Monday 8.11.10

Installation project. I loved this project, I’ve always liked working collaboratively and my group was really enthusiastic and we had lots of ideas.

We were given a quote from Hamlet, and ours was to do with Hamlet’s uncle being old and wanting to be youthful again. We worked along the idea of time passing, making a sundial out of cling film and shining an amber light up through it, signifying the time-encapsulating qualities of amber…

I wasn't really too sure about the outcome, I think we were quite rushed in the end and didn't think things through well enough, but the process was certainly interesting.

Week 8 Review

This week has been a lot of work, typography really made me think outside the box. I could have gone with my first instinct which was to paint the fonts onto someone's body and do a nude shoot, but then I started thinking about what the word FRAGILE actually meant (it was my favourite) and how it related to the world around me. I thought about what things in my world were fragile and fleeting, the words and the way they sounded reminded me onomatopoeically of the way ice looks and feels when it melts, and how it almost seems sad, the way it slips away. I wanted to portray that but also give a sense of mystery so I reversed it.

I didn't realise at first what I'd got myself into, trying to do a good time-lapse shoot. I had to set myself up a background on my desk with paper, sort of like an infinity curve, and put the mirror onto it so the ice could reflect (just a bit more interesting). Then I had to set up my lighting which took an hour at least, doing about 200 test shots with ice cubes until I got it right. In the end I used two desk lamps, one lighting it from the front-left with a greaseproof-paper diffuser to, well, diffuse the harsh bulb-light; the other lit the cubes from the back-right, I used a paper snoot to direct the light through the cubes to make them stand out. I then set up my tripod, and connected the camera (Canon 550D with polarising filter to reduce glare from the mirror) to my laptop and set it to photograph every 5 seconds. The test shoot I used a remote shutter but it produced way too many photos (I was shooting in RAW so iMovie and Quicktime couldn't handle it!). I then did the same for the titles.

Basically, I didn't realise how much work it would be. It still isn't really perfect, for some reason I forgot to set the white-balance off auto so it changes every other shot! It's very annoying that the exposure isn't the same throughout, but that's something I'll know for next time. I really loved the precision involved in making the movie and will definitely go out and do more time-lapse photography, it's good to try something new I guess!

Fashion-wise, I've always loved making clothes, and have been since a young age, though I've never really designed clothes myself before, or worked on a mannequin, so that was completely new. I can't imagine myself ever really wanting to go into fashion as a career, but I'll always love making clothes from patterns etc. and will definitely keep it as a hobby.

I discovered that film director Michel Gondry's preferred medium is time-lapse, I'm going to dig some more to find other great time-lapse artists.

I also must buy a Neutral Density Filter and one of these little beauties...

Friday 5.11.10

Lecture

Vivian

“If you don’t like picture books and cats, you’re not going to like this lecture”

There ain’t no cats in this book

Illustrator, went to Falmouth

She’s super-cute

Falmouth BA illustration

Commission to write picture books

Ollie Sutherland

Fal Foundation then Slade

Film

Tottenham court road

Film about somewhere he didn’t like being, but turned into more than that.

Worked in an old school in redruth, studios

Newlyn

Theremin

Time machine. Likes weird things

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, NIGHTMARE.

Interest in impending doom and superman.

Iceberg

www.zborough.co.uk/earth22

webcams from worldly places

go stop go (Gestapo?), redruth 4 weeks

Andy put his head in a basketball hoop.

Spike Island!

Animal enrichment, games in zoos

Obsesses about things, lived on a boat. He lost a stone and made work about space

NASA never said – deleted every star from a nebula

Gary the swan

Talk to me

“Oh, I’ve got some acid house I made this year!”

www.zborough.com

Thursday 4.11.10

The second day of typography. I decided to make a time-lapse animation of the word 'FRAGILE' in melting ice.



I really enjoyed making this. I did a test-run which I decided I didn't like, so I spent an hour or two researching and perfecting the lighting that would work best with the ice. I then spent another two hours photographing the ice melting, setting my computer to take the photos every 5 seconds. I used iMovie and Quicktime to pieve it together.

Music is 'Sea Talk' - Zola Jesus

Wednesday 3.11.10

Lecture – ‘Brendan’s been working here for a while, and he’s very 4-Dimentional’

VJ Theory – Ideas, creativity and quality behind live visual media.

HTML 5

Film

Appropriation of eastern ideas by western capitalist society?

Easy Java - Processing

The Wilderness Downtown - Video & digital processes

RJDJ iPhone app

Back in time…

Miniature painted portraits – photographic portraits, similar to miniature portraits

Photography takes on what painting was, painting then becomes it’s own artform.

Lumiere brothers, train coming into a station. Terrified people. 1895

Modulate VJing software

Viaje a la luna, de Melier, 1902

Recreating theatre. Croydon sheds, creating DRAMA.

Sprocket between each neg, punched big holes if out of sync!

Cinema1, cinema2

Routes through film, cinema, drama, art. What can you do with film?

Long exposures in film

Death of experimental forms of theatre=movies

Dickson experimental Sound film, Edison laboratory. Absolutely ridiculous. REMAKE

Intolerance – racist film.

Battleship Potemkin – Sergei Eisenstein

Symbolism.

Cinematic orchestra Man with the movie camera 1

Marx, capitalism is creating new types of men. Socialist experiment.

Gimp. Openoffice.

A study in choreography for camera

UBU.com. Named after Pere Ubu!

GPO film unit- A colour box by Len Lye

Bill Viola – the reflecting pool. Reason for knocking at an empty house

Chris Cunningham – All is full of love, Bjork

Aphex Twin and Hecker

Tuesday 2.11.10

First day of Typography.
We had been told to bring in a photograph, or any sort of image to work from. I couldn't pick just one, so I bought in two photographs, one from my portfolio, and one scrap photo that I'd worked back into using bleach:


We then had to write as many words as we could to do with the image, and pick five of the best to work from.

We then found already-existing typefaces that represented the words and copied them onto a worksheet. We then developed ideas from this sheet, of what we could do as a project involving typography in any sense!

I enjoyed today, I liked the precision involved in copying the type, and also finding fonts to match the words I'd found, but the scope of possibilities for the final piece has kind of unnerved me, In that I can't really think of anything. I'll end up doing photography again!

Monday 1.11.10

Fashion. Induction to household sewing machines and industrial sewing machines. Made maquettes.