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Media Studio | Wk. 9

This week we had our first meeting at Signal on Flinders lane for our Project Brief 4, it was a lot harder to find than I had anticipated but I eventually got there. We were all upstairs discussing our themes, and ideas each individual we had, and then someone from the Signal team presented to us how we would display our artworks through the building. There are four projectors set up around the upstairs room, that work to flip the the images and project them through the windows, so that viewers on the outside can see the films. There are speakers set out along Flinders lane and around the building, and all of it is controlled within the building. This means that we need to set our films in a very wide screen with minimal height to work across all four screens, it’ll be interesting to see how this works out.

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Media Studio | Wed Wk. 8

Today marked the beginning of our presentations for Project Brief 3. A lot of the class had some really great videos. This week we presented our group projects for Project Brief 3 to the class, with Joseph as a guest to help with some feedback. Overall, our group received great feedback, one thing to work on was our audio piece. We attempted to create a sense of ‘Arie’ within the presentation to imply that he has his own world for his art. However, they way in which we aimed to portray that did not come across as successfully, Robbie suggested we could have made that more obvious, and made it more abstract to suit his type of artwork. Joseph also suggested we could have included more about his work in Testing Grounds, unfortunately we did not have much footage of it given from Arie, nonetheless Joseph mentioned he had lots, so we could have extended our resources further to include everything that we wanted. Overall, I’m very happy with our group and how well we worked together as a team to produce our Project Brief 3.

Project Brief 3

Nowadays the world of art is much more diverse, artists have moved far beyond the traditional art forms of painting, drawing and sculpting into a digital revolution of photography, video formatting and more. The artist we formed a documentary on was Arie Rain Glorie, and his main art medium was video works, installations and curating for other emerging artists. Conducting an interview requires a lot of work. We had to seek permission first by emailing him, and then arranging a suitable time for us to meet to film. Elle, Nicolette and I planned our interview questions before we arrived, researched his work through his website, and then we hired a Canon DSLR, tripods and the Media 1 video recorders to capture our project. Elle and I did the filming and we originally had issues with finding a location to shoot as the photography rooms were locked and classrooms were too noisy. Thus, we decide to film his natural working place, in his studio at RMIT. We set up two cameras, one up-close to represent personal thoughts and emotiveness and the second further away to establish the location and quirks of his personality, such as hand gestures, and the way he works.

Nicolette focused more on the editing, she cut down all the unwanted footage and in class we worked as a group to put all of it together, making decisions on how we wanted to portray Arie, and what we felt was important to present in the documentary. Utilising the program Premiere we put the footage together, and we decided that we would demonstrate his love for the art world, and his sense of “place” within it as a main focus for our film. We utilised his artworks to explain his artistic ability and the way in which he works as well as his time with testing grounds. We had a couple issues with filming, as the camera was on auto-focus and therefore, kept adjusting while filming which caused a lot of distractions. Another was that Arie said “um” quite frequently during the interview and didn’t answer in full sentences, which caused confusion and repetition. Nonetheless, we worked on minimising these issues to being displayed in the documentary with cutting of footage, and putting external photographs and footage over the top of his voice, creating a narrative throughout the documentary.

Arie Rain Glorie is an amazing, introverted artist with so many intricate and creative artworks, as he states he likes to make his work “kind of familiar but the audience wont be able to quite place where it’s come from”. Arie’s work relates to Gaston Bachelard (1969) as he states, “imagination argues the values of reality”. Arie describes art as his lifestyle, it his “constant thought” and he wishes to produce his diverse place of thought of life through his work, especially video works. He is dedicated to the art world, not just as an artist but as a curator as well. He curated a trilogy series entitled “Love/City” which was set up at Testing Grounds. Arie enjoys challenging the place of the traditional art viewing, he wishes to defer from museums and galleries and create a new sense of place for artworks to be displayed and this is why he chose Testing Grounds to view his curated project. This is also accentuated by his work itself, Arie loves working with videos as it allows him to manipulate time, place and space, in which one cannot do with live performance. This also coincides with Michael Jackson’s book, “At Home in the World”, as he expresses that “life cannot be pressed into the service of language”. There is never conversation or narration in his works, he rather communicate his thoughts through art and have the audience decipher their own meaning.

Project Brief 3 was the most challenging so far, I say this as working in group dynamic does allow a little difficulty when it comes to task allocations, finding similar availability to meet up, and you have more people to rely on than just yourself. I have had a lot of trouble with group assignments this year, not one assignment has run along smoothly, and therefore I favour working individually. However, Elle, Nicolette and I worked really well together, and although our timetables clashed we managed to work around it. We assigned tasks to be done by certain dates, and when things, out of our control, did not go according to plan, such as, response from Arie, and extra footage needed to complete the film, we worked cooperatively to solve the issues. Communication within our trio was excellent; we met up at every class, twice outside university, and had a constant group conversation on Facebook. Overall, I am happy with the final result of our assignment and how we reacted to the problems we faced, as we produced an documentary that represented Arie, his work, his creative ability, and his sense of place amongst the art world.

 

References:

Jackson, M 1995, At Home in the world, Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 1-8

Bachelard, G 1969, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston

Media Studio | Wed Wk.7

This week was mainly focused on the production of our final edits for our Project Brief 3, we had few external footage of his work and so we were researching to find more, we also had noticed auto-focusing issues within our footage, and Arie said “um” way too many times. We worked together in the studio suits on Nicolette’s laptop so that we could try minimise these issues. We found footage off his website that we put in, and we tried to only have footage where the auto-focusing didn’t occur. We also suggested to make our own audio that had an Arie aesthetic to it with all of his um’s, so that’s another thing we will attempt to do before the deadline. Overall it is looking nicely, his audio is very good, and he has a lot of interesting answers. We’re hoping he replies to us in time with extra footage so we can finish our assignment!!

Media Studio | Week 6

This week we were given time to go and shoot our artist for our Project Brief 3, and the artist we were elected was Arie Rain Glorie. We emailed him to meet us outside building 9 as conveniently he was working at RMIT that day. We struggled to find a location for us to film, as we had plan to use the Photography classroom but they were locked, and therefore, Arie suggested we could film in his office instead. The lighting was very low, and fluorescent which was hard to work with but we set up a Media 1 camera at a afar, and a Canon DSLR up-close and we begun to interview him.

Unfortunately we only realised halfway through one of the cameras had not been recording, so we only had up-close shots, therefore, we had to re-interview him again, it took a while but we received a lot of great audio from him, as Arie had a lot to say about the art world, especially about himself and what he wants to achieve amongst it.

Media Studio | Thurs Wk. 5

Today was our second lot of presentations for Project Brief 3 and today mine was displayed. I gave an introduction of how my video aimed to present the idea of a carpark being a “nonplace”, and I received great feedback. My classmates and Robbie were very supportive, giving my advice on things to fix as well as stating things that they liked about my work.

Second half of our class was dedicated to the arrangement of our BBQ backpack night at the Testing Grounds, everyone was getting amongst their groups, and we arranged food, times, equipment and allocated jobs to certain to students. This was to ensure the night ran smoothly and was to be enjoyable for all. We also were given our artist that we were to interview for our Project Brief 3, I am in a group with Elle and Nicolette and our artist is named Ari, I’m excited to start working on it.

 

Media Studio 2 | Wk. 5 Wed

Today in class we presented our Project Brief 2 in class this week, we didn’t get to go through mine but i got to see majority of the classes work. It was really interesting to see how other people interpreted the assignment and the work they produced. Majority of the videos consisted of old infrastructure that was in use anymore, demonstrating the place’s lost of purpose, questioning it’s purpose as a place at all. It was interesting for people to capture places that may have come across asa “non-place” nonetheless they were still active. For example, Dusty’s film was set in a empty warehouse that seemed to no longer have it’s original use, nonetheless, the second day she went there was a knife stabbed into a cushion which wasn’t there the day before. Showing that the public, still had use of a place for this, especially the homeless, who had found a new “home”.

One of my favourite’s was Rose’s, I love how she questioned the meaning of specific places, she contrasted the action of one place on the set of polar place. Usually bathrooms are thought about to be unhygienic and private, and Rose had a young woman eating all sorts of food around the entire public bathroom, she was eating noodles on the toilet seat, lollies on the floor, and I was really grossed out by it. However, it did get me thinking about how a place can have it’s own specific meaning and certain things apply to certain places, I have always been told to not take my food into the bathroom, and to always make sure I’m very clean before I go to a restaurant, especially before I eat, and contrasting the specifics between the two sites was very interesting to observe.

Project Brief 2 | From Here to There

In a city that is over-populated with shops, restaurants, offices, and schools for society to socialise, eat and live within, there are limited parks for these destinations. Car parks are essentially a “place” to leave your car to go to your real “place”, and therefore sparks the question is a car park considered a place or non-place? “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” Marc Auge (1995). Although a car park may contain history with customers, it doesn’t form a significant historical reference or a sense of identity and thus lies the question is a car park considered a place?

The reason we chose to photograph and film this inner city car park was due to the lack of maintenance. Places usually attain some form of respect and require hygiene and preservation. The car park was painted in dust and dirt, the graffiti and tagging from strangers is the main source of colour, as well as there were broken pipes, wires, glass, windows, and rat position on the floor. There is no value for this space, this four wall concreted public space, with faded paint and broken windows are employed as a seven levelled garage.

I aimed to construct my film with a sense of repetition as well as an exploration of non-place. I utilised three different audio clips of cars driving, electricity sparking and a car locking and played them on a loop. The structure of my film was set by displaying a few photographs followed by a short piece of footage to match the photographs of different areas of the car park. This was done to mimic the cycle of the public’s abuse of the car park, collect ticket, drive in, park, drive out, dispense ticket.

Another focus on my film was to question the meaning of the text on most of the walls, as across all levels of the spacious parking lot were plastic signs. The Government’s signage possessed titles such as “no parking”, “no standing”, “exit”, “no exit”, “no entry” and “entry” all over the walls. From a non-place perspective, the car park is never considered a place that you would stay. It is a pathway to where your real destination is, the arrows lead you in, and lead you straight back out again.

Marc Auge states in his Non Places – Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), “the distinction between places and non-places derives from the opposition between place and space.” I strongly agree with this statement as it explores the importance of place and the insignificance of space. My definition of a place is somewhere that attains value, that’s respected and is of liveable conditions, a space is empty, only utilised when it is necessary, no one would choose to go to the car park unless they were to utilise it for it’s purpose, to park your car, or take it home, no one just wants to “hang out” at their local parking lot.

References:

  1. Auge, M 1995 “Non-Places – Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity”, Verso, London and New York.

Media Studio 2 | Thurs Wk. 4

This class was a very relaxed class in which we could have time to edit some of Project Brief 2 assignment, I used this to catch up on blog posts and begin to make a plan about how I would structure my film. It was very difficult, I was struggling a lot to connect the pieces, I’m used to making some form of narrative with my work, however, this place did not have much meaning, and there was literally no story. All I had was footage of a place, and the goal was to employ these materials into a film that presented this car-park into a non-place. I did notice I had much more photographs than footage so I decided to make more of a montage of a place in a specific sequence, to highlight the continuous cycle of abuse people do with a carpark using the iMovie program on my Mac.

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Media Studio 2 | Wed Wk. 4

Today Siobhan and I skipped class to go film our “non-place”. We decided on a car park off Elizabeth St. in the city. I mainly took photographs of the place, trying to find abstract viewpoints, and capture the multitude of signage around the building. It was seven levels high, and it was relatively quiet, therefore you were able to hear the sounds of the carpark very easily, such as the electricity moving through the circuits, the inner city traffic, the lights flickering. The entire space had an eerie aesthetic, although many people come in and out of this place, no one stayed, society utilises this place as a stepping stone to their actual destination, their real “place”.

I’m not quite sure how I am going to put the footage together to be honest, I have quite a lot of photographs, and a few sound recordings and video footage but I don’t know how to structure the piece together in a sense that conveys the message I wish to portray.