jl-randazzo-blog

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The background is very pretty. I don’t know if you were intending to just turn the camera off, but when you approached the camera and the music turned off, it felt like 1st person body possession or something. Things like this are definitely where I think performance art is most effective; it’s about conveying a frame of mind or an attitude or a...vibe, I guess? It works well here.

Thanks for sharing. 

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GumfgP7jjRw)

The Artist is Present / Performance Art

For the last project I wanted to be anonymous but still remain present.

My motto right now in life is LIVE+BREATHE+CREATE.

I tried to combine my love for interesting lighting, music, dance, and to just feel free. Free to be myself in this very moment, but the silhouette version of me. However, in some sense makes me feel that I am still holding back, and maybe need to try and let things go more, and humble myself. You only live once ( I think)  and I need to feel more confident in my own skin and as an artist . Ever since I have been in school I feel I have struggled with my body and the way I look at times. The world can be really cruel , and in this era we are living in and everything we see on the news, tv, social media, can be a struggle not to compare yourself to others. I have never done performance art before, and it really has inspired me to continue to push myself and keep going. It has also has elevated my senses in the arts after educating myself on What Performance Art is ,and what it means to me. It will be interesting to see what lies ahead for performance art. I really learned a lot this semester with all the really cool projects. I am very grateful I took this class, and I hope everyone enjoyed my art as much as I did theirs !!! :):):)

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all !!!

LIVE+BREATHE+CREATE

[jl-randazzo-blog]

Wow, this was actually pretty cinematic, but it also would genuinely work as a performance with people walking by. The themes were clear as well. I really enjoyed the Clair de Lune drop halfway through.

Nice work. 

Project #5: Performance Art

Artist Statement

For my piece I wanted to do a performance that closely resembled theatrical performances, but I also wanted to be able to convey the same deeper messages that can be found within other performing artists work. Due to this I ended up deciding to do some further research on verbs and try to create a performance using only one verb. This ultimatley brought me to the word fear. I personally feel that the word fear is perfect for this project because of the many ways the word can be applied. Throughout the video there is a hooded figure with a mirrored face. The intention for this was to demonstrate how often times we are the ones who create fear for ourselves. The mirriored face is ment to reflect the inner fears of the plaid wearing character a.k.a me. I can also see the mirrored figure’s face being a reflection of the viewer’s fear, and as a result that would explain why my character becomes increasingly fearful.         

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This was really cute. I have to admit I laughed out loud as the camera zoomed into her face with her tongue interrogating her upper lip. Funny stuff. It’s also interesting to watch a child individually look at all these important people in their life. I think it has value in terms of making us reflect on the influence key people had on our formation. I have no kids, but I have a 7-year-old nephew, and when he was four, he was a bona fide sociopath, so I can definitely appreciate the effort that went into making this happen!

Thanks for sharing.

Artist Statement project #5 one minute performance piece

So I’ll admit that at first I had trouble coming up with an idea for this performance video. Furthermore, since I’ve included my daughter in every single project this semester I wanted to also make sure to find a way to include her in this final project, as well. I was really struggling to come up with an idea, though, until I looked more into the work of Marina Abramovic. The work I’m specifically referring to is her “one minute of silence” piece where she allowed complete strangers wait in line and then sit with her in this art installment and let people do pretty much whatever they’d like, all while she herself sat perfectly still at a table. I thought that was a really cool idea and I really enjoy watching the video of the whole thing playing out, so much so that I decided it would be cool to try and recreate Marina’s project. This also gave me a decent way of keeping my daughter involved, as well, because if it’s one thing four year old kids aren’t typically known for, its sitting still and being quiet, so I decided I’d film my daughter sitting silently at the table while different family members took turns sitting across from her. At first I had people try to make my daughter laugh and make noise, but I found that was way too easy and filming her sitting silently was proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. In fact, it wasn’t until I promised her a chocolate doughnut before I got any real cooperation out of her. At any rate, despite the many takes this took, we finally got it down and I’m pleased enough with the result. The few family members that didn’t participate in the actual video were all standing by watching, which served as our audience, making this very much of a performance piece. It may not seem like much, but I assure you that keeping a four year old quiet for sixty seconds is no small accomplishment. You’ll find that I even went the extra mile in trying to dress my daughter all in red just like Marina wore in her installation.

[jl-randazzo-blog]

I was trying to figure out why they were popping so easily for most of the video, but you addressed that in your artist statement. I can’t imagine how long it took to blow up all of those balloons. Having them in that great of quantities probably is satisfying, though; it’s like having the whole floor be made of bubble wrap. Probably the most interesting part of it is the very beginning, when you’re already surrounded by all these balloons, but you keep popping the others that float down. Something about it feels oddly maniacal. 

Thanks for sharing!

Project #5 - The Artist is Present

For this project I wanted to do something fun and light. I tried several different things with balloons, paint, and the anticipation of the bursts/pop. Most didn’t work out or just didn’t feel right. I finally got so frustrated that I started popping balloons. That landed me here…

I was inspired by a bit by the comedian Boy with Tape on His Face. I put nails through some gloves and blew up 84 balloons (so lightheaded). I had my roommate throw balloons at me from upstairs.

I have to say that I wanted this to be fun but it also turned out to be very cathartic. It’s been a rough week with finals and work (but let’s be honest, this whole year can go kick rocks) and it was nice to destroy something, make loud noises, and be silly. My dog, on the other hand, did not appreciate the noise.

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The funniest part about this to me is the idea of people walking past. When I see someone acting hysterical in public, I tend to try to avoid looking at them, but you always manage to catch a couple glimpses. I wonder how long it would take for them to fully realize that you’re literally crying over spilt milk. Pretty funny. In reality, I think this is a case where having it on camera actually hurts the reality of it because people are clearly aware that it’s some kind of performance. But such were the requirements of the project. Thanks for sharing. 

Part 2

Some of you might recognize these trailers. As a journalist student I’ve been pushed off the main campus to study in these and know there are other journalist students there too. SO with today’s hectic media and ridiculous politics I wanted to act a little ridiculous too. When I was filling out my verb list and thinking about being a little extra I thought of the phrase “crying over spilt milk”.  Obviously that’s what you’re seeing but I do not want people to think that I am making fun of all the issues we are currently living.

There are some obvious issues that arose during this project. First I did not feel comfortable filming this with my camera due to the temperatures, because of this I had to use a phone but my phones lens is broken. Thankfully I have at least one friend. He also had some issues that I don’t fully understand. This is why the video is broken in two, then the quality is pretty shoddy because of the phone too.

Another issue I would change is that none of the other students are in the recording. I made sure to do this in between class so there would be plenty of people to see, and there really was. However, my friend was a little embarrassed by my antics and avoided capturing their reactions. This would not have been a huge issue had I brought a second jug of milk and was able to reshoot.

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Project #5: Performance Art

To put your mind at ease, this is a previously unused plunger. The idea here was about trying to get hangups out of my head. Every so often, I’ll feel like my thoughts are racing or I’m having trouble focusing or having a clear head for any number of reasons. Performance Art is something I’ve never been interested in doing myself, but my experience with it tends to be observing people using objects on themselves or in places that don’t make sense, so I spend a good amount of time thinking of different objects and how I could interact with them. Hopefully it’s at least... interesting? I don’t know; I don’t find it all that special, but it was the most interesting idea I came up with regarding objects I could use on my own body.  

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I find the fragmentation here to be the most interesting part. In the early days of broadcast, there was essentially no encryption, compared with now at least. It’s interesting to think of non-attenuated signal receivers collecting a whole bunch of partial signals at once, and what chaos it would look like. I really liked the shapes incorporated here, and some of the sounds.

Good work. 

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldCOK80mWGg)

                                        <<Interconnect>>

Project 4

For my video art project , I chose to use the metapsychical aspect of the reading. I find it rather interesting outside of the earth how much projection has been used, and what might truly be out their beyond us. I wanted my project to have a digital feel. I also wanted to showcase how technology has been used for broadcasting, and how it has been used for communication.After doing my research and watching shows like the X-Files, The Twilight Zone, and even the actual footage of the Apollo mission from 1969. I realized how big of a role technology has played not only in the world , but in my life, and now everywhere ( the digital age) . Though it might be a little creepy , my intent was not to be. I just find what lies beyond our world fascinating, and wanted to really play with that idea or notion. I wanted my video to feel like we are connected in some way, and the use of technology might help us get more answers one day or to possibly something greater. The Truth is out There. LOL

Enjoy :)

[jl-randazzo-blog]

Nice! Those hypersaturated filters go really well with the Pixies. It’s really nice when the wave swallows the shadow. 

Project #4 Video Art Artist statement - the main thing I took away from the reading was the idea of reflections and shadows; whether it was the story of drawing the Buddha from his reflection in the water or the mentioning of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with the shadows being cast on the walls to distract the prisoners, I took all of that into mind and decided to focus on shadows and reflections as much as possible. For the holiday break my wife and I went to Florida to visit family, so I took advantage of the situation and filmed my daughter’s shadow running around on the beach. Also, I once again used my daughter’s reflection in the mirror to cover the vanishing/appearing portion of this project. Lastly, I included Wave of Mutilation by the Pixies because it just seemed to be a really good fit. I’m pretty pleased with the way it all turned out and I hope you all enjoy it.

[jl-randazzo-blog]

More than anything, this makes me think about watching television in the 90′s for some reason. The cuts are really well orchestrated, and the sound nicely complements the cuts. 

I have to say that i don’t think i understood the project entirely.

When i read the article i couldn’t help but feel like scratching my head and asking myself if i’m wasting my time. This, for some reason, made me think of hangovers and the ruined day they create. My hangovers tend to move in a cycle of wake and sleep, disappearing and reappearing consciousness. The first cycle almost never leaves the bed, hence why immediately after waking up the eye moves into dreamlike images of flowers and space. The day is usually filled with nothing more than TV watching but i didnt want this to appear like lazily watching t.v. so i tried to keep it in order with the ramblings of a dream like state. Finally i took the story into a dark turn, The hospital scene could be a musing of the dream or a reality, but  i was partial to the line from the doctor stating “your going to be in and out of it.” I thought it was fitting for the piece and was able to create i nice blur in and out of consciousness.

[jl-randazzo-blog]

This is cool. I used to make stop-motion videos with lego when I was a kid. The VO was really bad, though. 

I actually think your idea here came through very clearly. Climate change is one of many things one could think of in response, but the removal of a necessary underlying structure putting surface elements into freefall is a wide net. You could really think of many different things. 

Project #4

For this project I wanted to do something related to climate change and our slowing vanishing earth. I didn’t want to be too on the nose though. I also wanted to create my own work instead of piecing together other videos. I thought about this for what seems like forever. I came up with the idea to create a landscape out of crayon names.  Using stop-motion I carefully built the landscape and then removed them one by one until only “outer space” was left. I like the idea that something so dark and present can be displayed by something so light and playful.

I apologize for the shortness and the lack of audio. I have never done stop motion before, nor have I tried to make a movie out of hundreds of photos. I definitely have a new found respect for this art. And in the end, I have to say I am happy with the outcome!

Hope you guys enjoy!

(Side note: bought a box of 164 crayons to find the right names. There is a color called “jazzarazz.” How is that even a color? Anyhow, My nephew will enjoy this extra christmas present!)

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Reading/Film response #5

I’m going to lump both of these together, because my thought process between the two has become very intertwined.

In the final days of Marina Abromovic’s exhibition, a woman approached to sit with her and proceeded to remove her clothes. Security promptly rushed her, and hilariously attempted to devise a way to block her from view without crossing any lines themselves. At another point in the exhibition, someone tried to wrap a picture around their head, and they too were escorted away. 

The standard would appear to be that if you do really anything besides sit there, you are escorted away. I remember thinking, when Marina’s long-lost partner sat across from her, that he was being a real asshole. Here she is, engaging in something very demanding both physically and mentally, and he’s throwing a big, fat wrench into the whole thing. The response from the crowd, security, and Marina herself would indicate otherwise, though. 

I’m left feeling very confused about the extent to which participants are meant to have an effect on her. Naked stranger seems like less of a disruption than long-lost lover, to me, and the precedent of nakedness has long-since been set in the exhibit. I imagine I must be in the minority here, but for some reason I just don’t understand the unspoken standard here. Don’t get me wrong, I would never take off my clothes before doing that or devise some meta addition to the artwork, but I’m as close to doing that as I would be to ever sitting in that chair in the first place. There’s something so fascinating to me about what even puts people in that chair—on the surface, it just seems so solipsistic, like the individuals have this deep need to be seen. I just can’t imagine being in that chair without obsessively critiquing the nature of the moment, and feeling deeply uncomfortable as a result. So perhaps I speak in ignorance here, but when I see people sitting there and tearing up and holding their hearts, I can’t help but wonder if her performance is serving as a canvass for these people’s deepest anaclitic deprivations. In that sense, it’s hard to call it anything but a success, artistically. But I hope that the experience left them with something truly positive. After her meeting with David Blaine, one of her friends insisted that she was doing something real, where Blaine is an illusionist. That holds true for the vast majority of her work, where she is the canvass. In this instance, however, it feels as though these people are being given the illusion of catharsis, but in reality their traumas are just being drawn to the surface.

Early in the film, there was footage of a series Marina did where she was posing in public places, fully clothed, with a number of naked people around her. These pieces reminded me of a recurring dream I had when I was a teenager. Sorry if this gets too personal, but to keep it brief, basically the dream consisted of me being fully clothed while everyone else around me was naked. The people around me were begging me to take of my clothes and be naked with them, but I refused. That dream was perplexing, because the more common nightmare would be to find oneself naked amongst the clothed. It’s hard to say what a dream actually means to us cognitively, but I’ve always interpreted that dream to mean that I had a deep fear of vulnerability, even amongst those who'd been very vulnerable with me. This was during my formative years, as I was just beginning to develop an identity as a musician, an artist, and a writer. 

One of the things I came to learn about art in general, as time went on, was that the most difficult part of it was becoming naked (metaphorically speaking) to yourself—to peel back the layers of why you feel the way you do, why you react to things the way you do, and why you are who you are. I’ve always viewed it as the responsibility of the artist to put themselves through that pain, to go spelunking through the caverns of their mind, and to live in that cave until they can surface with a digestible nugget of wisdom for their audience (hopefully). What makes performance art so challenging for me is that it seems to posit that, yes, we should dive into that trench, but instead of returning to the surface to meet our audience, we should provide them with their own path into the abyss. That requires a degree of vulnerability that I’m not sure I have, at least not yet. 

In Goldberg’s piece, she says that the function of avant-garde is to break through existing traditions. Whenever folks have visceral responses to emergent mediums, it’s right to be suspicious. After all, folks have been decrying new forms of expression for thousands of years. That doesn’t mean that something new can’t be bullshit (I could write a long, long essay about why I think John Cage, mentioned in this piece, is an abject charlatan, but that’s for another day), but when I find my impulse is to reject something on some arbitrary conception of what I think art should look like, I try to force myself to break down those walls. Goldberg called performance art in the twentieth century ‘avant-avant-garde.’ Although I’m no expert, I think its fair to say that performance has developed as a medium enough in its own right that it can no longer be called avant-garde by its own merits, following that definition. Impermeable barriers, screaming, and self-harm have become well-established tropes in the medium at this point; that is to say, there is a wide enough net of basic behaviors associated with performance art that I think it can rightly be termed as a relevant, commercial genre in the art world today. That’s why its good to see that those on the forefront, like Marina, are finding ways to challenge the conventions of performance art itself. 

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Project 4: Vanishing and Becoming

So I decided to do something with lights and music. The idea here was to draw some equivalency between the colors and notes in a constantly building chord. When a new primary color is introduced, a new root note is introduced. Then, when the analogous color to the primary is introduced, a disonant tone located a seventh away from the root note is introduced. Analogous colors are directly adjacent to root colors, which is often pleasing, but somewhat overlooked. In contrast, in music, adjacent tones are highly dissonant, and draw a lot of attention. Interestingly, when analogous colors aren't geometrically close, and there is a lot of contrasting tones between them, I find it creates its own dissonance, whereas when you space dissonant tones out by octaves in music, it helps us to forgive the disonance.

In the end, when all six lights are lit up, it creates an interesting texture, but one without much of an identity. Similarly, the chord that's couldn't really be described in terms of any regular triad, because it reads G B F# A D C# from top to bottom. However, a melody emerges when the final light shines.

Thematically, the idea is sort of about combining dissonant streams of thought to service a conclusion or a breakthrough of some sort. It responds to the reading in so far as the white light in the center is being birthed as a result of dissonant elements. The white light (and the melody) create a resolve to the tension, although the tension is still there.

Hope you like it! I used candles, an electric guitar, Premiere, and Protools.

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Exercise # 4

Warning: there are some light flashing lights in the video

The footage used in this is primarily from a movie called Jacob’s Ladder that released in 1990. I had to go back and watch it to figure out what footage I wanted to use. It’s a thriller/psych horror film from 1990. Going back and watching it now, although I think there are some pretty effective scenes and images, I’m disappointed to report that the story is really ham-fisted. Many of the themes step on eachother’s toes, and it ends up feeling like they just didn’t stick the landing with any one of them. There’s some interesting stuff in there, to be sure, but it does feel as though the writer wanted too badly to have a neat twist at the end, so the story ends up feeling pretty convoluted in that regard. 

The footage used in the first minute and a half comes from an old film-student production I found online based on the novel The Windup Bird Chronicle by Murikami. I really wanted to find footage of the stage production that I could use, but I couldn’t find any.

The song is written by Brand New. They’re a band I really liked in high school, and it is strange listening to them as I get older because they’re pretty depressing. They just came out with a new album, though, so I’ve been spinning that. They haven’t really outgrown the sad-bastard thing, but I think they’ve found a way to use it in more interesting contexts, such as this song, Lit Me Up. 

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Reading #4

Good review in ch 6 of implied time vs. actual time. I really like they used Bunny as an example. That little film is so oddly emotionally affecting, even before the light or any of that comes into the picture. There is something about the mundanity of cooking and swatting the moth that puts a big old lump in my throat. Implying time is obviously very useful for storytelling, giving viewers/readers a sense of distance between beats. I always think of films that force the viewer to sit in confusion about time passage, Antichrist by Lars von Trier comes to mind. It’s always so difficult to tell how much time is passing between events in that movie. Everything feels so cramped and so distant at the same time. 

The Vanishing and Becoming reading was very interesting. I think I understand most of the key points made, but it’s possible that I’m misinterpreting some things, as a disclaimer. I don’t know how well equipped I am to respond or critique it, but here I go anyway.

The paragraph that described the significance of Plato’s projections successfully nutshelled what they represent in a philosophical context. It also did a really nice job of laying the groundwork for what the author references later, with the ideal forms of expression throughout the renaissance being judged on how accurate a depiction of reality, or a moment, they set forth. 

I also greatly appreciated the comparison of Gorky’s response to early silent films with iconoclasts of the orthodox church. I think that resistance to evolving mediums exists in essentially every time period, and it’s interesting to cast doubts into similar categories. Similarly, the author weaves a wide associative web surrounding the term ‘projection,’ drawing comparisons between the artistic objectives of projection and the psychological and ego-preserving aspects of projection, among others (including the permanent projection of radiowaves into space). 

However, I’m critical of comparative aspects of pieces such as this when those observations stand as implicit claims. Word association is not an effective way to develop a greater understanding of the world. The tendency of folks to reconstruct categories—whether they’re social, physical, ideological, etc.—to conform to Venn diagrams they’ve constructed by reasoning through analogy is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. Luckily, I think it’s used in an extremely exploratory context for this piece, and using it as a method of qualitative exploration can greatly expand how we interpret the thematic functions of the medium in the work we produce. 

Still though, I can’t help but feel that some of the eventual conceptions of projection in this critique go a tiny bit off the rails—the advent of the pixel throws a huge boomerang in the wheels of this wagon, and in my opinion, besides a very eloquently constructed sentence, the author doesn’t do a great job of conceptualizing projection in a way that relates to how people view mostly. Maybe that’s not the point, but they do reference mass media in itself as a form of projection, and that all projection is innately ideological, which I think is an extremely apt description of even the most banal of commercial films. 

The author penned a great paragraph on the function of projection as mortality vs. natality, and the overuse of the medium to examine/think about death. Earlier in the piece, they reference projection as a medium innately focused on the dissolution of the subject and the object simultaneously, drawing comparison to Plato’s death of a higher reality intrinsic in the projection of forms. I certainly find it more interesting to the think about projection/film in the light of it giving birth to a new moment and new world with every passing frame, but I don’t know how appropriate I find either one of them. Projection as creation/death is appropriate in the context of the cast shadows—those moments aren’t recorded; they are ephemeral distortions of the current moment transcribed into art. Any performance art can be thought of in that way, but if the functional conception of projection as a medium is the distortion of an ‘exact’ reality, those themes apply. However, in the context of recorded film, although the subject is lost, the object exists in perpetuity. Maybe it’s due to a lack of imagination on my part, but I don’t find it especially useful to think of a projected slide in the context of the creation/death of a moment any more than the act of watching said projection or looking at a painting represents the birth/death of those individual moments. 

Really thought provoking piece! I will continue to enjoy chewing on it. 

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This one loops really well. Some of those cartoons are uniquely well-equipped for GIFs.

GIF #8 Jossie and the Pussycats

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The stooges lend themselves particularly well to GIFs. I like the foot on face one the most. 

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How did you create these? I don’t recognize any of these scenes from anything, and I’ve played almost all the Marios, I think. Did you animate them? Is there a fan game out there or something?