"Hanna Tuulikki is a British-Finnish artist, composer and performer based in Scotland. Her multi-disciplinary projects investigate the ways in which the body communicates beyond and before words, to tell stories through imitation, vocalisation and gesture. With a largely place-responsive process, she considers how bodily relationships and folk histories are encoded within specific environments, ecologies and places.
In her work, she often draws on embodied vernacular knowledges, in particular, practices of vocal and gestural mimesis of the more-than-human, to offer alternative approaches to making kin, both with one other, and across multi-species entanglements. Her most recent work engages with vital questions about what it means to live on a damaged planet, proposing contemporary, queer ritual, as a means to process the trauma that comes with ecological awareness."
Hanna Tuululiki uses vocalisation within her practice which relates to my practice right now. Her place-responsive process is also similar to my practice as the places I film are important within the film, not site specific, information based, but the look and feel a place/environment gives me and in turn how I film that and portray it to an audience. I find the way she considers how bodily relationships and folk histories are encoded within specific environments, ecologies and places interesting and relevant to my practice. Although its not in the forefront of my moving image process, there is allurement that happens when choosing places I go to. I find places with hidden history fascinating as I have experiences that they effect the way I photograph or film an environment/place. There is a relation to the human body and nature within my practice that I feel resonates with the vocal and gestural mimesis of the more-than-human within Tuululiki's practice and body of work. There is also an Anthropogenic nature to her practice; what it means to live on a damaged planet, proposing contemporary, queer ritual, as a means to process the trauma that comes with ecological awareness and this is another line of enquiry running through my work whether it be hints or gestures of.
Deer Dancer, 2019 by Hanna Tuululiki
Liquid body, 2016 by Hanna Tuululiki
Cloud Cuckoo Island, 2016 by Hanna Tuululiki
Arianne Churchman
"Arianne Churchman is an artist from East Anglia now based in Nottingham. Her work investigates British folk traditions, celebrations and customs; and uses the forms of performance, film, sound and sculpture to explore these themes. The work questions how we might import or re-imagine ancient rituals, beliefs and rites within our modern life, placing the mythic and historic into a contemporary context to create a new playful space."
We Entered Through the Chime Line, 2019 by Arianne Churchman.
Arianne Churchman's work has similar themes to Hanna Tuululiki's of folklore. She uses sound to explore this which is important within my practice. I like her use of play-fullness when making the work, this is something that I feel I could explore within my own practice, bringing humour into my moving-image making. I am attracted to the use of colour Churchman uses in the editing of her videos. I am less concerned with bringing human life to my films but rather gesture towards human-ness.
Jon Akomfrah
"John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. [...] In 2019, on the occasion of his participation at the first Ghana Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, John Akomfrah presented Four Nocturnes (2019), a three-channel piece that reflects on the complex intertwined relationship between humanity’s destruction of the natural world and our destruction of ourselves."
Four Nocturnes, 2019 by Jon Akomfrah (Three-channel HD color video installation, 7.1 sound)
"John Akomfrah's new three-screen video installation Four Nocturnes forms the third part of a trilogy of films including Vertigo Sea (2015) and Purple (2017) that explore the complex intertwined relationship between humanity’s destruction of the natural world and our destruction of ourselves. Using Africa’s declining elephant populations as its narrative spine, Four Nocturnes will be staged as a set of impressionist meditations on fugitive time(s), on improper light and the unnamed scandal. The film questions mortality, loss, fragmented identity, mythology, and memory through poetic visuals that survey the landscape of African cultural heritage."
Vertigo Sea, 2015 by John Akomfrah (Three channel HD colour video installation, 7.1 sound (installation view) 48 minutes 30 seconds) © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Stuart Whipps
"Vertigo Sea, a three-screen film, first seen at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of Okwui Enwezor's All the World's Futures exhibition, is a sensual, poetic and cohesive meditation on man's relationship with the sea and exploration of its role in the history of slavery, migration, and conflict. Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources, and newly shot footage, the work explicitly highlights the greed, horror and cruelty of the whaling industry. This material is then juxtaposed with shots of African migrants crossing the ocean in a journey fraught with danger in hopes of 'better life' and thus delivering a timely and potent reminder of the current issues around global migration, the refugee crisis, slavery, alongside ecological concerns.
Installation view: John Akonfrah: Purple, ICA Watershed, Boston, 2019. Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photo by Meg Elkinton © Smoking Dogs Films (6-channel HD colour video installation with 15.1 surround sound)
"Co-commissioned by the ICA and making its U.S. premiere at the ICA Watershed, Purple is an immersive six-channel video installation by the acclaimed artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah (b. 1957, Accra, Ghana). Akomfrah draws from hundreds of hours of archival footage, combining it with newly shot film and a hypnotic sound score to address themes related to the implications of climate change across the planet and its effects on human communities, biodiversity, and the wilderness. Sited in the Watershed’s industrial building, Purple resonates deeply with the Watershed’s harbor location and its proximity to the current and historical maritime industries of the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina. Symphonic in scale and divided into five interwoven movements, the film features various disappearing ecological landscapes, from the hinterlands of Alaska and the desolate environments of Greenland to the Tahitian Peninsula and the volcanic Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific. Purple conveys the complex and fragile interrelation of human and non-human life with a sense of poetic gravity that registers the vulnerability of living in precarious environments."
John Akomfrah's themes of memory and aesthetics are important in my practice. I look at evoking feelings within my practice through imagery that could evoke nostalgia. He uses multiple screens to generate impact to the themes behind his work. This is also important to me. The running theme through the above series is the Anthropocene which is something that keeps coming up within my work. He addresses climate change, animal cruelty and extinction and human's destruction of the planet as a whole and this is something that is important to me personally. Although his work is more informative mixed with feeling, my way of portraying it is much more subtle. The hypnotic sound scores he uses resonate within my practice after the last unit of using my own voice. This is something I want to explore and push further for this unit. Along with the use of multiples screens to see how it changes the perspective for the viewer.
Douglas Gordon
Wiki:
"Douglas Gordon (born 20 September 1966) is a Scottish artist. Much of Gordon's work is seen as being about memory and uses repetition in various forms. He uses material from the public realm and also creates performance-based videos. His work often overturns traditional uses of video by playing with time elements and employing multiple monitors."
Gagosian:
"Working across mediums and disciplines, Douglas Gordon investigates moral and ethical questions, mental and physical states, as well as collective memory and selfhood. Using literature, folklore, and iconic Hollywood films in addition to his own footage, drawings, and writings, he distorts time and language in order to disorient and challenge."
What attracted me to Gordon's work was his use of repetition in various forms and how he overturns traditional uses of video by playing with time elements and employing multiple monitors. Playing with time elements is something I have started doing within my own practice, when editing the footage I capture. I am intrigued by his process for investigating mental and physical states, as well as collective memory and self-hood. The self is something I am playing around with at the moment. Myself but also the audiences self. Through creating an embodied experience for the viewer through perception and the senses. Gordon distorts time and language in order to disorient and challenge the viewer and this is something that was prevalent in my last video of the flesh. With this unit, I will use less spoken language and more visual language and choral sounds and harmonies to disorient and challenge my viewers, which in turn makes them challenge themselves.
A Divided Self I and A Divided Self II, 1996 by Douglas Gordon
Tate:
"A Divided Self I and A Divided Self II 1996 is a two-channel video installation displayed on two monitors. The work shows a close-up of two arms, one hairy and the other smooth, fighting each other on a bed sheet. In the first video the hairy arm has dominance, while in the second it is the smooth arm that defeats its opponent. As the videos develop it becomes clear that both arms belong to the artist, and that he is wrestling with himself. As the title indicates, the battle between the two arms suggests an internal battle between two halves of the self; however the source of the self-inflicted torment remains a mystery."
I like how Gordon uses parts of the body for this. Although its not something I use visually in my work. The concept behind the work is great. I like how at the beginning you aren't sure whether its two arms due to the hair, but then you realise after seeing the title it is suggested that it is himself battling with himself. I also like how it leaves is mysterious and question well is it two people battling teach other or is it two sides of himself, and why is bhe battling himself? t reminds me of the two wolves analogy.
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Play Dead; Real Time (this way, that way, the other way), 2003 by Douglas Gordon
"Play Dead; Real Time (this way, that way, the other way) is a video installation with no sound by the artist Douglas Gordon. The work comprises two rear projection screens and one monitor. The screens are large, freestanding and placed perpendicular to one another in the otherwise empty and darkened gallery, while a monitor resting on the floor nearby plays similar footage. It was recorded at Gagosian Gallery in New York, where the artist arranged to have a four-year-old Indian elephant, Minnie, brought in from the Connecticut circus. In the gallery, a professional film crew recorded her as she carried out a series of tricks – ‘play dead’, ‘stand still’, ‘walk around’, ‘back up’, ‘get up’ and ‘beg’ – on the command of her off-screen trainer. The footage showing Minnie’s sequences of tricks is precisely edited, with each take fading to black. In the images projected onto the screens, the camera circles around Minnie, moving clockwise on one large screen, and counter-clockwise on the other. The footage on the monitor zooms in and out on her, with each new sequence commencing with a close-up of her eye."
I loved this piece of work because it has an Indian Elephant in and I absolutely LOVE elephants.
I like how simplistic his videos are and the fact that he puts them on split screen monitors which provide a closer look at the details.
Gabriel Kelemen
Gabriel Kelemen is an artist that took my interest during my foundation when I was studying and researching Cymatics. Kelemen uses Photography and film to capture the liquid experiments of Cymatics and standing waves. His work shows how nature responds to invisible forces, which I find fascinating and something that I would not only like to bring into my own practice but also hope to achieve to create some interesting surreal narratives for my moving image and sound pieces. Nasui (2015) suggests that the results of this kind of art work is defined as ‘generative art’. Jeff Volk explains, “He works with a sense of beauty and adoration with nature and that comes through his work”.
This is evident in the video below, one of many like this. Kelemen uses a special device called a spherical resonant cavity and one oscillator with a single wave and obtains a structure pentagonal, he states “after a few days in my lab, I was surprised that I saw the human face”.
I will explore this avenue further, by looking into and understanding our biosphere, the cosmic and the microcosmic universe through photography and using the cymatics speaker I made during my Foundation to do so.
This video in particular the lines and forms change continuously giving symmetry and asymmetry all at the same time. He has chosen complimenting colours, blue and purple, melting and dissipating into each other. These videos are eye catching due to their vibrant and rich colours. The texture is both gooey and velvety, something I figure can only be captured using macro video. I intend to use a macro lens to capture the results. There is an ambiguity to his videos which resonates with my practice and something I wish to explore further into this unit. This is following on from the previous unit of exploring everyday materials and extending this into combining matter with energy; in this case, frequencies. The everyday materials I aim to use this time are cornstarch mixed with paint.
More information on my research and studies of Cymatics and the Art of Sound here. https://amiedodgson.wixsite.com/website/post/the-art-of-sound
Jane & Louise Wilson
Gamma, 1999 by Jane & Louise Wilson (Video, 4 projections, colour and sound (mono))
Tate:
"Gamma is a four-screen video projection which was shot in the former United States Air Force base at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. In 1979, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) decided to station 96 cruise missiles at Greenham Common and thus prompted the establishment of the Women's Peace Camp in 1981, a non-violent, anti-nuclear mass protest which was to last for nineteen years and make regular newspaper headlines. Decommissioned in 1992, the missile base is now an eerily deserted monument to Cold War paranoia. Gamma is a companion piece to an earlier work of 1997, Stasi City, which was filmed inside the abandoned headquarters of the German Democratic Republic Intelligence Service, known as the Stasi. Both works were possible to make only because of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War."
What I like about ‘Gamma’ is the two sets of projections that look like an open book. This already draws the viewer in like they’re reading a story and sets up a narrative. Having the viewer in mind is my priority so thinking about the composition of the film in an exhibition space is important to me. I like how they have used different camera movements and compositions within the film to promote a sense of mystery but also tap into bodily sensations and feelings such as the feeling of apprehension. There are other feelings that are evoked such as anxiety and threat caused by sounds which I find interesting. The feeling is important to me in my work. I also like how they have used multiple screens to show different aspects of the same place to give an overall sense of the space possibly from two different people. Aesthetically the Wilson sisters use similar visuals of kaleidoscopic repetition as me which induce a disorientation. There is a sense of liminal spaces too which is something I am keeping aware of when gathering footage. Overall this piece is unsettling and affecting which I like, and which is important to me. It’s the feelings themselves and the reaction from the viewer I am interested in.
Ian Breakwell
The Other Side, 2002 by Ian Breakwell ( Video, 2 projections, colour and sound, Duration: 14 min)
Tate:
"The Other Side is a double-screen video installation commissioned as part of Breakwell’s residency at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex during the summer and autumn of 2000. The Pavilion was designed during the 1930s as a place of entertainment and public instruction by the architects Eric Mendelsohn (1885-1953) and Serge Chermayeff (1901-96) and is one of the best examples of Modernist architecture in Britain. It features in the work as both its subject and its backdrop. The film was shot on the Pavilion’s upper landing, the camera positioned looking out through the curved windows of the stairwell across the exterior balcony to a view of the sea and the horizon. It comprises two alternating sequences. Footage of elderly couples ballroom dancing on the balcony outside has been slowed down to the rhythm of the accompanying soundtrack, an extract from Franz Schubert’s Nocturne in E-flat Major (Op.148) overlaid by the sounds of breaking waves and seagulls. Silhouetted against the sky, the dancers slowly circle the Pavilion’s upper balcony. As the sun sets and the sky turns pink the camera pans back and forth through 180°. In the alternating scene, played to the same sound, panoramic vistas of the view out of the building towards the sea and horizon beyond are empty of human presence. The two scenes are projected onto either side of a free standing wall. As the music ends, the scenes are reversed and projected onto the opposite side of the wall. Each time the scene is shown getting gradually closer to sunset. Finally, the images plunge into darkness and the music stops completely. The noise of breaking glass, crashing waves and the piercing sound of seagulls calling abruptly ends the poetic atmosphere of timeless romance and quiet melancholy. However, it restarts a few seconds later as the thirteen minute sequence loops back to the beginning. Breakwell has explained:
The continuous motion of the camera moving smoothly backwards and forwards on its track, coupled with the slow, haunting intensity of Schubert’s music and the sound of the rhythmically lapping waves is intended to induce a hypnotic, trance like mood of disorientation in the viewer ... The dramatic soundscape ... makes the ending seem ... a startling intrusion which reminds us of how fragile a peaceful idyll is, as if the glass pavilion of dreams has been invaded by darker forces from the other side."
Breakwell brings sound, music and visuals all into play with ‘The Other Side’. His use of music manipulation and exploration of time and speed is interesting to me and my work. His sound effects coupled with the music to create feeling is also interesting and something that I am also experimenting with to create atmosphere. Again, like other artists I am interested in, Breakwell considers the perception of the viewer by inducing hypnotic and trance like moods and disorientation by using music, sound and visuals.
Bill Voila
Five Angels For The Millennium, 2001 by Bill Voila (Video, 5 projections, colour and sound (stereo))
Tate:
"Five Angels for the Millennium is an installation comprising five videos projected at a large scale directly onto the walls of a dark gallery space. The videos are individually titled Departing Angel, Birth Angel, Fire Angel, Ascending Angel and Creation Angel. Each video features a clothed male figure rising out of and plunging into a pool of water at irregular intervals, as well as hovering over it in between these movements. In all five films the action is presented in slow motion, and in each one the man and the water are shown in a single colour that changes over time in each film between a range of blue and green tones and a dark, blood red. These hues are accentuated by contrasting areas of bright white and pitch black. The five videos play simultaneously, but they are not synchronised and each is repeated on a continuous loop, so that the figures are seen repeatedly moving in and out of the water. Each projection is accompanied by an individual audio track featuring underwater noises that gradually reach a crescendo that culminates in ‘a sudden explosion of light and sound’ as the figure emerges from the water (Viola in J. Paul Getty Museum 2003, p.146).
The work’s title suggests that the five figures are angels who have a specific relationship to the new millennium, which had just begun when this installation was being filmed and edited. As such, the work may invite reflection on the state of religious or spiritual belief at the dawn of a new era. Viola has often drawn on the history of religious art in his work, and has sought to evoke strong spiritual feelings through his installations’ imagery and sound. He has stated that Five Angels for the Millennium produces ‘an enveloping emotional experience like that of a church’ and that it is about what ‘you cannot see, the things that are not on the surface’ (quoted in J. Paul Getty Museum 2003, pp.48, 216). Although raised as an Episcopalian, Viola was interested in world religions from an early age and he has often suggested that his practice is driven by a broad interest in the existence of a spiritual realm, rather than by the creed of any particular faith. In 1997, three years before he began making Five Angels for the Millennium, Viola explained:
I guess the connection ultimately ... has to do with an acknowledgement or awareness or recognition that there is something above, beyond, below, beneath what’s in front of our eyes, what our daily life is focused on. There’s another dimension that you just know is there, that can be a source of real knowledge, and the quest for connecting with that and identifying that is the whole impetus for me to cultivate these experiences and to make my work. And, on a larger scale, it is also the driving force behind all religious endeavors. There is an unseen world out there and we are living in it. (Quoted in Bill Viola, exhibition catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2000, p.143.)
Viola has also specifically compared the spiritual themes of Five Angels for the Millennium to his work Passions 2000–ongoing, a series of video installations featuring footage of actors displaying various emotions (see J. Paul Getty Museum 2003, p.48). When making Passions, Viola drew on diverse sources from Eastern and Western religious art that depict emotional states.
Water has been a recurring motif in Viola’s videos throughout his career, for instance in The Reflecting Pool 1977–80 (Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago), Nantes Triptych 1992 (Tate T06854) and Going Forth by Day 2002 (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). The art historian John Walsh has argued that the water in Five Angels for the Millennium plays a significant role in expressing Viola’s spiritual concerns by evoking ‘a luminous void of unknown dimensions where the laws of physics seem suspended and the borders between the infinite cosmos and the finite human body merge’ (J. Paul Getty Museum 2003, p.146)."
Voila’s work evokes feelings to but that of the spiritual realm which is interesting to me as I have certain beliefs and it is something that I would like to bring into my work somehow. In the last video ‘the flesh’ there were spiritual connections through the choral sounds I used. I like how his interest in the spiritual realm is a broad one rather than it be relating to one faith in particular. When he says “There’s another dimension that you just know is there, that can be a source of real knowledge, and the quest for connecting with that and identifying that is the whole impetus for me to cultivate these experiences and to make my work.” I relate to that within my own practice. I explore nature and then I explore it again through the editing of the nature. I would like to try and show through the visuals I use the idea of there being another dimension out there that you can't see but you can feel. Voila’s work on ‘passions’ is also interesting to me as he drew on diverse sources from Eastern & Western religious art that depicts emotional states. The fact he uses water too, water in dreams relates to emotional states. So this in itself is interesting to me and I like Paul’s quote ‘a luminous void of unknown dimensions where the laws of physics seem suspended and the borders between the infinite cosmos and the finite human body merge’ (J. Paul Getty Museum 2003, p.146)."
James Richards
Lux :
"James Richards’ artworks reveal connections between people, practices, and private, hidden, or suppressed histories through archival and online research. Working with a vast array of media materials, often generated during long-term exchanges with other artists, such as American media artist Steve Reinke and filmmaker Leslie Thornton, Richards produces sound and video installations and curatorial projects that invite the audience into an intimate encounter with private worlds and queer communities."
Radio at Night, 2015 by James Richards
(8 minutes, Original format: HD video)
"James Richards’ Radio at Night (2015) grapples with the anxiety and pleasure of seeing and sensing in an era saturated by technology. Like his previous work, this short experimental video collages together appropriated footage from highly disparate sources: intimate fragments from cinema and medical film, an extract of an erotic movie that documents an imagined Venetian costume party, news broadcasts, negative footage of seagulls flying over the ocean, and imagery of pigs and fish being processed at a food facility, to name a few. Radio at Night is especially preoccupied with the act of seeing and the ways technology makes this sensation mechanical. Accompanied by a soundtrack composed by the artist that includes vocal arrangements recorded with British harmony trio ‘vocal Juice’ refracted through his sampled electronics., Richards confronts his audience with close ups on faces as his subjects’ eyes dart back and forth across the screen."
"In Richards’ work, sound subjects the listener to specific acoustic architectures in order to influence the reading of onscreen images, especially those that indicate the human figure. In Radio at Night, as well as its precursor Raking Light (2014), the soundtrack includes familiar sounds of digital technologies that occur in close proximity to the body—namely, the sounds of “personal devices”: a small camera and its microphone scraping along the surface of a table, the noise of a hard drive “thinking,” a hard wind rushing into an unshielded microphone, for example. These sounds are frequently paired with the typically depersonalized imagery of instructional videos, documentary films, and medical photographs. Nearness and anonymity are thus bridged and paired. So too the title of the work infers such a hierarchy. In a reference to a text by Richards’ late friend and artist Ian White (1971–2013), the phrase “radio at night” captures the idea of an atmosphere authored by sound that is mediated and brought into being by technology. Radio is, after all, a transmission that is public in broadcast, and yet private in reception."
Richard’s much like other artists that seem to be attracting my attention now, concentrates on the feeling when producing his films. ‘Radio at night’ I like because that feeling is anxiety and that feeling has come up in my work in the last unit. It is also something that I suffer with daily. I like how he uses the concept of technology though and makes it very current with today’s society. He uses close ups to emphasise and confront these feelings too which is important in my work. He also uses a soundtrack which includes harmonies. Mine are made by me whereas he has outsourced. The sound is an important element to match his visuals to tell a narrative I feel, much like mine.
Tacita Dean
"Dean is best known for her work in 16 mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. Her anamorphic films are shot by cinematographers John Adderley and Jamie Cairney. Her sound recordist is Steve Felton. She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as 'asides,' which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks."
"Adrian Searle qualified Dean’s work as carried by a sense of history, time, and place, light quality, and the essence of film itself. The focus of her subtle but ambitious work is the truth of the moment, the film as a medium, and the sensibilities of the individual."
JG, 2013 by Tacita Dean (35mm colour & black and white anamorphic film
Duration: 26.5 mins
"Inspired by her correspondence with J.G. Ballard, Tacita Dean developed the idea for her new film JG. However, the origin of the project goes back to 1997 when, travelling to the United States, Tacita Dean decided to visit Rozel Point in order to see Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. She didn’t manage to locate the Jetty but instead created a sound piece entitled Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty, in which she recorded this experience. [...] Shot on several locations in both Utah and California, the images of salt lakes became entwined with Smithson’s Jetty and Ballard’s short story. Tacita Dean’s real interest is to film time:
“Both works have an analog heart, not just because they were made or written when spooling and reeling were the means to record and transmit images and sound, but because their spiralling is analogous to time itself.”
In order to “mix landscape and time in the same frame”, Tacita Dean used a special technique she developed for her work FILM shown in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2012. This new technique used various purpose made masks of different shapes to mask the gate aperture rendering an effect of stenciling, layering the filmed images. JG is an astonishing kaleidoscopic experimental film, which could never have been made using a digital format, its beauty is unique to the abilities of analogue film."
Dean’s films are often long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. This is something that I like however haven’t managed within my own work yet as I feel like I want to disorientate the viewer more. I like this idea though and will contemplate this for my next video. I like the film ‘JG’ due to it being about a Jetty and story of trying to find another artist’s work. Another artist that I really like due to being able to manipulate nature into something beautiful. I like the fact she never found it and that she created a sound piece experience. I also find it interesting how she manages to mix landscape and time in the same frame, something else that is important to me. Dean also uses an analogue film too which is very raw and all done in camera. I would love to try this!
Tarkovsky's "stalker"
Dream Scene from Stalker, 1979 by Andrei Tarkivsky ( Film, Duration: 161mins)
"'Stalker' is a 1979 Soviet science fiction art drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, loosely based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic. The film combines elements of science fiction with dramatic philosophical and psychological themes.
The film tells the story of an expedition led by a figure known as the "Stalker" (Alexander Kaidanovsky), who takes his two clients—a melancholic writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) seeking inspiration, and a professor (Nikolai Grinko) seeking scientific discovery—to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires."
"For Tarkovsky, music was more than just a parallel illustration of the visual image. He believed that music distorts and changes the emotional tone of a visual image while not changing the meaning. He also believed that in a film with complete theoretical consistency music will have no place and that instead music is replaced by sounds."
"As in the rest of the film the disconnect between the visual image and the sound leaves the audience unclear whether the sound is real or an illusion."
Tarkovsky combines elements of science fiction with philosophical and psychological themes which I love and is all important to my practice. I haven't been able to watch the full film yet because I can’t find it anywhere, but I will keep searching! The parts I have seen and the reviews I have read have given me enough insight in to realise that the themes Tarkovsky is exploring within it are all relevant to my practice. I like how music and sound is such a big element of the theme and his notions on music and sound I can relate to massively.
Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"
Trailer for Cave of Forgotton Dreams, 2010 by Werner Herzog
Watch Documentaries:
" 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' is a 3D documentary by Werner Herzog covering a remote cave in France called the Chauvet Cave. This cave is home to many ancient human-painted images, tens of thousands of years old.
The cave is fiercely protected and the public is generally not able to enter it under normal circumstances, but Herzog was able to get permission from the French Minister of Culture to be able to film inside the cave, with heavy restrictions designed to protect the cave and its contents.
he images painted on the walls of the cave represent long-forgotten dreams of an entirely different era of humanity.
The capturing of the images with 3D technology was initially a tough concept for Herzog to come to grips with, as at the time of production, 3D filming technology was meant to be used in conjunction with specific stages and digital manipulation, but the location prevented the use of any kind of stage or other heavy equipment.
The documentary has won several Best Documentary awards and had an overwhelmingly positive reception."
Herzog's documentaries are just beautiful I have investigated him before. The way he captures nature is spell bounding along with the storytelling of history through music and visuals is just brilliant and something that inspires me within my own practice.
Zabriskie point final scene
Final scene from Zabriskie Point, 1970 by Michelangelo Antonioni
"The five minute sequence is marked by Eisensteinian overlapping editing (the house explodes over and over again), a super slow motion cinematography, and the abstract properties of the telephoto lens. Artifacts of consumer capitalism (a fridge, a television set, furniture, food, laundry detergent, clothes, Wonder toast bread, etc.) are transformed into kaleidoscopic colors and forms, accompanied by a manic rock score featuring primal screams and searing guitar solos. The final item to be exploded is the library, with hundreds of atomized books floating toward the camera."
I like this end scene because of the slow-motion camera angles. An explosion that should be terrible has been made to look so beautiful. It really gives the viewer a closer look at something that would usually be over in a flash. The music that accompanies it is brilliant too.
Marcus Coates - Dawn Chorus
Interview with Marcus Coates in which he talks about his relationship to birdsong, the digital processes behind Dawn Chorus and the relationship between the work and the space at Fabrica. © Fabrica
Dawn Chorus, 2007 (14 or 7 channel video, 20 mins looped, High Definition Video)
"Dawn Chorus was an immersive multi-screen film installation that used unique digital methods to explore the relationship between birdsong and the human voice, and similarities between bird and human behaviour.
Nineteen individual singers uncannily recreated birdsong and bird movement. Together they formed a chorus that accurately simulated the sounds and timings of a natural dawn chorus. With each singer depicted in an everyday location: an underground car park, an osteopathic clinic, a bedroom, a bathtub, Dawn Chorus was as much a portrait of British people and their daily habits as it was of the natural world.
Dawn Chorus was produced in 2007. Marcus Coates worked with scientist Peter McGregor who specialises in birdsong and animal behaviour, and notable birdsong expert and wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample. To record the dawn chorus they used a unique method to capture the individual birdsongs and their inter-species song timings. By predicting where individual birds would sing and through trial and error they recorded 14 individual songs simultaneously, thereby creating an accurate document of which species of birds sing in relation to others at what time in the morning. They recorded at three different sites in Northumberland between 3am and 9am over seven days using a 24 track digital recorder."
"The 14 films feature individuals sitting in their own habitats; a car, an office, a bedroom, a school staff room etc singing accurate birdsong.
These recordings were then digitally slowed down by up to 20 times.
Dawn Chorus took approximately three years to complete."
Marcus Coates uses digital methods to explore the relationship between birdsong and the human voice, and similarities between bird and human behaviour. This is something that interests me as I am exploring humans and nature and the synergy between them. I like his research methods of collecting the bird song in Northumberland and predicting where and what time would be the best bird song. In relation to Coate’s post-production of the 14 films, I really like that he has put the original singers in their daily habitats as that relates to the birds being in theirs too. This whole process has given me food for thought in terms of what I could explore within nature by capturing the sounds of nature. How could I then play and experiment with this in relation to humans.
Bruce Naumen
4th Finger Start, 2013. Exhibition view @ White Cube Gallery, Presence/Absence, by Bruce Naumen (single-channel work, three dual-screen projections, HD video installation (colour, mono sound, continuous play, synchronous loop) 5 minutes 37 seconds)
"‘Presence/Absence’ features two single-channel works, from 1999 and 2001, along with three dual-screen projections made in 2013, that foreground the artist’s experimental approach, both in front of and behind the camera. Shot at his ranch in New Mexico, in his studio or the surrounding landscape, they are explorations of mind and matter. Employing elements of performance, labour, language, illusion and duration, the works investigate cognitive and social spheres."
"4th Finger Start (2013) is filmed partly from Nauman’s perspective, and explore the illusions that can be created by viewing objects form two lines of sight. In the films, his hands gesture to each other; his fingers flitting eerily across the dual fields of vision."
"The videos Thumb Start and 4th Finger Start, both 2013, derive from Nauman’s For Beginners, 2010. In For Beginners, displayed at this gallery four years ago, Nauman’s hands appear on-screen and make simple movements in response to his spoken instructions. In Thumb Start and 4th Finger Start, the same thing happens, but whereas the earlier work featured well-defined hands positioned against neutral backgrounds, here Nauman has doubled and superimposed his footage in such a way that the hands overlap, become mixed up, and split in two: The view is distorted, confused. The hands lose their vital physicality, becoming shadows of themselves. Likewise, the rigorous and repetitive verbal instructions have been edited into an obsessive, trancelike singsong. The cadenced movement of Nauman’s fingers recalls a metronome registering the passage of time, a reflection on the approach of death.
Finally, the show featured twenty-three drawings and nine silverpoints and goldpoints. For these works, Nauman made drawings based on stills from Thumb Start and 4th Finger Start, with each image showing the hand in a different position. Because these are drawings, the video-editing effects Nauman employed are less apparent, and the hands seem even more ephemeral, fractured, contingent. At the same time, there is an appeal to order: The hand movements are presented in a sequence—an implied system that guards against collapse.
This work’s affect is sorrowful and it is extreme from a formal viewpoint. Nauman concentrates all his attention on the force of gesture, action, and intention. And he achieves a certain level of subtle and precise communication, wherein the message is clear, the meaning is manifest, and we viewers are left bewildered, faced with the fragility of order."
Bruce Naumen’s new exhibition ‘Presence/Absence’ explores mind and matter. He uses elements of performance, labour, language, illusion and duration. Performance is something that I would quite like to explore within my practice at some point. I like his themes of social spheres. ‘4th Finger Start’ (2013) caught my eye. Filmed from a 1st person perspective, it creates illusions from manipulated hands in the post-production which I find interesting. The view is distorted and confused which is disorientating for the viewer. I like the way the hands become see-through, and the repetitive spoken instructions are ritual like, giving the viewer an almost trance-like state of mind.
Ben Russell
Trypps #7 (Badlands) by Ben Russell (10:00, Super16mm, 2010) https://www.dimeshow.com)
Ben Russell, a filmmaker, artist and curator who ‘challenges the conventions of documentary representation from within to produce intense, hypnotic, and, at times, hallucinating experiences.’ (Peleg, 2021) Hila Peleg describes his filmmaking as unfolding between ‘experimental cinema and a form of speculative ethnography; he calls it “psychedelic ethnography.”’
These are stills from one of his short films, “Trypps #7 (Badlands) which shows the journey of a young woman’s trip on LSD, as the film progresses through her trip the audience is taken on the journey with her and that of the expansive desert landscape. Russell uses a mirror on a tripod and turns it slowly to begin with and then faster, to give the audience a sense of what the girls view could be like. Russell explores the ‘phenomenological experience’ which is something I am exploring within my own research and practice. I am less concerned with bringing human life to my films but rather gesture towards humanness and providing the audience with a phenomenological experience.
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