Response to Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema Part One: The Audience and The Myth of Entertainment

In Part One of Gene Youngblood’s book, Expanded Cinema, explores the relationship between the viewer and traditional cinematic and television media to express his idea that a new form of cinema, an expanded cinema, is the way art can help to craft the intellect and metaphysics of audience in preparation for the “new age”. Youngblood talks about the world being a crossroads in history where society is in the state of permanent “radical evolution” in which nothing is certain but the fact of change itself. In a world of uncertainty, Youngblood finds the form of traditional cinema and television, mired in their catering to out limited senses, are not adequate to help Man form a new perspective about the world around him in order to acclimate to this environment of “radical evolution”. Chief amongst these forms is Entertainment, which according to Youngblood, “not only isn't creative, it actually destroys the audience's ability to appreciate and participate in the creative process.”(59) Entertainment perpetuates the training of audiences to act to the cues of commonly learned societal patterns and tropes, and thereby actually makes the individual think less. This is what Youngblood fears humanity must avoid at all costs.

So what does Youngblood propose as a solution to humanity’s need for redefinition of its metaphysical basis. Youngblood proposes that Man use a powerful culture for me nature of traditional cinema to what, he dubs, expanded cinema. He talks about the idea of humanization, which is the collective knowledge of generations being available to use more readily at birth than ever. Such a proliferation of accumulated knowledge would shape a much more aware society, as well as intellectual society which would require a mode of expression artistically, which he says is the role of expanded cinema. The two major examples he explores is the rise in the interconnected nature of the world due to the advent of the modern communication. He talks about the idea of the Noosphere where the culture of the world freely proliferates between countries, and pop culture and news is no longer just a local affair. This is facilitated by intermedia, which is the sharing of media over connected lines of communication that he say will shape the future of media. Youngblood points out the Man of tomorrow will no longer be an isolated consumer, but a producer of media tied into the world stage. In this way expanded cinema, with these elements, will serve as the ultimate mirror for humanity to discover as much as is possible of itself in artistic expression.

My personal opinion of Youngblood’s work is that he was a very forward thinker given that this work was written in the 1970s. Much of what he says will change media and the way we interact with it has happened. His notions of intermedia came true in the form that we now know as the World Wide Web, and the idea of the noosphere has only increased in its proliferation of cross culture interactions. Nevertheless, though I do believe that Youngblood’s aversion to commercial entertainment might be too extreme, I do agree that commercial entertainment, with its proliferation of “working models” over inventive and new undertakings for the profit are hurting society by stifling art. On a much brighter note, more and more consumers these days are becoming involved in the production of media as well, a fact that I think Youngblood would rejoice over and a trend very much predicted by the man himself. Indeed, Youngblood’s work has much to offer as well as show us how art and creativity may be shaped by the changing world and technologies around us.

-Nathan D.

PART FIVE: Television As A Creative Medium

Gene Youngblood gives a brief history of television and how it has impacted society in the creation of a new medium. Television that has expanded exponentially since its creation in the 1930s. Television has become the main source for ingesting media for decades. With all the frequencies and channels (VHF and UHF) provide an limitless amounts of varied programming for society to interpret in their own way. Some programming being artistic, others informational.

In this piece, Youngblood references television as a medium that not only produces an image of you but also looks deeper "inside" of you. Television as a creative medium has led to an extension to the man's central nervous system. This is also referred to as the "video sphere." He also dives into the aspects of video synthesizing as well as keying, chroma-keying, feedback, mixing, editing etc. Everything having to do with today's new and shows. They all use similar types of creative video synthesizing techniques. Editing being the most important for overall visual appeal. Editing for television has helped its audience to understand atmosphere behind the camera as well as creatively expressing video indifferently to the one-shot films created do document life in the early 1900s by Lumiere.




Today we see greenscreens in film, television and in most newscasts; whether it be imposing graphics, placing people or objects in fantasy or as simple as your local weather forecast. In terms of video synthesizing, television has become the canvas for visual artists. Even the simplest of news can be considered "creative" depending on camera angles, superimposition or chroma effects. Production values have been decreasingly dropping for some films because the use of a greenscreen and is more cost effective than other methods.




All in all, Youngblood has given us a perspective to see the expansion of television as a creative medium and how much television has evolved since the early days pre-synthesizing years. Much more audience appeal has resulted from the evolution of television. As a filmmaker, I watch television for its artistry and creativity.

THE AUDIENCE AND THE MYTH OF ENTERTAINMENT

THE AUDIENCE AND THE MYTH OF ENTERTAINMENT

The audience and the Myth of entertainment, is the first chapter in Expanded Cinema. Buckminster Fuller discusses that as a society we often relate seeing as understanding. As technology runs our society today we face changes that are inevitable. We now have a “Radical Evolution” or an “involuntary revolution” that we can stop. Our environment conditions us, and our environment is always evolving.

Scientific evidence has shown us that information is processed though our eyes before it even entering the brain. Up to 75% of information entering the brain is processed through the eyes. With the advancement in media technology, such as, the television, Internet, and other visual means, we now process information not as a reality but as a visual stimulation. For example, when you see a play or a concert, it live in front of you, it is reality, but when you watch a movie or a TV show it is a perception of a simulated reality.

As Fuller states entering into the twenty first century we have a radical evolution. Technology and new forms of media drives us forward, there is no way we can stay static. He describes this as “involuntary revolution”. By this he mean there is no stopping the changes we face, it’s not by choice, like the revolution the world has faced in the past. We are now driven forward and there is no stopping the change. We are dependent on technology, but that same technology is destroying the longevity of the market place. Products and job available now maybe obsolete in the near future. John McHale believes that with radical evolution there will be a total new worldview, everything will be looked at different. For example, he states “what happens to creativity when a computer asks itself an original question without being programmed to do so. Fuller states, “The cinema isn’t just something inside our environment” by this, he means new forms of media have become our environment. Television, Internet, and other form of cinema control the way we perceive things.

In this new environment, man-made environment, we are being commercialized and prioritized to react accordingly to certain stimuli. The commercial entertainer encourages us not to think for ourselves, but tries to exploit us into thinking what they want us think. Which in my opinion enables us to be victimized by big business and corporation to think a certain way, for the benefit of a profit. On the other end of the spectrum, we have art, which gives us the freedom to think our own, to interrupt things on our own. Because there is no set plot, each person sees it on a personal level.

In conclusion, we are in an involuntary revolution, which we cannot stop, or change. Technology has changed the way we perceive things, and as a result, it has vastly changed our environment. These changes have brought about positive and negatives factors. We must be able to see the true art and not just the commercial entertainment.

Gene Youngblood: Holographic Cinema, A New World

In this chapter, Youngblood describes the history, present (at the time of publication), and possible future of holographic 3D cinema. Understanding holography as what Reggie cited out of the text below, I could see that the nature of capturing the intersection of the different projections to make the 3D image would result in the necessity of projecting only in a small space, but even I didn't think it was originally so small that it would be only comfortably viewable by like two people at a time. It's quite a difference from what we have today:

In a way though, I was reminded of something I saw when I traveled to Croatia to visit family. There's a historical tourist attraction in the city of Dubrovnik that had an interesting method of holographic projection. I can't track any pictures down of the actual performance (since I assume that flash photography would ruin the performance by it's very nature), but the way it worked was that small hoses in the ceiling constantly ran water falling in vertical streams into a pool in the floor. As the water fell, light was projected onto the streams creating shimmering images. While this was happening, the hoses could be moved forward and backward in relation to the audience to move where the light was captured and create interesting 3d movement.

Youngblood's most interesting claim in this chapter, though in my opinion hardest to understand, is his concept of "technoanarchy." He first claims that human nature is defined by it's ability to conceptualize, create, and control technology. The quickening development of technology in the 20th century, he thought, was foreshadowing something of a climactic apocalypse of technology. He defines anarchy, in a way, to mean that it rejects artificial order and instead seeks natural order. The frantic development of technology in this day and age he considers "technoanarchy" because it is left at the mercy of our human nature. Can't say I entirely disagree; The Onion has a good take on it:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-device-desirable-old-device-undesirable,2862/

PART SEVEN: HOLOGRAPHIC CINEMA: A NEW WORLD

Through the reading of Chapter 7, I come to know more about the holography gradually. I think among all the digital techniques today, the Holography is the coolest stuff which can lead a pioneer trend in the future.

Before I start to write about the feedback of part 7, I list a video here for audiences to have a preliminary understanding about the Holographic Cinema.

This is a Burberry fashion show held in Beijing that uses the holographic tech.

In the video, the audiences can clearly see the continuous trace of the models. One can hardly find the source of the light. The models with fashionable suits just show up and disappear magically. This is the fantastic work integrates arts and computer science.

This chapter mainly introduces the invention, development and the future of Holography. The earliest holographic motion pictures really impressed the people. In 1969, Youngblood, who is the author of the article, witnessed the Catholic Monastery, Sierra Retreat showing up at a Research Laboratory. Everyone will be curious about how it was made.

• What is Holography?

Holography is a technique which enables a light field, which is generally the product of a light source scattering off objects, to be recorded and later reconstructed when the original light field is no longer present (due to the absence of the original objects).

The enigma that people concerned about firstly was that there is no optical image formed. Early techniques named wave-front construction created the lensless photography through multi-time experiments. The technology gradually turned to mature and there came out the holographic movie of tropical fish in aquarium, under the effort of scholars from different research labs. That is the first real-time film in the world.

Through hundreds of times experiments, the holography technology today is more complicated and reliable. The computer-generated holographic movies come to rule the markets. Every holographic will be produced and even recorded. People are able to record the holographic of the nature and make it to a movie frame. Movie frame is that you can get your face up so close that the frame disappears and all you're seeing is the illusionistic world on the other side. You're in it.

Schematic diagram of Hughes holographic movie system. Laser is indicated as "pumping cavity."

And this is the contemporary techs, Optical arrangement for reconstructing a hologram.

At last, Gene Youngblood introduces the limitation of Holographic Cinema during the process it developed. To create the perfect holography can one spend a lot of budgets.

I love the way holographic cinema expresses. This tech is really cool and easily accepted accompanied with the beautiful images and music. It can be widely applied to many fields such as commercials, theaters or products Launch. "Someday you'll be able to go to a party and be the only one there." As a whole new world to the audiences, it remains mysterious because it's still not spread to the world. People will definitely get to know it more and more. Holography is the future of projection.

PART 4: Cybernetic Cinema and Computer Films

Gene Youngblood begins this chapter with a very interesting quote by Marshall McLuhan that goes like this-- "The computer is the LSD of the business world. It absolutely guarantees the
elimination of all the business it is now being brought to serve."

This quote in itself seems to capture a lot of what this last decade has sought to pursue. The rise of technology is reducing the need for manual labor. However, this phenomenon is not just taking place in the worlds of business and science, but it is beginning to flourish in the worlds of art and music-- rather, it is conjoining the two together. In chapter 4, Youngblood uses a term called the technosphere-- referring to the symbiosis between man and machine. Youngblood describes technology not as a replacement of man but as protection-- a fail-safe. To some extent, I do agree with this statement but I cannot argue the fact that increasing technology has been a steady source of unemployment over the last few decades. I dare not say it is a bad thing, however. We are simply undergoing a change in times. As Youngblood describes it, we are learning to live all over again in this new day and age.

As seen in the picture above, Youngblood seeks to compare computer processing to human neural processing. Using this analogy, logic and intelligence are the brain's software. Thus, later on he goes to say that computer software will become more important than hardware in the future as "super-computers" are currently being developed. Speaking of which, this reminds me of the semi-recent Jeopardy match with Ken Jennings (legenday Jeopardy winner) and IBM's supercomputer, "Watson." Here is a link to the video in case you all haven't seen it:

It is almost scary to think how smart computers can get and where technology will take us possibly 10-20 years from now. It's like every year something new and almost revolutionary is being released. I remember the whole iPod craze back in the early 2000s and now we've got a new craze-- big iPods called iPads that do everything. What's gonna happen next? Gene Youngblood's vision of the future is the Aesthetic Machine-- "Aesthetic application of technology is the only means of achieving new consciousness to match our environment." This is certainly true as in today's modern culture, aesthetics and appearances have become something of a fad. We have to have the smallest MP3 players, the thinnest TVs, the simplest-looking laptop. Youngblood points out that creativity will be shared between Man and machine. He points to the links between computer art and Conceptualism, and the growing theoretical basis of art.

Later on in the chapter, he delves into Cybernetic Cinema and gives early accounts of attempts using computers to draw and make films. Back then, creating real-time images was not possible, but it seems like it has become possible in this new age. Thus, we are seeing the emergence of a new art form with the combination of art, music, and technology, and it all seems to be headed in a positive direction. Whether it becomes mainstream or not is the real question.
At the end of this chapter, Youngblood highlights key film-makers using computers such as John Whitney, James Whitney, Michael Whitney, John Stehura, Stan VanDerBeek and Peter Kamnitzer. In response to all this change, I welcome it. From my experience with Signs of Life and taking projection design, I find this growing field fascinating, new, and refreshing. The potential of this field could be breath-taking and needless to say, entertaining. The expanded cinema is coming and it could be coming to a theater near you!

Part One: The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment

Chapter one of Gene Youngblood's Expanded Cinema is a refreshingly transcendental and surprisingly erudite discussion of cultural evolution and the need to use cinema, as well as Art in general, to aid in the necessary change from what Youngblood terms a “Paleocybernetic Age” to one which is self-nourishing, or “negentropic”, and which generates new ideas. “Part One: The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment” starts out by questioning man’s perception of reality and points to the probability that we are unable to comprehend our place in the Universe. Youngblood pontificates on the reconvergence of art, science, and metaphysics that was occurring in the 1970’s and the associated technological growth which created an accelerated transfer of knowledge. Much of what Gene Younglood describes in this chapter is prevalent and even more pressing today.

“The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment” illuminates a time in which there is an urgent need for change in order to survive, but also one that is rife with opportunity for a global expansion of consciousness, both outward and inward. Youngblood quotes Pierre Teilhard, using the term hominization, as a description for the manifestation: “the process by which the original protohuman stock becomes increasingly more human, realizing more of its possibilities” (47). Youngblood then critiques the iniquity of commercial media in juxtaposition with the evolution of the natural world. He states “Art is the language through which we perceive new relationships at work in the environment, both physical and metaphysical. Indeed, art is the essential instrument in the very development of that consciousness” (47). Youngblood then writes of the need for a new vision for the exchange of ideas, the beginning of which he terms expanded cinema.

In the next portion of the chapter, subtitled “Radical Evolution and Future Shock in the Paleocybernetic Age”, Gene Youngblood deciphers that change, or revolution, is the only constant, experienced ubiquitously by modern man; he thus refers to the phenomenon as radical evolution (50). As the lines between nature and technology, science and metaphysics, become increasingly intertwined, the lack of knowledge or idea expansion, transferred via the “global intermedia network” becomes more and more acute. “The Intermedia Network as Nature” makes the case that “man is conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature” (54). Gene Youngblood envisions the intermedia network as the cinema, television, radio, magazines and newspapers that inform and define the social organism.

“Art, Entertainment, Entropy” explores commercial cinema’s formulaic prescription and the viewer’s conditioned response, made mandatory by a profit motive. Harnessing the power of the conditioned response, or memory, Youngblood argues that commercial entertainment capitulates a backwards-looking audience that is robbed of their power to think for themselves. He states, “Art is freedom from the conditions of memory; entertainment is conditional on a present that is conditioned by the past... To confront a work of art is to confront oneself— but aspects of oneself previously unrecognized” (60). Youngblood then observes that a “healthy” mind will regard the most important information as entertaining, and defines a healthy mind as one “capable of creative thinking” (61), or artistic thought. As new information is not circulated in the current commercial entertainment environment, change does not occur, and entropy, the “state of increasing chaos due to misinformation about the structure of the system” (62), accelerates in our society.

If the cinema can create an active participation with the audience, it can be regenerative. Youngblood states “If the information (either concept or design) reveals some previously unrecognized aspect of the viewer's relation to the circumambient universe— or provides language with which to conceptualize old realities more effectively— the viewer recreates that discovery along with the artist, thus feeding back into the environment the existence of more creative potential, which may in turn be used by the artist for messages of still greater eloquence and perception” (65).

“Retrospective Man and the Human Condition”: Man is Retrospective because the ideas he is currently circulating are recycled and redundant. This degeneracy is apparent in all aspects of our society, including our educational system (68). The current Human Condition for man is that of total confrontation of what we do and do not know about ourselves. The Artist is the Saviour as he or she creates new Symbols with which Man can explore themselves and their existences. An artist may be an artist, poet, scientist, philosopher (67)...

Finally, in “The Artist as Design Scientist”, Youngblood makes exceptions for several films working within the bounds of conventional cinema, resting their transcendental qualities in the design aesthetics created. Youngblood notes that the word “design” indicates “to remove the symbol of”, and charges artists/design scientists with the creation of a language that reveals the hidden meaning or potential within some aspect of our Humanity, and/or our relationship to the Cosmos. He states “The artist does not point out new facts so much as he creates a new language of conceptual design information with which we arrive at a new and more complete understanding of old facts, thus expanding our control over the interior and exterior environments” (71). And this, My Friend, is how we change the world.

TOWARD COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Part three of Gene Youngblood's paper, "Expanded Cinema," discusses the idea that art and science have exhausted our image language from traditional earthly/ tangible schemes of awareness. Stating that, "the end of fiction, drama, and realism as they have been traditionally understood. Conventional cinema can be pushed no further. To explore new dimensions of awareness requires new technological extensions." (line 2-4, pg.135) The article also discusses that to move to new levels of awareness and new bounds of artistic expression, we need to look beyond our senses, showing that majority of our life experiences are based around non-visible objects. The author writes, "What we "know" conceptually has far outstripped what we experience empirically. We are finally beginning to accept the fact that our senses allow us to perceive only one-millionth of what we know to be reality— the electromagnetic spectrum. Ninety-nine percent of all vital forces affecting our life is invisible." (pg. 136) Simply put, we can see the telephone cables and wires run, but not the conversation that is being taken place over them. We can see the outer parts of a plane or car, but nothing truly tells us how we are moving or hovering 10,000 ft above the ground. These are all things our senses cannot understand.

We need to move beyond our physical environment and move to a meta physical or further off environment. I'm not a proponent of saying things like mysticism, but what he is going for is turning and going after art that describes the invisible and inconceivable. His example is drama and how it is a finite concept, limited to human emotion and the physical environment that we place it in. He states that the, "concerns of artist and scientist today are transfinite." (i.e "things that are"infinite" in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers, yet not necessarily absolutely infinite." wikipedia on transfinite)

The authors main example of moving toward cosmic consciousness and thinking beyond our physical realm is with Einstein's equation E=mc^2. This equation is an example where the meta physical took precedence over the physical. Another example he used was with Nam June Paik, the GrandFather of electronic music where he writes "Electronics is essentially Oriental... but don't confuse 'electronic' with 'electric' as McLuhan often does. Electricity deals with mass and weight; electronics deals with information: one is muscle, the other is nerve." This is where the meta physical, intangible, invisible object of information transference takes place over the tangible.

In all of this, YoungBlood is saying we need to broaden our horizons because we have stretched the physical realm to the end. As artists or scientists, we need to look beyond the past existence of media and press forward into a deeper realm of creativity. Looking into things we cannot see, hear, smell, or touch but yet we still experience. Pushing the limits of our conceptual intake by raising our gaze to things beyond and unexplained phenominons. Its an interesting idea he is pushing. I'm not 100% sure I am behind his statement but it is interesting.

I immediately thought of surreal art work when reading this. I assumed this article was about looking at new and beyond perspectives in art and entertainment. Check it out

I also can't help but think about science fiction art work that focuses on undiscovered elements and expounds on them. I know the article was about cosmic consciousness and for our understanding to transcend the physical confinements that we conventionally allow but regardless, here is what i initially thought about when reading this.

Corny music I know...

-Tim

P.S. You all better post, cause I'm not coming to class:)

Response to Holographic Cinema: A New World by Gene Youngblood

Partial explanation of holographic images “Each point on the surface of an object reflects light waves inconstantly expanding concentric circles in much the same way that rings are formed when a pebble is dropped into a pool of still water. A collection of these circles and the interference pattern resulting from their intersecting trajectories constitute the wave front of light from the object.” I believe if you can understand the previous quote, you can understand the rest of the chapter.

Youngblood begins this chapter by explaining his first experience with holographic motion picture and an analogy holographic to conventional cinema circa 1900. The next section discusses how true holography does not use lens or is an optical image. The insert from above explains why this is so. This recognition of wave patterns was discovered by Dr. Dennis Gabor. Because there was no lights strong enough at the time, Dr. Gabor's work had to be postpone until the 1960's when Dr. Maiman invented the Laser. Leith and Upatnieks then took this new invention and with the help of Dr. Gabor's theory created the first 3 dimensional image. Also mentioned here is knowing that there is a difference between 3D films that require polarized glasses (stereoptic process) and true 3D projection.

Later Dr. Alex Jacobson invented the first holography with motion. It was basically tropical first in an aquarium. The holography was tented red because no other light source or laser was could emit burst of the required magnitude. After a length explanation of how Jacobson produced his holography, Youngblood explains some of the limitations of holographic images of the time. As mention before the lasers strong enough to work were ruby laser so the images were red in color.

I thought this written was fascinating to say the least. It reads relatively recent because not too many significant advances in holographics have been made. Granted we have exploited 3D movies as of the past 2-3 years, but those are still stereoptic films. I did a little research on the topic and found that in Japan that have actually advanced holographics to a personal level. Below is a video that explains it.

 

Thomas Wilfred "LIGHT AND THE ARTIST"

The idea of watching a "performance" of light, without an accompanying score of sounds or music seems quite ascetic --the pursuit of a purist. Thomas Wilfred is quite clear in his discussion about the emerging "eight art form", that to include music along with Lumia (the Art of Light) somehow distorts the work or misses the point completely. He does not believe that there is a scientific scale that links the frequencies of light to the frequencies of sound and therefor seems not to be interested in the endeavor. What he did seem to be interested in though, was developing a philosophy and goal through which to develop instruments and compositions of light.

Wilfred breaks down art into 3 essential components of form, color and motion. He believes that form and motion are the "two most important" contributors in the art and that a lumia artist is able to compose in black and white if they so choose. The aim for Thomas Wilfred's easthetic seems to be the illusion of a 3d space, projected on a 2d surface. I did not understand Wilfred's differentiation in the division of "Lumia's theoretical space-stage" as divided into a "FIRST FIELD: the visible section of space (screen surface), and SECOND FIELD: the remainder of space, not visible to the spectator" (pg. 254). Wilfred's life's wish to discover the artists that would bring lumia into it's full splendor is quite interesting. I am not sure the Art of Light has ever attained the status Wilfred so dearly envisioned for it.

Jitter @ Coachella~

Some of you might find this interesting
http://cycling74.com/2009/04/30/jitter-on-the-mainstage-at-coachella/

check this too

http://cimatics-masterclass.blogspot.com/

Vague Terrain

http://vagueterrain.net/journal09

Stan Brakhage Dante Quartet

As it's all been said before, Stan Brakhage is a very influential non-narrative American film maker and an important member of experimental films. Most of his film consisted of painting each frame on 35 mm film. This technique is painstakingly slow and to him it was well worth the wait. One of the four film from Dante Quartet, Hell Itself, was created in this very manner. The film is about 6 minutes long so thousands of frames to be painted. The film consist of random timed frames with variations of the same color scheme of mostly part reds, browns and greens. As am artist myself, I really appreciate the time and dedication to what Brakhage does in his films.

With that said, I don't get his work. I personally do not like abstract art in the least. It has no context regardless of what anyone says and can be created by anyone. Granted Brakhage works takes a lot of time it could easily be duplicated. Its really only innovative because no one else had done it before in the context of film. I get that its passionate and possibly meaningful to the artist but we as audience can only assume what the context, which in most cases are implied in the title. And when pieces are untitled they really should be considered "art for art sake" and nothing more.

Brakhage's poetic interpretation of Dante

Stan Brakhage's "The Dante Quartet" is his abstract, visual interpretation of the 12th c. master' Dante's poem, "The Divine Comedy". Dante's original work had three parts: Inferno (Italian for Hell), Purgatorio (Italian for Purgatory), and Paradiso (Italian for Paradise or Heaven). Brakage was apparently obsessed with reading translations of the poem and found himself at a point conjuring images from the poem and equating them with the circumstances in his life.

Brakhage composed four movements for his "Quartet". He worked on the first, Hell Itself, while he was going through a divorce with his wife and experiencing the collapse of his "whole life". Brakhage's view of Hell was accompanied by a vision of how to get out of Hell, which he entitled Hell Spit Flexion and which apparently "shows the way out". These two movements are followed by Purgation and existence is song, which is Brakhage's interpretation for Heaven, as he did not suppose an after-life.

I found Brakhage's use of extra footage, super-imposed and blended with his hand-painted in Purgation and existence is song to be interesting. I also liked the explosive/colorfulness of these two movements, the rapid pace of the images and the use of fading from one image to the other and to blackness. Aside from this, I do not find the piece to be particularly obvious in its portrayal of Hell/desperation as juxtaposed with "a way out" or of Paradise/sublimity. I really liked the review Adrian Danks, a writer for Senses of Cinema, described of the film: "an obscure, off-centre and idiosyncratic perspective that is difficult to conceive – at least initially – as anything other than a glorious celebration of the experiential and material possibilities of film stock and projected light."

-Wikipedia, "The Dante Quartet"

Reggie's VJ clips

Stan Brakhage-Dante Quartet

The Dante Quartet is a short experimental film by Stan Brakhage, which he completed in 1987. The film is nothing more than changing still paintings that are animated by rapidly playing each frame, but I found its impact quite powerful. The imagery formed by seemingly arbitrary still paintings really captures the essence of Dante’s work. At points the animations look like the whirlwind of bodies on the level of lust. Other times, Brakhage overlays paint with still images in the background adding a whole new dimension in the message his short film conveys. It is amazing to think about how much work Stan Brakhage must have put into his film The Dante Quartet. I know that I personally would not have had the patience to paint each slide individually. Nevertheless, I found many things interesting from this work, such as the idea of perhaps slowing a digital film’s frame rate to achieve that animated effect, and that sometimes overlaying two images together, if done thoughtfully, can change the narrative and message of your projection entirely.

-Nathan D.

Three VJ Clips

Took a bit of searching, but here they are.







-Nathan D.

My 19 Images

I tried to send them to you Professor Pagano, but UF's email server keeps denying me. Well anyways here there are.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42451756/ND%27s_images.zip

Nathan D.

Dante Quartet

The Video "Dante Quartet" by Stan Brakhage is a collection of abstract pictures collected and combined frame by frame to make a video. The video has a very trippy /acid and semi poetic fell to it. It is a non-narritive, although i am not sure what Stan Brakhage is trying to portray, but he does an amazing job of doing this frame by frame to make this video. I could only imagine the amount of time it must of taken him to create this video.

Stan Brakhage's The Dante Quartet

A series of abstract paintings (I forget the exact name of the style, but it's just throwing paint on a screen basically) in very quick succession. The title is interesting because it looks like some sort of visual component to a real music piece, in the way that some parts are slow and some are faster. Some are peaceful, some are chaotic. Some are filled with light colors and others dark.

It also kind of reminds me of the opening to the film Dancer in the Dark, only quicker and less structure in the paintings themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkWd0azv3fQ

Stan Brakhage and the Dante Quartet

The Dante quartet is very, very abstract. I didn't quite understand it. Upon watching it, I felt as if Brakhage's mind was jumbled and possibly expressing his emotions through varieties of stop motion painting art. The piece I thought was particularly visually appealing, but very quick visuals and not enough time to process a meaning. Personally, It seemed very repetitive without true meaning, he just laid out his feelings into artwork. It reminds me a lot of the Coldplay video "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall." Coldplay's uses the narrative of the song to make the visuals flow more cohesively.

My created VJ clips

I uploaded them to video, but the amount of time it was saying it would take for itt to begin converting was insane, so I unlisted them on my youtube account and gave the links here. Of course, it's going to make them look like crap on youtube, but oh well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0NcydZpfQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVZ4y1Kdr4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIIibS6R48

VJ Clips

Already posted mine but here's some more!!









EXTRA CREDIT ;)

VJ Clips

I have some more complex videos, on my flash drive i will upload later

Veejay Videos

Insanity from Alexa Henderson on Vimeo.

Writing about the AV Club

The AV Club at Santa Fe Community College was honestly very successful for its debut showing last Saturday. I was gifted with an inside look at the process of how the show was set up, and can say that a lot of hard work went into the preparation for the show. Beyond that thought, I won’t say anything more about my experiences behind the scenes the event. I intend that this blog post in going to come from the perspective of an attendee rather than as a post mortem to the event. With that being said, let me get on with my review. The selection of artists covered a wide array of styles. From the distinctive, native sounds of the “Hear Hums” to the relaxing, melodic tunes played by Nicole Miglis on the piano, there was definitely a big sampling of musical tastes. From a continuity standpoint, the event was well divided and pretty balanced overall with the way the AV Club dispersed the acts. The electronic music artists, DJ, and VJ sets (Hear Hums, Euglossine Industires, Ghost Fields, DJ Adrian Villaverde) were all framed by more traditional acts involving pure lighting (and occasionally some projection) work like Nicole Miglis’s piano pieces, the Infamous dance team of Santa Fe College, and UF’s hip-hop poetry group, Signs of Life. Regarding the VJ sets for each artist, they were amazingly well done, and really helped to augment the experience of audience members as the artist played their music. I personally thought that the best sets were the VJ sets for Ghost Fields and DJ Adrian Villaverde, which were just mind-blowingly spectacular. While there were some hiccups at points, considering that it was all done real-time, the VJing was very well put together. The lighting also worked out extremely well, and was excellently cued for the most part, as well. The only criticism I can say about this event was that the spare DJ playing during the break-times really didn’t have much to work with, as moments between acts varied between long and abrupt starts. At times it left me wondering, “Why bother having the DJ anyway?” “Why not just play a prerecorded intermission track?” Nevertheless, like I said before, the event, overall, was just plainly awesome, and I’m definitely looking forward to the next one whenever that may be.

-Nathan D.

What He Wants

Story board: Your name, When the show is, To whom... (Pat)... scenes, etc.

Show Font, Show Design concept, ideas, Draw out the frames,

Due: who knows? Maybe tuesday?

MAX CLIPS

These are three of my clips using MAX Jitter patch. I used the freeframe Kaliedoscope, Chromakey, Directional blur and Gaussian Blur on some the clips. See if you can see where!

MAX Clips x3

These are my 3 clips using MAX. Each clip features a combination of the ROTATR, PANNR, ZOOMR, TWIDDLR, and CHROMAKEYR. Each one is a variation of the modes. The first and second clip use fold mode for the first three effects mentioned, while the third clip uses a combination of fold, wrap, and clip mode.

Jitter/Max/MSP/Jitter/Vizzie Slabs and Shaders

I am feeling frustrated with the lack of understanding of Jitter/Max/MSP/Vizzie. I am hoping that we can have a little more of an overview of the program(s) and what even the differences between the three of them are? y are they rolled into one app? and which is the best to use for which situation?

I am unable to get the slab objects to work in the jitter2011.1 patch, but have a few patches saved which attempt to add new shaders to your work. I tried to understand a little more about the slab and shaders by checking out the "Jitter Tutorial 42 - Slabs and Data Processing on the GPU" (found both online and within Max) . I loaded several of the Color shaders to the demo videos the tutorial accesses to see what effects they added. Many of the Color shaders did not seem to visibly affect the movie clips, but I took screen shots of the effects which did...

Tutorial's default cf.emboss.jxs, cc.scalebias.jxs


cc.grgb2rgba.jxs, cc.planemap.jxs


cc.saturate.ip.jxs

co.inverse.jxs

FREE VJ Clips!!!

First of all, thanks for the patch that Tim provided, which saved my life. It's really AWESOME !

This blog is about the link of FREE VJ Clips.

You can download without uploading new one.

Check it and have fun :P

http://www.archive.org/details/ANALOG_RECYCLING_VJ_LOOPS

Link Update

Sorry, links didnt load on last post:

LandEscape Teaser 2011 from John H. King on Vimeo.

After Effects PLugin Similar to Rutt Etra

Here is a cool After Effects plugin similar to the Rutt Etra plugin used in Jitt.

A lot more control with this plugin but it is an additional $500 smacks to purchase as well as the $900 price tag for AE. Gets a little pricy:) But, Some cool stuff can come out of this app.

http://vimeo.com/25597708

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-form/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6C-YNMXxG8&feature=related

Enjoy

-Tim

The Contrary of the Movie Theatre Response and Vasulka

I should not have been surprised that this article would somewhat bash movies by just the title alone. Like Pat said in class, Menotti pretty much defines projection design aka VJing, by everything movies aren't. For instance, movies and projections are both art form and they both have a performer, but unlike VJing, movies have a negative performance where the audience coherence depends on the story. Also the medium in which projections are displayed also contradicts movies. Menotti believes that movies are perfect for theaters because they contains the audience and enables them to keep focus. Projections on the other hand, can illicit a variety of mediums because setting can actually be part of the piece or provide an intimacy that a movie can't.

Vasulka Art of Memory

So, I watched a few vasulka clips and I still don't understand what is going on on this site. I mean I get they are mutations of videos with unique filters, but I feel they lack substance. It seems like they all were just experiments on how to use this tech at the time. The one thing I did notice that most of the clips had, were there synthesia aspects. The works flow with the sounds but the sounds are just that; Sounds. No musical quality of about them.

CONTRARY OF THE MOVIE THEATER

CONTRARY OF THE MOVIE THEATER

The reading presented an interesting point, contrasting VJs and traditional cinema roll projectionists. The author believes that the main difference is in improvisation vs. following a score (or script), as well as the performance emotion involved. In the first case, Menotti discusses the meticulous task of loading and connecting film roll for cinema. The projectionist needs to work within a confined time frame to allow the cinema to continue to roll without flaw or blemish. No one can argue that this requires a special skill and can be viewed as an art in it self, a performance if you will. As for VJs, the roll is less scripted and more along the lines of improvisation, where the arts has more freedom to create and manipulate inside their artistic influence. The two contrasting views can be akin to classical music vs. jazz improvisation. One if scripted and the other is free form.

Another point the author makes is the emotional result of the performance. A cinema projectionist invokes a negative emotion with their performance because the only time they are noticed is if they screw up. The film needs to run perfectly. A VJ has the ability to create and explore which creates a positive emotion. This point is interesting to me.

I also created several design in Jitter using the Etra Rutt plugin. This effect is very very very similar to After Effects inside a plugin called Red Giant, Form. It pretty much does the same thing with particles. It is pretty stinkin amazing.








This one is blown out using a thing called threshold: I tried to get different exposures.. not a fan of this one:(




Here is a duely video mixer I made with two chroma keyers and some graphics I made in After Effects: