Assignment two - There Was Three
Note – The assignment is a combination of moving image and archive images. Viewed ideally together – video and physical prints for example in a gallery. The moving image would also ultimately be presented has a loop.
Moving Image - https://vimeo.com/347697379
Note – The assignment is a combination of moving image and archive images. Viewed ideally together – video and physical prints for example in a gallery. The moving image would also ultimately be presented has a loop.
Moving Image - https://vimeo.com/347697379
This assignment is slightly different in how it is placed in terms of the creation of the assignment within the unit. It was made after assignments 3 and 4. Much of the work is self-exploratory and cathartic. It is fluid in nature and intuitively without knowing. I had a set plan at the beginning of this unit which has evaporated not via choice but due to a severe episode of depression which lasted for four months, this was created coming to the end of the episode, a family holiday.
I am beginning to realise that it is only natural to approach the concept of I&P is to seek out people and places, portraits of other people. Recording and exploring them and their lives but the truth is identity formation occurs with the early stages of life and maybe without knowing assignment 1 was a manifestation of this. The bollards from assignment 1 are situated outside of a primary school, the same one I went to has a child. I am well aware that my approach to this could be seen has a cop out, a way to dodge approaching others in different places. But my approach although not traditional approach to I&P but is equally valid.
This piece of moving image was taken when I was on holiday, it was the same place I went has a child we even stayed at the same caravan site. It hadn’t really changed much the whole place was a small traditional seaside resort. We were eating fish and chips on the beach has the tide came in. My 16-year-old son digging a hole in the sand, patting down and smoothing the excavated sand, the sea getting closer and closer it seemed a pointless task, the sea would reclaim and fill to void.
I had an old compact camera and I decided to record zoomed in close to the hand and the sea. I knew I wanted to both observe and obscure the wider surrounding and context. The water could be river or sea, the hand male or female, child or adult, the sand a pit or beach. They both connected in my head sea, beach and childhood but I really didn’t know what it was. Most of my thoughts about this work is retrospective and although I consciously shot the video in frame, I just didn’t really know what was going to happen with the material, it certainly wasn’t for the family album. It was more an introspection, a sunny week at the seaside and has a family, a well needed one. Memory lane, sharing stories with wife and kids. Weeks prior I had been sharing childhood experiences with a stranger my Councillor.
I have developed an interest in moving image, approaching and treating them has what I describe has Lo Fi. Old technology with its fallibility, liberating know that you are not working towards technical perfection. The visual output representational and expressive.
I edited the two videos using MS windows movie maker, I stripped the sound and spliced the videos together, switching from one scene to another and vice versa. The scene to scene was graduated pixelated transition. I saved the movie. The next step was to replay the edited movie on a laptop and re-record it via compact camera, the focus on the laptop screen was close in and slight soft in focus it also highlighted the pixels on the laptop screen. Again, I stripped the sound and saved the 2 postedit. The final stage I repeated the process but this time I took the laptop outside which further highlighted the pixels on the screen, I was quite and this time I kept the background sound which is the sound of trees in the breeze. I live next door to large bank tall trees and the sound of the leaves in the breeze always remain me of the sea.
The result was work that felt confused, it was eerily calm and introverted with an overall retro aesthetic, building a sense of memory or at least parts of. The square pixilation starting to grow larger and more in number each square lacking detail, loss of information like forgotten memory. It seemed that the moving image continued to have an exchange the patting and smoothing of the sand and the sea, childhood memory.
It seemed natural to explore archive images and incorporate them within the assignment. It was effective in terms of triggering thoughts of what is it and why, it also is open to interpretation. The moving image bounds off the stills and vice and versa. The overarching element is the place and space, the sea, sand and the beach. There is a strong link to and from the still and the moving images – the beach and the children and the sea, sand and person.
The archive images are in a sense both aware and unaware, there is no consent given for their appropriation from all parties’ models - brother and sister and photographer – my dad. I feel justified in their appropriation and that I have successful changed the context and narrative of the archive images.
I have always felt like an outsider within the family. I don’t know why, it was just the way things were, even me and my sister have joked that mum and dad had picked up the wrong baby. The archive images were part of my dads archive of course he is unaware of how I am using it or why. The use of the white squares obscuring the faces and details, memories and experiences I never had. These images were taken on a holiday I never went on I was to old and cool at 17, a self enforced distance, this series of image encapsulates the sense of outsider, there was 3 of us but the moving and stills are divided into 2 and 1.
It is a risky approach to this assignment and it could again be said that it fails to meet the brief in term of taken photographs but
“The guard is down and the masks off” (Walker Evans, 1940)
Work viewed
Julian Germain – For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness http://www.juliangermain.com/projects/foreveryminute.php
Phillip Toledano
http://mrtoledano.com/photo/when-i-was-six/
Not enough critical engagement
I am beginning to realise that it is only natural to approach the concept of I&P is to seek out people and places, portraits of other people. Recording and exploring them and their lives but the truth is identity formation occurs with the early stages of life and maybe without knowing assignment 1 was a manifestation of this. The bollards from assignment 1 are situated outside of a primary school, the same one I went to has a child. I am well aware that my approach to this could be seen has a cop out, a way to dodge approaching others in different places. But my approach although not traditional approach to I&P but is equally valid.
This piece of moving image was taken when I was on holiday, it was the same place I went has a child we even stayed at the same caravan site. It hadn’t really changed much the whole place was a small traditional seaside resort. We were eating fish and chips on the beach has the tide came in. My 16-year-old son digging a hole in the sand, patting down and smoothing the excavated sand, the sea getting closer and closer it seemed a pointless task, the sea would reclaim and fill to void.
I had an old compact camera and I decided to record zoomed in close to the hand and the sea. I knew I wanted to both observe and obscure the wider surrounding and context. The water could be river or sea, the hand male or female, child or adult, the sand a pit or beach. They both connected in my head sea, beach and childhood but I really didn’t know what it was. Most of my thoughts about this work is retrospective and although I consciously shot the video in frame, I just didn’t really know what was going to happen with the material, it certainly wasn’t for the family album. It was more an introspection, a sunny week at the seaside and has a family, a well needed one. Memory lane, sharing stories with wife and kids. Weeks prior I had been sharing childhood experiences with a stranger my Councillor.
I have developed an interest in moving image, approaching and treating them has what I describe has Lo Fi. Old technology with its fallibility, liberating know that you are not working towards technical perfection. The visual output representational and expressive.
I edited the two videos using MS windows movie maker, I stripped the sound and spliced the videos together, switching from one scene to another and vice versa. The scene to scene was graduated pixelated transition. I saved the movie. The next step was to replay the edited movie on a laptop and re-record it via compact camera, the focus on the laptop screen was close in and slight soft in focus it also highlighted the pixels on the laptop screen. Again, I stripped the sound and saved the 2 postedit. The final stage I repeated the process but this time I took the laptop outside which further highlighted the pixels on the screen, I was quite and this time I kept the background sound which is the sound of trees in the breeze. I live next door to large bank tall trees and the sound of the leaves in the breeze always remain me of the sea.
The result was work that felt confused, it was eerily calm and introverted with an overall retro aesthetic, building a sense of memory or at least parts of. The square pixilation starting to grow larger and more in number each square lacking detail, loss of information like forgotten memory. It seemed that the moving image continued to have an exchange the patting and smoothing of the sand and the sea, childhood memory.
It seemed natural to explore archive images and incorporate them within the assignment. It was effective in terms of triggering thoughts of what is it and why, it also is open to interpretation. The moving image bounds off the stills and vice and versa. The overarching element is the place and space, the sea, sand and the beach. There is a strong link to and from the still and the moving images – the beach and the children and the sea, sand and person.
The archive images are in a sense both aware and unaware, there is no consent given for their appropriation from all parties’ models - brother and sister and photographer – my dad. I feel justified in their appropriation and that I have successful changed the context and narrative of the archive images.
I have always felt like an outsider within the family. I don’t know why, it was just the way things were, even me and my sister have joked that mum and dad had picked up the wrong baby. The archive images were part of my dads archive of course he is unaware of how I am using it or why. The use of the white squares obscuring the faces and details, memories and experiences I never had. These images were taken on a holiday I never went on I was to old and cool at 17, a self enforced distance, this series of image encapsulates the sense of outsider, there was 3 of us but the moving and stills are divided into 2 and 1.
It is a risky approach to this assignment and it could again be said that it fails to meet the brief in term of taken photographs but
“The guard is down and the masks off” (Walker Evans, 1940)
Work viewed
Julian Germain – For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness http://www.juliangermain.com/projects/foreveryminute.php
Phillip Toledano
http://mrtoledano.com/photo/when-i-was-six/
Not enough critical engagement