thergusthoughts

[thergusthoughts]

Clarity or Confusion?

Having sent the video to both tutors and cold viewers from outside the art communityI found that there was a split in opinion about whether the 2nd segment of the film was too chaotic, too confusing, or whether it was the opposite, and even whether it was necessary at all. I was told that the audience is asked to do a lot of work with the video as a result, something I was pleased with despite meant to be more of a critique. 

I took this advice on board and thought about its place in the video. The videos are from a ride range of events and media. I wanted to create chaos and confusion to show that we are being bombarded with footage like this all the time. We flick through it at such as rate that we cannot take a moment to wonder what is actually going on. We let the headlines tell us what is happening rather than taking a deeper look into the story and coming to our individual conclusion. 

After the first section the audience has an idea of what the piece is about, but after a slight rest the viewer is shown all of these flashing videos with layering audio creating a sense of confusion. This leads the audience to question everything they have seen and only after the end of the video can they question their own standpoint on being exposed to violence, and its effect on them. 

I do not want for there to be any more screens. This is because I want people to view it on their own devises and making the screens any smaller would make them not visible at all. I find the 9x9 grid a perfect balance between making the audience have to focus and providing them with enough visual information for them to decipher interpretation  

[thergusthoughts]

¿Where To Show It?

when i first made the video I wanted to have it installed on a large screen in a cinematic setting to suit the cinematic style of the work. However, as I have had to adapt to the current situation I decided that I want to show the video in the same way that the content which i discuss is shown, on phones and laptops. As a result I want to share the video via the internet on sharing platforms just like the extreme content i reference is. Everyone consumes online content consumes it on their own, in their own time. I want everyone to watch it and have their own experience of it. 

[thergusthoughts]

Video discussing my aims for the final crit

[thergusthoughts]

In this experimental video I wanted to try and play with the idea of suspense without relief. The audience follow the video with anticipation. The video motifs of the crosshair and the growing volume of the score create suspense but right at the crucial moment the video cuts off, just leaving the audio. This is frustrating for the audience as they have no sense of catharsis at the end of the video. They have invested their time in order to see what happens but are not rewarded. This leads the audience to question what they are waiting for. The final shot is a violent one, or so the audio suggests, and therefore to view it may make the audience uncomfortable. But still the audience want to see it, they are drawn in by what they cannot see even if it will be disturbing for them. 

[thergusthoughts]

Background colour.

The background colour was not something I had considered when making the first draft of the video. But after the suggestion of changing the background colour was raised then I thought I would try it out. I wanted to keep the colours as strong tones that would not distract the audience. As a result I thought I would try out three colours, Black, Grey, and White. I started with the grey background and found that it did not have the same sense of infinite expanse and emptiness as the black or white did. I wanted to try the white but the issue I had was that when a video played with a black border it stood out to much as did not have the same sense of disappearing into the background. It felt awkwardly placed there. As a result, I am sticking with the black

[thergusthoughts]

Draft 2 and Crit 3:

The audience initial reactions were what interested me the most during the crit, especially having seen it many times myself I have gotten used to watching it. The reaction that came up frequently was that it was ‘hard to watch’ and ‘disturbing’ which is exactly what I want to achieve. I want to show that these are events that are witnessed online all the time and in fact there is nothing unusual about the clips featured, only they way that they are compiled. 

Along with this reaction people also found that by the end it was harder to watch the video game footage rather than the real life events because of what they reflect and represent about the real world. 3 people mentioned that they almost didn’t want to watch it but found themselves drawn into the video unable to look away. This is a reaction that excited me. I find that these types of images existed everywhere online and we see them all the time. We know that sometimes it might not be ‘okay’ to watch then and that they are often disturbing but we find ourselves drawn in, seeking that sense of thrill or shock from the images. 

One person pointed out that the viewer is made to do a lot of the work. My view on this is that there is nothing wrong with that. I do not think that the message of the video has to be obvious and explicit from the moment they start watching it. I believe that the effect of the video is more of a subconscious one. When the audience goes online and sees an extreme video or a violent computer game they will think about what they are feeling, or whether they are feeling anything at all as they have potentially become desensitised to certain type of imagery.

The music was another talking point that was raised during the Crit. I was told that the music took away from the real life aspect of the piece. To some extent I agree with this. But I am not trying to replicate real life, if i was i could simply just show news footage. I want to create a sense of being sucked into the video, like i have discussed earlier, where the score has an almost Shepard tone effect where it feels like it is constantly getting louder higher creating a suspense. Another point was that the music forces a certain emotion that is already apparent through the visual language, therefore making the music unnecessary. I want to make the work as emotionally rich as possible and I find that the music helps create a richer sensory experience which I can then take advantage of by having a sudden ending, depriving the audience of any sense of catharsis. 

[thergusthoughts]

Draft 1 issues. 

Pacing: the pacing felt rushed and unconsidered in the first draft. Having showed it to 5 members of my peer group they found that there were moments where they needed to rest and moments that they thought should be faster and more overwhelming. An example of this is the screenshot above: the film of the burning building is playing while a few chaotic terror attacks are playing around it. For me this was not enough. I wanted to have a sense of rest after the previous scene before I went into an even more overwhelming segment. I added a moment of darkness where the score played on its own before the image of the burning building popped up in the middle to suggest at potential proleptic irony as the audience has not yet seen a large scale disaster in the video yet. This foreshadowing comes into fruition with the second draft: there is a sudden burst of 12 different events that suddenly scatter the screen, whereas before the shots felt slow and less dense and overwhelming. 

As well as other technical tweaks, such as  removing evidence of me screen recording the videos, the second draft is ready for me to show in the Crit. 

[thergusthoughts]

I am interested in the individual frames of the window. They act as natural divisions and therefore the audience look at each panel on their own as well as all of them as an ensemble.

I initially wanted to try and place different images within the frames but having done some research and further experimentation i have decided that I want to place videos in each of the frames instead. I find that this will create a greater sense of being overwhelmed with information. I want the audience to see all of this extreme imagery and be, at first, overwhelmed and therefore not focused, but after they stop at look at each indidvidal frame they will realise what they are looking at and question whether it is ok. 

The videos themselves will be found footage from online sources. I want to use easily accessible and familiar  videos to highlight how we view this kind of content on a daily basis. 

[thergusthoughts]

Voyeurism and Discomfort

The audience feel like they are inside looking out. The subjects in the frame do not seem to notice the camera. By creating a kind of one way mirror, the audience becomes an almost voyeur, secretly looking at a snapshot of this event. 

After several minutes of viewing and discussing the image, the audience went from intrigue to discomfort as they felt that they were almost spying on the people within the image. This also raised the question of whether the artist in the ‘spy’ or whether the audience is complicit in it. 

 The windows that they look through feel like large screens on which the images are being shown. The audience members picked up on this and remarked that it feels like they are watching a form of entertainment rather than a real life event. 

[thergusthoughts]

Crit 2

After presenting this work in a recent crit, I found that people responded well to the image and drew an understanding that I had hoped and planned for. However, the group also acknowledged that this image ‘worked’ as a result of them having seen the previous images from my project. Therefore, the image itself may not be as effective if it is shown to an audience who has little prior knowledge of what I am trying to achieve. 

The group was initially conflicted about whether the windows and floor boards belonged to a comfortable western domestic setting as a result of how there is no decoration or furniture to indicate so. The reason I did not want to fill the image with signals is I believe that the image in the foreground is already enough of a contrast to the image in the background. The clean and straight lines of the floor boards contrast with the chaotic street scene behind. In my previous crit I found that the audience was overly focused on the objects in the foreground which frustrated me, leading to me to removing any distraction. 

Assumptions. The audience initially assumed that this was a place of war and terror. Their initial thoughts were that this is a violent place (or a place that has just seen violence). In the the feedback I was told that ‘The image relies fairly heavily on assumptions, for example what looks violent or foreign- and on close reading some of these descriptors don't feel accurate’. This is what I wanted to achieve: These images bombard us on a daily bases and are ingrained into out subconscious that when we see certain things such as a Hijab or a street littered with rubbish and dust we assume a location or a certain type of event. As the constant stream of images flow through the internet we never stop to consider what we are looking at. The result of this constant exposure to these images is that we become desensitised to them, they become normal.

[thergusthoughts]

Has global access to the internet made us desensitised and passive to certain events? Has extreme imagery become a part of everyday life?

[thergusthoughts]

 Kosuth’s ‘Chair’ 

which representation of the chair is most “accurate”?  

Does the experience of seeing something in the flesh define it/change the experience for us?

With a large number of major galleries and exhibitions going online as a result of the recent Covid-19 pandemic I have been questioning the value of work as it changes medium as well as the way we view it. 

This is an issue that I initially had when I made a digital collage of a Rodin’s ‘Kiss’ overlaid with a low quality screenshot from a porno. The contrast of images seemed very apparent for me at first, one was a valuable sculpture while the other was taken from one of many low quality pornographic videos that seem to fill the internet. 

The problem I faced was that the source of the images is the same. They were both taken from Google images. I am not comparing the low quality image to the work of Rodin, rather I was actually comparing it to an equally poor, mass produced image of the sculpture instead

No matter how much I changed the collage layout or the actual artwork itself, the results where the same: I could not get close to contrasting the two opposing works without using the original artwork. I believe that the ‘Poor Image’, as Hito Steryrl calls it in her essay of the same name, will only seem as different to the Rodin sculpture is if it is compared directly to the sculpture itself.

[thergusthoughts]

Morning Views and Breaking News

Although the process very similar and the results may also appear the same way I believe there is a very big difference in digitally inserting as image into a window frame vs a picture frame. 

The view from the window is often hard to control and predict. It is also constantly changing. The frame has intent. It has been put there and has a thought process behind why it is in the frame. 

This is something I want to explore further as I look at how the internet intrudes and changes our everyday life. 

Instead of looking out of a window we look at a screen 

Rather than looking at a framed work in a gallery we have to look at it online.

[thergusthoughts]

normalising violence; Bringing graphic computer game imagery into the domestic setting

Crit 1:

frustrating! I did not consider the the items outside of the frame. The two people were analysed more than the image in the frame. 

Despite this some interesting talking points:

the audience assumed that the image was put in the frame rather than superimposed in photoshop. This changed how they viewed the two people in the foreground: whether they were complicit in putting up the photo, whether they are celebrating the image by having it framed in their home, or whether they had no idea that the picture would be replaced with a violent image. 

The lens flare on the image also led to confusion. Which I liked as it sparked debate about whether it was real or superimposed later. All i did was up the brightness and enhance a lamp that was already in the video game screenshot to make it look like it was a flare from a light hanging in the room. This was emphasised by the pre existing lights that are already reflecting around the edge of the frame from the original photograph. 

From here I need to refine my actual image, get rid of distraction, and guide the audience to what I want them to feel and interpret. I feel this concept has potential for greater exploration and expansion but in its current form it does not express what I want to. It is a first step in trying to convey our desensitisation to violence as a result of a hyperbolised online world.

[thergusthoughts]

this work makes the audience complicit in a crime by making them witness a brutal beating up of  a man. It raises questions about whether it is ok to view this and whether creating it in a video game program is different from real life