Artsvis 54

Production Still from "fiat lux(xx)"

For my movie, “fiat lux(xx),” I stuck with my claymation idea, and created a shoebox diaroma.  I found that a shoebox was too small, so I actually ended up using a wine crate.  I like how the clay fits within the childish aesthetic of the environment I created, and the shoebox (or wine crate) also lightens the mood of the movie — addressing my concern regarding the dark nature of the storyline.

Claymation proved a challening techinique for my first exploration into animation, so I ended up  scaling my plot down a bit.  I didn’t have a tripod, so I balanced my camera on books.  I now understand the main causes of the jerks in my video, so a second attempt would definitely come out much smoother.  I added the sound effects and music via Final Cut Pro.  The song I decided upon is Shinichi Osawa, “Ami Nu Ku Tuu.”

I posted my finished movie on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGRws_t56ak

Week 2:

I’ve expanded upon my original idea of church arson, and created a (rough) storyboard.  I’m concerned that my narrative is far too dark, however, as I foresee my completed film having a lighthearted and playful mood.

The narrative opens with an establishing shot of a little bucolic church.  The camera pans around, and we see a priest, drinking from a eucharist.  Next frame is a close-up on his face, revealing a few tears tricking down the side of his face.  At this point, I plan on somehow indicating a flash-forward, and showing a highway where the rural church once stood.  To indicate that this is the same plot of land, I thought to use landmarks — a small church graveyard, and a little creek.

To bring the viewer back to real-time, I will return to a close-up of the priest’s face.  When I zoom out, the viewer will see a canister of gasoline at the priest’s feet.  He drops the eucharist, picks up the gasoline, and turns toward the church.  He slowly walks to the front of the church, and begins to pour gasoline on it.

Next frame is a close-up of the priest  lighting a match.  He throws it on the freshly-’gasolined’ church, which immediately ignites.  He opens the front door, and steps inside.  People from the congregation appear, a few at a time, and watch their church burn.

I went to Michael’s this morning before class and bought a variety of modeling clay (couldn’t resist the 24 pack), and I’ve been playing with the material to get a feel for it.  I first created a little figure out of brown clay and started molding him into different positions.  Erin suggested I start with a skeleton of wire, and then model over it to add some stability, so I squashed my first attempt and picked up some of the leftover wire from my soda can sculpture.

I decided to create the priest out of purple clay, because I think it contributes to a playful aesthetic.  I photographed him alongside some of the other colors I have to work with (!!!).

I also need to decide upon the background.  I’m considering a shoebox diorama because it would align nicely with the naivete of my modeling, but this might be pushing the childish aesthetic too far.

Week 1:

Grizzly Bear’s latest music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE) has inspired me to try my hand at claymation.  I love the way the modeling looks unfinished — almost to the point of childhood naivete.  And the way in which the colors blend!

As far as my story line, I’m intrigued by the idea of church arson; a “heavenly” place goes down in flames.

I’ve expanded upon my original idea of church arson, and created a (rough) storyboard.  I’m concerned that my narrative is far too dark, however, as I foresee my completed film having a lighthearted and playful mood.

The narrative opens with an establishing shot of a little bucolic church.  The camera pans around, and we see a priest, drinking from a eucharist.  Next frame is a close-up on his face, revealing a few tears tricking down the side of his face.  At this point, I plan on somehow indicating a flash-forward, and showing a highway where the rural church once stood.  To indicate that this is the same plot of land, I thought to use landmarks — a small church graveyard, and a little creek.

To bring the viewer back to real-time, I will return to a close-up of the priest’s face.  When I zoom out, the viewer will see a canister of gasoline at the priest’s feet.  He drops the eucharist, picks up the gasoline, and turns toward the church.  He slowly walks to the front of the church, and begins to pour gasoline on it.

Next frame is a close-up of the priest  lighting a match.  He throws it on the freshly-’gasolined’ church, which immediately ignites.  He opens the front door, and steps inside.  People from the congregation appear, a few at a time, and watch their church burn.

clay study

I went to Michael’s this morning before class and bought a variety of modeling clay (couldn’t resist the 24 pack), and I’ve been playing with the material to get a feel for it.  I first created a little figure out of brown clay and started molding him into different positions.  Erin suggested I start with a skeleton of wire, and then model over it to add some stability, so I squashed my first attempt and picked up some of the leftover wire from my soda can sculpture.

our (anti)hero: the little priest

I decided to create the priest out of purple clay, because I think it contributes to a playful aesthetic.  I photographed him alongside some of the other colors I have to work with (!!!).

I also need to decide upon the background.  I’m considering a shoebox diorama because it would align nicely with the naivete of my modeling, but this might be pushing the childish aesthetic too far.

Week 1:

Grizzly Bear’s latest music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE) has inspired me to try my hand at claymation.  I love the way the modeling looks unfinished — almost to the point of childhood naivete.  And the way in which the colors blend!

As far as my story line, I’m intrigued by the idea of church arson; a “heavenly” place goes down in flames.

creep

The soda can embodies mass-produced, synthetic consumerism.  Its flashy colors and bold-faced brand names combine with the manmade metal of the can and its strict regularity of shape to position the soda can far from nature.  In exploring the way a metal soda can responds to cutting, crushing, twisting, and stress in general, I was surprised to find that the can could be easily torn in a spiral pattern without the help of scissors.  It felt as though the can had a “natural” tearing line.  Ripping the cans in this manner produced kind of irregular edges that gave the metal a much more organic shape than that produced with scissors or a razor.  To enhance the native feel of the work, I entwined the vine-like strips with wire, and added sporadic branching around the wall.  I also sprinkled around flower-esque shapes.

Lorrain says, "Drink Imperial Cola"

With regards to Maya, I have finished my triumphal arch after many hours of struggling.  I designed a new soda can label with a marble background that says “Imperial Cola: The Empire’s Drink of Choice.”   My arch initially had too many cans for the computer to render, so I had to delete all cans on the back and the top of the arch.  I inserted my arch into a Claude Lorrain painting of an idyllic Roman/French landscape, “Landscape with Aeneas at Delos” (1672), because I like the juxtaposition of the Roman architecture with the metal arch.  I chose this painting in particular because the figures, wearing togas and archetypical Roman sandals, appear to be gesturing at the arch.

May 8, 1945: Victory in Europe Day marked the end of Hitler’s Nazi regime, but what was to become of newly-liberated Germany? The victory certainly conjured notions of happier times for the German people, but the oppression continued, hidden behind this façade of newfound freedom. Twenty years later, this underlying continuity –in the judicial system, among political figures, and perhaps most glaringly within the new German armies – manifest itself in the form of a wall through Berlin, dividing East and West Germany. The Berlin Wall stood as tangible evidence of Nikita Krushchev and Walter Ulbricht “keeping it in the family” with regard to oppressing citizens and use of propagandistic techniques.

For me, the gilded frames evoke family portraits hanging in a bedroom corridor. Imbuing the images of Kruschev and Ulbricht with the emblematic Hitler moustache suggests an inherited trait – a family legacy.

Done (ish)!  I can get a better image tomorrow, but for now I can’t set the work vertical because I still need to glue down the picture frames, and I don’t want to do so until I have the work cut to the correct dimensions.  I attempted to cut it down tonight, but I decided to wait until tomorrow morning because I found it very difficult to get a clean cut without a nice surface and a metal ruler.

I’m really excited with the way my frames turned out — I spray-painted them silver, and inserted extra cardboard behind the images to ensure that they sit pressed up against the glass.  I situated them on images such that the border surrounding each frame is almost entirely black to make the frames stand out even more significantly.  I photoshopped moustaches onto Ulbricht and Krushchev’s portraits to convey the continuity.  I’ve written a tentative statement for the finished work, but I’m afraid it sounds too contrived:

May 8, 1945: Victory in Europe Day marked the end of Hitler’s Nazi regime, but what was to become of newly-liberated Germany?  The victory certainly conjured notions of happier times for the German people, but the oppression continued, hidden behind this façade.  Twenty years later, this underlying continuity –in the judicial system, among political figures, and perhaps most glaringly within the new German armies – manifest itself in the form of a wall through Berlin, dividing East and West Germany.  The Berlin Wall stood as tangible evidence of Nikita Krushchev and Walter Ulbricht “keeping it in the family” with regard to oppressing citizens and use of propagandistic techniques.

I suppose I can sleep on it and see how I feel in the AM.

Kurt Schwitters, "Blue Angel," 1923, mixed media, 20 x 15.5 cm

“Blue Angel” is my favorite Schwitters work.  I find Schwitters’s use of tactile texture the most striking aspect of this collage, as he has intentionally allowed the blue background to crease significantly — usually an undesired side-affect of using too much glue.  The color palette, as well as the geometric simplification, suggests the influence of De Stijl artists such as Piet Mondrian.

A closer look at the cut-out depicting a woman’s legs and dress hem provides an example of hatching used to create gray tones.  This clipping appears to come from a newspaper.  

I had the initial instinct to label the orange markings at the top of the figure a halo, but further inspection leaves me confused.  Hopefully I can find some writings on the work to provide me with clues.

Fatimah Tuggar, "Untitled (army)," 1996, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 36 x 48 inches

Bill Burns, from the series "How to Help Animals Escape from Natural History (The Llama Version)", 1994-2005, color photograph

I first encountered the work of Fatimah Tuggar in the halls of the East Duke building.  I usually have to make a conscious effort to engage with ‘hallway art,’ but Tuggar’s bright palette and liberal use of elements associated with consumer culture have an arresting effect on the casual passerby.  

In visiting the artist’s exhibition at the Smith Warehouse, I was particularly amped on Tuggar’s “Untitled (army)” for a number of reasons – notably the visual parallels to Canadian artist Bill Burns, who often incorporates little plastic animal figurines and army men into his works.  I suppose this is the only unifying thread between the artists (an aesthetic one, at that), so I’ll end my tangent here. 

In reading the artist’s statement, I initially frowned upon his self-proclaimed refusal to “pass definitive judgements on the cultures involved,” but I’ve since decided that I appreciate the open-ended dialogue he creates, as well as his ultimate goal of a better understanding.

 My viewing of Charles Sparkman’s photographs proved a mildly embarrassing experience, as I has to ask another student where the exhibition was located, all the while unknowingly standing amidst the works.  His photograph entitled “Scaffold” conjured notions of Adrian Bejan’s ‘constructal theory’ – the idea that architecture mimics the natural patterns of trees and water flow.  My favorite photograph was “The Workshop.”