Gentrification Video Done

After 10 weeks of hard work me and Kanesha finally finished the production of poem and the music video. The video production is aiming to raise the awareness of gentrification in Chicago area. Kanesha did a fantastic job forming the basic concept into the video and making it a serious issue. And I hope it did help to make people aware of the fact that gentrification is destroying the lives of people in the lower social class. The stylish look of the video is only tyring to grasp the attention of the audience, what we are trying to convey is what we really want to show the audience. I will put the video in this post once we upload it online.

oops, here's the video.

Hype Williams

Harold "Hype" Williams was born in 1970, Queens NYC. He's currently known as a music video director. I found his style really unique. The use of color, green screen illusion, and "flashing screen" are commonly seen in his music video. I don't really know how to describe the "flashing screen" effect, but it is basically two frames are shown at the same time in a way of flashing over each other. In Christina Auguilera's music video Not Myself Tonight you can see the effect was shown in the second climax part of the song. Also this effect is also shown in lots of his videos.I'm especially intrigued by his use of color and the modern style he attributes to his work. This is something I want to put in our music video too.

Hype Williams

Here are some music videos of his that represent his style.










About our music video, we finished shooting 90% of the scene last Thursday-both studio shooting and outside shooting. Now it's just the time to put the pieces together and let the magic happen. Kanesha did a good job contributing political and social perspectives in the video and I'm trying my best to make the video stylish and aesthetically enjoyable.

Progress

We did not film any new footage this week, instead we did the intense editing for the whole week. Obviously using Final Cut Express to do green screen editing is a pain. It takes forever to rander! Kanesha finished the poster for the video and post it on zazzle.com.

Next week we are going to speed up the camera to capture some cool effects.



Production Blog

"The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Borges, "Will there be Condominiums in Data Space?" by Bill Viola, and "The World-Wide Web" by Tim Berners all have a fundamental theme, which is the amorphous network. I especially like Bill Viola's point of view that life is supposed to be one big moment from birth to death, it is the days and nights that make us feel there are separations within life. That made me think that the whole data world is one big moment, maybe it did not change from the beginning at all, and what has changed is only our perception and mind. Just like the different online agency websites out there today that help us to promote ourselves,  the network existed from the beginning, however, we keep changing the way it works.

I found this absurd video on YouTube about social network. Enjoy!


We finished about 1/4 shooting for the music video. Here are our production pictures. I have been working on the green screen editing, and I have to say that it is a tedious job!

Mary Jane Jacob, Ray Johnson, and I

I find the idea of merging Buddhism into art quite interesting because I think art is about making statement and expressing thoughts or ideas. The medium of art is like a poet’s pen, and the content of art is the content of the poem. Poets express themselves by writing. Artists express themselves by making different types of art. But Mary Jane Jacob is going for the emptiness of art. After I read the article I somehow agree with lots of things in it. Mary Jane Jacob thinks art should be transient not permanent. Her idea is that the existence of art should only be there when it’s presented in front of the audiences thus the viewing experience of the audiences is a part of art. I have another theory, I think if art is an expression of some sort of emotion and no emotion lasts forever, thus art does not last forever and it should only be a temporary thing. The idea of having audiences’ viewing experience as a part of show reminds me of Allan Kaprow’s happening series. Even though Mary Jane Jacob is not a performing artist like Allan Kaprow, they both make audiences as a part of the show thus people would understand the concept and the essence of the show as an insider.

About Ray Johnson, judging from the depiction from How To Draw A Bunny, I think he made his style into an icon without copyright.

Ray Johnson

I've been writing screen play for the music video. The recording of the song and the poem are done. Too bad I can't upload the audio here because I don't know how.

This is one of the music videos I got inspired from in making our own music video.

Happening

Allan Kaprow's philosophy of art is unique and bold. Using event that is happening as a form of art is somewhat similar to performing art in my mind. However, he's different from lots of performing artist like Marina Abramavic. His way of presenting the art piece is to get the audiences involved and to let them be the part of the piece thus people would understand the essence of the piece while they are in the it. Nam June Paik's TV sculpture is also really avant-garde. The idea of creating an art form that is cybernetic seems obscure yet he successfully present it in front of the audiences. By combining videos with live performances, Nam June Paik managed to articulate his style.

Nam June Paik's TV sculpture

Last Friday, me and Kanesha did the green screen testing. It went pretty amazing actually. We figured out that all we have to do left is to get rid of the green edge in the video and to build a dolley. This project is happening and we might document the processes.

Here's a video of Allan Kaprow's style piece in NYC.

Every moment is art

Joseph Beuys

The idea of Fluxus is that anything could be art and the field of art is a melting pot. I think Joseph Beuys is an epitome among all the artists like that. He takes every single moment/event in life as pieces of art, which could be a little on edge to me. I personally agree that every moment in life could be art. I call it the art of life. I think we should constantly keep records of any events happened in life, in other words, I also think people who write diary are all artist. Bloggers are like sculptors, sculptors make things out of life, and bloggers sculpt every moment in life into their blogs. That explained how I agree with Joseph on the subject that life is art. However, I am not fond of his works of fat. I just don't think it's worth to be exhibited in a museum because it's just unfair for lots of young artists out there who devoted their perseverance and time into their works and still could not get them recognized and on display in a museum.

About my project. We are going to build filming dolly. The song is done and we are looking forward to directing and making it.

Reality Check

Not every story has a happy ending, or not every story has an ending. This is just like that not everything/event in life would have a closure or resolution. Unlike most of the mainstream films nowadays that bring the audiences. into their fantasy world, Stroszek pulls the audiences back to reality and imbues them with depression and hopelessness. At least to me, Bruno in Stroszek is pretty much hopeless, he is either going back to the mental institution back in Germany or he is going to be arrested and immured by American policemen. The ending is ambiguous yet leaving the audiences a few possible thoughts including Bruno might be arrested, Bruno might escape from the police but still ends up being a poor hopeless maverick, and Bruno could die from the cold in the brutal winter of the Midwest. I kept wondering if this is that kind of reality that Werner Herzog talked in the interview where he told the host that being shot was kind of cool. And this is the reality we all have because we cannot predict everything in life and we cannot make things the way we want them to be sometimes. That is why life is full of sorrow and joy. I believe Stroszek is only the epitome of one of those bleak scenes in life and reality is not all about being hopeless because we still have films that are with happy endings.

Bruno Stroszek

The music video project is going smoothly. We planed the timeline out and the first day of shooting is around the corner. I'm just doing research on green screen technology and I found this super cool tutorial online today with Johnny.

being nostalgic dose not make art non-art

Herzog on Herzog left me one impression of Werner Herzog, which is that the guy is obviously living in the past. To better explain my idea, Herzog mentioned in the interview that he dose not think art exists in modern world and creativity is outdated and antiquated. Also when talking about influences, he mentioned numbers of musicians and novelist in the past. He even said that he'd rather bring the Oxford English Dictionary when trapped on an island. To sum all of those up in my understanding, Herzog's ideology still stays in the age when all art pieces were considered original and non-profit. I call that nostalgia. For example, people who watched the 1974 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when they were young think that film is a horror classic and the new 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is crap. If you check out the scores and message board on IMDB you will find lots of useless diatribes about how the new version sucks. They complained that the original was the best and the new one was changed a lot. This only means that those people who don't like the new version do not have an open mind for updated everything, thus they reject the creativity in the new one. Just like most people bitch about how much they do not like it when facebook updates its layout everytime. I completely disagree with Hezog's idea that there's no true art today just because he dose not see the creativity in modern days.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 (which is better than the original one in my opinion)

 
So about my project. I changed my plan from photographing sculpture pieces to making a music video with Kanesha. Unlike Herzog, I call this project art once it's done because it's all about creativity. We are still brainstorming ideas for the video and waiting for the beats finally to be finished. A music video is different from short films or documentaries because it , as being in the category of music video, has a special style. I've read an article on line before about techniques of making music videos and I cannot wait to try them out soon. By combining traditional techniques with new creativity, the work is going to be artistic and enjoyable. We are going to Chicago to take some shots of ghettos and liquor stores soon because the theme for the video is gentrification. I will think of more ideas once I listen to the music.

By the way, just compare the two trailers for the two version of "Massacre" and you will see which is better (clearly the new one is the best!)

1974 original one


2003 new and better one

Production log

I'm not amazed by the whole factory idea of Andy Warhol because of that when in film making, it could not be more normal that people with different backgrounds have to work together. Collaboration in art is especially important in film making because we need the person with cinematography background to film, theater background to act and direct, electronic background to set up the grid before filming, sound background do the sound engineering, etc. What caused my attention was that Andy Warhol's time capsule idea and the way he documented everything in his life. This really made me want to document my works in my sculpture class I'm taking this year. I'm planning on taking photographs of my art work in that class and make them into a book with my description. Documenting every details when I'm making my art behooves me not to be afraid of the loss of them in the future because they are captured permanently by camera.

Here's a picture of things I made the first week.

heels made out of cardboard

I checked out some of Andy Warhol's early work. I was surprised that he made lots of draft of heels just like I did. And the styles of the heels he designed are similar to mine. This gave me the inspiration of making heels. I will try to make all my sculpture art pieces relate to fashion and document them.

Here's a video of Fashion by Lady Gaga