Category Archives: Specific To Site

Final Signal & Specific to Site Reflection

The final project brief for specific to site was exhibited at ‘Signal’. This creative arts studio aimed to provide a space for young artists of all mediums. With the assistance of classmates, our tutor, and the employees at Signal we were able to put on an exhibition for 3 nights in the heart of the city on the Yarra. Our team worked hard and cooperatively in particular groups to prepare, promote and run the show. The different groups included the tech team, the installation team, PR, project managers and the documentation team. I was a member of the public relations team, and through being appointed this job I had a variety of responsibilities to ensure the success of the promotion of the exhibition. One of my main tasks consisted of constructing and the distributing of visual promotions. These included assisting in the construction of the website, placing of posters, and cutting and dispersing of the flyers.

Our team had a group conversation via the social media platform, Facebook, to keep in contact to keep on top of activities and to brainstorm and collaborate ideas. It was here we voted on placing posters in spaces in which are often densely populated and thus would have a higher chance of being identified. This included the library, building 80, the student lounge, RMIT connect, and the media and communications building 9. (See blog post here). However, when I asked the librarian’s permission to put up the posters, they declined kindly and informed me that we are supposed to seek permission from RUSU on where to dispense posters. After speaking with RUSU, we had permission to place posters in RMIT connect, the pillars of building 8 and we had to seek permission from individual buildings for the other places, and therefore we also placed them in building 9. Another job of mine was working with Rose on developing the website, providing potential viewers the opportunity with a link to each individual student’s Media Factory blog, blurbs for their work and a portrait of themselves. (See website here).

Overall, this semester has been far greater than semester 1, the ‘Specific to Site’ studio has taught me a lot on methods of exhibiting, editing skills and collaboration. I enjoyed being able to work and produce all forms of mediums for media, such as photography, audio and film. As the semester progressed I have a made a lot of new friends, as well learnt a lot of valuable skills such as editing for film. We were provided workshops on particular programs such as Premiere Pro, and that plus the help of classmates and my tutor I was able to learn a completely new program and work with arranging multiple footage on one screen, cropping, sizing and edits of reversing and slow-motion. The signal exhibition, the backpack projection night and Project Brief 3 for Testing Grounds really extended my skills on collaboration and allowed myself to experience working in the media industry professionally, working with real artists, and real employees of the studio art world was very valuable and a great insight to the media environment. It also allowed myself to immerse in the struggles with communication, and hardships of putting an exhibition together, especially if there is not a mutual understanding on collaboration and effort.

Furthermore, through this studio my conceptual process of creating films has expanded immensely. Robbie has expressed to me a new understanding of place, and the relevance of set, scene, and studio galleries. I was able to challenge the idea of place and non-place and match it amongst the art world. From this, I believe that any sort of space could be made into a place, depends on one’s interpretation, project brief 2 really helped me to explore this. (See blog post here). I had such a small understanding of curatoring and studios, however after being exposed to Testing Grounds and the Signal studio, I have developed a deeper understanding for galleries and exhibitions.

Moving away from conventional exhibition spaces whether it is a gallery or exhibition space, we have focused to explore more alternative spaces that would compliment our work. Although traditional exhibition spaces may offer “perfect” lighting or an ideal colour scheme, alternative spaces such as outdoors or projections from a building offer a sense of ambience or atmosphere that other spaces could simply not offer. While observing works in the outdoors, each viewer has a unique experience, while being offered the opportunity to be influenced from external factors. Making art seem fun to the public, rather than mysterious, incomprehensible and solitary, has led a growing list of artists and municipalities around the country to create open studio events (Grant, 2010). Therefore, with the influence of readings, Robbie and the Project Briefs, I have deferred from the idea of traditional projects of artwork and been exposed to more non-traditional places, redefining the “place” of artwork, and becoming more specific to the environments of production of artwork as well as the display of art.

 

References:

  1. Grant, D 2010, Selling Art Without Galleries: Towards Making a Living from Your Art, Allworth Press, United States.

Project Brief 4 Reflection

Obsession is defined as an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind. The over-arching theme for our Project Brief 4 linked all the students’ work together, as well as allowing us to branch off and explore this particular theme through our own interpretation. Initially it was challenging to think of an individual theme to branch off ‘obsession’, as there were so many different paths to go down. Beginning with the idea of balance, with further brainstorming, I finalised my theme to “Gravity”. With this, I wanted to breakdown the perception of gravity, creating illusions with movement, exploring the freedom that flight and slow motion provide, with use of film and digital effects. Vladimir Frieder’s journal article, “Overcoming Gravity: Pushkin on Freedom and Art” had an interesting perspective on comparing gravity to life as he states “the kind of freedom and ease enjoyed by Pushkin do not come easily; they are the result of overcoming the gravity of earthly life, its injustices.” He relates gravity has a sense of stabilisation in one’s life, and I found that very intriguing, as without gravity, everything on Earth would be crazy, and therefore, challenging gravity would create a form of chaos.

Nake Frieder mentions in his journal article, ‘Spectacular Bodies’ (2002) that “the human body has… been a prominent subject of art through almost all its eras and styles” and to execute the idea of gravity, I incorporated the human body as my main subject and worked with a high level tumbler performing gymnastics skills on a sprung floor and trampoline. I utilised this to enhance the idea of movement especially with flight and rotational actions involved with majority of the skills he would perform as the freedom of movement and expression of the dance and art activities allowed [establishment] of homeostasis between self and world. (Rebecca Burrill, 2010). I filmed landscape shots to portray the flight, and some close up shots and mid-shots to highlight the movements of the body, however majority of the work was done using iMovie and Premiere.

Utilising these programs I was able to manipulate the speed, the angles, and the cropping of the footage. By employing slow motion to certain parts of the footage, it allowed the viewer to distinctly observe the multitude of movements occurring, however, I only utilised this editing skill on some parts of the film to maintain the viewer’s attention. To really accentuate the questioning of gravity, some of the film was reversed, played back to front, and I also placed some of the footage upside down and mirrored it against the other screens, as I had 4 small screens within the “Crossbar template” playing at the same time, as that is not able to occur in real life, all movement is in the same time, and whatever comes up, must come down.

Screen Shot 2015-10-20 at 10.35.42 pm

The main issue was the lighting and colouring of the set. However, I was limited to the choices of places to film, as I required certain equipment for the Project Brief to be produced. Therefore, I placed the gymnast in all white clothes to stand out from the accumulation of colours surrounding him, as well as the colour represents light, and purity, adding a sense of freedom of flight to my work. The colours came across dull through my lens and thus, to enhance the idea of freedom and elevation, I manipulated the colours in iMovie to become more saturated and vibrant. The array of colours also worked well into falling into the theme of challenging the perception gravity, as it enhances an abstract, pop culture aesthetic, to make it look a little unreal, as these particular movements do not occur in reality.

Creating the audio was the most challenging part of this Project. There was already so much occurring in the film that I did not want the sound to distract the viewer from the footage and therefore, I manipulated the same spring sound on repeat. However, utilising the program Garageband, I placed the same three audios over the top, and altered one of them to keep a consistent beat through the entire piece and then I manipulated the flex range in order to create an unusual, abstract edit to the audio to enhance the idea of distorted reality in terms of the perception of gravity.

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There were a few disappointments in the screening of my work at Signal, the footage was grainy, one of them was over-exposed, and one did not match up perfectly on the windows. However, overall, I was content with the finishing work for Project Brief 4, as I believe I conveyed my theme across the four pieces of footage and thirty-second audio. The film worked well with representing my theme, portraying the ideas of gravity, freedom and flight, through abstract colours, being obsessed with movement and the distortion of time and speed within my work.

signal exhib

 

References:

1. Burrill, R 2010, ‘The Primacy of Movement in Art Making’. Teaching Artists Journal, vol. 8, no.4, pp. 216-228
2. Frieder, N 2002, ‘Spectacular Bodies’, Leonardo To Now, vol. 35, no.4, pp. 455-457
3. Kantor, V 2000, ‘Overcoming Gravity: Pushkin on Freedom and Art’, Russian Studies in Literature, vol.36, no.1, pp. 50-61

Test Run at Signal

One more night before the opening of the exhibition!!!!!!

Tonight we met at Signal and we discussed where all our teams were at, and if there were any final jobs to attend to before the big night tomorrow. Everybody was on board with everything and therefore we all got to view our work for the first time through the windows of the Signal building. I was very impressed with a lot of the work my classmates had produced, one that stood out the most for me, was the one where the subjects were knocking on the window and had their hand on the window, it was very creative and looked excellent on the building. Overall, I was content with how my work was projected, however there were a few disappointments with over exposure one of them, and the footage came across very grainy. Another one was that I only heard my sound once (I think, it could have been none) on the overall audio, however I didn’t notice until much after. Nonetheless I am very excited for tomorrow’s opening night, it’s nice to see everything been put together after we have all put in a lot of work to make it happen.

signal test run

Team PR – Signal

Today Marissa, Elaine and I met up in the city and placed posters around RMIT University city campus to promote our final project’s exhibition at Signal. We met at building 80, discussed ideas of places to place them, they were given building 80, I was given building 8 and student study spaces, and Rose would place more in building 9 the next day. When I went to the library to distribute posters, I asked the librarians permission first, and lucky I did because I discovered that I had to seek permission from RUSU on where I could post our flyers. I went to building 12 and spoke with a RUSU official, and she suggested the only areas that are available were RMIT connect, and the pillars of building 8, otherwise we would have to seek permission from the school of the particular building. Therefore, I placed my posters in building 8 and RMIT connect, and Elaine and Marissa placed their posters in the media and communications building. After this I was given the flyers, designed by Rose and I took them home to cut up, ready to be handed out at the opening night at Signal.

signal posters signal posters:flyers

Project Brief 4 – updated

After listening to Robbie’s feedback about my video, I decided to redo my first and second sequence to create more of an abstract aesthetic, in which questions the perception of gravity. I also was not happy with my audio, and Robbie told me to work with the spring sound i originally had. I attempted to mix it in with the old audio, and make a new one but I wasn’t having much success, with the assistance of Robbie and Jordan however, we decided on placing the same piece of audio three times, and altering the sound by enabling the flex range in garageband. The sound that was produced from this matched up well with the theme I was going for, it was abstract and unnatural, which supports my theme of questioning gravity/movement. Here are the two new videos and audio sounds:

Media Studio | Wk. 12

Today is our last lesson for the year and I presented my Project Brief 4 to the class. Robbie’s feedback was very beneficial, he liked the idea of questioning gravity, and preferred the last 3 films, and to work on the second and first to match the others, to make it more abstract. Originally I thought the sound of the spring of the trampoline wasn’t good enough to use in the audio of the overall piece, however, Robbie really liked it and therefore, I’m going to go back and work on my audio again.

Project Brief 4

Finally, here is my last assignment for media this year, completed. I struggled to create this, with minimal footage and audio tracks, I think I’m happy with what I have made from it. My theme is Movement/gravity, identifying the point of flight and the feeling of freedom when amongst it.

Here are my four 8 second videos, and 30 second audio track:

Production/Editing

On Saturday I filmed Evan, and when I went back to my computer I had realised I actually didn’t get that much of footage, nonetheless I did not have time to re-shoot, I have to work with what I have. I am comfortable using iMovie the most, and therefore I made the footage for each window on that, and enhanced the colour on all the videos as the lighting came across very dull and lifeless in the footage. This way I was able to utilise the slo-motion effect and the reverse effect in iMovie, and then I dragged the items across to Premiere to put it all together with the “Crossbars” template that someone had placed on Google Docs for all of us to use to match our work correctly to the windows at Signal. I really tried to accentuate the idea of questioning gravity, and having a lot of flight in all of the footage. The audio was the toughest part, I didn’t think that my spring sound was good enough, so I avoided it and used Garageband to create an audio track with some chords to accentuate flight and a repetitive beat to enhance the idea of jumping.

Screenshot of work in Premiere

Screenshot of work in Premiere

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Media Studio | Thurs Wk. 11

Today, I brainstormed what I was going to film and record for my Signal – Project Brief 4. I’ve asked my close friend Evan, who is high level tumbler (person who can do flips) to come into the Gymnastics centre I work at, so perform some tricks for me, and then I’ll aim to do all the main work for my film on the computer. I’ll capture it with my Nikon D3000 and the lighting in the gymnasium isn’t very good so I’m going to have to edit that on the computer as well. I’ll film in 3 different places, 1 on the main trampoline, 2 on the full gymnastics floor, 3 against a plain wall. I want to film the same set of tricks on each place with different angles, so a low angle, a mid-shot, a upward angle, and film the bottom half of the body, then the top half, so I have the ability to move around the same action across different screens with different angles. I’ll also get my subject matter in white clothes so he stands out against the equipment as the multiple colours in the room may be distracting, as well as it will represent life, and flight.

Media Studio | Wed Wk. 11

Today in class, I sat with Robbie and we finally sorted out my theme, from balance, to movement, I feel like I like to expand off movement and work with gravity, and question the art of gravity and how it functions, working with slow-motion, and rotating and mirroring of images, films etc. As I didn’t have any footage to work off in class, I decided to do some research on the RMIT library to help me out, I found quite a couple good articles on gravity and relating it to art. Vladimir Kantor’s journal article, “Overcoming Gravity: Pushkin on Freedom and Art” had an interesting perspective on comparing gravity to life as he states “the kind of freedom and ease enjoyed by Pushkin do not come easily; they are the result of overcoming the gravity of earthly life, its injustices.” He relates gravity has a sense of stabilisation in one’s life, and I found that very intriguing, as without gravity, everything on Earth would be crazy, and therefore, challenging gravity would create a form of chaos. During this tutorial, Nicolette also helped me download the program Premiere, and taught me how to use it so once I had my footage I would be able to edit with ease with this Adobe program.