Course News

Assignments for Tuesday Oct 2

5 analytical descriptions from your 30 images and 5 pictures from friends/family (not personal photos) - see projects section of website for more info.
Reading/blog post: Abbott Miller's Pictures for Rent.

posted by ryan griffis at 2:16 PM Thursday, September 27, 2007

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Swastika In Navy's Architecture To Be Masked

This was picked up by Google Earth fanatics quite a while ago, but it has just recently surfaced in the New York Times, so many more people are now paying attention to it. The Navy is apparently now going to spend $600,000 to camouflage the design.

posted by ryan griffis at 9:53 AM

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The Production of Creativity (Lecture Today)

The Production of Creativity: An Artist's View of the Rise of "Creative Work"
Kevin Hamilton
Wednesday, September 26, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m.
2405 Siebel Center, 201 N. Goodwin Ave., Urbana
Why wouldn't any of our practices be improved by being more creative? Yet as a conveyor of added value, creativity serves a broad and necessarily conflicted range of purposes. For example, my "creative" (original) solution may not be "creative" (innovative) enough for one fellow researcher, and not "creative" (productive) enough for another.
Within and across our disciplines, are our different approaches and uses for creativity made more or less apparent by the quick deployment of the term? What are the promises and perils of research where funding and recognition are tied to creativity as a value? This multimedia presentation will seek to provoke discussion and debate through a survey of current approaches, conflicts, and opportunities.

posted by ryan griffis at 10:25 AM Wednesday, September 26, 2007

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Independent Film Making Discussion

If you're interested in film making, documentary film maker (New Media MFA-candidate and Assistant Professor in Journalism) Jay Rosenstein will be discussing his experiences. The talk is Wed Sept 26 at 12 Noon in the Temple Buell Architecture Gallery in the Old Architecture Building.

posted by ryan griffis at 9:06 AM Monday, September 24, 2007

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For-Educational-Use-Only 4

September 26th : 7pm : Rm 229
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Women on Camera: Performing in Persona

Dara Birnbaum
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
1978, 7 minutes

A stutter-step progression of "extended moments" unmasks the technological "miracle" of Wonder Woman's transformation, playing psychological transformation off of television product. Birnbaum considers this tape an "altered state [that] renders the viewer capable of re-examining those looks which, on the surface, seem so banal that even the supernatural transformation of a secretary into a 'Wonder Woman' is reduced to a burst of blinding light and a turn of the body—a child's play of rhythmical devices inserted within the morose belligerence of the fodder that is our average television diet."

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Alex Bag
Untitled Fall ‘95
1995, 57 minutes, color, sound

In Untitled Fall '95, Bag, at the time an art student, "plays" Bag the art student. In a series of deadpan performances, Bag gathers fragments of pop detritus, fashioning a thoroughly mediated document that is at once a celebration and a record of loss. With the narrative inevitability of a TV serial, the eight diaristic segments trace a woman's struggle to make sense of her experience at art school. As each installment marks the start of a new semester, Bag's character addresses the camera with her latest observations and frustrations.

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Kevin Blechdom + Lucile Desamory
Countdown to Nothing
2004, 13 min. 25 sec., DV (shot on Super 8), color & b/w

COUNTDOWN TO NOTHING is a collaboration with the musician Kevin Blechdom. A musical starring two women meeting in a tree. One cannot touch the ground, the other is stuck. A hypnotic voyage through their psychedelic subconsciousness will relieve them from their troubles.

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Miranda July

Atlanta
1996, 10 minutes
A 12 year-old Olympic swimmer and her mother (both played by July) speak to the public about "going for the gold."

The Amateurist
1998, 14 minutes, b/w
A short, captivating video about surveillance, identity, watching and being watched, The Amateurist slides along the edges of horror and satire to create an unsettling portrait of a woman on the brink of a technologically-driven madness.

Nest of Tens
1999, 27 minutes
Nest Of Tens is comprised of four alternating stories which reveal mundane yet personal methods of control. These systems are derived from intuitive sources. Children and a retarded adult operate control panels made out of paper, lists, monsters, and their own bodies.

Getting Stronger Every Day
2001, 6 min. 30 sec.
Getting Stronger Every Day captures the experience of being lost, then found, from moment to moment, and over the course of a lifetime, in mundanely poignant tableaus in which the spirit realm is manifested in low-tech effects and remembered TV movies.

posted by ryan griffis at 9:45 PM Friday, September 21, 2007

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Beginning Semiotics

The next section of the class is Semiotics, a methodology that builds upon the framework explored in iconography/iconology, but introduces some significant differences. We will start this section with an introductory reading from Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners(the chapter on Codes). The reading, and a blog post that addresses it will be due Tuesday, 9.25. In your posts, I would like you to consider how semiotic methods (through the concept of "codes" presented by Chandler) differ from those of iconography/iconology as we've discussed them in class and in the readings. There is a shift in how meaning is understood that is crucial to understanding semiotics.
The first part of the second project will also be started this week, and will be due on Thursday 9.27. This project will continue our initial investigation of images through self-awareness, resulting in a "constructed self-portrait" that will be very different from those created in project 1. The assignment, as explained in the project section, is to collect 30 images from mass media forms that you find yourself identifying with - i.e. that reflect something of how you perceive yourself. These images can be collected from cinema, literature, advertising, television, art, historical narratives, etc. You must have a minimum of 30 distinct images, and half must be from a source other than the internet - your sources should reflect the diversity of media you actually consume. If it is a literary source, you should isolate the scene or character, using the vocabulary in the text to describe it (passages from a novel, for example). Bring these in some printed, or otherwise physical, form (no digital files).

posted by ryan griffis at 9:40 AM Thursday, September 20, 2007

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For-Educational-Use-Only 3

In 229 as always...

/Text and Language/

Tony Cokes
We'll screen several works for video by this active artist. From the EAI site:

"In a series of videotapes and installations produced since the mid-1980s, Tony Cokes engages in cogent investigations of identity and opposition. His works question how race influences the construction of subjectivities (personal, cultural and historical), and how race, gender and class are perceived through what he terms the "representational regimes of image and sound," as perpetuated by Hollywood, the media and popular culture.

Cokes' analytical strategy is one of reframing and repositioning. His critiques are informed by contemporary cultural studies, poststructuralist theory, and popular texts; he quotes from sources ranging from Louis Althusser, Malcolm X and Catherine Clement to Public Enemy and William Burroughs. His works are often assemblages of archival footage, images from Hollywood films, text commentary,
voiceover, and popular music."

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John Smith
Associations
1975, 7 minutes

By using the ambiguities inherent in the English language, Associations sets language against itself. Image and word work together and against each other to destroy and create meaning.

Gargantuan
1992, 1 minute

"To master the one-minute time span requires considerable discipline, and few pieces, if any, had been shaped as genuine miniatures—most having the appearance of being extracts from larger works. The notable exception was John Smith's Gargantuan, which was not only the right length for the idea, but actually incorporated a triple pun on the word Ôminute.'"
—Nicky Hamlyn, "One Minute TV 1992", Vertigo (Spring 1993)

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William Wegman
We will screen several video works by this artist spanning the years 1970-1978.

Wegman began producing short, performance-oriented videotapes in the early 1970s, which are considered classics. Many featured his canine companion, a Weimaraner named Man Ray. These tapes are dead pan parodies of "high art" using sight gags, minimalist performance, and understated humor. Recorded as single takes in real time, Wegman used portable video's intimacy and low-tech immediacy to create idiosyncratic narrative comedy.

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Shelly Silver
1
2002, 3:15 minutes

1 is a short tape about longing, threat, power and seduction, with the camera functioning in turn, as aggressor, mediator and confessor. The split-screen image as well as the eerie sound track, made up of two versions of the same Miles Davis song run simultaneously, underline Silver's ambivalent take on the controversial subject matter, as well as calling the work's title into question.

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Plus works by Young Hae Chang Industries, John Baldesaari and more!

posted by ryan griffis at 9:51 AM Wednesday, September 19, 2007

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Posts and Comments: a couple of things

One quick comment about the reading responses... generally, everyone is on track. But, please, please, keep in mind the expectations. These posts are the best way for me to assess that you are reading and understanding the texts outside of classroom discussions. I am not expecting creative writing at its best (not to discourage it), just a short response that tells me what you thought of the text and makes explicit references to parts of it that correspond to your comments. If you're doing this, you're good, if not, you should rethink your approach.
On another matter, I've noticed that several of you have received comments (well, the same comment) from some followers of a "symbologist" (if it's even more than just the one person) that I will leave unnamed here for the purposes of not giving them any more credit or attention. This is one of the "benefits" of blogging... responses from people who see your blog as another link in their drive for attention and fame on the WWW. You, of course, are free to respond to the comments if you would like, but I would urge you to be cautious in who you engage or attempt a conversation with.
I would be happy to discuss the "arguments" presented in those comments with anyone interested in such a discussion.

posted by ryan griffis at 8:20 PM Tuesday, September 11, 2007

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For-Educational-Use-Only 2

(another chance for extra credit)
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12th:
/MEDIUM AND MEMORY: Video, Time, and Personal Recall/
(As always, in room 229 at 7pm)

Rea Tajiri
History and Memory
1991, color and b&w, 32 minutes
Framed by the haunting facts of the post-Pearl Harbor Japanese
internment camps (which dislocated 120,000 Japanese Americans during
World War II), Tajiri creates a version of her family's story through
interviews and historical detail, remembering a time that many people
would rather forget. This video surveys the impact of images (real
images, desired images made real, and unrealized dreams) on our lives,
drawing from sources such as Hollywood, U.S. Dept. of Defense films,
newsreels, memories of the living, and spirits of the dead. Relics of
the camps, contrasted with human efforts to forget their existence,
create a sense of taxonomic insistence that these camps were indeed
real.

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Shigeko Kubota
My Father
1975, b&w, 15 minutes
In this classic personal elegy, Kubota mourns her father's death and
recounts the last days of his life. Reflecting on Kubota's use of the
video medium, the television emerges as the link between Kubota and
her father, with the melodramatic crooning of Japanese pop singers
providing a backdrop for Kubota's real-life tragedy.

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Wim Wenders
Notebooks on Cities and Clothes
1989, color, 35mm film, 79 minutes
This documentary about fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto is also an
examination of the differences between video and film, and their
different capacities for enabling understanding of time, craft, and
the body. A filmmaker tries to understand a form he never works in -
fashion design - as he explores a new instrument in his own toolbox -
the Sony Handicam.

posted by ryan griffis at 12:22 PM Sunday, September 9, 2007

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For-Educational-Use-Only: A Series of Video Screenings

Extra credit in the form of 1 blog post will be given per written response to each film screening. Same requirements as the reading responses (it must show that you watched each video shown, and should not be a "report" - you must do more than describe the videos).
Below is the general info and a schedule for this Wednesday's screening.

On Wednesdays this Fall, in room 229 of the UIUC Art and Design building, we'll be screening videos at 7pm. This un-themed series will simply show works that are sometimes hard-to-come-by, or restricted in circulation. Not all works will be screened in their intended format (i.e., works shot for film will be screened as videos) or even in pristine form; the idea is to get at least some experience of these often hard-to-find works out into circulation of our educational communities.

THIS WEDNESDAY, September 5, 2007 - 7pm.

CAMERAS ON THE MOVE: a grab bag of works about places
This week's program will include at least the following works, and probably a couple of others.

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Jem Cohen
THIS IS A HISTORY OF NEW YORK (The Golden Dark Age of Reason)
(1987, Super 8, 23 min.)
A history of New York City from Prehistoric times through the Space Age, composed entirely from documentary street footage. Gorgeous shots of a recent New York that is already long gone.

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Matt McCormick
The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal
16mm/Digital video - 16 minutes - 2001
Emerging from the human psyche and showing characteristics of abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, graffiti removal has secured its place in the history of modern art while being created by artists who are unconscious of their artistic achievements. [Narrated by Miranda July]

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Bill Brown
Buffalo Common
16mm - 2001 - 23min
The Landscape of North Dakota, dismantled missile silos.

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Harrell Fletcher
Sunglints
[digital video, 2000, duration?]
"This is a sequence of digital pictures of sun glints on cars in a parking lot in Minnesota. Sort of like little pictures of the sun."

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Charlemagne Palestine
Island Song 16:02 1976
Strapping a video camera to himself as he drives a motorcycle around an island, Palestine harmonizes with the engine, maniacally repeating the phrase, "Gotta get outta here...gotta get outta here..." His chanting voice merges with the vibrations of the motor, forming an incessant soundtrack that echoes the jarring motion of the camera. Palestine creates a kind of composite instrument in motion as well as an "articulated personal drama". His stated desire for escape is contained by the boundaries of the island. Palestine was a trained cantor, and he often used his moving body and sustained vocalizing to generate a physical and aural intensity in his musical/video performances of this period.

posted by ryan griffis at 4:27 PM Tuesday, September 4, 2007

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Previous Posts

| Assignments for Tuesday Oct 2 | Swastika In Navy's Architecture To Be Masked | The Production of Creativity (Lecture Today) | Independent Film Making Discussion | For-Educational-Use-Only 4 | Beginning Semiotics | For-Educational-Use-Only 3 | Posts and Comments: a couple of things | For-Educational-Use-Only 2 | For-Educational-Use-Only: A Series of Video Screen...

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