the top in sort of a propeller configuration so it would use the heat from the light bulb to power the rest of the structure. The rising heat through the vents created motion, I think that having a sort of artificial fire powering the image of a fire to be an interesting concept. Heat is essential to both but one has to do with combustion while the other has to do with illumination. I have decided to create a basic rig for different slide collections to go into. These slides will have to do with the basic elements that are essential to human survival. I will make a slide set that has to do with shelter, for this one I want to use the imagery of fire to represent warmth and hearth. The second will represent food, for this set I want to use the imagery of a deer running. The third set will have to do with water, this set is the least developed of the bunch. Im not sure whether I should represent it with the imagery of a boat or the imagery of the actual consumption of water. My timeline for completion would probably no more than two weeks. I would spend the first week working out the logistics of getting the propeller shape at the top of the slide cylinders to work properly within the basic structure. The next week would be spent perfecting the imagery. I want to draw the images by hand using pen, pencil, and watercolors. The overall construction of the main housing structure would be made out of wooden dowels each filled with a translucent paper material, like wax paper, tracing paper, or maybe rice paper. The actual slides would be made from the same materials from above, perhaps something fully see through like cellophane or transparency paper. I think the most difficult part of this project will be figuring out the motion aspect of the night light and getting the correct look to the slides that I want to accompany it.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Concepts to be explored
This assignment is pretty interesting, I like the idea of thinking about cinema as individual frames and how the audience approaches them. I have always played with different sorts of stop motion and have gotten some interesting results. This time around though I feel like my work will be coming from a more informed perspective.
The first idea I have is to make a large box, that is like a peep show. The box will be self contained with a light source beside the peep slot to illuminate the images passing by. I want the mechanism to be powered by a hand crank on the side of the box. I have been thinking about the mechanics of getting images to slide past the peep slot and I want to stick with a basic mount that will be made of a bicycle tire. The tire will be connected to the crank with a bike chain and the viewer will get to experiment with different speeds and how the image is effected by the amount of force put into turning the wheel. The image that will be portrayed is something that I am still working through. I want to play with the idea of the origins of entertainment, when we were all cave dwellers who would sit around a fire and tell stories, This idea led me to an image of modern entertainment burning. So some of the things that I want to capture and transfer for this model could be a number of things, eg. Burning Dvd Boxes, Burning a Television or computer, burning an Mp3 player, etc.
The second idea I have been playing with is making a Viewfinder slide show. These toys were not always just for children, often in the past they were reserved for adults to enjoy sights from far away places in futuristic 3D. Today we find these toys in the bargain bind, people have turned a cold shoulder to these interesting machines. I wanted to approach this very seriously, giving the view finders subject matter a sense of importance. I think I can achieve a number of ways. First I could compile "Seven Wonders of Memphis" much in the style of the "Ancient Wonders of the World." This module has been used to sell an eclectic mixture of the best an area has to offer for many years. Since the days of Worlds Fairs. Another interesting subject matter to explore would be an alternative short narrative. Much like the makers of religious Viewfinder slides I would like to make the anti-christs slide set, or the slide set of a good capitalist. Over all I see Viewfinders as an interesting and powerful model for conveying images, so again like the first this is about figuring out an engaging and powerful narrative to insert.
The final concept that would be interesting to explore would be an analogue collage animation made on an animation stand. I have always loved the way older collage animations look, like Fantastic Planet, so the aesthetic would be very homemade. As for subject matter, I would like to avoid a narrative and perhaps try and capture the essence of Fear. Animation is a wonderful medium to work in because as an artist you are allowed to be as abstract as you want, without fear of pulling the audience from the suspended state of disbelief. This being said, capturing the essence of something, like Fear, would work great within animation because of the limitless potential for abstraction.
The first idea I have is to make a large box, that is like a peep show. The box will be self contained with a light source beside the peep slot to illuminate the images passing by. I want the mechanism to be powered by a hand crank on the side of the box. I have been thinking about the mechanics of getting images to slide past the peep slot and I want to stick with a basic mount that will be made of a bicycle tire. The tire will be connected to the crank with a bike chain and the viewer will get to experiment with different speeds and how the image is effected by the amount of force put into turning the wheel. The image that will be portrayed is something that I am still working through. I want to play with the idea of the origins of entertainment, when we were all cave dwellers who would sit around a fire and tell stories, This idea led me to an image of modern entertainment burning. So some of the things that I want to capture and transfer for this model could be a number of things, eg. Burning Dvd Boxes, Burning a Television or computer, burning an Mp3 player, etc.
The second idea I have been playing with is making a Viewfinder slide show. These toys were not always just for children, often in the past they were reserved for adults to enjoy sights from far away places in futuristic 3D. Today we find these toys in the bargain bind, people have turned a cold shoulder to these interesting machines. I wanted to approach this very seriously, giving the view finders subject matter a sense of importance. I think I can achieve a number of ways. First I could compile "Seven Wonders of Memphis" much in the style of the "Ancient Wonders of the World." This module has been used to sell an eclectic mixture of the best an area has to offer for many years. Since the days of Worlds Fairs. Another interesting subject matter to explore would be an alternative short narrative. Much like the makers of religious Viewfinder slides I would like to make the anti-christs slide set, or the slide set of a good capitalist. Over all I see Viewfinders as an interesting and powerful model for conveying images, so again like the first this is about figuring out an engaging and powerful narrative to insert.
The final concept that would be interesting to explore would be an analogue collage animation made on an animation stand. I have always loved the way older collage animations look, like Fantastic Planet, so the aesthetic would be very homemade. As for subject matter, I would like to avoid a narrative and perhaps try and capture the essence of Fear. Animation is a wonderful medium to work in because as an artist you are allowed to be as abstract as you want, without fear of pulling the audience from the suspended state of disbelief. This being said, capturing the essence of something, like Fear, would work great within animation because of the limitless potential for abstraction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)