Rachel's blog

Final project

For this piece I was partnered up with Lauran. We wanted to create something that was a game, a structured game for the audience to play with. After thinking of ideas such as using ideas from Franko B’s work (the imagery), and finding floors in all of them, eg, finding we had no control over the audience or the technical side was falling all the time. So we began to think again.

I had recently been to a party and the lights that the DJ was using seemed to be moving to the beat of the music. I spoke to him about how they worked and explained what we wanted to achieve and he very kindly offered the use of them to us.

After going back to Lauran and explaining all of this to her, we agreed to use the lights in our piece. After experimenting with them we worked out the pattern of the lights. The only problem was that the sound sensors, which the lights plugged into, to making them work with the music, had four in-puts and we only had two lights. So we ended up having the lights flashing on and off as the sequence went through the motions to the beat. However we found this to be better than having the lights on all of the time. It gave the piece some depth with the dark moments.

Our first initial idea for our sound was to create a track of feed back noise. Very high-pitched screeches and buzzing sounds. But after discovering the dark moments in the lighting we felt that this would not work as well because we wanted the audience to control the lighting. Also to add to the problem of sound, the high-pitched track had know beat to it, so there for the lights were not changing at all, so the sound had to be changed.

Our solution to this was for the audience to control the lighting by giving them a very large drum they could beat. We put them in control of the game instead of taking part in it.

Lauran and I were tied up around our knees to restrict our movement, to add a comedy element to the piece, also having a restricted space to move around in. This was a taped out square on the floor we had made before the audience arrived. The game was of cat and mouse. With Lauran and I chasing each other. The rules that were given to the audience were that:-
· The cat could only move when the lights were on (this giving the mouse an advantage).
· The mouse could move all of the time
· Once court the roles reverse
· The audience could beet the drum to help whichever character they wish to.
· The audience only have three beats of the drum each (this giving the piece an ending).
We felt the concept worked quite well, with the audience laughing and having fun. It was nice that when the light went off and then back on again the mouse would be somewhere completely different in the space.

The only main problem we had was it seemed to go on for a long time and the audience seemed to get a little bored. However this was because they did not stick to their rules and they were beating the drum a lot more than three times each. So we had to end the piece ourselves, by Lauran catching me for the last time and us having to announce that it was the end. We new that this might happen and this is why we had already agreed that if it was going on to long that whoever was the cat would catch the mouse and then announce the end.

I feel the piece was successful. There could have been improvements made but we only really saw these problems once we had performed it to a large audience. Even though we had practise the piece this had been with only a small audience so they did not show up.

These were that the audience seemed to all bang the drum at the same time, not allowing for moments of darkness. This could have been avoided by having the audience in a line and having their three bangs on the own, so then they did have complete control of the piece. Instead we had everyone in a group around the drum. However I feel that the audience understood the piece and enjoyed it to and in the end was very successful.

For this piece of work I worked with Beckie B and Ria. We created a piece that looked in to the idea of trickery with the use of media. Our set up consisted of having two television screens back to back, linked together using video cameras. So the camera facing the door was wired to the television facing the back wall and the same for the other side with the camera facing the back wall being wired up to the television facing the door. This enabled a two-way conversation between an audience member and performer. Our trickery came in to play when we asked the audience member to read a passage from the door. Once positioned facing the door they could no longer see the television screen. As they read aloud, Beckie who had been sat talking to them, got up from her chair and made her way round the edge of the room (extremely quietly) to the other side where the audience were sitting. As she did so I then switch the camera on to play mode, now showing the audience pre-recorded footage of Beckie reading a book to her self. As the audience member finished and sat back down the pre-recorded Beckie began to read from he book. At a certain point Beckie then walked to behind the audience member very quietly and began to read in time with her self showing the audience the final trick.

Criticism
We did have some technical problems with this piece. We found the sound level to be a problem. For them to be able to hear the recorded footage the sound had to be up quite high which meant when it was a live feed there was a lot of feed back through the cameras and the voices were unclear. Our solution to this problem was to use Ria, who had been playing the part of Usher, to have the volume controls with her. As the audience member turned around to read the passage she would change the volume at the same time as I was switching over to play mode. This worked well as it was masked so the audience didn’t see the change.

We also had a minor problem with the camera turning its self off all of the time. We resolved this problem by constantly recording the audience member. By having it on record the camera did not turn on to stand by mode.

To make sure that Beckie was looking directly at the audience member and so she could also see the screen so she new when they had turned around we had to position the camera right in front of her television. It didn’t matter, as her side did not need to look good it just needed to look like she was looking at them in the eye. But so the set up looked good on the audience’s side and so we could see them and the door we had to set up their camera to the side of the television. This meant that they were not looking at the camera. A lot of people sat and didn’t know where to look. They weren’t sure whether to look at the camera or at the television, this was confusing for them and I think we should have thought of a better position for their one.

Other Groups
Sarah and Janice had a great idea for theirs, to overlap the faces on the wall. I liked this because this is something I had done in the previous term with Dani. I had printed a photo of my self and one of my mother’s photos on to acetate. My mam and me look very alike any way. I used an OHP to project the two images on to the wall. Once every one had had a good look at the two images in then place them one on top of each other. This shocked them all as it was now like looking at one person. Every feature lined up perfectly to create a new image. This was a nice development using media to show it instead of acetate.

Thobie and I presented a presentation on Nam June Paik, here is the information and the presentation we presented to the class.

Nam June Paik is composer, performer, and video artist--played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression. His works explore the ways in which performance, music, video images, and the sculptural form of objects can be used in various combinations to question our accepted notions of the nature of television.
He was born on the 20th of June 1932 in Seoul (Korea) and died on the 29th January 2006, He left Korea during the war and then he graduated from University of Tokyo in 1956 concluding his studies of the history of art and the history of music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg

Growing up in Korea, Nam June Paik studied piano and composition. When his family moved, first to Hong Kong and then to Japan, he continued his studies in music while completing a degree in aesthetics at the University of Tokyo, concluding his studies of the history of art and the history of music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg. After graduating, Paik went to Germany to pursue graduate work in philosophy. There he became part of a group of Fluxus artists who were challenging established notions of what constituted art. Their work often found expression in performances and happenings that incorporated random events and found objects
In the fluxus he did the exposition of musik/electronic television that was the first exhibition including TV monitors

In Japan he met Shuya Abe and for the year he started to experiment with electromagnet and colour television. And within that year he visited New York and he did collaboration with Charlotte Moorman.
Paik's initial artistic explorations of the mass media of television were presented in his first solo exhibition in 1963, Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. This milestone exhibition featured Paikís prepared televisions. Paik altered the sets to distort their reception of broadcast transmissions and scattered them about the room, on their sides and upside down. He also created interactive video works that transformed the viewers' relationship to the medium. With these first steps began an astonishing effusion of ideas and invention that over the next 30 years would play a profound role in the introduction and acceptance of the electronic moving image into the realm of art. All of his work is very aesthetically pleasing. With most of the pieces he creates some sort of structure, giving the audience a sculptured presentation to look at as well as the visual media. The More the Better, was created in (1988) and this is a fine example of the structural brilliancy of his work. He uses a lot of colour in his work, this just simply adds to the aesthetic pleasure of his work.
In his Paik changes the sets
“TV Clock”. The piece consist of twenty-four TV monitors lined up and the image on each is compressed into a single line with the lines on succeeding monitors rotated to suggest the hands of a clock representing each hour of the day

Influences
Ø Karlheinz Stockhausen-composition
Ø John Cage-electronic music (elektronische musik)
Ø Shuya Abe- experiment with electromagnet and colour television
Ø George Maciunas- Founder of the radical art movement Fluxus

I think that Paik is a very creative guy. He thinks a lot beyond the norm of the way that TV is used or seen. In his work he manipulates the images on the screen and he also thinks about the aesthetics of his installation. He has a lot of influences and he has influenced a lot as well.

The rest of the information here is both of our resurch. With the information at the botom being what we used on the hand out.

Nam June Paik's journey as an artist has been truly global, and his impact on the art of video and television has been profound. To foreground the creative process that is distinctive to Paik's artwork, it is necessary to sort through his mercurial movements, from Asia through Europe to the United States, and examine his shifting interests and the ways that individual artworks changed accordingly. It is my argument that Paik's prolific and complex career can be read as a process grounded in his early interests in composition and performance. These would strongly shape his ideas for media based art at a time when the electronic moving image and media technologies were increasingly present in our daily lives. In turn, Paik's work would have a profound and sustained impact on the media culture of the late twentieth century; his remarkable career witnessed and influenced the redefinition of broadcast television and transformation of video into an artist's medium. John Hanhardt
Guggenheim Museum of Art
Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts http://www.paikstudios.com
June 20th, 1932
Born in Seoul (Korea), the fifth son of a textile manufacturer
1956
Paik graduates from the University of Tokyo, concluding his studies of the
History of Art and the History of Music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg
1958-63
Meets John Cage; works in the Studio fur elektronische Musik at WDR,
Cologne

1963
Participates in "Fluxus. Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik",
Wiesbaden; "Exposition of Musik / Electronic Television", the first
exhibition including TV monitors, is shown at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal
1963-64
Travels to Japan; meets Shuya Abe; experiments with electromagnets and
color television; visits New York, collaborates with Charlotte Moorman
1965
First solo exhibition "Electronic Art" in the USA at Galeria Bonino, New
York; buys the first portable video recorder

Nam June Paik
He was born on the 20th of June 1932 in Seoul (Korea) and died on the 29th January 2006. He is a composer, performer, and video artist--played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression. (Liggett 2008: www)
Influences
Ø Karlheinz Stockhausen-composition
Ø John Cage-electronic music (elektronische musik)
Ø Shuya Abe- experiment with electromagnet and colour television
Ø George Maciunas- Founder of the radical art movement Fluxus (Hanhardt 2006: www)

Nam June Paik's initial artistic explorations of the mass media of television were presented in his first solo exhibition which was in 1963 called the Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, in Germany. Paik altered the sets to distort their reception of broadcast transmissions and scattered them about the room, on their sides and upside down. He also created interactive video works that transformed the viewers' relationship to the medium. With these first steps began an astonishing effusion of ideas and invention that over the next 30 years would play a profound role in the introduction and acceptance of the electronic moving image into the realm of art. (Lynch 2000: www)

This is an image the piece called “TV Clock” created in 1989. The piece consist of twenty-four TV monitors lined up and the image on each is compressed into a single line with the lines on succeeding monitors rotated to suggest the hands of a clock representing each hour of the day

I think that Paik is a very creative guy. He thinks a lot beyond the norm of the way that TV is used or seen. In his work he manipulates the images on the screen and he also thinks about the aesthetics of his installation. He has a lot of influences and he has influenced a lot as well.

I feel this presantation went very well. I leanrt alot from this piece of work. Finding another artist I am very interested in. The use of asthetics in his work is beautiful. Hopefully I will be able to incorporate some of his wonderful ideas into my own.

Ria and I were asked to put together a presantation on Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollard. This is some of the information i colected for the piece of work and also the bibliography I put together.

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are pioneers of the current trend exploring re-enactment as an artistic genre. The World Won't Listen, was their first live project in 1996, setting them up to create some brilliant re-enactment live art. Since then they have created many more pieces including their critically acclaimed A Rock 'N' Roll Suicide at the ICA in 1998 and, more recently, their film File under Sacred Music. As their work progresses they have engaged on the fact that society’s engagement with cultural and emotional expression is increasing.
In 2005 they recreated Vito Acconci’s Walk-Over. For this piece they worked with Plan B, a young MC. By doing this they were bring in the more up to date sound of urban music, which update the script and gave new ideas when re-shooting the video. Then in 2006 they presented their most ambitious project to date, Silent Sound, which Ria will talk about.
When creating a new piece of live art they find work by other artist, performers or musicians and begin their research on them. Most of the time their re-enactments are exact and there for the research has to be very thura. They try and adapt the piece to fit in with the modern times but they do not change much of the piece. They allow the work to stay in its natural form so the small changes they do make are more powerfull and meaning full.

http://www.iainandjane.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/shootinglive/2003/forsythpollard/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/shootinglive/2003/forsythpollard/background.shtml

http://www.afoundation.org.uk/greenlandstreet/details.php?id=11

Since The World Won’t Listen, their first live project in 1996, to their critically acclaimed A Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide and, more recently, their film File under Sacred Music, they have had the timing and insight to key into contemporary society’s increasing engagement with simulation and artifice as a vital part of cultural and emotional expression.
http://re-title.com/artists/IainJane-ForsythPollard.asp

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard colaboration of both mine and Ria's work

Brief Summery
Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard have collaborated together since 1993 while studying fine art, and graduated together from Goldsmiths in 1995. ‘Forsyth and Pollard are collaborative visual artists who work with live art, film and video, and are pioneers in establishing re-enactment as an artistic genre’. (A Foundation, 2006)
Silent Sound was a live performance and installation presented in 2006 as a part of the Liverpool Biennial. It has been described as their ‘most ambitious work to date’.
(Forsyth & Pollard, (2)) The work was inspired by the history of the space, St. Georges Hall, Liverpool. In Victorian times the hall was a platform for the work of the Davenport Brothers, a duo that would convinced their audience of super natural presence by illusion. Silent sound was inspired by the Davenport Brothers, and the artists created a soundproof booth that resembled the original ‘spirit cabinet’.
The Performance Installation was divided into two parts. The first part was a message repeatedly spoken by the two artists within the soundproof booth. Outside of the booth was an orchestra playing a live music recital. The messages were played out alongside the recital through a specially designed machine, although this was inaudible to the audience. The second part of the piece was a day later where the live performance was incorporated into a large scale installation. (Forsyth & Pollard, (2))

Genealogy
Marcel Duchamp, Vito Acconci (walk over), plan B,

Dr. Ciarán O'Keeffe,
Technical
The Installation

The Installation design was supported by John Bell, architecture. The live music recital was composed by Jason Pierce, from the band Spiritualized.
The soundproof booth and silent sound machine were made by Charles Poulet and Andy Bolton.
Iain and Jane worked with Chris Bigg and Vaughan Oliver at V23 on all of the graphics for the project. Other collaborators to the project are Charles Poulet as audio consultant, Noah Roase on the design and production of the cabinet and machine, John Bell from FXV on the design of the installation, ARUP on the ambisonic recording and installation and Live Here
Iain and Jane worked with FXV architect John Bell on the design of the installation. At the heart of the installation is a dark listening chamber, the Silent Sound machine is housed in an ante-chamber visible through a window. The live recording is played back across 12 hidden speakers and a sub-bass - the resulting sound is enormous. With the support of ARUP and Charles Poulet the sound in the chamber sonically recreates the 3D space of St. George's Hall inside the installation.
Technical Influences

Jason Pierce (Spiritulized)
John Bell

Brief Opinion

Bibliography
A Foundation (2006) The Blade Factory: Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Silent sound [online] Available from: http://www.afoundation.org.uk/greenlandstreet/details.php?id=11 [Accessed 18th January 2008]

Forsyth. I. & Pollard. J. (1) Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard: About the Artists [online] Available from: http://www.iainandjane.com/about/index.shtml
[Accessed 15th January 2008]

Forsyth. I. & Pollard. J. (2) Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard: Silent Sound at the Liverpool Biennial [online] Available from:
http://www.iainandjane.com/shows/silentsound/index.shtml [Accessed 15th January 2008]

Forsyth. I. & Pollard. J. (3) Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard: Words & Pictures - Ultra-Paranoid (Extra-Spatial) Portable Art [online] Available from: http://www.iainandjane.com/work/wordsandpictures/index.shtml

Taylor. T. (2003) Ghosts of the Prairie: The Davenport Brothers [online]
Available from: http://www.prairieghosts.com/davenport.html [Accessed 18th January 2008]

Bell, J. (2006) Interactive Arcutecture.org: FXV [online] Available from: http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/fxv.html [Accessed 18th January 2008]

ARUP. About Us [online] Available from: http://www.arup.com/aboutus.cfm [Accessed 18th January 2008]

Noahrose. Silent Sound: Performance, Installation, Experiment, Re-enactment. [online] Available from: http://www.noahrose.co.uk/MODULES/GALLERY/noah_GALLERYmoduleASP/GALLERYMOD_level3.asp?level1id=2&level2id=116&level3imageid=518 [Accessed 18th January 2008]

List of References

We felt our presentation went very well. Covering many aspects of their work and describing their style of performance in detail.

Sarah and I created a peice using the senses, we wanted to make you use your ears more than anything. we did this by blindfolding 50% of the audience and the other 50% were left to experiance it with all the senses in use.

Sarah and I had pre-recorded certain sounds on to a dictaphone. this was probably not the best piece of equiptment to have used but we now know that. as we played one of the sounds from the dictphone we would re-create another of the sounds in the live space. they would hear the same sound twice,but not consecutively, it would be all mixed up. we did this is so they could experience how a pre-recored sound and live sound differed and how it made them feel.

we only had 50% of the audience with blind folds on so we could ask them how each half had felt. if not having a blind fold had ruined the performance or whether it just made it more interesing because they could see what we were doing. we wanted to know if the sounds sounded different to the people with blindfolds.

Other people for example, Jancice's group, they used more technology than we did. they had wired a mic up to a pair of headphones. the listener was on one side of the room and the speaker on the other. the listener also had Beckie sat next to them speaking into their ear. this piece was really affective and made you want to listen to more.

Jack's group had created something that reversed every thing you said so you were speaking backwards. this piece was very clever and worked really well as an installation based piece.

ria's group used frequancy in theirs to create an erie envronment. unfortunatly the equiptment faild just before i was due to go in so i did not experience this one, but from what people have siad they were very succsesful in creating a scary enviroment.

Forever- this piece is shot on 16mm film with a very simple projection. it was created in 1993. the piece is all projected from behind, infortunatly i am unable to find a picture as his web site has only got his currant work on there.

Inland- this was another piece which used projection and other formes of midia. still usingheprojection he also had a telivition screen pulled on by a dancer. the TV showed a dog going for a walk. this was a conectin between real life and media. having the performer pull the dog on stage mimics them taking it for a walk. the TV was powerd by very larg batterys as there was no wires for safty.

Wright created a very asthetically pleasing image for the audience. having a small projection in one corner and then the performer dancing with the projection. a simple image of Bird can give a story to the movement of the dancer. this creates a duet etween real life and midia.

He creates some very clever images, for example when the perfoemer is infront of the "mirror", he moves perfectly with the image of himself, reacting so will to the extra interaction between them. for example when the reflection slaps the real person. he also has a nice section when all the performers are in a projection, but then one of them leaves and enters the stage in real life, interacting still though with he projection. it is all very clever, showing a shift in time in the performance.

i think the reason why this all works so well is because Wright takes time to no his performers and what there life situation is. he then takes this and makes his performances around the performers.

http://www.douglaswright.net/ hee is a link to Wrights web page.

-the different sounds that can be created
ambient sound, a way to pull across sound. meaning sound that is underneath the action. a sound that helps what ever it is acompaning to be succsesfull, setting the mood.

Both found on Google, web definition.
the general sounds, no matter how faint, that fill the background of the primary recorded sounds.
hhh.gavilan.edu/grichards/hum4/terms_000.html

This term generally refers to any sounds that are used to establish location. The ambient sound of a scene in a park, for instance, might include birds chirping, children laughing, or a dog barking. ...
faculty.salisbury.edu/~dtjohnson/filmterms.htm

Mic's-aquiptment to record sounds
Radio mic, is a body mic that runs from a small battery pack which is possitioned on the body, the microphone head is very smll and easally attatched to either clothes or to he face. this is often used in stage productions.

Shotgun mic, is a microphone tha picks up very small sounds alowing you to record them and play them back at a higher leval to hear them.

Speakers-out putting the sound
a PA sysem is a piece of equopment also none as a public address system that contolsthe sound by electronic ampifier.
Alot of people are recording on there mobile phones now to. this is a very quick and easy way to create video's to put on the net.

Hello, hopefully I have finaly mastered the world of the blog. Im sorry if I seem really lame, Im just really not good with computers. However Niel is really easy as a discution bored. We have been using that for the past 2 years. I know the dance students have been using a blog though that is why they are so good at it. But im willing to learn so here goes.