"...what I want out of art, and the things that excite me, are things that help us see the historical moment that we live in." 

- Trevor Paglen, Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture (2015)

Trevor Paglen is an artist. 

Mrs Paglen is in every fashion of the word an artist. What I mean by that is that he does literally everything. Whatever tool he needs to show the world his art - he will use, whether its a wielding iron, a camera, or a pencil. Most recently he has tackled issues such as mass surveillance and data collection. For this he won the 2016 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Price. 

When I read about his project I immediately thought of our Maps & Networks project, because I feel like that in our modern world "mapping" things is very important. We want everything in the clear, and know what everyone is doing. His installation is compromised of images of restricted military and government areas,  and skylines showing the flight of passing drones. Multiple ways humans are trying to "map" out the world. He goes on to talk about how he feels like we are unable to see the historical moment that we are currently living in because of all the distractions we endure. I think this fits nicely with our  current project.

Another of Paglens projects is this cube that you can see to the right here -->

This project is called "Trinity Cube" and is a part of the 2015 "Don't Follow The Wind" project. This is an inaccessible art installation in the radioactive area around the power plant that exploded in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. The cubes outer layer is made of irradiated broken glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, while the the cubes inner core is made from Trinitite, the mineral created on July 16, 1945 when the USA exploded the worlds first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thereby incapsulating the humans race contact with atomic power. I feel like this could also fit our project, although in a different way. When human beings discover something, we become obsessed with fully exploring it. Sometimes this leads to great discoveries that furthers our sciences, and sometimes it ends with mesmerizing destructive force. Nothing fits both these explanations better than nuclear power. Whether its for energy, like in the Fukushima Power Plant, or as a weapon in the 1945 nuclear bomb explosion. It effects everything, thus connecting it to all our lives. 

The installation will become open for the public whenever the Exclusion Zone is safe to open again. This can be anytime from the next 3 years, to the next 3000.

If any of you want to read more about this, feel free to follow this link.

http://www.dontfollowthewind.info/

TJ

"There is... a lot of work located in galleries and put on a pedestal that wouldn't hold its own on the film festival circuit, where it would be seen as very surface and shallow."

- Andrew Kötting

Andrew Kötting - who is he? 

Born 16th December 1959, Andrew Kötting grew up in Kent, and later went on to study BA Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design; MA Mixed Media at Slade School of Art, and is currently working as an artist, writer, film maker, and is teaching Time Based Media at University for the Creative Arts.  

Widely known to be an experimental artist, following the spirit of the late David Jarman, his work ranges from running around a field pretending to ride a horse, to feature length films like Gallivant (1996) and Swandown (2012). In interviews he has claimed that he still sees himself as a performance artist even though he now does feature films.  

"I wouldn't think of myself as a feature film-maker. I'm just making longer pieces of work."

All At See - 2016

In his latest work Andrew has collaborated with his daughter Eden, who at an early age was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder - Jouberts Syndrome - which causes a sort of underdevelopment in the cerebellum. They have also worked together in the past, for an example on his feature film, Gallivant. All At See is a companion piece to the film It's All In The Mind, and takes place at sea, featuring animated versions of Eden drawings. The video posted in the post is a compilation of Andrews recent work, including All In The Mind and All At See. 

- TJ

THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR from andrew kotting on Vimeo.

we'll fix it in post

Now we have to make this film come to life. We are still nervous that we don't have enough footage to realise our original idea. We want to give these items a new meaning, bring them back in a new light. That's why we used the blue gloves, to give them a delicate touch, almost like a museum curator preserving precious treasures. 

We also want the sound to match the objects, not necessarily literally, but possibly a link to where we found them, or to what they were used as in their previous life. For an example: We found a lot of our items in the park, and that's why we want to have nature sounds (birds chirping, wind etc) to match those. But we also found piano notes made by a composer called Wilfred Sanderson, so we found another piece by him that we wanna use in our sound track as well. 

i love going item scavenging

So everything wasn't as simple as we thought. In Surrey you're not allowed to take objects from landfills, and lost and found boxes are also off-limits. This greatly limited our search radius, and we now had way less chances to find objects than what we originally hoped to have. 

On the first day we went to charity shops and looked for items we could use. We found some good postcards which all of us agreed nicely fit the aesthetic of the film we envisioned, and we also asked around if they had some items in the back that they might not be able to sell. This further led to some items we could use. 

On the second day of item finding Preston, Arturs, and I went to Farnham Park to see if there where any objects there that we might be able to use. We also picked some flowers and leaves. These will look really nice after we film them. 

Ah, I forgot to mention! We might be scanning the postcards, but for the rest of the items we had to figure out a different approach. That's why set up this intricate recording studio: 

As you can see it consists of a sheet of glass, held up by two tables, with a camera underneath and a white screen above. This worked really well with most of the items - some of the denser items look too dark, but the more delicate ones like plants, and a cassette tape look really nice because they're almost translucent.

We are struggling with having enough footage though. We might have to rely on found footage as well. 

the idea, and how we thought we could make it reality

So Natalie's original idea was this: 

"The main concept for my film is a moving photomontage under the theme of lost and found objects. Everything in the film must be found be the filmmakers. Even the camera has to be one found in a charity shop or second-hand shop. This includes archive footage and pieces of fabric that are found outside shops, or interesting textured nature found on the ground. 

All these things complied into a montage will create a beautiful concept with an interesting and unpredictable aesthetic. The film will begin with simplicity. A montage of  clips from archive footage will play. The layering will become more complex during the climax."

Our group consists of Natalie, Preston, Arturs, and myself. During our first meeting we discussed the idea and how we could do it. We all agreed that finding enough objects might pose a challenge if we wanted to have it as fast-paced as Natalie described in her pitch. We decided to give landfills, and places where they might have a lost and found box a call, and visit charity shops in person. We also set up a calendar with a schedule for which days we are going item hunting in the streets, in Farnham park, landfills, and lost and found boxes. 

Sound is different from music. The same components are used, yes, 

but sound can make you see so much more.

Hello hello hello, testing testing, 1 2 3. 

So today I set out to record my sounds, and here are the sounds I've decided I want: 

-Tapping that increases in intensity and power.

-Tapping with slightly different sound (made by tapping microphone) -I didn't use this one, too noisy-

-Tapping that resembles a heart beat

-Bomb explosion sound effect, made with voice 

-Bomb dropping sound effect, made by whistling 

-Plane sound effect, made with a fan

I recorded all of them, and most of them sound relatively good. I will absolutely have to edit them slightly, maybe distort some (the whistling for one as the pitch is too inconsistent). 

I also played around with some synth on Garage Band because James and I discussed an earlier piece he had made, were the synth sounded like artillery fire. I tried it out and I got some interesting results, but I also felt like it didn't fit my piece. I will definitely incorporate it in future projects though!

Here's my final piece: 

Final Sound Piece

Now that you've listened to it, I'll tell you what I did to make it sound like that. 

First of all I had to do noise reduction on all of them as my mic records a lot of the buzz around it. (I recorded by my computer, and the whirring from it was on the tracks.) I used the Heavy Reduction preset, as I wanted all of the noise to be removed. 

As I wanted the tapping to be quite loud, and the other sounds to come in naturally and not abruptly, I had to play around with the amplifier. Some tracks, like the tapping and the heart beat I had to amplify, while other tracks like the explosion and the bomb dropping I had to quiet down a bit. In the beginning of the piece I turned them down to about -25db, while later in the clip when I wanted the bombs to be "closer" I turned them to -5db. 

As I mentioned just now, I wanted the bombs and planes to seem far away in the beginning and then come closer. I did this by using an FFT-filter, and putting it to a low pass frequency, so that only the lower frequencies pass through. I curved it, instead of shelving it, as to make it sound like it was coming closer.

And that's about it. I'm quite pleased with my final result. 

-TJ

Can you hear that? Sounds like a sound project. So fresh and audible.

First things first, this is the second time I've ever played around with sound. The first time I was convinced I could create the next big party tune, but alas, Adobe costs money, also, creating a Billboard Top 10 hit takes a lot of time. (Needless to say I benched the project. Watch out though.) 

But this also means that I'm excited to get back to it and play around with actual, professional sound editing software magic. 

Nothing like some fun photoshopping to procrastinating making a blog post. 

Experimental sound project, let's go! 

In our first lesson with James we were told that our piece should be based of an image. We were presented with 8 (I think it was 8, oh well) different images, and among the herd there was one that I recognised. 

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso 

HISTORY LESSON 

In the spring of 1937 the Spanish Civil War was raging. And long story short, the Republicans, supporting the left-leaning government, fought against the Nationalist forces led by Fransisco Franco. If you know anything about history, then you know that Franco isn't necessarily known as a nice guy. If you need any convincing of why he isn't a nice guy, then you should know that he was supported by both Mussolini and Hitler, two of Europe's least nice guys.  Anyway, Hitler and Mussolini, who both were very right-winged in their political ideologies figured it'd a good idea to have Spain as a ally, but also that this civil war was a great way to test out their weapons, as to show the rest of Europe that they packed some real fire power - essentially one big scare tactic. 

Well, in 1937 Guernica was the next target. Italian and German air-forces bombed the poor city to rubble. It was completely unnecessary. History lesson over. 

I guess I have a certain soft spot for this part of history, as a town were I have roots, Dresden, also was bombed without reason not a mere 10 years later. Anyway, let's get to recording. 

What I want

I have a very clear idea for what I want to create. I want the piece to start out quiet with a steady beat. I then want it to come more and more chaotic, with planes and bombs whizzing by. It's a simple project, but I feel that this is what I hear when I look at this painting. 

-TJ