action man camera as tourist in berlin

telling stories, exploring a sense of bewilderment.....

ok, so a few notes, to come back to, from tutorial today;

need a sense of clarity in learning agreement and vision for my practice this term. need to get on with trialing ideas, making stuff. define through a theme? drawing into the pinhole/hidden camera

i enjoy telling stories, sharing stories through objects, especially recounting the tale of my invisible performance piece, recounting the experience and then showing the little visual pop up of me in the changing rooms. make me think about whats the give me a new look experience of my work? the event- the shop assistants who thought i was a little bit sad or crazy/ the recounting it/ the pop up/ the projection....etc

drew links to the hyperactive world of lee evans...maybe thriving on the sense of chaos and urgency in me, presenting a series of surprises, shocks, absurd maybe in action man as a camera, pinhole toys....

developing scenarios- maybe looking back at julia bardsley, cindy sherman.

using participation engagement of toy camera in taking 'serious' photos eg at wedding, news worthy event

considering how people behave differently when they see suddenly see a camera- and how differently this is from unthreatening toy camera/disposable (amateur, feel sorry for you can't you afford a digital?) to a DSLR (professional, serious, means business, photo-journalism connotations) at what point do you reveal the camera if at first hidden? do you reveal the camera or juts its images? how public/ integrated is the camera and the process itself in an event? who control the camera- me/participant? how does the camera link to story telling?

anyway...to be continued....

the paper cinema i missed at masque of the red death!!

ok, so laura said these guys were her favourite bit of the whole masque of the red death punchdrunk show at BAC, neither myself of lena on our separate visits went into this room...damn!! the issues of such a large scale promenade piece allowing people to meander off on their own, no one has the same experiences but the telling of stories of different encounters brings to life a performance that lives beyond the event itself....

they describe their paper puppet screen based practice on their website;

'What happens at the accidental meeting of
inkblots, photocopies, cardboard, angle-poise lamps,
the occasional table, video technology, a laptop and
a banana box?

A cast of hand-drawn marionettes are
magically brought to life by the Paper Cinema.'

Love to see them! sound a more illustrative approach to no-domain, maybe more like my playful feline friends gal and carim from band psapp??

Through googling around, found that paper cinema have a gig!

Don't you wonder sometimes @ The Luminaire
feat. Perico and the Paper Cinema + Lautrec + DJ TooLoose
307 - 311 Kilburn High Road
London NW6 7JR
8pm - 12am £5

water at the lyric theatre, hammersmith

hmmm, a fantastic show, seemed a simpler, less layered version of the complicite a disappearing number? it opens with a lecture, use of hotel rooms, OHP, dual narratives, lost child...for starters. it was good that with all the quirky low fi sound effects performed on stage with a mic (eg water dripping through roof into saucepan) that they didn't go for a full visual multi-media effect on top of this- allowed the experience to breathe more on stage (am i writing this, who as my music-collaborator friend kerry once blogged,any tiny excuse and harrys there projecting visuals- i even did this for her wedding speech at wedfest on a farm this year) on this occasion it would have killed it, less is more. i liked the small screen based visual link up with using skype live on stage. my favourite bit was the ending- simulation of being under the sea- with kiddie helium balloons of fish floating around and a huge shower type curtain as a stage curtain, figures on stage in their own worlds locked there.

gave me lots of ideas about visibly showing the process of creating sounds- using voices and mics/ props/ loop pedals/ visuals-OHP on stage/skype and macbooks. nothing seemed to be pre recorded- but i may be wrong.

the rites of spring at RFH- stereoscopic video, dance and orchestra

in exploring the relationship between time based media and visual performance, thought back to this which i saw in june at royal festival hall.

from the south bank website link sent in June 2007 (link no longer live)

'A UK premiere. Digital artist Klaus Obermaier, conductor Marin Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra create a 21st-century realisation of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

A unique audio-visual experience, the audience wear 3D glasses to experience fascinating distorted visual effects dictated by Stravinsky's innovative score and the movements of dancer Julia Mach. Electronic sensors and cameras pick up changes in the dynamic and tempo of the music, which trigger changes in the virtual interpretation of the work.

Modern masterpieces Arcana by Edgard Varèse and Prelude from Akhnaten by Philip Glass complete the evening. '


most people were speechless afterwards...but was this for the dazzling special effects taking you back to the childhood delights of seeing jaws in 3D? more than any sense of a mutually beneficial audio-visual relationship? this was a live video experience with the screen above the orchestra and figure moving in 3D on it, reaching out and feeling like a whispering distance to your face. the formalities and traditions of the orchestra, lead violin arriving last to applause,conductor then taking his stand seemed in very stark contrast to the seductive state of the art visuals, but maybe that was the point.i have no doubt that the majority of the audience seemed to be there for the latter ear wigging on conversations later in the bar. i have found these views online;

from the independent;

'The pity is that, agape at the visuals, you don't give the music the attention it deserves. The LPO's [london philharmonic orchestra] playing, under the spunky direction of Marin Alsop, was technically and texturally superlative, yet even at its most tumultuous I was only partially aware of its details: proof if any were needed that the sense of sight dominates the other senses whenever it can. Obermaier hopes that his Rite will stimulate questions about "authenticity of experience" in modern life. However, I'm not so sure. But, that doesn't detract from his dazzling achievement.'

i am very struck by this 'sense of sight dominates the other senses whenever it can.' needs further exploration. i did myself find the level of awe and wonderment in engaging with the digital trickery meant, sadly, i stopped listening after a while.

from guardian unlimited;

'The wow factor turns even more intense when the "floor" on which the virtual Mach dances tilts and her body is pitched into space, looming so far towards us that her hands appear to touch us, then retreating so far back she seems a dot in apocalyptic emptiness.

The disappointment, however, is that Obermaier has only a limited interest in following the dramatic logic of the score. He has effects aplenty, making Mach's body dissolve into galaxies of stars, sending a roaring wave of patterned light across Stravinsky's climactic finale. But because there is no developing structure to his choreography or image-making, this Rite ends up being about precocious trickery. Obermaier may be a master of the digital arts, yet when it comes to delivering their emotional or theatrical potential he is still an apprentice.'

the simplicity of movement of the full figure, circling with ribbons on the screen was beautiful, very fluid and worked easily with the music. the problem i had was the doubled ended foot things (no photos i could find on ole google) some loosely dada-derivative, seem to verge on the ridiculous and lost it for me. the 3D grid flowing tossing the figure also hinted more of homogenised computer simulation kelly lebrock in weird science than embodying a tumultuous ride aurally.

none-the-less a tremendous experience of whats happening in contemporary cross-arts practice, and its to be commended that the royal festival hall and the london symphony orchestra took this leap and brought in, i would imagine, quite a new audience.i would say watch this space, i hope that the fusion will continue to develop in more directly beneficial ways and that all the relevant senses are considered.... i will always continue to advocate that the visual effect must be well considered and develop a concept/narrative/collage of significance to the accompanying performance...in a one-click digital artwork culture of neon glow filters (grrr don't get me going now) its always a grave danger that as cheap effects are more and more 'free' and accessable to all (its amazing how many digital artists are popping up with little understanding of the visual image) effects are taking over artistic merit.....don't digital-pop-art-warhol-style-face me now...

shibboleth, participating in the crack at the tate modern....

now full of the world of participation,and other ways of exploring this, enjoyed watching and ear wigging on others interactions and discussions about this crack the whole length of the turbine hall. it seemed to be small children that were most eager to get their foot/head/ toy down inside it and be photographed. Would be good to go back and record this more. Looking at how people had recorded this on youtube, I found this i minute, walk the crack video- its weird but i would have started from entrance to back i.e. as crack opened up



From Tate website;

'Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.'

participation in a new way, a public art piece you can get right inside, no red tape.

this link also talks about peoples interactions with what has the nickname doris's crack, saying one old lady fell down it as she thought it was painted on and about other casualties. it is interesting in a health and safety, risk assessment bonkers society that this work is so openly there to inadvertently fall into, a crack this size on a pavement would have huge barriers around it sealing it off, but i guess this also points to that obsession in our culture.

Contextual Connections- Peter Richards- Pinhole performances

ok- so following a cross-course tutorial in which the link between my thoughts on linking photography and performance was questioned (which has meant that, rightly so in retrospect,now i have to really get on with considerations in a much more direct way what this connection means, what is this world in between? and how is there a purposeful link between the act of recording and/or process of image making/ engagement with photograph as a performative act in some way to start to make connected work and try to avoid mis-communication) i have started more looking back at the work of others', exploring one aspect of my proposed learning agreement for traditional photography. i must also get on with camera lucida:) i have been looking at whether anyone else had been exploring this with particular reference to pinhole photography and performance, and so peter richards popped up. i remembered having seen a copy of this work a few years ago. although lengthy the text describing his work on his website shows his whole playful process of staging long pinhole exposures in various locations and various engagements with participants.this work was written in a fantastic account linking with a photo booth art work in joshua sofaers essay, conflict of interest: performance as a spectator sport he writes; 'the camera is the performative sculptural mechanism which facilitates the performance. The giant cardboard obscura ........ [is] site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.' I need to come back to this text, examining its realtion to camera lucida. i should also consider how this work connects with the ideas explored in our frenchmottershead participaton project.