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Conceptual Portrait:

180 minutes of spit

For my conceptual portrait, I decided to keep the theme of music, and show the residual effects of an artists practice, and skill. Straying away from the piano, I chatted with my friend Phyllis, who plays Trumpet in a band, and partnered with her to record how much time she took practicing her trumpet for an upcoming performance, and to display that time in a conceptual way.
for this piece, I wanted there to be a relationship between time and the material and the subject, to create A single form of documentation as a Portrait. The way I captured this portrait was after every hour worth of Playing, I held up a piece of paper, stuck to a piece of cardboard, and had her blow out her spit from her spit valves in her trumpet. To make the spit easier to see I told her to chew on a colourful piece of gum before she went into practising, however it didn’t show up as clear as I thought, but you can see a bit of pink colour on the sheets of paper. Thinking of a way to display the sheet of paper, I thought a really clean display would just to be to line up all three sheets one beside another and label how many hours worth of practice per sheet, which was one hour each, Which I think I will represent in minutes instead due to the title. Phyllis took a break every half hour so she was not playing for an hour straight however the spit accumulated is equivalent to one hour of practice per sheet

TRUMPET-

IDEA:

• Hard work
• Practice
• TIME
• MATIRIAL
• SUBJECT
• DOCUMENTATION

TIME:

• It takes a lot of time to accumulate spit in a spit valve, therefor there is a concept of time within the portrait

MATIRIAL:

• Coloured spit on paper
• Maybe framed- professional

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SUBJECT:

• The portrait is of practice and time
• Residual effects of an artists work

Ideas and themes:

-Classical music- piano keys, playing a song, multiple people playing in a band on different instruments

This idea would require some recording of where someone’s fingers would land on a piano during the playing of a classical piece, such as swan lake. I would ask someone to cover their fingers in something like paint or glue and glitter or charcoal, therefore after they play the piece you will be able to trace back the where fingers were pressed to play the piece.

Another music themed piece would be covering not only the piano players fingers but also the sticks playing on a drum and the fingers of a guitar player. The goal of this afterwards would be to be able to trace back the bands movements through the tracing of pigment that initially covers their hands and instruments. The overall profile would be to a specific song and/ or band (my sisters band), and it would be in a photograph, including nothing but the instruments (no people) and the colourful pigment representing the aftermath.————— Another way this can be done is by individually taking multiple pictures of each instalment, for example the piano keys up close, the faces of the drums and sticks, and the strings of the bass or guitar.

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AUDIO ASSIGNMENT

Same old scare:

When making this project I wanted to work heavily with the idea of jumpscares. I decided to take that on in two different ways; one being scaring my family members with the same scary object (pic below)

, and capturing their reactions and screams, which turned into a jumpscare audio itself. The other piece I came up with was to take jumpscare clips from old 80’s horror movies and overlap all of the screams.

I picked 80’s movies in particular because they all have that really iconic theatrical acting and music which I feel like would be the most recognizable for horror movies. I took clips from close to 15 different movies. The clips were all a bunch of dramatic jump scares, and I overlapped them in a way where the “scare” or “scream” went off all at the same time. After making and combining all the clips however, it doesn’t sound like there are even so much as 2 different movies in there. Somehow the audio just sounds like a dramatic scary clip from a single movie. I thought that this was kind of interesting because it made it evident that all 80’s movies really do have the same iconic music and bad acting, which definetly contributed to the audio turning out more seamless than intended. I think that it actually works very well for how the piece turned out and makes it all the more interesting.

For my second clip, I really liked the idea of making somebody’s fear a scary element for viewers. Using the screams as jump scares, I combined an audio clip of my family members screams after I scared them. I think it was really effective as a jump scare as I tested it on multiple people, and the anticipation was violently long.

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VIDEO ASSIGNMENT

ONE SHOT-

For our one-shot, we started by brainstorming something around a “bang” or a “splatter”. Our first attempt was to manipulate the lens of the camera, which then turned into the main subject for this project. What we did was add some colourful paint, reds yellows and blues, to one of our hands and while one of us help a pane of glad, acting as a camera lens, the other hit the pane and splattered th paint. After cit however, we took a turn to use just black and white paint instead, creating our overall piece.

LOOP-

Next, we did our loop. We enjoyed the idea of having one person apply paint and have the other scrape that paint away, creating a constant loop. In our first attempts, we again set up the glass to act as the lens, and used our hands to apply and scrape away the paint. However we ran into some trouble because our hands were not scraping away the paint efficient enough, making the paint harder to see when it was applied again due to all the residue being left over. So we looked around the painting class and found this giant brush to scrape.

EDITED-

Our initial idea the first few times filming was to have the camera pointed at us, as one person held a canvas, the other would have just their arm in frame, painting with different objects, and we would switch off between who was painting and who was holding the canvas. However, it was too messy in the end and we needed to come up with another alternative. Instead, we used different objects to paint, and made reference to Pipilotti Rist as I smooshed my face against the pane of glass, painting with my face.

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WEEK 3- FEILD TRIP

As someone who hasn’t experienced contemporary art or Looked into it at all, I really enjoyed some of the works in the contemporary art museum. They all struck me to have questions about what kinds of conversations were had in order to create these pieces, and it was interesting to be able to explore different kinds of contemporary art. I enjoyed a lot of the works in the museum that surrounded ideas of culture and invited people to look at and understand vital parts of some peoples identities.

FLATBREAD LIBRARY

Unfortunately, for these last pieces, I didn’t get to look too much around the gallery as I didn’t have enough time, However, These pieces were really cool to experience and look at because of their size and freaky shading. The printer effect along with all of the body parts Was really interesting. I think I overheard some other people in the gallery talking about how this artist was exploring new ways to incorporate Technology into his sculptures with the idea of pixels and glitching. I could definitely see that in the visuals and editing that he put into these photographs, Or screen prints, And it made it almost creepy. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of it, but there was this massive wall that you could walk around, The entire thing was flat other than these random flesh like sculptures that stuck out from the wall, almost like handles. I thought that they looked out of place. But it was also weird , And obviously would make more sense if I read about it, But there were small nipples around this wall as well, I wonder if this is supposed to add a vulnerable or erotic component to whatever the sculpture was.It definitely was something I’ve never seen before and was completely new to me to even use materials like this, and I’m definitely going to be looking at more artists who use mixed media’s like this one because it just creates such a freaky effect that I’m interested in.

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WEEK 2- PIPILOTTI RIST

1. Post an image from one of Rist’s videos that you are most interested in. 

   Rist’s “sip my ocean” is a captivating mirrored recording of both ocean landscapes and the human body, which seem to overlap eachother due to the mirrored effect. This was inspired by christ Issac’s Wicked Game, as Rist found the ideas of wanting to fall into the other as well as being afraid that the other will destroy us, very relatable. The way she goes through with representing these ideas in video is by using a mirrored effect to represent the tension one would feel, integrating a loss of control when the voice of the music flips. As for the contents of video, she keeps the shots of the human body very close and personal, the shot being very detailed. In Some of the scenes, you can see hair follicles and sweat as an example of how close it really is. Throughout the video, you can see rist swimming in the ocean, having the camera focusing on parts such as her hands, close ups of her eyes, arms and even the turmoil in the water she creates while swimming. It’s all very eerie and definitely represents the idea of tension with how some of the subjects almost rip away from eachother. As for the video editing, Rist adds quite a vibrant saturation to the video, causing the blues and greens of the ocean and the eyes to pop out. It creates a connection between the environment and the subject (in my opinion) and overall makes the video more visually appealing. Because the video is directly inspired by Wicked Game, the song plays over the video, adding to its hallucinative vibe. Personally I think the high pitched guitar in the beginning of the video also has a slight tropical  vibe, which adds a lot to the connection between the visuals and the sound.  Because the piece is pretty straight forward, the way they display in gallery’s is by using two corner walls and projecting the mirrored recording onto these two walls, having the line of mirroring be directly where the two walls meet.  This work was very striking to me as I think it was an excellent depiction of what Rist was trying to create. The part about tension and how she decided to display that with mirroring was so well through out and I loved the visual effect it gave. I think a really big part of art is to evoke some sort of feeling, weather its simple or complex, and this piece definitely make me feel a sense of harmony and corruption.

1. Rist has had a long career in video art making – how do you relate it to the kinds of video that you might see all the time on Tik Tok or You Tube, in our time?

I feel as if this is definitely a situation where artists walked with videography so we could run with it. The exciting obscure approach with videos in media today  definitely takes from how artists such as Rist were thinking and exploring engaging results back then. I can definitely see the relation between how wow factor media today carries some of the weird and psychedelic editing that rist applies to a lot of her work, like sip my ocean and pixel forest. Editing like that is now used in a lot of music related content, more so punk videos, as its seen as trendy and cool, instead of speaking on the meaning of the idea itself. We don’t use that kind of editing now as literally to the idea as rist does in her works. Usually the glitchy, overexposed content in Rist’s work speaks on the multitude of different feelings and actions that Rist includes in her work. Its usually heavily linked with giving out and exploring the limits and mistakes of people, providing people with another view to look into, other than oneself and the world. It strives away from the average landscape of life and invites people to explore different ways of thinking. Her works show you things you wouldn’t typically be introduced to if it wasn’t in the specific way rist intends to display vulnerable gazes into the human body and desires.

Experiment: While still at school – put on your sweater/shirt INSIDE OUT. How does this change how you feel? Is it changing how other’s are treating you? If you can wear your sweater/shirt inside out all day – make a few notes about the results of this very small change in your presentation in public. Is this a performance? Why?

After wearing my shirt inside out for about an hour on campus, I can conclude that it made me feel quite stupid, and very conscious of others. I began to think things like do they know I know its inside out? Or do they think I have no idea. If I acted confidently even though the shirt I was wearing was very obviously inside out, with tags sticking out, would anyone say anything? So, after sitting in the library, I have experienced two people that came up to me and informed me that my shirt was in fact inside out. The question if this is a performance or not is complicated to answer for me, because I’m not sure about the intent behind doing so. I think in a way doing this would be a performance because you have an idea and a documented result. But on the other hand, it speaks on human experience In general, as people wear their clothes inside out by accident all the time. But what if you wore it by accident and was aware of it, but wore it anyway? It stuck many questions for me but overall I would conclude that it made me realize how analytical people can be, even when you think people aren’t aware of you.

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Week 1- Jax’s Kilometer

I decided to explore a kilometre using my dog.

My first idea in which I brought to critique was that I walked a kilometre with my dog, in an area he has been before.

However, I concluded that I could make my assignment more interesting by placing my dog in a spot he’s never been, and walking where he wants for that kilometre.

In this kilometre, I wanted to explore the world in the lense of my dog, stopping for what he’s interested in, and exploring where he so chooses. When walking, I was able to discover a lot of cool things, and even stumbled across a new park I had no clue about in my home-town.

Like before, I included a video of my dog before the walk (video above) mainly just to mark the beginning of the journey. We also ended up driving and parking near the spot since it was quite far from my house and my dog cannot walk that far of a distance.

I started at a local pond named Mill pond in my home town, and walked along side it. In order to ensure that I would be able to properly document the kilometre, I stoped to check where we were on the trail every once In a while, slowly leading up to exactly 1 kilometre from mill pond to a cemetery.
here is a overview of where we walked on google

At first my dog was stopping at a bunch of trees, circling around little bushes and such. But as the walk went on I started to discover some things that were much different from our usual route

First we stumbled about wild berries, in which my dog sniffed but did not eat, only to later discover  that they are possibly poisonous, which strikes the question did he know they were poisonous? Could he tell?

Then we stumbled across a tortoise. My dog was definitely not too happy, he seemed quite intimidated. But I could tell he was curious about the animal. It was cool to experience what he decided to pay attention to vs what I would normally stop for. He definitely also did not just happen to walk past the tortoise, he went quite deep near the water to find it.

We also came across a small waterfall, which he drank from. This also made me question if he found the water on purpose and if he wanted to meet the water because he was thirsty. When I think back to his manurisms, he did seem confident in going towards this direction, which gave the impression that it was what he was looking for.

Then, nearing the end of the walk, we game across a cemetery that was hidden (was not private)

It was a pioneer cemetery in which the founders of my town were buried, and was a traditional 19th century style cemetery. It was cool to walk through, as I don’t think many people knew about its existence. The plants were overgrown and overall it looked really cool.

And then here’s a pic of Jax back in the car, quite tired after the walk.. so I gave him an ice cube.