A
lot of re-thinking of my work has occurred this week, considering what I want
to show for the crits that are coming up and looking into getting something
more from the video work, finding another level to the piece, making it ‘better’.
I
began the week by finally finishing my long video piece, by adding a loop to
the film and then zooming out from the original video twice during the loop.
This is very subtle, so if you were to miss a minute or so of the film you
wouldn’t see this, secluding this slightly Meta imagery with the ideas
surrounding observation and dual realties to certain people who would either
consume the whole film or just pass by at the ‘right’ moment. This is in stark
contrast to my earlier Snapchat work, where it was all about getting as much information
to the viewer as possible. I also decided to not include any voice work within
the video, as I feel that it works well with the music only, as opposed to ‘shoe
horning’ in texts that don’t really make much sense. I believe that the whole
film was successful in its own way, but I want to move on now to something
different and new. Unfortunately the film is too big to upload here.
After
going to the talks last week surrounding hacking and the internet, as well as
watching many films centred on the idea of the network, the download culture
and WikiLeaks, I started making a complimentary piece to go alongside my main video,
ready for the crits that are occurring on Tuesday. This work thinks about the
specific groups of people who control and view our daily communications, and
the immense power that they have, only to use it in order to keep our days
monotonous and repetitive. After going through many iterations, the moving
image piece is built up of a blue background that continually changes, this is continuing
my obsession with the colour blue in relation to capitalism (how it comes in
many colours, etc) as well as referencing Hito Steyerl’s famous piece Red Alert (and Jamie Jenkinson’s Colour Correction) which is partly to do
with the terror alert colour system, which also comes into question within the
piece, as it considers Five Eyes and how much power that the group has as an
entity within the online world. Throughout the 19 minute and 55 second run time
(the year that all the countries within the Five Eyes treaty were officially acknowledged
as being a part of it) a solitary spinning white disk, representing a Panopticon
(a type of prison layout that enables all of the inmates to be observed by a
single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they’re
being watched, similar to how it feels to traverse the virtual landscape of the
internet in this day and age) and an Identity Disc (in the film, Tron, an
Identity Disc is used both as a weapon as well as a form of storing information,
and is the most valuable piece of equipment to a ‘Program’) is seen bouncing
from one end of the screen to the other in constant motion. In the middle of
the disc there are five globes that have the flags of the five main countries involved
in the Five Eyes treaty pasted onto them. The globes are layered, representing
how close knit the different countries are in terms of the information sharing
that has been occurring since the Second World War. I still need to think about
this further, and refine some of the aspects, maybe adding in sound and voice
work before Tuesday. I’m unsure. These are a range of the different iterations:
After
making these two works, I realised that I would have to decide on how to display
the work, and what kind of meaning/thinking would be surrounding the display. After
considering the works content, I decided that I wanted to pain the viewer in
some way, be it only slightly, similar to how the majority of people that I
talk to about this subject (consumerism/the government watching your every
move) don’t actually care about it. This, I think, is partly to do with the
type of people that I’m talking to, which are mostly young people who have
grown up in this digital age where you tweet about where you are/how you feel
on a daily basis. The pain that I was talking about earlier is going to be
initiated by having the TV close to the ground, so that the participant has to
bend down to view the work. For young people, this is (in most cases) relatively
easy and painless. On the other hand, older people will find the bending down
process harder to achieve, in some cases gaining pain from the action, this
reflects how many older generations are incredibly weary of the virtual, not
clicking on a ‘risky’ install link or being scammed by a Nigerian Prince. Having
to look down onto the screens also brings about the sense of delving into
something, being on the precipice of a huge cliff, looking down at the rolling
waves crashing against the jagged rock, being incredibly aware of falling over
the edge. This is, in some ways, how I view the internet (and screens in
general), something to be immersed in and captured by, like a huge wave. The
two screens are also resting against each other, with the small screen holding
up the larger one. The small screen – showing the work surrounding Five Eyes –
is propping up the bigger screen, which is showing the work about Capitalism
and the overconsumption of the screen. I think this too works well, considering
how the monitoring of the internet enables Capitalism to continue onwards, and
how many social media companies have shared their data with the Five Eyes
alliance, like Facebook and Instagram.
Unfortunately
I didn’t actually go to any galleries this week, apart from the Zabludowicz for
a Joseph Kosuth talk which was terrible – an hour and a half of Kosuth reading
from an impenetrable essay – and a small exhibition at uni featuring all of the
Fine Art exchange students from year 2, which was interesting. One work was a
video game, a platformer where the goal was to reach the top of the screen via
an assortment of blocks leading up to that point. Unfortunately, these blocks
were invisible, so you had to reach the top of the screen blind, which was
basically impossible. The very real frustration that occurred was interesting
to consider, thinking about how that’s a very obvious feeling that occurs a lot
when you’re playing a video game, but one that I haven’t really considered
before in terms of harnessing it for a project.
The
rest of the week was taken up with the weekly lecture, which was on Roland Barthes and Photography. It was an interesting lecture, which brought about
many enticing ideas, like how we bring outside references to different works. This
is obvious, but it was particularly appealing when looking at Jacques Rancière
and ‘Punctum’ being a significant thing. With this logic, though, many images
can be enticing to the viewer, because of a certain aspect that is occurring within
the work which was unintentional or very intentional, that relates to them. I
don’t know…
Mathew
Sawyer was the artist who was giving the talk on Tuesday. It was great, full of
‘fuck you’ to the future and small, inconsequential interactions with people
that became incredibly poignant and beautiful in their own, simple way.
I
also started my two seminars this week, with the one focusing on Utopia going
well but being slightly boring, as the session was focused on going through the
book (Utopia) that I had read before the seminar, so many questions were asked
that would have been answered if everyone had actually read the book. The one
focusing on Politics, Art and Philosophy was highly enjoyable and complicated,
highlighting yet again how little I, and the majority of the people in the room,
know about everything. I look forward to next Friday.
I
also watched many films this week, as usual. These are as follows; Beyond the
Black Rainbow (weird and crazy with beautiful visuals), Starship Troopers
(hilarious propaganda along with some great bug killing), thx 1138 (distressing
and interesting idea surrounding an ‘ever watching’ government), The Lady Eve (hilarious),
Solaris (distressing and great), The Master (Philip Seymour Hoffman being the
best), Dope (surprisingly enjoyable), Internet Rising (very interesting and
informative), Truth (kind of dull), Downloaded (eye opening – ish), The Net (so
dull), Sunshine (not Boyle’s best), DMT: The Spirit Molecule (very 'wishy washy') and many more, but unfortunately I’ve
forgotten the other films, which is a shame… I’m sure they will come back at
some point, or maybe they aren’t worth me remembering at all…
I
also played a very weird video game called Plug & Play, which featured anthropometric
plugs having relationships with other plugs, and another one called Windowsill,
a beautiful and delicate interactive game centred on a variety of different
environments all set on a windowsill.
I
continue to read On Immunity, which continues to be interesting, making parallels
between us and cyborgs, referencing Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto where ‘we are all already cyborgs’ etc. During
this coming week I want to start reading Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game,
if I can find a copy and other books that relate to my practice a little more.
I’ve
already talked a little about the crit that’s coming up this week, which should
hopefully be exciting and helpful. Alongside this we’re slowly gathering into
groups for offsite shows which will occur at the beginning of next term, which
I’m looking forward to.
Laila
and I have put our collaboration on hold for the moment during the lead up to
the crit, which I’m excited to get back to after Tuesday, as I really like the
overall concept and the vision for the work.
Oh
and I finished Making a Murderer, which was slightly disappointing, much like
Serials season 1 ending. Season 2 is proving to be quite interesting too, but
maybe not as gripping for me as season 1, as it feels like the contributors
want it to be a huge thing like the previous season… I don’t know, I guess I
have to wait and see.
Anyway,
I look forward to seeing what this work holds for me.
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