Editing Demo with Nathan – Using Davinci for editing video art
Work time with your group – show work in progress.
Complete all recording before next class
Work time with your group – everyone should have footage by today!
Show work in progress.
Critiques for One Feat, Three Ways videos next week!
Comprehensive blog posts contribute to getting the full grades for your assignments. The blog in general (especially articles and notes) will be evaluated at the end of term to contribute to your participation grades.
Studio bookings for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and for next class on Monday and Tuesday
Each group must have footage to work with and edit by next week WEDNESDAY – when we do an editing demo.
Video Art: One FEAT, Three Ways*
You will work with a partner to make three videos 1-2-minutes (MAX) each in length each.
Your videos should be shot at the studio in controlled, illuminated conditions.
Pick your FEAT. You will repeat variations on your “FEAT” in each video below.
Your FEAT should be an everyday gesture or activity that you can push to its limits. Push yourself to your limits. Push a material to its limits. Do not take ANY risks with your safety – subtle, quiet, funny risks are better and more interesting anyway. Just watching someone smiling as long as they can as hard as you can is fascinating and even painful to watch for its duration.
Examples of gestures from past students include: Eating something, Juggling, Kissing, Blowing up a Balloon, Smiling, Holding an Awkward Pose, Reaching for Things out of Reach… etc.
It might be an absurd thing – something pointless, or an impossible feat that you can’t actually do
The object is to try to do the thing, not to “act” – and what happens… happens!
You, your partner, or someone else may perform. Maintain your concentration and explore how a simple gesture becomes interesting when performed with commitment and intention.
NOTE: Add a title to some of your videos, and they should be approximately 1-2 minutes in length MAX.
Video #1: The One-Shot
The video will consist of “one shot” – there will be no editing, other than a black screen to mark the beginning and end of the video. You may focus on camera function, unusual points of view, and framing. You will also add titles and end credits to your videos.
Video #2: The Sequence
The object of this video exercise is to shoot a series of shots with the intention to edit them into a sequence. It may require 5 minutes, an hour, a day, or a week, and you can show it in a series of stills or a time lapse. Edit your footage to be less than two minutes.
Video #3: The Loop
The object of this video exercise is to create a video that is meant to be played over and over again indefinitely, without stopping. Consider the content of the video when you are shooting your feat, and use looping to complete the meaning of the work. Don’t make a short GIF type video – think of a longer loop – something that could play in a gallery on repeat without end.
Edit your loop footage to be less than 2 minutes long, and then play on a loop for the critique.
_______________________________________________________________
Videos will be graded by the degree to which students demonstrate:
Students are also expected to post a final work (including any revisions after critique) to the class blog with a title, artist names, and a short description of the work within ONE WEEK of the critique for final marks.
Videos will not receive a grade until a
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/arts/dance/gesture-archive-art.html
(if you are blocked by a paywall use this PDF of the article and watch the video for examples of movement)
Make notes on your blog:
FRIDAY JAN 24th EXPERIMENTAL FIELD TRIP
9:30 AM to 6PM – Toronto Museums
Here is the eventbrite link for students to purchase tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.com/checkout-external?eid=1141141217099&parent=https%3A%2F%2Fx23.experimentalstudio.ca%2F2025%2F01%2F12%2Fweek-2-8%2F
SCHEDULE and assignment:
EXPERIMENTAL FIELD TRIP 2025Download
Due ONE WEEK after field trip on the blog.
Mandatory: Create a FIELD TRIP blog post illustrating, describing and responding to two art works from each museum. How are these works relevant to your own research interests and practice? What did you notice, learn, or take away from the experience of the works in the gallery?
Note: Students who are not able to attend the field trip must visit one of these Toronto museums, in addition to the AGG exhibition and create a blog post based on this field research.
*Reading notes due on blog
Sal and Ava – 2023
(SEE DESKTOP for 1 minute examples – lemons, hugging, denim…)
https://x1.experimentalstudio.ca/2023/01/17/avery/
Camera Recording and Lighting Demo
Discuss ideas with group and Diane
Work in progress
Book work time on studio sign up sheet for next week!
For the one kilometer project, I chose to record the audio of running for 1 kilometer on the treadmill at my local gym. I decided to name this project ‘EXP. 1K Interlude’ as it is the first work of many in This Experimental I class I will create. It represents the beginning of an album of works that will be recorded, filmed, built and completed in this class.
The Infinite Cave, 2022
Dan Hudson
Digital Video Installation
Dan Hudson’s immersive and breathtaking digital installation showcases an extensive collection of documented footage on Earth. Creation, destruction, success, failure, celebration, and obliteration; all at once. With the aid of 164 monitor screens, The Infinite Cave induces an immersive and meditative experience of the many life forms existing within the Earth and how they are connected to the natural world and to each other. The installation is a collective compilation of 7 years of social media footage Hudson found on the internet. The installation is paired with the two adjacent walls in the room showing the sun to the left and the moon to the right. While the wall with the many screens represents Earth. Inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Hudson’s art reflects how what we see on the internet is merely a mirage or representation of the world. Much like the allegory, the exhibit invites you to sit in a dark room and stare at a wall of dancing images that are what we perceive to be our Earth, but in actuality, it persists to be an extension of the essence of the world. Also complementing the allegory is an ambient audio piece which sounds like soft wind mixed with audible creatures chirping and buzzing, and sometimes the mechanical hum of an engine. It takes you from feeling like you could be hearing the vast openness of space, or a cave, or nature with the undertones of human presence in the environment.
At first glance, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed by the expansive themes and imagery bouncing your eyes of several screens. My first impressions of the piece is how unbelievably saturated the internet is with information now, and how much access we have to so many records of history captured on film. Since the discovery of film, human’s have gained more access to daily information around the globe in the palm of their hand. The term “compilation” is practically coined now by the internet to deliver its audience a produced collection of related video footage of the same topic, by which nearly anything can become a compilation now.
Moving my gaze around this installation, I start noticing each screen is responsible for depicting its own topic. While the entire installation contains over 500 000 video clips, each screen concentrates on a single Earthly theme: Birth, bird migrations, wildlife encounters, dancing, red carpets and paparazzi footage, mating, fighting, the aurora borealis, architecture, demolition, construction, industry, mechatronics, flashfloods, tsunamis, landslides, hurricanes, volcanos, babies, plane take offs and landings, wildfires, civil war, slow motion footage, sports, timelapses, marine life, mukbangs, pollution and physical labour. Initially, my eyes fixated on the left screens as I was sharing the exhibit space with a retired art professor who had visited this exhibit for his 7th time today. The first screen I immediately stared closely into played a video I recognized from watching 7 years ago– The birth of a baby elephant in a sanctuary, the significance of this birth being that the baby elephant was born lifeless, but after minutes of the mother elephant, Nikki, trying to nudge her baby awake, it finally began to breathe.
I continued to scan my eyes, observing that one monitor played clips of humans doing water activities such as swimming, volleyball, and surfing, adjacent to a monitor of flashfloods, infrastructure, and people being pulled by hazardous water. My eyes moved back to the birth monitor, which now played a human birth by a couple recording their experience in the birthing room of a hospital, and it continued. The next was a clutch of snake eggs hatching, and it continued. On another monitor, I saw two elk fighting for dominance, then two kangaroos, then two humans, evoking the structural and instinctual habit of within-group competition in every species. My visual priority seemed to naturally fall towards the monitors depicting some of the most unique and uncommon events to happen on this Earth: natural disasters and devastation, dashcam footage of driving through wildfire, giant structures and houses being pulled by flooding, underwater footage of whales and marine migrations, ice cap collapses causing minor tsunamis. They are some of the most silencing videos I could watch; I just stared and wondered how unpredictable and uncertain life is, how one moment, people just found themselves in the place of that event and shared their experience with the world. I also spent much time looking into the topics that interest my political concerns of the world: civil unrest, climate crisis, destruction of life and infrastructure. I also spent time admiring the natural beauty of our planet: animals, astronomical phenomena, cultural anthropology, and geography. What I found hard to watch was the paparazzi footage, mukbangs, and low quality/low-output internet videos that are created for fast consumption. They are terrifying in their own nature for being media everyone has consumed at least once. To me, documenting Hollywood celebrity fashion and praising or criticizing status will not ever be journalism, but documenting environmental, biological, earth, and space science is the journalism our world needs. I loved the way this installation made me think. I stayed with this installation for over an hour. One of my favourite traits of this piece is that if you left the room and returned in 20 minutes, a day, or started observing from a different starting point on the wall, no two experiences with this artwork could be the same. It left me thinking that all these events could be taking place around the world every day, and what I see, I only see for such a short time. I’m only ever going to witness such a small fraction of the millions of events that happen around the world.
Edward Burtynsky
First: Carrara Marble Quarries, Carrara Italy
Photograph Print
The mountains surrounding Carrara, in Tuscany Italy, have been quarried for thousands of years. Renaissance sculptors sought out carrara primarily as their stone of choice for carving. From this exact mountain quarry, the marble of Michelangelo’s David, Moses, and Pieta were all created. To this day, Carrara is still a highly sought after building material internationally. In this photography, Burtynsky captures one example of the cumulative effect that sustained human activity can have on the planet. We are systemically removing a whole mountain. In 1000 years, we will finish the supply from this source, shwing the scale of what collective and cumulative activity on a natural mineral source looks like.
Second: Shipbreaking, Chittagong, Bangladesh
Photograph Print
The second largest shipbreaking site in the world. 20 kilometres of Bangladeshi coastline dedicated to yards of dismantling sites to extract tons of scrap. The photo is a recognition of the dangers international third world countries face from improper disposal of hazardous waste materials. Maybe to note of these things in art can mitigate the impact we have on the planet.
Third: Telephones, Hamilton, Ontario
These phones in this photo, at one time have been the cutting edge of communication technology, distributed and purchased by the thousands. But in time, another technological advancement will compete with it, and as human progress behaves, no one wants to be left behind, so we will see to replace one obsolete device with a new, and then with a new again. The endlessness of innovation, and it’s aftermaths.
‘Utility Lines’
With the objective to challenge ourselves with a more struggled feat, we chose a medium that does wouldn’t practically or usually receive the treatment of braiding. We braided together a vacuum pipe, garden hose, and extension cord as these larger objects are not conventionally braided, however, are braidable, and this we wanted to explore. The accomplishment of this feat was to execute a fluid motion, to let the materials behave as they do while being manipulated into the form of a braid. We wanted to explore the simplicity of braiding in some of our other takes, so it this piece, we wanted to explore the bizarre.
“The Making and Unmaking”
We found a unique way to repeat our action that would effectively look like an endless braiding and unbraiding loop. It’s two personal motives that continuously work together towards their own goal: One person making the braid, one person unraveling the braid. It’s not really going anywhere, not ever growing or shrinking, just two people manipulating the same braid and it never really changes as long as they both work on their sides.
‘Bound By What We Carry’
Our series of braids where out feat of braiding is applied to finding as many items on our body to braid into each other. One of our equirements was to have one of each of every medium to bind our two bodies together. This series explores levels of intimacy, discomfort, and comfort. The other requirement was the braider was responsible for actively gathering the material they’ll braid, meaning they undo and gather their partners shoelaces, belt, and hair for them.
Reflection:
Some of her props are generic goods like ceramic/glass decorative bowls and shelf decor. In the braiding spaghetti piece, a glass infinity twist mini sculpture, a gold-reflective ceramic balloon dog, a gold fork, and other objects are meticulously spread around the table. Aside from being goods associated with consumerism and aesthetics, there’s a sense of the randomness of the objects not correlating with each other. Typically, decor like this is purchased for aesthetics and aesthetics only.
In the clip of the La Mer moisturizing cream being spread on the bread, the bowls are arranged decoratively in the background to ground the foreground where the action is being done. I associate the placement of these decorative objects with flat lays to aestheticize a product promotion.
Physically, the piece provokes many sensory responses while initially holding an unsettling awareness of how touch can provoke discomfort. Some of the slower gestures like the caressing of objects, and sliding of her entire body against the porcelain white room, feel awkward and absurd for why she’s intimately interacting with them.
The interactions elicit unease because they employ various textures with gestures to evoke those feelings. The prosthetic teeth fell out of her mouth but fell out in pooling spit, which heightens associations of fear and disorientation of losing teeth and visceral disgust of seeing bodily fluids being pushed out to exaggerate the feeling of discomfort.
Absurdity plays a role in destabilizing the viewer’s expectations; for when you see the familiar, you shouldn’t expect the familiar to happen next. This forces the viewer to reflect on their perception of the work and consider whether what they observe is unsettling, humorous, contradictory (to the default assumptions of associations to these objects), or critical.
Charlene Lau says, “While Moser’s work has been described as prop humor, it also fleshes out the relationship between comedy and sex through an exploration of objects with fetishistic appeal.” This subliminal eroticism is evident in her performances: with her body on the sofa, caressing with hotdog fingers, and playing with the mannequin foot, slowly sticking her finger into a mannequin hand finger hole beneath the words of “Does this look like some kind of joke to you?” This again, highlights the gesture’s way to evoke comedic and unsettling associations, emphasized further by doing so with the absurd everyday bourgeois objects that hold implicit meaning.
Lau makes note of “the consumerist, bourgeois junk” Which is well understood from the objects we see to appear as the most purposeless form of the material object. “…Such as a rose-gold makeup mirror, white and gilt decorative ceramic objects, and a bottle of pink Himalayan salt—parodies displays of “Haute” consumerist taste.” As Himalayan salt is primarily an ingredient but is now often seen in decor sections for the trending aesthetic purposes. So the meticulous choice of decorative objects pertains to this profound sense of value (monetarily, to afford to consume goods to the extent of buying impractical objects) and the sense of pointlessness or worthlessness (that the object serves no function or necessity for anyone, yet we all have seen these objects before)
Furthermore, to see these idle, impractical aesthetic objects in pink, rose, and gold around seemingly idle, impractical gestures serves the idea that much of what we care to aestheticize has nearly no thoughtful impact on our lives. Nails, teeth, and a pink suede sofa with gold accented feet need to be aestheticized far before we think to just need them. I believe this ties in well with her opening monologue where she finishes by saying, “I want any feeling that helps distract me from–” As designing nails, whitening/straightening smiles, and choosing a seat for its visual quality benefits us through nothing more than a “feeling” of it being better than the most basic form it comes in.
This audio piece is a merge of audio collected from my home videos, focused on the gradual childhood development of my younger brother, his voice, first words, and cries. It merges into a piece of my brother, my family, aunt, uncle, and grandparents around a birthday cake. The reason for this transition is to show the elements early childlike innocence and wonder: A toddler exploring their voice and budding personality, into a group voice of the house they’re raised in, the voices that shape his character, and above all, the joy and support around this kid during his upbringing. This piece is a little time capsule of the sweet little moments of growing up that I have taken for granted, the sweet gift of my one and only childhood and what it included: A brother and family full of unique charm and noise.
This past week, I had the honour and privilege to volunteer and enjoy the MFA and Capstone students open studios. One of the more rewarding parts of this event was the chance to talk with many of the artists about the inspirations and development of their artwork. I always feel I understand the art and the artist better when I learn more about the details that I couldn’t perceive with my own subjectivity. I spent a lot of my time before volunteering visiting the Capstone studios. It provided me with much insight into the possible route I’ll find myself going in my upper years. I enjoyed asking the student’s if they felt they were declaring a thesis by which the work they did all seems to align together and again, felt that these artworks I’ve been seeing showcased in Zavitz Gallery through the past year have a deeper and richer meaning after learning from their artists about what drove them to create their pieces. I learned a lot about how the Capstone students install, deinstall, and move their largest canvases and soft sculpture. I loved hearing how they defend their concepts, and this all taught me a lot about the skills you’ll have and be developing up to graduation.
While volunteering, I continued to spend time meeting many of our Masters students. I was very inspired and interested to see the creativity of mixed media through many of these studios. I liked gaining a sense of what a week in the life of an upper year or masters art student looked like.
Some of the art that stood out to me, and I continue to think about well after Open Studios include Trinity Bishop’s sculpture on a false worship; Andi Syme’s work using collage, mixed media, and photography to explore the topic of gender identity and sex change; and Tuesday Troup’s paintings that liberate textiles and print through interior scene-based portraits. I am someone who likes to call back to my family heritage and celebrate the beauty and connection I have as a girl to my cultural traditions, so seeing work like Ana Sofia Silva Elizondo’s which tributes her family and past ancestors from Mexico excited me. I really loved how she incorporated painting on blankets, involving Mexican textiles to connect with her focus.
‘Generational family portrait of objects in my house that were create in my family member’s birth years‘
My Grandfathers (made in India 1939)
Gone With The Wind (1939) film adaptation playing on a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (started 1939) laptop
A Hand Painted Brass Vase (inscribed date 05.25.1939)
My Grandmothers (made in India 1947)
Pilliteri Winery screwpull corkscrew (made in 1947)
Bottle of Miss Dior Fragrance (released in 1947)
My Mum (made in India 1970)
Casette of the Grease Soundtrack (released 1978)
My Dad (made in England 1970)
Mikasa Japan heart-shaped porcelain dish (produced in 1970)
My Brother (made in Canada 2005)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief book (published 2005)
Myself (made in Canada 2002)
DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (released 2002)
To begin, I’ve always taken a big interest in some of the lesser-known milestones or events in our global timeline. I highly recommend everyone to use the website called ‘On This Day’ and put in their own birth date. It’s a website that logs every media recorded event that was significant to the day.
For my conceptual portrait, I wanted to create a generational portrait, to find a way to include my grandparents, parents, and brother. I committed to the challenge of finding an object in my house exactly as many years old as the members of my family. To compose the found objects, I decided to make a still life photograph of them together, like a family portrait. I was also ready to accept that I had no idea what I would find, and how the end product would look until I found and confirmed the year of manufacture of each object. This piece is a little assembly of creations that are not just random, but fondly tied to being in the family, or belonging to a member of the family before I stole them for my experimental art project. The ninth and unmentioned object in this photograph is the backdrop, which is a hand-embroidered shawl given to my maternal grandmother as a present the week my mum was born.
Reflection of this process
I thought it would be helpful to research on what inventions, brands, and companies started in the years of my family members’ birthdays. This would at least guide me on what to look for.
There were many inventions, or products I would have liked to photograph instead (for visual aesthetics) but if it wasn’t in the family house, I would ignore it and find something that was; if it wasn’t made precisely in the year of a family members birthday, I would look for something that was. By this, I mean, I looked at every super old, kinda cool looking thing in my house that I could confirm its year of make, but if it over/under shot the years 1939, 1947, 1970, and 1978, I wouldn’t use it. For example, when I found out the iconic tubular Pringles can was patented in the year of my dad’s birth, I checked my pantry only to learn I didn’t have Pringles and only Lays in a tubular can, so I moved on to finding something else.
When I learned the album Led Zeppelin III was released in 1970, I looked through all my LPs and cassettes, only to learn I had owned every other album except the one released in that year. When I found a slinky, thought it’d be interesting to photograph, I learned the slinky was invented in 1943, which is neither of my grandparents’ birth years, so that too I couldn’t use, but if you had a grandparent born in ‘43, you could use your slinky… But I know, who still has a slinky?
So this was what I love about this project, that I couldn’t have planned what this would look like, I had to use what I had and what truly equalled the age of my family. I like that each of these objects truly belonged to my family, that I didn’t purchase any products to make the search easy. But I would also like to see if I could make a family dinner out of foods I only bought because they were made in the year someone in my family was born.
I took the book off my brother’s bookcase. I found the perfume on my grandmother’s vanity. Even if I couldn’t find something that personally belonged to the family member, but was just in the house, it’s still been in the family and moved in houses with us. I tried the idea of playing a song or movie to include more media in this and liked having a screen playing Gone With The Wind. To support the incentive of honouring materiality of things, I thought it suited the assignment well to print it physically and frame it as it’s meant to resemble a family portrait of our items.
The quote “I WANT TO BELIEVE” is most well known for being associated with The X-Files. It’s seen in a poster seen as early as the pilot episode featuring a ufo flying over an earthly scene with the typography of this powerful quote which still resonates with many people today. Specifically suggesting no matter how unlikely and improbable, there’s many who want to believe theres other life outside our planet, other intelligence in the universe with us.
What I grasp to in this phrase, is “I want to believe’ expresses a desire to hold a particular belief in the face of doubt or skepticism. That it suggests a willingness to accept something as true even if there’s evidence or doubt against the idea. So I repeated this phrase over photos of Earth, but not with a UFO involved. Just photos of Earth, landscape, wildlife, and signs of human impact. I sourced my images from photography featured in National Geographic Magazine and the works of Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky.
The phrase “I want to believe” over photos of Earth’s beauty is like saying I want to believe this is what we have. But we are losing the ice caps, we are losing out wildlife species population, and we are losing our marine species populations the longer humans populate the planet. The phrase is also placed over landfills, manufactured landscapes, and wildfires indicates that wish to accept our world as positive and hopeful, but there’s evidence, tons of it, to suggest we are dooming our home. Belief is about being faithful and committed to an idea, and every time we try to put a positive light on the world or advances of the human race, it takes a moment to think about what it took to get there. With big mechanical industry, monstrous manufacturing, air pollution, water pollution, and a global indication in a rise of temperature due to emissions, we want to believe we will “Save the planet” as we put it, but it may be fair to argue that we have completely gone too far. No matter how much we could liberate the beauty of our planet, so much that cannot be undone has happened to it already, and it’s almost impossible to ignore. All together these buttons express a sense of fleeting hope on a broken planet.
We keep trying to change the world, save it at the point of precipice. The planet is undeniably changed. We have changed it.
Critique of Kilometre assignment – Bring in your kilometre for discussion, and/or make a post about your kilometre in any media on your Blog page.
Review on how to post to blog
FRIDAY JAN 24th EXPERIMENTAL FIELD TRIP
9:30 AM to 6PM – Toronto Museums
Here is the eventbrite link for students to purchase tickets:
SCHEDULE and assignment:
https://ago.ca/exhibitions/culture-hip-hop-and-contemporary-art-21st-century
https://ago.ca/exhibitions/pacita-abad
https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on
“Seductive, fearless, and outrageous, Marina Abramovic has been redefining what art is for nearly 40 years. Using her own body as a vehicle, pushing herself beyond her limits and at times risking her life in the process she creates performances that challenge, shock, and move us.
This film follows Marina as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major new retrospective of her work, taking place at The Museum of Modern Art. To be given a retrospective at one of the world’s premier museums is the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more: it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: But why is this art?”( From Film Summary)
Questions for discussion and blog post:
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