Pathway Roundabouts: Week 2

Media:
In our media pathway roundabout we looked at scratch film which is similar to animation which I have done in the past. The earliest known piece of scratch film was by Len Lye called 'A Colour Box' and it was created in 1935, between World War 1 and 2. This is important because most people associate the world of the past as being in a black and white tone or sepia and we find this hard to connect with on a personal level. All of the information recorded from the two war's are predominantly in black and white or sepia (other than war posters) and so this is how we see the world. Then we see Len Lye's work and it's a bright colourful 'Avant Garde' (experimental) piece of work that changes the perspective of this. Suddenly the art world of the past isn't dull and grim anymore, there's evidence of art similar to the artwork of the 60s. This leap of artwork is overshadowed by the wars, but jump started the Avant Garde work that appeared in Paris, London and New York.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR-9Q6q-Jyk

We also looked Stan Brakhage's 'Mothlight' which reflected on meaning in his scratch film piece. After seeing a bug-zapper killing moth's, he intended to bring them back to life in a way that gave them some importance. He did this by pressing the dead moths within the film strips so as the film rolled, the moth's body's and wings were illuminated through.
Jamie explained the use of aesthetics in art which I've used in the past as 'how art looks' but didn't take into account the gravitas that it's also how art 'feels' and the 'meaning' behind the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5P5vkegmvU

To make our own scratch film we were given a strip of film to work on as a group and we each had 3 seconds worth of film. the reel runs at 25fps (frames per second) so this worked out to 75 drawings each. Because I've done animation in the pas so I had a good idea of how to time each drawing. I wanted to make a bat flapping it's wings, so I drew 12 frames of a bat with the wings open, 12 of the wings closing, 12 of them completely shut and then I reversed the actions because I had 4 seconds of film. In the end the film ran smoothly, the most successful were the ones with bright shapes and lines. My bat animation ran smoothly but with the mistake of it being run upside down, which worked better in my favor anyway. The overall style of a scratch film reminds me of the kind of home cut videos you see in a horror movie in some cases, but the Len Lye work it reminds me more of the opening credits to films, an example of this that I've seen is the opening credits to Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

Here is our class's combined scratch film
http://vimeo.com/110126309


Photography:
In photography with Martyn, we looked at both light photography and compositional photography.
Here are some artists I looked at for this:


Michael Bosanko:

These three light photographs are by Michael Bosanko and I chose them because they are drawn from films which I enjoy. Although the Batman one doesn't have much detail into it, I like how the water reflects the light image.





Michael Ross:

Another light painter photographer, Again I picket work that I liked for subject matter, but this style has got me thinking about how I could incorporate this into my own artwork.


For the light work, we split into groups and worked as a team to create moving light images. We did this on the DSLR cameras using a slow shutter speed. We worked by photographing each other, whilst someone else shone a torch around the person, which creates a light line and allows you to draw around the person. We experimented using different colour filters and adjusting the focus.
After this we looked at compositional photography where we took photographs of just grey areas of a wall but demonstrating different tones. I experimented with this by using running water and shadows cast by hands.

This photo came out over exposed

This photo was also over exposed

This is where I had the idea for flashing the hands and then moving them

We then tried this trick using a blue filter which worked even better

This is my favourite of my grey photographs

I know this and the photo above have colour on them, but I really like the way the greys work together so a black and white photograph would support this image

I had the idea to photograph self cast shadows

This photo came out a little too blurry