Friday, 31 October 2014

Testing Display and things learnt

I first tried in the white box before the tea bag material had come. Chris had helped me by drawing a suggestion of how to place the projectors and how to make some plinths that would be more fitting with the delicacy of the material I was using.  I used the Kozo paper as trial to project onto and the uni plinths. The space seemed overwhelmingly large for my work and I wasn’t convinced that it was the best space for it but decided to write up a few options in case that was the only space available.

Secrets of display technology

1.     If the projector says No Signal press ‘Source’ and then ensure that the right source has been selected eg HDMI etc

2.     To get the video to loop – while the video is playing – press ‘Options’ on the media player remote then select the circular motion symbol then press options again and the video will resume and loop.


Images of testing the display and measurements





3 Options for display :  using whole whitebox with 3 projections
                                      using whole whitebox with 5 projections
                                      use half whitebox  with 3 / 4 projections






Outcomes of setting up in the white box
For me it seemed that the works got lost in this space. i needed to find somewhere more intimate yet still allowing room for the works to have space. 













List of all the equipment I booked in advance and needed for future reference


   Reservation CK-3075 will be available for pickup at the Audio Visual
   equipment dispatch QCA South Bank - Fine Art at 5:00 PM Wednesday, October
   29, 2014

   The following items are reserved for you:

 ROLAND02     - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 ROLAND01     - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Power Boards02 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Power Boards01 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 HDMI Cable03 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 HDMI Cable02 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 HDMI Cable01 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 RCA Cable04  - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 RCA Cable03  - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 RCA Cable02  - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 RCA Cable01  - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FA MP01      - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FA MP02      - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FA MP05      - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FA MP04      - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FA MP03      - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FAP07 BenQ   - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FAP02 BenQ   - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FAP05 BenQ   - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FAP11 BenQ   - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 FAP10 BenQ   - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord06 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord05 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord04 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord03 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord02 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)
 Extension Cord01 - Reserved - (5:00 PM, 10/29/2014 to 4:45 PM, 10/30/2014)

   

   
 Video Artist References – Carolyn Collier &  Kasia Larsen

 Some of her work involves projecting onto material. She is interested in the space and installation of work as well as the ‘dichotomy in the fact that gestures are frozen because of what they are projected on to, but they also embrace the act of transformation, in an alchemical presentation, material presence (with a life of it’s own), combines with artistic manipulation as an extension of the body’. Dense accumulation of material, ephemeral environments that create immersive experiences, poetic response to the idea of the body as landscape’. 

Interesting this idea of body as landscape as something for me to work with in the future. I was hoping that my work would evoke a sense of the ephemeral body and connection to the landscape as an echo of the loss of mum and also the loss of living in Zimbabwe as well as perhaps a gentler touch on the losses many people have experienced there due to the hardships. This perhaps came more strongly in the video in the middle of the landscape burning which also has a hint at the regeneration that follows. I didn’t want the work to be without hope.










Kasia Kohler Larsen

Danish documentary filmmaker Kasia Larsen used ‘visual and aural triggers’  (Theresa Moerman, 2012 The Magic Mirror  p.33) in her work Fragments of Me  2006, an autobiographical work about her search for her heritage. As she writes

‘Is the soul found in our memories and family?
The film is a biographical stream of consciousness, it will take you on a journey from Odense in Denmark to Krakow in Poland in the search for my roots in my grandmothers abandon house.
FRAGEMENTS OF ME is my debut as in making documentary. The film is a part of my master thesis at the University of Southern denmark.’

Sourced from Penelope Productions ,n.d viewed 20 October 2014 via http://kasiafilm.com/2011/11/19/fragments-of-me_synopsis/






            blurring as a technique seen in this  film stills 

This idea of using the senses to try and recreate history or re connect with the past spoke to me for this work and I worked on a sound piece to add to the installation with my son making an imaginary phone call to me mum which was interspersed by the only words I have on audio file of my mum speaking.





Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Progression of ideas

Once I d mined the family videos I narrowed it down to 19 potentials:

Some were focusing on mum and family times together, some were of the family home before and after and some were videos of Zimbabwean scenery that evoked a broader sense of home and the familiar.




                                                                List of potential videos


I then reviewed these again and narrowed it down to the 8 I thought were the most potent:

1) Scenery driving through zimbabwe with some people in it - no sound




2) Kari packing- no sound


3) Isle of Man - Mum running away on the beach figure getting fainter - no sound


4) Nyanga burning

5) Ross and mum at our old home - no sound




6) Ross phoning my mum from when we moved to Brisbane



7) Short clip of Graham (uncle)  fishing and mum's voice in the background (the only recording I have so far of her speaking)


8) A video Taz (my sister) made in October this year upon my request of the house - everything looks great but its empty



Manipulating videos and Artist Reference Sophie Calle

After choosing which videos I wanted to work with I opened them in imovie and started using technology to manipulate them. I used the slow down function to control the speed particularly around parts where mum featured in the video to try and grasp once again that sense of her essence- now heightened by seeing her in the moving image – another dimension compared to the static still photograph. It feels like an illusion – you can see the person yet cannot reach them.


Video of Ross and mum that I edited 2014 




Video of Mum, Z and Jo (IOM) that I also slowed down and used reverse 

I slowed down portions so I could take my time and examine this figure made of pixels, which showed my mum. I took the impulse further and utilized technology to reverse certain moments. An especially poignant one for me was when mum and my son Ross were hanging out in the lounge and I spent some time when she blinked slowing that down and reversing it – opening her eyes over and over again as if willing them to stay open and simultaneously coming to terms with the fact that they were closed for good even though I hadn’t been there for the end as it was sudden. Maybe it was a way to get some closure of how she looked with her eyes closed, as there is an element of peace in the slowed down movement of blinking.

An artist who undertook this journey in a different way was Sophie Calle in her film work “Pas pu saisir la mort”  (2007). Here she films the last minutes of her mother’s life as she lay on her deathbed. In contrast to my work she does not manipulate the film in any way - the power of the work comes from it being a real event happening which although an incredibly potent event ,the finishing of a life, this is highlighted in a sense by the absence of being able to recognise exactly when this moment is.  As Ken Johnson [1]writes

 The most interesting part is the deathbed film, which was first shown in the 2007 Venice Biennale. To make it, Ms. Calle set up a camera to record her mother continuously while she was dying; what you see is the 11 minutes during which she expired.
It shows Ms. Sindler in profile, lying still with eyes closed, asleep or unconscious. At one point, the hands of otherwise unseen attendants touch her neck and her chest to determine whether she is still living and then adjust the covers. We briefly hear a piece of music by Mozart that Ms. Sindler had asked to be played upon her death. By the end, she has died, but it’s impossible to say exactly when — hence the film’s title, “Couldn’t Capture Death.” It’s eerily uneventful. There’s no perceptible change in her physical being, no last word or gasp, no discernible evidence of the soul leaving the body. If it seems ghoulish to present such a document as a work of art, that just makes it all the more riveting to watch and ponder.






Extracts from Sophie Calle's Pas pu saisir la mort 2007




[1] Johnson, K 2014 ‘As maman lay dying her spirit became art’, The New York Times viewed 16 Oct 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/arts/design/in-rachel-monique-sophie-calle-eulogizes-her-mother.html?_r=0