During
the past couple of days since the last post I’ve been doing a few things, the
most important being making a new piece of work every day for the 30 days, 30
works thing. Alongside that I’ve watched a couple of films and played a few video
games. After being back from New York for a week now I feel that I’m slowly
sinking back into the relaxed life, with the boredom of the country being
pushed away by the one piece a day project. I’m sure a week from now I will
feel differently, but for now I’m content.
The
30/30 project has been a weird experience, one that I’ve not taken part in before,
the mass generation of work and ideas. I don’t know whether I like it or not. At
this juncture it feels like my days are being slightly dominated by it, even
though I’m only on day three! On the first day I attempted to create an
installation of sorts which consisted of an array of old laptops piled up,
creating a tower-like structure alongside a video work which utilised Sketchup and
Rihanna’s Work; the brief was can you make a work, at work? The video
piece consists of a pile of equipment synonymous with offices (office chairs, computers,
plant pots, etc) alongside a video that’s within the video of an impact hammer
literally attacking a road, all set to a variety of female computer generated
voices repeating the words ‘work’ over and over. I was interested by the
contrasts between the stereotypical jobs for the male and the female and how to
juxtapose the two alongside staying in my Sketchup comfort zone. It was more ‘fun’
than good, fun is still good though. Although I was content with the piece, the
lack of a good camera left me with my phone camera, which was a mistake as the
final image of the sculpture looked terrible. I immediately made the decision
to not make another work that would have to be photographed for 30/30 before I
return to uni and my good camera, which is depressing, but warranted.
The
second piece that I created was a 40 minute film that features a webcam video
of myself, watching a compilation of all the endings from the Call of Duty video
game franchise. The video of myself was filmed in the dark during the early
hours of the morning, whilst watching a tv show, the light from the screen is flickering
against my face with various amounts of light so that at points my face is lit
up whilst at others the screen is completely black. I chose to have some fun
with the layout of the different clips, creating a newsstand-esque aesthetic for
the different slices of gameplay. The twisting of the different screens draws
your attention towards the fact that it is a screen, that it’s a performance, a
virtual space posing as a real one, something that I’m interested by. It also
makes it more evident that I’m having this dialogue with the different video
games, rather than simply being put in front of the gameplay. This aesthetic is
borrowing from Neïl Beloufa’s video piece People's
passion, lifestyle, beautiful wine, gigantic glass towers, all surrounded by
water where he twists the screen, and plays with your senses. The cold,
blank face of my video, seemingly playing these games considers how our first
world society is (in the media’s eyes) slowly becoming desensitized to violence
through the use of these FPS video games. Obviously this is not true and
various studies have explored this, but I thought that it would be interesting
to create something that explores this. The work reminds me a lot of Harun Farocki’s
Serious Games, where soldiers are
filmed playing an army game. I’m happy with the piece, but the lack of time to
create the work made it so that I had to export the video in a very low quality,
which is always a shame. The days brief was is
your work descriptive, or performative?
For
today’s brief could your work have
another function? I decided to create a very short but simple piece of work
using a variety of my old pieces. Putting a bunch of folder shortcuts onto my
desktop, I then proceeded to screen-record my mouse putting them all into the
Recycle Bin and deleting them forever. I then set this short – 40 second – clip
to John Williams’ The Imperial March.
The theme is used throughout the Star Wars franchise, usually occurring when
Darth Vader strides into frame, so I thought that it was pertinent and
appropriate as the song to accompany the mass deletion of some of my ‘art’
files. Although the After Microsoft
background by Goldin+Senneby is my default background, I think that it works
well with the content of the piece, the dying/gentrified landscape drawing parallels
between the idea that everything and anything can be art. This is also being
commented on by how each folder is simply labelled ‘art’ as opposed to any
details, etc. This very basic premise of deleting something from your computer
is used a lot within the art realm, one particular piece by Christian Schultz
comes to mind; Foreign Policy Proposal
where the genie from Aladdin is ‘deleted’
back into his lamp.
Apart
from 30/30 I’ve been watching a few films, the first being The Conversation which reminded me of a good work of art, where
everything fits so well, and makes so much sense. I loved the incredibly sensual/sexualised
manner that Caul (Gene Hackman) adopts when he’s crafting the different
recordings. It made me think of all the Cronenberg films, especially eXistenZ, when Pikel (Jude Law) is
interacting with the virtual reality console, massaging and connecting with the
device. I also enjoyed the scene where Caul is lying down, listening to his
doctored tape; the then contrasting with the now, the two different scenes
intermeshed to make one is an exciting cinematic tool that I look forward to
repurposing in my own films at some point. I also watched L.A. Confidential
which was another enjoyable classic, corrupt cops and Kevin Spacey make for a
good film. Speaking of Spacey, I’ve also finally got around to getting back
into House of Cards, although I’m
very behind and only on season 3. Oh and I watched Kids and hated it. The way it was filmed, the acting, the plot. The
ending was just awful. No fun at all.
On
top of this I played a short game called Dr.
Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist by
one of the co-developers of The Stanley
Parable, a mind-fuck of a game that I love. In this new – free – game it
begins with you trapped in a sort of ‘waiting room’, soon discovering that you’re
not actually going to ‘play’ the game, but instead going to be directing
another ‘player’ through the ‘game experience’ that you were supposedly going
to play yourself. Incredibly meta. Ultimately it’s as if the video game within
the video game is in fact an elaborate theatre piece, not unlike You Me Bum Bum Train, and you’re the one
who’s behind the fake walls, turning on the weather machine and letting the
tiger out of its cage. Throughout you’re directed by an unseen narrator (Simon
Amstell – who does an incredible voice acting performance), talking you through
the game that you’re operating, feeding you subtle hints as you progress. It’s
basically a game about games, commenting on how games are made (or the public’s
perception on how games are made) and the creative process. It’s definitely
worth your time, and did I mention it’s free? Why not.
Alongside
that I started to play another video game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. This, as opposed to Firewatch, comes under the heavy banner
of ‘walking simulator’ and is an exploratory game. I’m not sure if I’m a fan of
aimlessly wandering around an – albeit beautifully rendered – uninhabited landscape,
hoping to bump into the next item to pick up. I am only a mere 30 minutes into
the experience though, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see. For the moment the
story is kind of impenetrable, which may or may not be a good thing. Who knows?
Over
the next week I hope to continue creating the daily projects as well as vaguely
starting on my essay, at least the ‘research’ part of the experience anyway. I
also want to watch more films, as I seem to have slowed down for some unknown
reason. Anyway…
Enjoi
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