Tuesday Class

I am in the process of getting a super8 camera for video taping and have gained access by the film chair to to lab fascilities to process this film. I just want to confirm that for tuesday we are required to do drawings from stills from our movie. I am under the impression i may need a little more time to get the film up to par.

With that said i attended the writing seminar and i think it covered some interesting conditions of authorship and the task of our thesis 'procis'. I think it is an interesting text to be written in that it lays down the foundation and relative truths from readings we find to be relevent in laying down the parameters by which we will explore the thesis. I hope that during class we may begin to discuss the importance of laying down in writing this procis. I tried to discuss this in the seminar but i personally feel these procis must discuss the dilemma of linguistics in discussing space and time, issues of scale and the middle world and the framework of perception that is vital to the issues being explored. Now all may not find these to be dilemmas but is it wrong of me to think of the procis as the place of authorship that would establish certain issues of domains that we have discussed before based on the theoretics of our thesis as well as the text and linguistics already discussed in class.

video compression

I am wondering how people are compressing their .avi videos from premier in order to post them on youtube and then the blog. Does anyone have a suggestion for a compression program? Thanks.

for Michael Toste

Notes from reading Piaget "the Child's conception of Physical Causality" the Chapter on Water:

I re-read with Mike's project in mind asking myself what in here is usable .....these ideas are present in the fountain he filmed but it is organized , more complete with possible metaphoric associations.....they could be used ......yes they are kind of obvious but they are just a beginning for associative thinking...


types of states and movement of water:

waves they occur at the EDGE of lakes ......caused by stones, paddles or winds

currents (of rivers) .as LINE ... one does not see the where they begin (source) and
where they go (end)...they are hidden...it is directional.....
from a child " it goes away...how come there is always some left"
the mystery of finite being..........
"the water runs because of the slope".....the idea of weight and
gravity
falling water


clouds

Sketches

Rear Window

"... Think of - Alfred Hitchcock. Life in a window observed from without. A classic. You see this woman in a lit window wearing a red dress, and you've got no idea what she's up to. But then - yes, you do see something!"

P46 - part of the chapter talking about the Tension between Interior and Exterior.
Peter Zumthor - Atmospheres

By the way, "Atmospheres" and "Thinking Architecture" are unbelievable books. If you have not read them you should.

Metaphor: Angels are the weight in the waters of our intentions
Site: Red Hook waterfront

More later

Run Lola Run

fort greene maze

fort greene maze movie

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dwyKS69oGzc

this should be the link to my movie, i couldnt figure out the posting.

Further analysis

Analysis diagram of one of the film stills from Antonioni's The Passenger

See comments for further posts...

youtube

so, i want to post my video, but i can't figure out how to post it. what format does it need to be in? do i need to post it on youtube and how do i do that?

twelfth night

this was a good film made by a student during my summer studio. the contruction was generated from a joke, bathroom humor. the construction was then callibrated with a shakespearean comedy.

kwang mi

http://www.poetrycenter.org/involved/news/poetsjunkyard.html

Alfred Hitchcock. Rear Window 1954

(Left) Boundary between Miss Torso and the suspected murderer Mr. Thorwald.
(Right) Central courtyard, everyone views the just found murdered dog.

frascari-scarpa drawings

http://art3idea.psu.edu/intersense/documents/synesthesia_frascari.html
read this before you start your drawings.

multiple clips?

does anyone know how to show multiple clips at the same time in premier?

recent comments

for some reason there is a serious delay on the recent comments sidebar. i cant figure it out, but dont depend on it for updated info...

synaesthesia and semantic frames

http://clsl.hi.h.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~nozawa/files/2003_nozawa_shibuya_p_iclc.pdf

metaphors

studio,
quit making this more difficult than it need be.
many of you simply dont seem to understand what a metaphor is.
here is some very simple advice,
read metaphors we live by as you were asked to do in the first week.
read the examples, USE the examples.
orientational metaphors as example...
conscious is up,unconscious is down.
high status is up, low status is down.
rational is up,emotional is down.

with that said, we should be well into editing by now.
this is due on tuesday.

How to capture stills from a DVD

Ok everybody, here is how to capture stills from a DVD (Disc):

First of all, although it seems complicated, it is actually very easy after you've gone through the tutorial. I suggest that whoever has the same videos go through the ripping process together and share the compressed (avi) file so that you don't all have to go through the entire process . Its easy, but can be time consuming (most of it is just waiting for the computer to convert files) and it also requires a ton of hard drive space (around 4gb) to temporarily store the uncompressed DVD on your computer. So like I said, I think it makes sense to do it together if possible...

So here's what you need to do:

1. Go to: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_shrink.cfm
2. Download "DVD shrink" and install it
3. Install the "Womble mpeg video wizard" (one of the programs that I gave you)
4. View the attached tutorial (It is hard to see exactly what I'm doing because of the bad video quality that the video gets converted to when uploaded, but I think you guys will be able to figure it out..)

Issues with logging and capturing

It seems that the digital video cameras they have at the media center at pratt dont take, or allow the use of a fire wire port for logging and capturing. I tried using a usb port, but Final Cut, Priemier, and i-movie do not recognize the importing of video with a usb port. so I'm kinda stuck here not knowing what to do! i know i can go to the film labs in the arc and use their DV decks, but Id like to start editing tonight. does anyone have any quick suggesstions????

"Living On The Edge!" Metaphor

I hope my metaphor is not referenced with the Aerosmith rendition; I wouldn't want it to be considered a satire. Yet for me it does show the domain issue with the metaphor; in the sense that once assimilated outside of linguistics whether perceptually, artistically or spatially the context of the metaphor completely dissolves to the issue of scale and materiality, and more importantly to time and space.

Allow me to explain myself(Ironically enough through linguistics and metaphors) see Comments.

Metaphor and Site - Rear Window analysis

When looking at Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Richard Serra's "Sequence" I began to look at common threads between the two. Both seemed to have a theme of a "Threshold between reality and illusion". Serra's piece dissorients you when walking through the curvilinear walls and gives the illusion of endlessness. In Rear Window you are trying to figure out, along with the main character Jeffries, what he is immagining and what is reality and actually happened. He cannot see what happens beyond his frame of vision and speculates what happens in those moments when the characters he's watching slip beyond his frame of vision. The closer he got to the characters through his telophoto lens, the more he could see of the truth.

The site I chose is the roof of my apartment. I live on the 3rd floor of a brownstone on the corner of a block and there is a rooftop outside my back windows from the extension of the bottom two floors.

Metaphor

I worked on sixth mirror displacement by Robert Smithson. I find intriguing the spacial conditions he creates by placing the reflection of the sky on the sand (ground), and the questions such conditions now pose: (Since the mirrors make the sky attainable), can I now walk on the sky? Can I lay on the Sky? What kind of light quality has such as space?

The movie I "Rope" by Alfred Hitchcock. Eventhough rope was shot on a limited space, the way it was shot does not make the audience aware of the confinement. What I found interesting of the film, was the displacemtne of the program of each space. The film set composed of all the traditional public spaces of a flat; dining room, living room, foyer, kitche, etc. yet none of the spaces are utilized by their program. With a few manouvers of objects, each space takes a new meaning.

I don't have a metaphor yet. Some of the words that come to mind are: morph, emergence and displacement. I feel these words can be found on my installation and film.

For my site I want to explore a place with a distict program. I am thinking a pedestrian overpass.

Metaphor

these are the prints I had for the analysis. "depth of field" is an ideal of my metaphor.
I need to refine it. I couldn't decide my site yet, but I'm planning to go check out Roosevelt Island tomorrow and do some pictures, videos.. I'm looking for a place where low rise buildings frame my view, but not so dense that buildings form a wall.

Nostalghia -- 8 of 13- Dream Scene

Movie Analysis + Metaphor

I chose to analyse Nostalghia's dream scene where after fighting with his interpreter he remembers his family and house in Russia.

During this scene, Tarkovsky creates frames where the camera stands still for very long moments.The landscape becomes surreal.The camera sets images as paintings, gives them flatness.The characters simply become repeated objects as part of the painting. "Perpendicular camera positions, the flatening impact of a telephoto lens, and the immobility of the figures and their slow down movement also reiforces the painterly effect of Tarkovsky's images." The link between family, house and country is experimented in this scene.

Fog, trees and water all have meanings. In this case I belive the water gives a feeling of surrealness and estrangeent. All these elements give a feeling of evasion and being lost. The vastness of the landscape is an element that ties in with the Mary Miss installation in Battery Park .

Tarkovsky moves the camera in a perpendicular straight line and films a line of characters who by turning their heads lead the camera to the next target. He slowly creates a mirror image.

What i am mostly interested in is the idea of evasion, repetition and mirror image.

The words I have been trying to work with are absence, forgotten, evasion, continuity....

I have many ideas but i haven't been able to come up with a metaphor. Marc and Dan i would really appreciate your help or anyone else who has suggestions

I have two sites in mind one would be in an area of battery park city, because of the park area+the water+ the repetition in the buildings behing it, I think the shift between the peacefullness of the landscape and the crowded buildings could be interesting, or, in the lower east there is a small park in between two streets which is interesting.

metaphor - site

Installation - Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter
Movie - Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger
Metaphor - Shadow

in regards to the installation i chose - The shadows reveal themselves as much more than images cast from the fragments of the blown-up garden shed. These shadows hint at the hidden reality, the unconscious, the undeveloped (transformable) field wherein meaning has been produced by simply turning on the light bulb. The fragments are finally able to become what they really are and replaced for what they could become. The past and present are conflated where this temporal nature is frozen.

The power of the shadow is that it creates an alternate reality from an illusion or turns the illusion into reality.

The images below are in response to the film i have been analyzing (The Passenger). The first image is a still of a particular scene where David Locke is about to drag the body of another person whom he will change identity with, Mr.Robertson.

The next image is a collage i had made to make my point - "shadow." "The Girl" is looking into the space through the window where David is dragging another person out (which is David in the scene) and the person to the right (David again) is watching all of this as well. I created this image by taking 4 different stills from the movie. David on the right is actually looking into an open locker, but i used the darkness of the interior of the locker as if it was a dark wall in the image.

The shadow can take on many meanings. The Girl is David's alienated self, desire, the psyche David wants to reach and is the subject outside the window. She attends his life as a 'shadow' spirit who has been assigned the duty of guiding him through his final acts on earth. David on the very right of the image who has already changed his identity as Robertson is looking at his old-self, the shadows. David on the left is dragging Robertson on the floor but I tried to make it so that he is really dragging himself out of this hallway. In a way, they are all casting a shadow of themselves in this one scene i had collaged.

Hence, shadow as knowledge - self-awareness is the kind of metaphor i'm trying to get at in this simple image where i wanted the shadows to have a kind of time and space of it's own.

As for my site, I've been thinking about filming some pedestrian street at the LowerEast Side where a lot of people pass by.

opps, here is the correct link

chicago Outlaw

Inquiry. before thursday???

Dan and Marc- I need some feed back before 1 pm on thursday if you can, because i'll be leaving for Kutztown PA, to get some footage of my site for my film. I camped out there last summer on my bike tour to Chicago. I think direct relationships can be made to The Shining, Robert Smithso'ns idea that the "Earth is an Abyss," and Lackoff's container metaphor "A clearing in the woods." The site stands out from other densly wooded areas in that it is 'bounded' by a snapping turtle infested river, Which we had to cross with with all of our gear to camp the night. when darkness 'erased' the last bit of light, nothing could be done to get out. we were stuck there along with all sorts of preditors, criters, and poisionous insects, miles away from civilzation. You can read the entire account on my bike journal " Chicago Outlaw "

Im thinking of putting my self in that exact position, this time with a vid-camera in hopes my fears and emotions will affect my taking of the video. I'd like to play a little with the paradoxy of containing danger, and yet being contained from danger. I'm wondering what your thoughts are, and if you could bring anyting to my attention.

animated manhattan

http://www.ironicsans.com/animated_manhattan/

Video Editing Program

Does anyone have the cd with the video program on it? apparently the cd from marc's mailbox that I downloaded only had support programs not the adobe premiere. I need to get the program if anyone has the cd. Let me know.
Thanks

Coloring Experience

Select a site based on your Metaphor.
Inhabit and Observe the site.
See, Touch, Smell, Listen, Taste.

Read the Cinema 1 Handout.

Write and Sketch.
-what type of 'drawings' might activate senses other than visual? (ex. rubbings-material tactility)

Record Atmosphere.

Consider:
How does the site perform?
Which Verbs are amplified on site?
Identify the 'elements' (ie.weather.) Film at different conditions, amplify the elements.
(wet/dry…calm/windy)
Consider filming a drawing (ie.map.)….Marking, Scanning Scrolling...
Consider using techniques from your film analysis (spatial and technical)
Consider the position of the camera and the objects filmed (moving/still...up/down)

Rules:
Use at least 2 different means of recording technology, high (ie.digital camera/video) and low (ie.Polaroid, phone camera/video.)

Possible Metaphors

There are three themes which I think can be explored further as metaphors in The Passenger and Robert Smithson's Mirror Displacements: The idea of identity and mirror reflections [the shot when Locke bends over the dead body of Robertson - the eerie similarity between the live Locke and dead Robertson -they are in different tenses of their existence (relate this back to the idea of horizon in Smithson's writings). Also considered is the theme in the end scene with the slow zoom in of the camera. Here I'd like to focus on what it means to switch from the "I" to the "me" in these few moments, and how both the camera and the setting/background enhance this transformation. The last and perhaps the weakest metaphor situation is the one where Locke sees death as bliss - blindness as bliss and release from this world and his ever running away from his past. More on all of this during the complete presentation of the movie.

pin up by 9:30

please be pinned up tomorrow by 9:30am so that we may begin on time.
thanks in advance.
marc

serra analysis

union of the torus and the sphere. 2001
-Richard Serra

Intervention:

splitting the torus and the sphere.

Robert Smithson

This is Mary Miss' Veiled Landscape.

Veiled landscape is a series of inserted platforms in a clearing through the woods. Each platform is arranged along a created optical crosshair that has been interjected between them. The screens are a physical boundary instrument that filter and dissect the natural landscape in infinite ways, using layered subdivisions to constantly alter the view. Arrangement of the scene is dictated by the approach, navigation around, navigation onto and deviation around the platforms. The space between the body and the screen is critical to this idea of filtering, but also creates heightened senses by the constantly scaling scene. These veiled frames are an instrument through which the individual experiences the other platforms and visually navigates between them, the clearing and the woods. The significance of the eyes utilizing the screens as an instrument to hold and penetrate the layers of divisions and distances. The spatial experience of nature, as this plastic kind of experience, in a technical way through these screens makes the viewer acknowledge a layered division that is divorced from a scale that is known and allows us to make judgment. “…space can be measured and plotted, distances estimated…” (204) Because of the changing scales of each of these interventions as one descends the clearing, the space of the woods and the relationship from one screen to the next is constantly being reevaluated through the eye, which moves itself between these. The landscape becomes objectified through these screens, and infinitely, because as the person moves through, between and around the platforms they are constantly altering these distances and scales.

The way that the body is constantly moving and evaluating the space through the screens allows the person to be registering their own spatial intervals. The use of the geometry of the objects, as well as the orthogonal placement of them, as a vehicle to create a visual field that is more objectified. Although the composition on an orthogonal was not meant to be specific, there are certainly implications to that that are inherently important. What does it mean to insert oneself in an orthogonal manner into this place?

“The frequent use of telephoto lens and frontal shots reduces the plasticity of space and fuses figures and ground…the narrative drama dissolves into visual aesthetics. The elimination of depth serves the purpose of equalizing various elements of the visual field and turning characters into objects and vice versa… ‘What interests me now is setting characters in contact with things…’” (123 Pallasmaa).

Other

I think I have my site narrowed down to two places. There are qualities between the two of them that I want to use. Would I be able to create a space that is a combination of the two?

Inquiries

Marc and Dan,
I was wondering if we can save some class time for a quick desk-critish sort of meetings. I have a number of ideas that I have had prepared before thesis had begun and I want to be able to move them through what we are doing.
Thanks,

Matt

The Fall (Images)

I would like to make a simple note to the site specificity of thess installations. In an effort to invoke a metaphor of the catastrophic architectonic condition that occured on 9/11 Woods must create a dialectic between the instillation and the space it is being viewed within. I think he takes a rather architecturally sensitive approach to how he activates the space with the instillation. However to some extent he then freezes a moment of time and space within the architecture which begins to exploit the metaphor of The Storm & The Fall.

Sorry More Storm Images

The Storm (Images)

I Have the book published for this exhibition if any one is interested. It contains a great deal of drawings and renderings that begin to capture Lebbeus Woods' intended spatial/architectonic gestures.

raw

more tomorrow, in comment

The Storm & The Fall (Nostalgic?)

I am catching up on the readings, watching Tarkofsky's Nostalghia, and reading on Lebbeus Woods "The Storm and The Fall". I am considering the metaphor, however i must warn i do not understand if the metaphor comes out of movie/installation or if it is a response there of. I want to perseve the "metaphor" of cinema and installation to "construct" the metaphor of an architectural thesis (Site i feel must be inherently dependent on the metaphor that seeks reality,therefore i haven't made that decision). First i offer the disclaimer as made by the readings that both cinema and installation are architectural in there perception of "Time and Space". Both median invoke some mental perception through the exploitation of Time and Space. With that in mind i offer some correllations being made between The Nostalghia and The Storm and The Fall.
The metaphor is the perception of dialectics among Time and Space as an object; the metaphor is therefore not the object but rather reaction of the viewer to the object. The Storm and The Fall is Lebbeus Woods' metaphor to the architectural event which occured on 9/11. It is in no way a re-representation of the condition but rather a abstraction of Time and Space that occured within the architectonics of the collapsing World Trade Centers. A direct assimilation can be made in that the installation is some Nostolgic Manifestation of the event. How the viewer registers this is based on their own "nostalgia" of 9/11, as recollected within the instillation as form in site.
I am looking to watch the movie again this evening to begin to further justify the possible metaphor the concept of "nostalgic representation" has on the manipulation of Time and Space. I will scan images of the installation and post them tomorrow,to bring some insight on the possible cognitive perception of the installation as a built form (dependent on Time and Space). I am at the moment disconnected linguistically in how to assimilate the conditions of metaphoric nostalgia both in cinema and installation to the readings of perception of forms, physical causality and cognitive metaphors. I am confident there are strong dialectics, i hope to post tomorrow a better explination that can justify the comparisons being made. I want a group of drawings that would visually begin to diagram the dialectics of text, instillation and cinema (We will see that for Tuesday, hopefully). Sorry for the delay on the postings.

Sculpting in Time

Anyone looking into Tarkovsky should make sure to read his book, "Sculpting in Time." It is available at the Pratt Library. Also the Tarkovsky site in the links section.

Richard Serra

Spin Out (for Bob Smithson) 1972-73.
Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo

of location
An elliptically shaped enclosure with steep walls and dense foliage along its rim. A single pathway, at ground level, permitted entry to its sheltered interior. Inserted into this basin at positions approximating 12, 4, and 8 o'clock are three steel plates, each measuring 10 feet by 40 feet by 1 1/2 inches. These walls create a force field at the heart of the outdoor room, a spatial vortex that exerts an alternatively centripetal and centrifugal pull on anyone approaching its center. When viewed from above, however, the spatial dynamic reads quite differently: it becomes less visceral, more cinematic, as the viewer's gaze is constantly interrupted by the trunks of trees hugging the basin's rim.

The Mary Miss installation is an intentional and consciously functional material construct intervention within the perfectly functioning system of nature. The intentional and conscious quality in both this act of intervention and how it is perceived, both speak of a significant human component. That is, the part amidst the whole; Perception itself making any distinction at all. The lumber-metal-earth-water construct establishing a hierarchy and relationship between elements with an intended function. Installing the intervention within a natural setting contrasts the duality of man’s invention with nature’s invention. Furthermore, the reflective troughs allow the human to experience a visual connection between the earth, her or himself, and the sky. Concrete, to transient, to ephemeral all at the same moment.

There is a revelation through this contrast of human intention and nature in that human intention (the construct) seems to lose its function when set amidst a vast natural setting. The perfectly cut dimension lumber’s function is dwarfed by the natural apparatus it is connected with. The construct seems to be futilely inserting itself into an already functioning seamless system. Such would force the user to question, what, but more importantly, who are our inventions for. The perception only occurs in human beings. Ricardo Scofidio claimed that the human mind was the “only landscape capable of sustaining the construction of logical incongruities.” Our creations are interventions in nature. We are the intervention in nature. Nature, often indifferent to that which we create but the discourse and progression that it creates qualifies its creation. The human hand shown for man in a natural intervention is a portrait of purpose of the functionless wood.

On the other hand, we are partly nature itself. We are made up of its elements operating as a natural animal and yet we have the ability to dream out of plastic reality and operate in mind space.

What conditions are necessary for us to experience plastically what we dream?

I am finishing the drawing this weekend.
Matt

adopting a metaphor

i've been watching Antonioni's The Passenger and going through the readings - i haven't decided on the metaphor yet, but my thoughts on it are around the ideas of experiencing an existential outsideness, placelessness and psychic isolation and observing shadows. gravity of shadows, shadows of detachment, shadows of the gaze (viewpoints, subjective/objective). i will post more on this sometime soon.

suggestion for this blog

blogger has a side bar for recent comments, it allows us to see recent comments and those left on old posts. you can find the code in the help center. just type "comments" in the search bar, and look for "recent comments in side bar"

Installation - Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson's Sixth Mirror Displacement - 1969

Art Installation

Mary Miss
Battery Park Landfill
New York, New York 1973
Mary Miss’ intallation is located in a large open space. I would consider it an “architectural decor”.Emerging from the ground of this vast space are five billboardlike structures.The first structure has a full circle,in every other structure the circle sinks down gradually into the ground. Mary Missuses the ground as an element of her installation, the ground becomes part of the structure since the circles look like they are sinking down in it. Geometry and repetition is used. “the unimposing structureshold a series of clearly articulated concentric circles descending into the ground, as though a column of air were being defined as it tunneled into the ground...” A straight line is used to place the structures and they are each 50 feet apart. The viewer, coming from the North side, can not see the project as he isapproaching it. However, as the viewer walks to the front he can start seeing the project. The viewer needsto get involved with the piece in order to get every aspect and view of it. These structures give a sense of howvast and deserted the land is, they have no boudaries. The front view looks combines all the void circles and looks like a sunset into the ground.

09.11.07

while watching Rope, i began with the association of metaphore found through out the film that poked humorously to the thought of death. and the color red which was the single color hitchcock decided to emphasize in his first color film. other than this my mind began to wonder (too) widely, beginning to look at architectural precedents such as archigram + andrea zittel who play with the notions of mobile enviroments, which go along the same lines as Rope's technologically advance set, necessary for camera movement throughout the entire set because of the desire to limit the amount of editing in the film. etc. I apologize for not producing what the assignment asked for and will limit my thought into a more indepth analysis of the film itself for next week. along with a interpretation of a art installation. i had posted earlier that i would be investigating smithson, however i believe that piece might have been exhausted last wk + i will be looking into another of relevance to my chosen film, that be smithson or serra.

Video Capture Software

For those of you who have dvd copies or have found streaming video of your films, I have found a couple of video capture programs, for windows go to http://www.keepvid.com/ there is a free trial...if you have a mac, let me know directly, I have the software to do it.

read this and do it

please fufill the responsibilities established during our last class.
your participation will have a direct affect on your evaluation.
in other words.
post your precedent now.
this is not acceptable.

Installation Research diagram

My writing on the project is located in the comments so as to save space on the main page.