Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger, the American underground experimental filmmaker: 'Lucifer is not the devil. He's the god of light and colour.' Photograph: Pål Hansen for the Observer
"I was entranced by Scorpio Rising when I saw it for the first time, and it’s had a powerful effect on me and my own films over the years. The way Anger used music in that film, in such perfectly magical harmony with the images, opened my thinking about the role music could play in movies. It could become as important to the characters and the world of the film as it was to all of us at the time." -Martin Scorsese


Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Divine Irreference of Images

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse at Disneyland,
Anaheim, California, Christmas 2007 by Mouse Planet
"This deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and
realized by a man who is himself now cryogenised, Walt Disney,
who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade."
© 1983 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (p. 24)

Thursday, November 19, 2015

ALLATONCENESS NEW MEDIA WORK

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - 3:00-5:30 PM
Warch Campus Center Cinema
New media projects by 11 ART 240 Digital Processes students responding to Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of the global village from his seminal book The Medium is the Massage. Writes McLuhan, “Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “Space” has vanished. We now live in a global village…a simultaneous happening…we have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction.” 


Chloe Stella   Dentro Di Me (Within Me)
A short stop-motion video exploring the anxiety that stems from feeling constricted by one’s physical existence. 

Molly Froman   Blind 
This video explores the relationship of the still and moving image. By layering still images I have created not only a video but also a new still image which only gradually changes over time. It aims push the limits of subtle change and what it might mean to the viewer.
Patrick O’Mahoney   A Day in the Frame
My final project will be a series of photographs set to music. I will encapsulate the daily activities of a Lawrentian using still images in attempt to tell a moving narrative.

Malcolm Lunn-Craft   STILL RUNWAY SHOW
In this project, i will be using photography to help exemplify beauty in the form of a modeling photo shoot. The models will come dressed in what they idea of beautiful is, and strike poses that make them feel beautiful. This project is meant to show beauty and diversity and how we all are unique in the same community. 

Sara Morrison   Selfie-Portrait
A photography book which presents selfies as legitimate works of self-portraiture in order to explore the link between the two and why we consider one to be art and the other to be frivolous and self-absorbed.
Alison Smith    Appear Offline
A series of photographs exploring the interpersonal interactions between players in gaming.

Colt Duncan    Censored 
A series of photos mocking censorship and all the people that try to hinder anyone’s voice or artistic vision by using censorship. “Art is anything you can get away with” – Marshall Mcluhan, and although I agree, I think you should be able to get away with all art. 

Alicia Lex   Life Bling
A magazine containing 'life bling' found in Appleton, WI. But, do these blings solely belong to Appleton? To imagine what the artist captures as bling, an abstract video will show you through the eyes of the artist.
Mark Lofgren   Amateurism in Modern Film
I believe that in modern Hollywood we have lost this aesthetic of amateurism that early 20th century film once possessed. I seek to return modern films to the amateur.

Luis Gonzalez  Hitana    
A music video that follows a couple walking around at night and has clips of The Goat Wizard playing live hoping to capture the vibe of the song that is in very odd meter.

Pat Commins   "The Pat Show"
In hosting my own talk show with a simultaneous video and performance interaction, I examine the roles that space, identity, and the audience play into creating a piece, and the impact of amateur versus the professional aesthetic.

Anna Kosmach   In the Eye of the Beholder
This video project explores the ways in which culture influences how women perceive who and what is beautiful, and what types of women qualify. I asked women I knew to describe who they thought was an icon for beauty that they look up to, and talk about why that woman is beautiful in their eyes.

Liam Guinan   The Village of Appleton
A video exploring Appleton's "village centers" such as stores, bars, hotels etc. and the cultural rituals performed there. It's purpose is to present Appleton as a "modern village" as McLuhan described in The Message is the Massage.

Molly Hopkins   je ne sais quoi.
This video attempts to show that human beauty comes from the little things that we all do.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Something is Happening




Bob Dylan performing Ballad of a Thin Man, referenced on page 104-106 of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage, from D.A. Pennebaker's Eat the Document. An amazing, spirited performance. McLuhan must have been impressed with the song, dedicating three pages of the book to Dylan's likeness and the words:
"Because something is happening
 But you don't know what it is
 Do you, Mister Jones?"
Although many have tried to link the lyrics to specific people and events, the song can be interpreted as a universal critique of people unaware of the world around them. It was one of a very few songs Dylan kept performing over the years, typically introducing it with the reflection that "there are still a lot of Joneses out there."


Sunday, September 27, 2015

Robert Frank's Journey to the Outside


Sarah Greenough discusses the structure of The Americans in this video. She authored the 528 page volume that investigates Frank's Guggenheim project and the resulting 180 page book, first published in the United States in 1959.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The Film Studies EditShare Media Server is the place to store video and audio media for your classes in Hurvis 013. Here is a video explaining how to log in. Students enrolled in a video production class, such as ART 240 (FIST 240), are automatically allocated class media storage space on the Server, which can be accessed from all work stations in the Hurvis editing labs. Student's personal computers can NOT access the server space! Students are strongly encouraged to frequently back up all files stored on EditShare to their personal external drive.

NOTE: All files stored on EditShare will be cleared one week after the end of the term.


Tuesday, September 15, 2015

One of the Greatest Men of All Time



Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013), whose vision of collaboration using computer technology to help solve the urgent and complex problems of all of humanity, died on July 2, 2013. His comrades believed that his ideas were never fully realized due to his ideas and generosity of spirit. For example, he resisted patenting the "mouse" he'd invented and it eventually fell into the public domain. The robotic rigidity of institutions is also to blame -- most powerful technology companies in American relegated him to R&D. Ted Nelson, professor and inventor of the first hypertext project, delivered Engelbart's eulogy on December 9, 2013. In his tearful delivery, he said the "...real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration...Perhaps his notion of accelerating collaboration and cooperation was a pipe dream in this dirty world of organizational politics, jockeying and backstabbing and euphemizing evil." Engelbart articulated his ideas for collaboration publicly in what is known as The Mother of all Demos delivered on December 9, 1968, nearly half a century ago. Some of what he described is still in the process of being realized in commercial forms such as Skype, Google Docs, and more.