Video Triptych

I am fed up with television, especially "Reality TV." The only TV we have at my house doesn't get any channels, cable or otherwise, so when I was assigned to watch some new TV's shows for another class I got fed up. I made this triptych to urge people to get up off their couches, go outside and do something. There are so many good, productive things to be done away from our TV's and I think that people forget that these days.

Assignment #1 - Video Self Portrait

Continuing with the idea of found objects that I used to make my instrument and audio self portrait, I went the route of using mostly random found footage from youtube. My audio track is pretty chaotic, more so when I combined the random track with the intentional track, and I wanted to represent that visually through found footage. The first clip was shot randomly this morning when I woke up to find it snowing outside. I didn't expect it to snow so the surprise of it got me to go outside and take a little video of it. I think the randomness of this fit perfect with the rest of my clips. I just started typing things into youtube and seeing what videos popped up in the search, and then just selected pieces of those clips and went to the clips related to those to find more videos. For my editing I randomly dropped clips onto my timeline and then clipped them to make them fit to tempo changes and the time constraint. Everything fit together really well and sticks to the random, found idea of my project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRi1G9DDUcM

Video assignment #1

For my video assignment I want to emulate the look of found footage videos. I think that since my audio self portrait has so many different sounds in it ranging from loud fuzzy chaos to soft clinking bottles I will be able to create a visual version of my sound in video using an assortment of found footage and video I shoot on my own. Also, since everything I used to make my instrument I found in my neighbors and my own trash and recycling cans, it will add to the theme of my project. When looking at other found video artists I came across Joseph Cornell and really liked the way he used all the old film spliced together to make his pieces. The coolest one I found was "Jack's Dream," but I am sure there are other good ones as well. Im looking forward to finding clips to match to my audio as well as film things that I come across as well. I was thinking of walking through the woods in the day and night and filming that to ad different representations of nature to my video.

Audio Self Portrait

My intentional sound

http://soundcloud.com/dannyconroy/intentional


My random track

http://soundcloud.com/dannyconroy/random

Barbara London Lecture Review

I attended Barbara London's lecture on April 28th when she came to UNR to be a guest curator for the student show. She currently works as the Video and Media curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In her lecture she talked about many artists I have heard of before, both through Digital Media classes and art I've been interested in outside of school. A few names that really stood out were Nam June Paik, David Bowie, Laurie Anderson and Captain Beefheart. She also discussed her most recent work, "Looking at Music 3.0." She went in detail about Paik's work with TV's how he essentially created the first music video. She said that Paik's work was really a commentary on information presented to us on the TV and how we process and interact with it. Her exhibit, "Looking at Music 3.0" dives into the appropriation in music during the 80's and 90's and music's influence on visual arts, mainly in the NYC area. I really liked her lecture because of how she tied in music with digital art. I'm a huge fan of all sorts of music and the culture associated with it in many different time periods and it was very interesting to hear her take on it and see how she represented it.

Final Hotwheels Mini Golf

For my mini golf hole I chose to make a Hot wheels theme in order to incorporate a loop.  I ran into some problems with pepakura printing two sides for everything, but I eventually figured it out and made the shape of my loop, jumps and hole in 3D. I also wanted to create more than just a hole by itself so I made buildings in pepakura in order to give the hole a city theme to relate to the cars in Hotwheels. The hole is playable and both myself and Denver have made it in the hole in 2 strokes, though there has yet to be a hole in one. I added some more decoration to go with the theme by putting Hotwheels logos everywhere, putting actually Hotwheels cars on the streets and adding checkered flags to go with the race theme to indicate the start and finish of the hole. Overall I had a good time using the pepakura even though it was frustrating at times. It is a very cool program that I can see myself using in the future for 3D modeling because of how easy it is to create a template from the computer to the paper. I'm really proud of how well it came out and especially happy that myself and someone else made the marble in the hole. If it were bigger and at a real mini golf course I think the hole would be a hit!

DIGITAL NATION

Not knowing what to expect from this video I was pleasantly surprised and found most of the points made very interesting and true. As someone that uses technology on a day to day basis, I know firsthand how much easier it has made my life and so many others. I can't even imagine how we used to get ahold of each other without cell phones and I didn't even own one until I was 20, which seems pretty rare these days. The part about multitasking really touched close to home. We don't even consider it multitasking anymore, but just about all of us at least check the time on our phones while doing just about everything else. I don't have a smartphone, but when I do eventually upgrade, I'm sure the allure of checking email and the internet at my fingertips will make it that much harder to get things done.

The section on South Korea's addiction to technology was very interesting and almost sickens me. I think that since I'm older than most people in my classes and wasn't raised with much more than a TV with a "bunny ear" antennae, I am a little more skeptical of all the technology and can appreciate simplicity and realize when it is being taken to far. The gaming relationships section also reminded me of the documentary on WOW we watched in class and how out of touch those people are with reality. I for one could never take it to that point, I don't even like video games, and personally think that people that into games and gaming relationships need to get help, even if it is not showing any effects of harming them or people around them. Overall I thought it was a very interesting video and it gave a good overview of where we are currently with technology and the places it might take us in the future, both good and bad.