20 Ideas in 20 Minutes: The Beginning of a New Project

In class we completed 20 ideas in 20 minutes - I think I now have a record time as I completed this in 11 minutes!

As you can see completely unreadable however the best ideas here that I would like to explore further are:

• Photographing objects/the body underwater - I have never actually done this before and thought this could be quite interesting
• Photographs and materiality/post-photography looking at putting photographs on materials and 3D objects on a theme perhaps just exploring my personal relationship with the camera.
• Photographing the future- my own future visions in photographs 

As I already discussed Helen Chadwick and using 3D objects with the image in my previous post so I thought as my last project concentrated on the past that this project could be more about the future and transformation.

I have been looking at feminist photography such as this By Karin Mack:

  Karin Mack, Bügeltraum (Iron Dream), 1975

Here the woman is trapped in domestic tasks even in her dreams and this kind of photography and feminist thought was the kind of work that was made in the second/third wave of feminism with Martha Rosler and her performance and posters.  Hannah Wilke another feminist artist used their body - below Lynn Hersham Leeson constructs the woman's face through makeup in an extreme fashion to explore the politics of a woman's face and body in society.   

Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Constructing Roberta Breitmore (1975)

In terms of transformation and commentary, I want to explore these ideas of woman, the feminine and how this translates in the fourth wave of feminism as I do think we may have lost our way....

References

Fortman J. (2018) Vocal Media: A Timeline of the Feminist Movement Available from: https://vocal.media/viva/a-timeline-of-the-feminist-movement (Accessed 16/01/20)

Welcome to a New Term!

Another new term so to begin I talk about my therapy as this seems to be all the rage!  Over the Christmas period I began a Monkey making marathon!

The Sock Monkey Kit

I made many monkeys which I will add photographs here.... I found the sewing very relaxing and stress relieving and while making them I smoked less and generally was more relaxed. How you ask is this at all relevant to this coming term!?  I wanted to share this as I do enjoy making things whether physical or digital and this term I would like to incorporate this idea of 3D and I go back to looking at Helen Chadwick

Helen Chadwick, The Labours I and II.

Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) used performance, photography, 3D Object and mixed media to express her materiality, corporeality and questioned notions of societal norms within her work.  The Tate states that: 'Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in elegant yet unconventional forms. Her work draws from a range of sources, from myths to science, grappling with a plethora of unconventional, visceral materials that included chocolate, lambs tongues and rotting vegetable matter.' (Tate 2020)

I particularly am inspired by The Labours where Chadwick becomes part of the object embedded into its very essence with the silver gelatin of the photograph. Here below her body is ingrained into the material.  This physicality of the image is something I am really interested in creating with my own work.

The obituary that appeared in The Independent stated: 'Chadwick made her art splice the sensuous with the cerebral in a quest to bend, stretch and dissolve age-old certainties of who and what we are.' (Buck, Monday 18 March 1996)

This exploration of the physical combined with considered thinking is what I most enjoy about this work and hope that my own work has these aspects. 

Helen Chadwick The Labours V 1986

References 

Tate Modern Online (2020) Helen Chadwick [Online] Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253 (Accessed 13th January 2020)

Buck L. (1996) Obituary: Helen Chadwick [Online] Available from; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaryhelen-chadwick-1342742.html (Accessed 13th January 2020)

Game Art Portfolio: Final Book

Here is the final book that I have created for Game Art - I created this on Flipsnack

The Dream Investigation Unit

This was a short project just to demonstrate how to create a Game Art Portfolio - I am hoping you enjoy and see that to create something like this you need a mixture of digital skills and a great concept and narrative to design you story. 

My Final Film: Reflection

Although you can view my film on my website, you can also view it here and on Youtube.  Overall I am quite pleased with the result of this film, it has the feeling I wanted to demonstrate throughout ad technically it actually does work in the way I intended from the beginning with the movement in the images and the narrative, I think the music works well with the message.  

If I could change anything perhaps I would have made this longer, included a more comprehensive history of my memory, however, in a way, I like the brevity, I think perhaps longer would have been too much and I did not want everything just a touch from each moment, a dip in and out through memory. 

I also am pleased with the website even though this still needs more work as it has some issues (text too large in places, not looking the same on all devices - on my own computer at home my name drops off the edge!) I am actually quite glad I did create this as I think this is definitely something I can build on and improve constantly if I am going to use this as my main website - I have directed my domain to the site and once I have completed this I will connect this properly.  

As with anything I do with photographs, I am always slightly amazed at how much I do fall in love with them every time and I think my introduction to the project reflects this.  I hope that you will enjoy watching my film and visiting my website as much as I enjoyed making them!

Final Process for Slow Beauty

To begin I added all my final images to the Movie Maker editor.  I could then begin to move them into place. 

I then needed to add the narrative so I went 'caption' in the home menu and then I went to text editing and set the duration to 7 seconds for each image.  I also changed the font to Palatino linotype for each one

As it was starting to come together I began tweaking the transitions so that the text would fade in and out at the right moment in a fade between images - this took some time as the text would move and lose time so this had to be reset for each every time I moved one as it made the text out of sync

Here you can see the text lined up and then I also faded the music at the end here in the music editor so that it was a slow fade and did not suddenly just stop as this would have been quite jarring to the viewer. 

 

Did some final checks on the texts, improving the English and making the text flow easily and checking all text was consistent and in the right font.

 Once
 Once I had completed this I rendered the video so that it was high quality and saved it to my computer.  I then uploaded it to my website as you can see below.

I changed the portfolio pages so that they were all consistent and added an introduction to each page. 

I also redirected (temporarily) my domain for my website so that this can be found - I have now published and I am just testing this and improving as there are still some tweaks that and one page that I still need to add.

Very pleased however with the finished film - you should now be able to go to zoevan-de-velde.com and find my website!

Slow Beauty: The Process Begins

I will explain my process for Slow Beauty - I was going, to begin with a storyboard but this does not really work well as I am piecing together memories and images like a jigsaw puzzle so I began by scanning in the images I wished to use.  I have a Canon scanner at home as you can see, I customised the scan to ensure high-quality high-resolution scans:

I then had a bank of images that I wished to put together as these are all of varying quality, light, place and time I had already decided to make these all black and white - for quick edits I am using Picasa which I have used for years as it will quickly and easily find my images and I can make quick easy adjustments.

 Here I used a Black and white filter and just adjusted the contrast slightly on the image.

This image I used auto-contrast, rotated the images and used the black and white filter.

I also cropped a few images to ensure the anonymity of the subject there are things that should always remain in obscurity...

Now I have completed the curation and the editing of the images I should be able to complete the final film edit and narrative which I will be posting very soon!

Erik Satie & The Residents: Anti Music/Experimental Sound

I wanted to discuss the music of Erik Satie (born May 17, 1866, Honfleur, Calvados, France—died July 1, 1925, Paris) and The Residents (a music group who released their debut album in 1972), in relation to my project on memory.

Erik Satie

I am looking at these artists as I am interest in how they layer and experient with sound just as I am layering and experimenting with photographs and memory.  Music has the ability to take you anywhere in the mind and so does an image - we create our own stories, call up old memories. The Residents have stayed anonymous for their entire career and this means that their work is not overpowered or interfered with by personality and it something to be hugely admired in these celebrity/self-obsessed days.

This is a film about them: The Theory Of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents

What is interesting about this is about creating a myth, the myth created by obscurity, by stories told, by whispers.  We can all tell our own stories building layers of myth and truth that make up our own story.

Satie also led a strange life mostly in obscurity: 'Film-makers have missed a trick with the life of Erik Satie. A biopic would have pretty much everything: the heart-warming story of a talented but strange man whose early failure and obscurity led to late-in-life celebrity; some acrobatic sex (literally – his one-and-only girlfriend had previously run away to the circus); strong language, violence, scandal and litigation (he was famously irascible, and was imprisoned over a spat with a music critic)' (Bowen M: 01/07/2015) Satie was eccentric and that is why his music was so avant-garde in its experimental nature - using 'high' and 'low' music, sounds and what he called 'furniture music' which is essentially what we have everywhere we go today. 

I want in my own work to explore these ideas much further than I really can in this project but I will try to produce my film on memory and then I do hope that I can explore a larger body of wor that uses more of these ideas of obscurity, eccentricity, and memory.




References

Bowen M. (1st July 2015) The Guardian: Erik Satie: a life less ordinary [Online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/01/erik-satie-a-life-less-ordinary (Accessed 17/11/19)

Britannica (2019) Erik Satie [Online] Available From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-Satie (Accessed 12/11/19)

Kreps D. (31st October 2018) Rolling Stone Magazine:The Residents’ Co-Founder Hardy Fox Dead at 73 [Online] Available from:  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-residents-hardy-fox-dead-749872/ (Accessed 17/11/19)

Weingarten C.R. (2nd March 2015) Rolling Stone Magazine: We’re an Anonymous Band: How Do You Make a Film About the Residents? [Online] Available from: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/were-an-anonymous-band-how-do-you-make-a-film-about-the-residents-41119/ (Accessed 18/11/19)