It's hard for me to find the right words to describe things that have shaped my life thus far (i'm sure i'm not the only one). To connect with a part of myself that I rarely talk to others in depth about, I had to go back to the very basic thing that solidifies a part of my identity- food. Specifically, polish food. At first, I wanted to make it broad. Sticking to the niche of my video ended up bottlenecking that homing-voice in for me, and helped to center my focus a bit on figuring how to make the montage reflective of me while also being reflective of to other's feelings about foods that might be true to their cultural experience with food.
After watching it more and more times, and after having critiques in class, I realized that I wasn't satisfied with the message I was trying to bring forth. I was too ambiguous with who the person was starring in my video (Eden, a fellow busser of mine at a restaurant) and the relationship I had to him. I thought it wouldn't matter too much bringing into the video my work relationship to him, but it definitely ended up blurring the line between private and public. My audience could no longer see meaning in what is was that was personal to ME, despite Eden talking about family in the restaurant, and me making polish cookies for my "family" here at school, as a way of my coping with being away from family back at home (in the same way that Eden talked about his association of work family to his real family). It was kind of disheartening to see my message come across as unclear. I feel like I started with a strong storyboard but then led myself askew from it, possibly overthinking it and trying to make it about more than it was. I wish I had cut a lot of the scenes out and edited in some scenes from my personal life at home (my old pictures, mom cooking, etc); just some snapshots to relating my family presence with the work family dynamic I am trying to communicate.
I liked a lot of the shots I took. I think more of them could have varied, especially in the restaurant. I think I could have processed the story of me making the pastries a bit more orderly, timely, basically more chronological. There was room for improvement on many of them.
I'm proud of myself for tackling this personal subject, but I don't think I went all the way that I could have with it. I made it personal but bordering the line of impersonal, my feelings towards the subjects and/or my source of it wasn't relayed through me in the video. As I grow to learn myself better, as well as come to understand how my own familial cultural experiences played a role in how I feel about food and relationships, I think i'll be able to understand better how to put together a vision that is truly encompassing and projective of all the feelings I have had about food throughout my life (good and bad), and perhaps an opportunity to be a reflective piece for others who have also had similar stories to relationships and food.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Hito Steyerl
What is a "thing language"? A thing conversation consists of showing the other person who you’re talking to the thing you’re talking about, as it is.
What are some of the "things" that make up the transnational language of documentary? Commerce, general communication, “standard narratives” that are “independent of national or cultural difference”.
How does the "language of documentary" actually make differentiating between real and not real more complicated to figure out? Because now, documentary is able to “conjure up the most spectacular aspects of the language of things and amplifies their power.” They are able to exaggerate one type of event while undermining the rest of the facts. Documentaries today are able to be altered in a way that the past events are conjoined with the present in order to create that visual “thing” language, past and present superimposed over one another to create a new, altered form of visualized documentation. The flow of events in documentaries, mashup of the chain of events timeline, and manipulation of visualized photos, videos, and graphics all make it harder to decipher. “The more extraordinary, catastrophic and eccentric things behave within them, the more everything can stay the same”.
How does the language or tropes of documentary orientate us and isolate us at the same time? “Stereotypical assumptions about so-called cultures can catalyse dangerous social dynamics and align reality step by step to it’s caricatures”. In times of “presumed” conflicts between people, cultures, and countries, documentary is able to play an active role in determining the output, the general face, of the subject in it’s documentary. By pinning the subject of a documentary with it’s conflict, the documentarist is already setting the two subjects at a rift. While it helps to see the rift and understand the events leading up to it, setting this type of material barrier in videos, pictures, words, and recollections can marginalize the subject topic into something basic and lacking of better understanding (because it is so concentrated on the “rift”).
What do you understand a non public public sphere to be? I would consider a non public public sphere to be somewhere that you have your own jurisdiction in within a larger jurisdiction that you have to answer to, perhaps your own office space in a larger space of offices, a doctors office, a closed-classroom, a voting area, etc.
What is a private public sphere? What technologies made a private public sphere possible? Give an example of a private public sphere. A private public sphere is something that is public but is only made available to only certain groups of the public. Technologies that make a private public sphere possible (like a gated community) is financed security systems, safe housing infrastructures, cable channels with privatized shows and movies, subscriptions to media outputs, etc.
What are the different ways that documentaries as distributed to the public in the present day? Documentaries are distributed through many things today. They can be shown in forms of new media and technologies, showcased through exhibitions in museums, or displayed in a chosen public scenery. They can be published through certain online channels, through cable networks, on public/private television or radio. They are sometimes made available online through public sites such as Youtube and Vimeo. Some are distributed through institutions such as school or certain workplaces.
How does privatization lead to commercialism? (Think about: Compare PBS now to when you were a kid.) Privatization, while perhaps gets a better sourcing for finances, is also a controlling force in the sourcing of commercialism. In the case of PBS, which is a publically-funded broadcast that garners support from their audiences, is heading towards a direction of privatization in the form of commercials. Some commercials that i’ve seen in the form of sponsors has been Boeing, an aircraft manufacturer company. I can imagine if companies would begin to take stocks in PBS, that the broadcasting would change dramatically. Since the station would be no longer funded by the public, the channel would need to make money through commercial advertisements. This would change uninterrupted showtimes, and possibly even cut programs to make room for the advertisements.
Do a Google search on Hito Steyerl. Look at at least 3 videos so you can get a idea of what she does.
What connections did you see between her work online and what you just read? Please be specific when referring to one of her artworks.
I watched three of Hito’s works. They were called “Hito Steyerl about Red Alert”, “How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV file”, and “November, 2004”.
In “How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV file”, there were many connections to what she said in the article. She sprung the notions of public and private, of being visible and invisible. In this she was demonstrating how easy it is for a subject or information to be cut from a scenario, using effects such as green paint to merge herself with the green screen, or dictating through narration that she was going “off-screen”, to which she shows herself physically next to the green screen, after which she evaporates from the side of it. She also used a video within the project that demonstrated a prototype for a developmental secured community, with gates and shopping malls and escalators and everything. She talked about how you can become “invisible” by living in one of these protected environments, perhaps alluding to the fact that security and omission of the outside world makes people comfortable living in their own bubbles and not having to question what is what. After she gives that example of how to become visible, she makes other comedic allusions to what this might mean, like “being a woman over the age of 50” with a very monotone, robotic voice. Through her alteration and exposure of what the audience was made to see versus what was happening off-screen, the irony was not lost. This further upheld the article by stating that documentary is something that can be very real or not real, or something in between that’s alluding to the sublime but has tangible pieces of evidence to point to it’s infinite possibilities. But nonetheless, it made me think of how little people understand what actually makes a documentary, the whole piece of evidence, instead of what is just in-front of the screen.
The other one I watched was called November. It was about many things, but mainly started on Hito’s friend Andrea Wolf, who became a martyr symbol for the Kurdish people of Turkey when she was executed by the Turkish government. It was very moving, definitely one of my favorite pieces ever.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Project 2 Reflection
I really fell in love with the process of creating this piece more I did with the other pieces we created throughout the semester. The topic reflected in my shared experience of after-school programs and how they assisted me, and how i've grown to see them as absolutely necessary to have available to all education spectrums, especially of those K-12.
It was really nostalgic for me going to my old grade school and seeing how little it had changed. It also made me sad realizing it had not undergone much revision, apart from the security cameras on the walls. I later realized it was good of me to have visited my grade school and used b-roll from it to uphold ideas for my short documentary. I was able to take the feelings that I regained from visiting my grade school and use them to tell a story that reached far before and far beyond my few short years at Bridge Elementary. I found a lot of parallels when interviewing Jaimin, and he helped me to further explore those connections to ideas we both helped create. Through this we were able to construct a bigger picture that combined both of our experiences, as well as shared experiences of all of those involved and mentioned in the piece.
After this semester, i'm really leaning towards documentary being a main focus that i'd like to invest much more time into. It's a medium that enables me to put forth my ideologies as an individual, but more importantly its a medium to which i'll have to spend much time learning to communicate outside of the medium, between story-maker and storyteller. The more time I spend getting to understand how persons interact with our collective memory as people, the more i'll be able to understand how I can better portray those persons through a series that draws a portrayal from their willingness to engage, and be seen.
It was really nostalgic for me going to my old grade school and seeing how little it had changed. It also made me sad realizing it had not undergone much revision, apart from the security cameras on the walls. I later realized it was good of me to have visited my grade school and used b-roll from it to uphold ideas for my short documentary. I was able to take the feelings that I regained from visiting my grade school and use them to tell a story that reached far before and far beyond my few short years at Bridge Elementary. I found a lot of parallels when interviewing Jaimin, and he helped me to further explore those connections to ideas we both helped create. Through this we were able to construct a bigger picture that combined both of our experiences, as well as shared experiences of all of those involved and mentioned in the piece.
After this semester, i'm really leaning towards documentary being a main focus that i'd like to invest much more time into. It's a medium that enables me to put forth my ideologies as an individual, but more importantly its a medium to which i'll have to spend much time learning to communicate outside of the medium, between story-maker and storyteller. The more time I spend getting to understand how persons interact with our collective memory as people, the more i'll be able to understand how I can better portray those persons through a series that draws a portrayal from their willingness to engage, and be seen.
Citizenship Beyond Sovereignty
Photography is an instrument that shifts across varying paths and borders, thus making itself it's own "sovereign". The use of this universal instrument allows the creation of a transparent collective, and the ability for everyone to become a part of. This is how the idea of collective citizenship can represent a person as a representation of the past, present, and future state of mode in the states they've lived in. We are "entering a dialogue" with a persons photographed, in which their power is often times "both silent and silenced".
Giving up the idea that photography is about "me" and my involvement to the subject opens up the entire word of photography as a communicative medium. By gaining the confidence and trust in order to willingly put yourself into the world of photography, as both the spectator and the spectated, this is enabling a full circle to come around, a relationship to form between the viewer and the viewed. Letting yourself be the witness and only letting yourself be the witness is an ignorance that misses the whole point of the subjects involved in the evolving photo process. Giving equity to one another gives the other a staple of trust, and with it comes communication, and with communication comes beautiful work that is understood through both photographer and photographed.
This equity of understanding allows the audience to delve into subjects much more bigger than the individual. Once given each other the opportunity to honestly communicate, the viewer and the viewed can learn things that span borders and limitations, and be able to empathize and relate to each others stories through this representation of an exchange of information that they created when they made the moment in the photograph.
The individual of subject will always be the focus, but the collective individual community represented by the image of that one subject is a reinforcement for all the other individuals who are living in the same shared experience.
In the ideal moment.
Giving up the idea that photography is about "me" and my involvement to the subject opens up the entire word of photography as a communicative medium. By gaining the confidence and trust in order to willingly put yourself into the world of photography, as both the spectator and the spectated, this is enabling a full circle to come around, a relationship to form between the viewer and the viewed. Letting yourself be the witness and only letting yourself be the witness is an ignorance that misses the whole point of the subjects involved in the evolving photo process. Giving equity to one another gives the other a staple of trust, and with it comes communication, and with communication comes beautiful work that is understood through both photographer and photographed.
This equity of understanding allows the audience to delve into subjects much more bigger than the individual. Once given each other the opportunity to honestly communicate, the viewer and the viewed can learn things that span borders and limitations, and be able to empathize and relate to each others stories through this representation of an exchange of information that they created when they made the moment in the photograph.
The individual of subject will always be the focus, but the collective individual community represented by the image of that one subject is a reinforcement for all the other individuals who are living in the same shared experience.
In the ideal moment.
Monday, October 29, 2018
We Will Become Statues (video)
I thought this piece gave a very intimate look using every day montage sequences in co-op with an audio that was deeply profound in it's vivid use of storytelling. The visuals were pictures of still or moving images, most of which had a still background but had action happening in the foreground, like people walking or machinery moving, or snow falling against the night sky at the end. The stills used their movements wisely and coexisted in time with one another, allowing the viewer to catch up on the split screens as they were listening to Katherine Arline talk about her experiences on the mid-20's New York mental health system scene, working in "State myriads and as a social worker and case supervisor. It made a mark to address the main catastrophes of these people's experiences by sequencing the audio in a repetitive and discombobulated order, reflecting details in the system that are flawed, as well as how they're shaped by the people and their environments, that collectively make it flawed.
One of the patients was picked up on the streets, found wandering alone and through city intersections at some time midday. Katherine explained that he was pretty young, Asian, and apparently was deaf and mute. They picked him up, and he would not say anything to the workers. But, after he was examined by an Asian doctor, the man started to speak to the doctor. This barrier of language, was a big issue present in many of the cases in those early days. I was just interviewing Jaimin for Illini Mentors, and we were discussing how international students here get ostracized at first because of the lack of similar representatives their age, their interests, their willingness to give their time to try and communicate to someone who does not speak the same language, I think that poses a lot of questioning in how we begin to approach integrative service in a social working medium. The representative faces of many institutions do not reflect its inhabitants.
Near the end, there was a mention of patients eventually realizing they held a disconnect for the settings that their environments, shaped by a physical association to precedents outlining the building as a place they would never get out of. This mental feedback that these places were bad only support the notion that they were understaffed and underfunded, leading to a poor execution of their institutional responsibilities as a state mental facility. This matter of fixed environments with unchanging processions in social adaptation to the simplest matter of equitable sustainability for each individual, we cement them further into the system instead of letting them go through a rehabilitated cycle of treatment.
One of the patients was picked up on the streets, found wandering alone and through city intersections at some time midday. Katherine explained that he was pretty young, Asian, and apparently was deaf and mute. They picked him up, and he would not say anything to the workers. But, after he was examined by an Asian doctor, the man started to speak to the doctor. This barrier of language, was a big issue present in many of the cases in those early days. I was just interviewing Jaimin for Illini Mentors, and we were discussing how international students here get ostracized at first because of the lack of similar representatives their age, their interests, their willingness to give their time to try and communicate to someone who does not speak the same language, I think that poses a lot of questioning in how we begin to approach integrative service in a social working medium. The representative faces of many institutions do not reflect its inhabitants.
Near the end, there was a mention of patients eventually realizing they held a disconnect for the settings that their environments, shaped by a physical association to precedents outlining the building as a place they would never get out of. This mental feedback that these places were bad only support the notion that they were understaffed and underfunded, leading to a poor execution of their institutional responsibilities as a state mental facility. This matter of fixed environments with unchanging processions in social adaptation to the simplest matter of equitable sustainability for each individual, we cement them further into the system instead of letting them go through a rehabilitated cycle of treatment.
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Mic Fun
https://vimeo.com/295319246
Shotgun Mic:
Sources:
http://www.shure.com/americas/products/microphones/vp/vp83 https://static.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/314639.pdf
Answers:
- Dynamic or condenser: electret condenser
- Mic does not have phantom power
- Frequency: 50–20,000 Hz
- Mic has roll off switch
- Polar pattern: supercardioid/lobar
- “The low-cut filter reduces low frequency rumble caused by camera handling and other environmental factors by rolling off low frequencies 170 Hz and below (12 dB per octave).” - was only information given about sensitivity.
- Output impedance up to 171 Ω
- Unbalanced
- 1 kHz at 1% THD[2], 1000 Ω load - Maximum 129 dB SPL
Lavalier Mic - Wireless Lav Mic
- Dynamic
- Phantom power - No, most condensers have that though
- Frequency Range: 35Hz - 22kHz
- Yes - most have low-frequency roll-off
- Omnidirectional/cardioid
- Dynamic range (typical): 102 dB.
- Impedance: 1800 Ohm.
- Unbalanced
- Maximum 110 dB SPL
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