Inspired by John Cage’s compositional process, I took some video and audio footage of a house, a boat and a train and edited them together using a random choice process. The film contains instructional photographs and the finished edit.
After reflecting on John Cage’s musical compositional style, I decided to create some rules to compose my film edit. I brushed up on reading musical notation by looking at Ken Davies’ website and Music Mind website. I labelled each of my forty six film clips with a number: 01 to 46. I took the first four beats from each clip and placed them in a ‘raw footage’ sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro. Here are photos describing the process I used to make my film:
I used six musical notes to decide on the length of clip; three of them were silent to represent black screen.
I cut out paper squares.
I wrote the numbers of clips and drew the musical notes on the squares of paper.
I folded the squares and placed them in cups (separate cups for film clip numbers and musical notes).
I pulled a number from one cup and a note from another until I felt I had enough for a short film sequence.
I added the clips to the visual track and if the note was silent I made the clip transparent (you can see this by the position of the yellow line).
I marked off each note so that I knew where I was in the process.
I did the same for the audio track.
I wrote some of the thoughts that I had whilst carrying out the monotonous repetitive work:
“as I drag the opaque bar down to zero, making the image disappear, a panic clutches me.”
“relief: the next note is not silent.”
“I imagine the final crit and Matthew dismissing the work in some way.”
“John Cage: “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”. His 4’33” consisted of actual musical silences and a pianist sat at a piano and read the music until it was finished.”
“doing this with the film footage might render my journey to obtain it pointless.”
“seems perverse.”
“I recognise some of the shots as ones I like and feel sad they won’t be seen.”
“I wonder what this will be like to watch.”
“I wonder if I will make meaning from the result.”
“it doesn’t matter how it turns out. It’s just a bunch of numbers and notes.”
“it’s just a series of repetitions: look at number and note type, select number of notes, copy them, paste them, turn opaque down if instructed, mark paper to show where I’ve got to.”
“I wonder how long the film will be.”
“images can be manipulated to show things that aren’t/weren’t there.”
“I know what that image is!”
“some of these tiny images look beautiful.”
“I’m near the end!”
“John in Bristol.”
“folly. This is folly. And so is everything else but stuff that’s purposeful appears not to be folly when it is.”
“motorbike sound outside: remembering the anticipation of John arriving on his motorcycle.”
“Edmund in his lycra outfit scootering around Enterprise Point.”
“Lauren in fairy wings scootering around Enterprise Point.”
“Father Christmas.”
I watched the visual track once I’d added the notes. I wrote this: “it’s a bit like setting up a line of dominoes; the anticipation has been building during the editing process.”
I didn’t have much to show in my tutorial. Last night I edited all the film clips I had together in a line, which amounted to 15 minutes in length. My tutor seemed disgruntled that I hadn’t gotten any further with it since last week; however, I’ve been reading lots and reflecting and that is just as important in a process as doing.
I could make two short films, showing one after the other: the house in Basingstoke could be set against sounds that grow in intensity before giving way to the boat in Oxford with gentler sounds. Then I could do the same thing the other way around.
A way of exhibiting/disseminating that mirrors exclusion in capitalism: make a set of rules that require a need for a smartphone to capture a QR code to watch the film.
Another way of exhibiting: create two structures inside an art gallery; one is a house and the other a boat. Inside the structures show video of a house and a boat (the boat in the house and the house in the boat). I looked up dictionary definitions of “investigate” and “explore”:
Investigate: to inquire into to study in order to ascertain facts or information.
Explore: 1. to seek for something or after someone. 2. To examine or investigate something systematically. 3. To travel somewhere in search of discovery. 4. To examine diagnostically. 5. To (seek) experience first hand. 6. To be engaged exploring in any of the above senses. 7. To wander without any particular aim or purpose.
This is a documentary about John Cage and his musical practice. I watched it after watching the video of a performance of Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra. During the documentary a performance of 4’33” is given: a pianist sits at a piano and reads the notes; each note is silent. John Cage composed these silent notes. The audience sits and watches the pianist read the music.
I didn’t know before there was an actual musical composition consisting of silent notes. It makes the piece very interesting. How do we know the pianist is reading the notes and not thinking about his dinner? What if he loses concentration? The piece might last longer. It’s intriguing that he opens and closes the piano lid during the performance. I wonder what that’s about. John Cage’s music seems haphazard when listening to it, but his instructions are very precise. He uses chance (the i-Ching) to devise the compositions. It seems like a concentrated, repetitious way of working.
I watched this video after reading John Cage’s Queer Silence by Jonathan D. Katz in Writings Through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art edited by David W. Berstein and Christopher Hatch (2001, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). Katz mentions the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra a few times in his essay, highlighting the use of silence. Cage recognised “silence is coterminous with sound” (p: 51).
I wanted to experience his music and I found it pleasing, disturbing, and thought-provoking.
A psychogeographic film in that Keiller took shots of London with a video camera; the shots sometimes relate to the narrative he weaves over the images. He created a character called Robinson and tells the story of Robinson over the backdrop of London. I didn’t watch it all; I found it depressing.
After a trip away at the weekend, where I did some filming inside my aunt and uncle’s house in Basingstoke, and some filming on a fellow CouchSurfer’s narrowboat in Oxford (see photograph above), I presented some rushes at a group critique session at university today. There are many ways I could manipulate the footage: I could compare the two styles of living, highlighting the differences and similarities; I could make a narrative, using sound, and have some drama operating off-screen; I could make a simple observation of how it was to live on the boat at that particular time. Patrick Keiller was a name that came up in the critique, so I’m researching his work.
First stop was an article, How Patrick Keiller is mapping the 21st-century landscape, by Owen Hatherley from The Guardian (click the photograph of Keiller above to go to the article). The article documents Hatherley’s visit to Keiller’s The Robinson Institute exhibited at Tate Britain in 2012. Hatherley compares Keiller’s fragments of evidence that document turning points in English history to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, which documented the commodification of things taking place under iron and glass covered walkways in Paris in the nineteenth century. Both Benjamin and Keiller are political in their work. This quote is from Google Books:
“The Arcades Project is Benjamin’s effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed “true history” that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by “progress,” Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things.”
This video, Paris Arcades (with Walter Benjamin), comes from YouTube:
It shows footage of passageways (although not glass-covered) and a voice over reading from Arcades Project. The text has glimpses of middle-class male angst in it.
This video is Patrick Kieller’s London (1994):
It has shots of London with a fictionalised narrative voice over, and also displays middle class male angst.
Boy and Bicycle (1965). Ridley Scott.
The film has a simple feel to it; we follow an adolescent boy as he goes off on his bicycle, ending up at the beach where he explores a wooden hut. The things he sees in the hut spark memory associations, which we are privy to through the use of voice over.
I’ve been asking people to tell me about interactive public art that has been intended for climbing on, swinging on or sliding down, with 24 hour access for free in the UK and there’s nothing, except children’s outdoor parks. My travel grant covers research; since I can’t use it for visiting similar things to my idea, I could use it to visit stuff that has an element of what Wonder Land is about. For example, I could visit an outdoor children’s adventure playground that used recycled materials in the build, or a public sculpture that uses recycled materials or invites interaction in a thoughtful way.
I spoke to Matt Page (Moving Image Technician) and he told me about a public sculpture in Berlin that is formed of individual plinths set in rows that form corridors; it commemorates holocaust victims so people aren’t allowed to climb on the plinths but people play Pac-man in the corridors. Another branch of my research, therefore, is looking at how people use public sculpture. A brief internet search shows there is some controversy surrounding the sculpture – click on the photograph to go to a news story about it.
I visited the yurt (temporary relaxing space in uni of Brighton, Grand Parade garden) at lunch time and talked to Sara, Mikey and some girls (whose names I didn’t ask – so rude of me!) from the third year sculpture course about my research. Sara offered her services as project manager if I can get funding for Wonder Land and asked if I have a Go Pro camera, which led to the idea of time lapse filming of the build. Mikey told me about Martin Creed’s current exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which I checked online: the exhibition has been extended until Monday 5 May 2014 but it costs £11. Click the photo for information about the show. I wonder how I can gain free entry?
Sara, Mikey and I also chatted about Carsten Höller’s test site exhibit at the Tate Modern in 2006. Mikey saw it and her son rode the fifth floor slide; she said he confirmed it was exhilarating. We talked of how a sculpture you can swing, slide and climb on could relieve depressive symptoms. I found some books and a DVD on Carsten Höller at St Peter’s House Library and I’m going to use them for further research. Click the photo to go to an interview with Höller on the Tate Modern website.
The third year sculpture students told me about a children’s park at Bletchley that has a dinosaur slide (with urban/graffiti colours) and a graduate sculpture student from last year, Carly Jayne, who made a swing for interactive public use in her second year show. The closest thing I could find to the dinosaur slide was this:
I found Carly Jayne’s swing here:
It’s the closest thing so far to my intention for Wonder Land.
As I was sitting in the yurt, feeling much more relaxed than when I’m outside of it, I realised I’d like to incorporate some quiet, contemplative space into Wonder Land. This is a photo of the inside of the yurt:
Later, at home, I checked Facebook to see if there were any replies to my question, “does anyone know of any public interactive art in England that is fun to climb, slide or swing on and is free to use?” Ezra shared a link to a Guardian article about Dalston House: the building that lets you defy gravity. The piece was exhibited in summer 2013.
I also found a link to a happening in Bristol this coming Sunday (4 May 2014); Luke Jerram is turning Park Street in Bristol into a giant water slide:
Although it’s fun, interactive and free, it’s temporary and ticketed. The artist used crowdsourcing to pay for the event and liaised with council officials to arrange it.
Oolia touching reality 