Friday, January 14, 2011

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explain my idea, Herzog mentioned in the interview that he dose not think art exists in modern world and creativity is outdated and antiquated.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

2 comments:

  1. Don't you think that's ridiculous that he would want a dictionary? I'm not so sure I buy that. Plus he said one book, and then like all 19 books, oh yeah so now you get to bring as many books as you want? Anyways, I think the music video avenue is a fun one to explore.

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  2. Reading the dictionary does provide a range of amusements. Maybe it is an old guy thing?

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