Experimental Film

My project is an experimental film called A Schizophrenic Man on PCP.  A schizophrenic guy gets his own super power and fights the evil. In the video, I experimented some fun functions that final cut express provides.

pcp pills

Artistic Statement

As a psychology major, I'm really into psychological drugs and diseases. I have always wondered what would happen if a delusional schizophrenic patient takes some sort of hallucinogens. Schizophrenia itself creates hallucinations for the patients already and it gives the patient credible delusions, with the vivid hallucination that PCP brings maybe the patient will have super power.

My YouTube Channel

From one to more than a thousand

complexity of rhizome

In A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the comparison between writing and botanical roots made me think that human thought process is like a tiny computer system. This idea of rhizome in writing and thinking is kind of beyond my ability to comprehend. However, it did form a image of how our thoughts keep twigging into more and more branches and finally form into a certain types of ideology though the article stated that it's different from ideology. That is how I perceive computer programing: thousands of files are actually the derivative result of one single parent file. In my opinion, this could be similar to all the derivative result of new media like Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMs, and DVDs as stated in Lev Manovich's article New Media From Borges to HTML. Through the development of new media, it gradually forms into this new system of rhizome.

Enjoy this new media art installation

Marina Abramovic-The Mirror of The Public

Before I started the research of Marina Abramovic, I slightly browsed through some of her works. My first impression was that there must be something wrong with this crazy woman. Since has when pain and agony become a form of art? When I saw the video on the article on telegraph.co.uk regarding her earliest work Rhythm 10, I started to understand her better. She said that the reason she was doing all those extreme form of performance is because that she wants to bring people's fear of dying, fear of pain, fear of suffering in front of the public. She symbolized herself as the mirror of the public, which means the audiences can see their own fear of suffering through watching Abramvoic.

Rhythm 10

Another work of her made me realize that this mirror also reflects our desire. In her work Rhythm 0, she was placing herself to the public to let people do whatever they want to do to her.

Rhythm 0

Her relationship with another artist Ulay is also interesting to look. They seem to both appreciate this agony as the form of art. Unfortunately, they parted after their epic walk on the Great Wall of China. In my opinion, the walk symbolizes the end of their chronicle cooperating journey.

The Great Wall Walk

Her most recent piece was in MoMA, NYC.  With Marina sitting in the middle of the room, any audience can choose to sit in front of her for as long as they can. Most of them ended up crying. Maybe through the mirror of this great artist, people got overwhelmed by their own agony. This made me realize that Marina's work truly let people to feel the existence of art itself and to literally relate the audiences to the piece of art.

The Artist Is Present

The Message

the medium message

For some reason I got super annoyed by Marshall McLuhan's nearly unintelligible article The Medium Is the Message. Here's what I get from the article. First, the content of one medium can be thousands of things, like a computer can play music and movies, and can allow you to skype with your family and friends. And the message of the medium is like a grammar, like the message of a computer is processing information in a fast way, thus an extension of human brain. At last, one who cannot tell the difference between the message and the content of a medium is incarcerated in an invisible prison. In contrast, one who can interpret a medium can cause a revolution in this world by the medium. For example, IBM is one of the largest computer, technology and IT corporation in the world instead of  being a office supply making company according to the article. If my understanding is somewhat correct, I assume one has to know the meaning or the message of what they are using and wanting in order to create something valuable with that medium.

All in all, my thesis is that, you have to truly comprehend the meaning of a medium in order to utilize it to the fully extent and to achieve its incisive effect on the human society.

And I found this video about a prisoner of iphone4




necessity of gore

I made this 3 videos to show the relationship between gore and suspense in films. When film industry was not as flourishing as it is today, the suspense and storyline of a horror film were major parts of our viewing experiences. As cinematic technology developed over the past years, now people can make gory scene more convincing than before. A transformation in horror films began from being more suspenseful less gory to majorly gore and less suspense. I put all the videos in my YouTube Channel.

My first video is Bloody Vomiting. I am actually just making fun of the gory content in contemporary horror film showing that besides bloody red gooey stuff, there's nothing left to see.
This is easy to film. All I needed were corn syrup, food color, toilet paper, and canned soup.

My second video is called From Suspense to gore. I'm trying to show the comparison between suspense and gore in films from the past to today.


My third video is called Self-explanation. I was basically explaining my direction and purpose in the two other clips. I was intending to make it look like a pseudo-professional filmmaker interview.

Frank Lewis lecture

The way of documentation is not just about recording in text, photography is a more permeable and collective way of documentation. I was really intrigued when Frank Lewis talked about the idea of Taylorism. According to Lewis, Taylorism was originally set to document every stage of a consecutive movement to achieve better management. For example, it is like we are watching a film frame by frame and then we can discuss or criticize it. In my understanding, Taylor-ism can also be applied to the documentation of history. The comparison between them is pretty obvious, one is documenting all the steps in a single movement, the other is documenting the development through history. Through photograph, we can easily see the actual history back then without imagining it with our own perceptional color, thus it is more permeable, understandable, and fair to view the history of labor-ism through photography. People could  view this history in a clearer way after they organized and lined up the works of all the great photographers like Eugene Smith, Henri Catier Bresson, Robert Frank, etc. Their works was organized like what Lewis said in the lecture, frame by frame, so we can analyze and delve into the development of labor-ism. So this photo essay of history needs effort from collaborative works of artists though they may not know at the time that their work would contribute to the future history analysis when they took those pictures for other purposes.



Pittsburgh Steeler-Eugene Smith


In this lecture, I learnt that photo journalism or photo essay is a permeable and collective way of documentation. It has this Taylorism style that brings us back to the time frame by frame.

Here is a video about the history of management.

Artists, Technology, and Society

In Raymond Williams' article  "The Technology and Society", the relationship between technology and society is entangled and ambiguous in my understanding. From his description of the important role of television in our society,  I can assume that society incites the birth of technology while technology impels the growth of society. Williams mentioned in the article that inventions are accidental throughout the social development. In my opinion, the impact that the new technology brings is inevitable. One can never tell the cause and effect between them, however, the improvement that our technology brings to society is enormous. Since the invention of television, it shortened the distance between human-beings themselves and the world. In addition, our perspectives are always manipulated and altered by the content of televisions. So technology is powerful and the society is gradually overpowered by it. 
                          
                         Here's Daft Punk's television rules the nation.
                         

Also, the development of technology gives many artist more space to explore the world of art. William Wegman utilized the technology of film to create lots of experimenting clips of randomness in life. From the "crooked stick" to that "I own" clip, I can see that Wegman was fully exploring and expressing his own style of art, even though he's more interested in dog pictures.

William Wegman-Hansel und Gretel

Anthony Goicolea's Amphibians is also a good example of experimental film. From his work I can see his interests in multiplication. With the editing technique, he created multiple same characters running around in the same frame in Amphibians.

In general, society stimulates the development of technology, while technology improves society providing more and more space for artists to experiment and create.

The Art of Collage

After reading William S. Burrughs The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin, I got inspired by the idea that not only can you make a collage of pictures or films, texts can also be rearranged and made into something new. As the article stated, "The cut-up method brings writers the collage, which has been used by painters for 50 years," the actual cut-up poem is exactly the art of collage. I found this cut-up poem from blogger Anna Lea's blog, people can grasp the idea of the relationship between cut-up poems and collage.

cut-up poems 4 by Anna Lea

The art of collage relates tightly to the art of found material. The idea brought collage to the modern media level. Bill Morrison's Decasia is an example of transforming random found material into art. Bill Morrison expressed his obsession to melted film by putting pieces of melted film together and transforming the mass into a whole new theatrical  experience. Judging from the entertaining aspect of the movie, I personally think Decasia is a piece of crap. It brought no enjoyment and excitement to me when I saw it, instead it made me want to escape from the theater and take a long drag of smoke to shake off the terrible disturbing image in my head. However, if you look at the film from the perspective of an artist, it actually expressed Morrison's fond for the art of decaying and fully reached its aesthetic purpose for himself. It is a nicely done piece of collage on film.

Because the art of collage involves a large amount of found material, copyright issues are inevitable in modern society. Personally I don't think art could be restrained by any of those commercialized titles like copyright or terms of fair use. However in reality, relative cases in regarding to copyright issues happened all the time. In 2005, a Chinese college student made a parody of the movie The Promise by director Chen Kaige with large amount of actual footage from the film. The parody got popular over the night, it seemed like every Chinese people who had an Internet accessible computer had heard of or seen it. The director ended up suing the student for copyright violation because it actually got more popular than the film. People ended up just watching the parody but not the film to get a sense of The Promise. I think the parody itself should be categorized as an independent piece of art because it was conveying a different idea. However, in the commercialized filed of film in China, it still could not be accepted by professional filmmakers.

Here is the parody of The Promise. ( it is in Chinese, but just get a sense of what it is)


Also I found this super hilarious Friday the 13th Parody on YouTube. It has the original footage of the movie, in addition, the artist has added sitcom laugh soundtrack in it. It is a total comedy now. Enjoy.

Panopticon&The Still Image Reflection

The theme for my project is Paranormal Universe. I got inspred by all the eerie claimed haunted pictures online and the movie Paranormal Activity, thinking there could be something unsual and not mundane that could be captured by surveilance cameras. (My flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jingleixiao80/)

Photoshop is a big part in this project, I had to make an usual picture to look like a surveilance or hidden camera image. So desaturation, the adjustion of hue and color, and the adjustion of exposure are the major function of Photoshop I was using.

Here are some examples of how I made my pictures.

a

 First I took a picture of an empty hall way (picture a). Then I took a picture of the figure in the hallway (picture b). After adjusting the hue and saturation, with corping and feathuring the edge I put the figure in the hall way becoming (picture c). After taking a picture of the person in different position (picture d), I put picture d and c together. So picture e is the final product.

Of coruse I didn't use a fancy lens to create the surveillance still effect. It was just a normal Sony Digital Camera
 



b



c




d

 

e

 

Professional content still dominates, while Web 2.0 hones our skill leading us to becoming professional

After reading Air after Web 2.0 by Lev Manovich, I agree with Manovich’s opinion that even though the internet is democratized and used as a giant stage for everyone who has access to it, professional produced content still dominates people’s sources of news and media. People still watch fox and CNN news, go to movie theaters watching big budget movies in 3D, and listen to trashy shitty main stream pop songs by singers like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce. However, there are some exceptions, people got famous from sharing their content on internet in Web 2.0 age. Perez Hilton got famous with the power of his Youtube video channels and his sassy Hollywood celebrity gossip website perezhilton.com. And there are numerous democratized celebrities on Youtube who are those online stars and famous bloggers whose face are still mysteries for their audiences. Whereas, as the article stated, according to 2007statistics, only between o.5-1.5 percent of users of the most popular social media sites contributed content on the internet. This means the chance we ourselves become professionals and dominate the source is still pretty tiny.

Except social communication and content sharing, we can totally utilize the internet nowadays to hone our skills in our interested domain. I got really inspired by Rachel Crowl’s lecture about social media and artist. The part where she talked about how she practices her photography skills was really inspiring. I’m interested in film making, according to Rachel, I can just join any film forum that shares and discuses films online and upload my works for other people’s advices. This is a fast and easy way to gain more knowledge and get feedbacks. Actually, I started practicing my editing skills by doing music video editing just like the fan made AMV stated in the article Air after Web 2.0, and post it on Chinese video website and sent the link to the forum I was in to share insights and get feedbacks. Personally I thought  it was really helpful.

Here is one of the fake AMV I made years ago.

It's all about to be there at the right time

Just like the rest of most undergraduate students, Dan Leer had no idea where his future would go when he just got into college.  In his lecture From Lawrence to New York Art World, he showed us his way of fumbling in order to reach his career goal. I think his success in his career has a lot to do with capturing the right direction of where he wanted to go at certain period of time. It also has something to do with the non-stop exploring of what's in front of him. Nothing can be planed, you just have to be there at the right moment. Just like Henri Cartier Bresson's works, they were all captured at the certain moment at the right time. In his lecture, he spent a large portion of time talking about Henri Cartier Bresson, who travelled all around the world documenting what he saw with photographs. Bresson captured lots of historical scene including the communism invading Shanghai in China during the time he was in China. One of the most famous works is the decisive moment, which shows the moment a man jumping over a pond. I think capturing the right moment is what photo journalism all about. 

Cartier Bresson The Decisive Moment

I also found this montage about Bresson's prints when he was in America, from the video you can see that he is a master at capturing random and decisive moments.

                                 

Dan Leer first started developing his interest in the medieval art from the ancient illuminated manuscript from his class. After he took a intership in an art museum in New York in Junior year college he discovered more passion for medieval art. When he went back to Lawrence, he had an independent study studying ancient Greek coinage. He realized that photography and art history are what he wanted to do in the future. So he took photography and made a great thematic series of prints called Blue Collar Bullshit depicting his anger about people being rude to construction workers. By the time he finished Lawrence University, he left Appleton for Portland, Oregon. Shortly after that, he got a job in the museum of city of New York as a photo collector. By this time he realized that he needed to study more to get a better job in a bigger museum, so he enrolled in a program in Columbia College. During this time, he finished another great project about dating basket in the supermarket. Just when he was unsure about what job he can get after graduation, Museum of Modern Art offered him a job the day he got his diploma.

From all his experience I can see how important it is to keep exploring and be ready to capture what is in front of you. The philosophy is extremely similar to the essence of Cartier bresson's works. Later after Dan Leer started working in Museum of Modern Art, he curated both traditional and contemporary photography.

Modern ways of surveillance -a controversial character

Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a prisoner

To be honest, I was not shocked when watching Errol Morris's documentary Standard Operating Procedure. It is another example of exposing how dirty can human nature get when put in some "proper" circumstances like being a prison guard in Abu Ghraib prison. It's not hard to find an example to prove the heinous nature of human being. Just like the Hello Kitty murder in Hongkong in 1999. A bunch of young guys brutally killed a night club hostess after severely tortured her for 3 months. The case was exposed after the police found out a human head in a hello kitty doll. Unlike the case of Abu Ghraib, the hello kitty murder did not have any photo evidence at all. Compared to which, the exposed photos in the case of Abu Ghraib became the hero. However, do the photos actually prove anything that actually happened at all? In one of the pictures released on the internet we can see Pvt. Lynndie holding a leash attached to a prisoner collapsed on the floor, known to the guards as "Gus." Purely judging from this picture, it is not hard to make the assumption that the woman in the picture put the leash on the prisoner and was eager to show it off in front of the camera. In fact, the reality is completely different from our assumption,  it was actually done by the sergeant Charles Graner when Lynnndie walked by, he asked her to hold the leash and stand in front of the camera. This picture was actually cropped. The photo evidence did show people the truth that the prisoners in Abu Ghraib was tortured, but it can never tell people the actually story, in face, it is people's own perception that is telling them the story. This made this type of surveillance really controversial. It shows you what happened, but it dose not tell you the specificity of the story. And photos can be easily manipulated for different purpose like this, which is that the sergeant does not want to show up in the picture.

Surveillance camera in Chinese classroom

While playing a hero in modern society, surveillance also has its evil nature which can mislead people. The idea of panopticon has a positive purpose, to better manage and control the prisoners. It makes people to contain themselves when under the surveillance, however, when used with the abnormal purpose, it actually leads to the problem of courtesy and respect. In lots of Chinese high schools, the classrooms are installed with surveillance cameras. It is desinged to keep an eye on the students when they are taking exams, as the digital operator of my high school, I was cognizant  of the fact that those cameras were never used at most of the time. So it shares the same purpose of the panopticon. The students actually do not know whether they are being watched or not, so every body tries to behave themselves when there is no proctor around. It is a smart idea, however personally I don't think the schools actually respect the students by installing this kind of surveillance equipment. While serving the purpose of a proctor, the surveillance camera actually put everybody in the suspect of a cheater. This is actually a huge insult; it is comparing the students to the prisoners. Who would feel comfortable taking exams in a room like this in school? Who would even feel comfortable digging their noses when knowing someone could possiblly be watching them? All I can say is this is too extreme.

Surveillance media can be easily manipulated and misread, which is why I do not trust it at all. It was the misleading of the image that give the military specialist Sabrina Harman a felony sentence because she raised her thumb up in front of a dead body in one of the photos in the case of Abu Ghraib, however in fact she was just trying to document everything and to expose the disgusting behavior of those American soldiers. Sergeant Charles Graner cropped himself out of the picture to let people think it was Lynndie England who put the leash on the prisoner. Other forms of surveillance are also morally controversial. The surveillance cameras in Chinese high schools basically insinuate that those students are just like prisoners or thieves. However, surveillance media still reveals the truth and secrets to the public helping us to uncover those ugly deeds done by some people in every corner of the world.

All in all, in my opinion, modern ways of surveillance is fundamentally controversial. the only neutral scenario is when it is used for entertainment purpose, just like the film We Live In Public. To volunteeringly expose one's own life to the public is nothing harmful, at least compared to the insulting cameras in Chinese high schools.

It's not one way or another

The dystopian vision of computers expressed by the twilight zone episode in my opinion is purely clannish and irrational. The whole episode was basically concentrating on how this new machine destroyed people’s life and sending out the information indicating the “cold blood” of computer. This kind of thoughts of producers and writers can be attributed to human being’s irrational fear of esoteric things. Just like in ancient China people were even afraid of the eclipse of moon; they attributed this effect to this ridiculous lie that it was the flying dog monster that ate the moon. So we can get that people tend to relate what they are afraid of to monsters. That’s why “the machine” was portrayed as being a monster with an evil essence in that episode. The producers of twilight zone never thought about to create a harmonious relation between human being and computers. Computers were created by human, thus they needed to be operated by human. In that episode of twilight zone they should have arranged that instead of firing all those workers, the appearance of the machine helped workers to work faster and more effectively after the workers learnt to operate the machine.

Douglas Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect gives us a clear picture of how computers can enhance productivity and efficiency of solving problems. As the article stated, the computer helps us to solve problems in a way of merging different perspectives and field of subjects thus to reach human intellectual effectiveness. So it’s us that gather what we know into computer and develop the framework to let computer work for us. Although computers can accurately solve us problem, they lack the basic ability to adapt into random situations in reality. In the article, Engelbart used the example of architect designing building with computer. The computer showed and simulated everything in front of his eyes including predicting the angle of the sunshine in the certain time of the day, but what if some construction worker made a mistaking of using wrong material or misplacing tubes inside the structure? This is when we have to manually fix the problem because the computer couldn’t foresee the chaotic system of reality, however we can.

So people need to have computers to work more effectively, also computers need to be operated by people and maintained by people. It’s not a one way or another problem like computers and human beings don’t get along, instead they need to work together. Neither the dystopian vision of computer in the twilight zone nor the utopian vision of computers reading full human intelligence in Douglas Engelbart’s article is going to happen. In fact, there should be a harmonious relationship between computers and us.

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