Time Travel Dog - In-Class Exercise with Final Cut Pro

I made this for you.

This is what I mean when I say Tim and Eric are performers.

It's like they were possessed by the spirit of Chris Burden, but they're kind of more depressing.


Here you go.

Favorite Video Art Performance

I've been a huge fan of Improv Everywhere since about 2008, when I first saw them on youtube.
I love improvisation and involving the public sphere in a transient moment that's being recorded and has so much intent behind it on the part of the artists, and is so fleeting and absurd to those unsuspecting others captured in the moment.

Here's one called the mp3 Experiment, which every year has been gaining momentum (this one is from 2012, and it's the 9th annual installment). In this particular video, over 4,000 people participated. You'll get the gist of it when you watch it.

Here's another called the 1860's Bar, it's very jolly and puts two guys in a beautifully crafted, full-on performance piece, where they interact and explore this spontaneous-to-them world. Their reactions are great to watch, I don't think I could see this without a smile creeping up on my face. It's interesting how in the vast majority of these videos, everyone who isn't in on the bit reflexively laughs and smiles.

I encourage you to check out Food Court Musical, and Frozen Grand Central, both of which went viral shorty after they came out in 2007.

Lastly, if you're still with me at this point, No Shirts is a great social commentary as well as a comedic awakening to men's bodies in pop culture compared to reality. So often the focus is on the  idolization of distorted women's bodies, but here 111 men take off their shirts and explore a large, multi-floored Abercrombie. I especially love the interactions between the model at the entrance, and the other men.

Video Art Notes (pg 6-20)

Introduction:

• emphasis on presence of video screens in our lives: Times Square, computers, televisions, and mobile phones.
• "No beginning/No end/No direction/No duration - Video as mind" 

                            -Bill Viola

              I am confused by this quote. Videos have duration. unless you replay them. How could one say that other art forms have duration? Surely Viola does not mean other art forms (painting, sculpture, dance, fiber, theatre, etc) grow old and inapplicable while video does not; or that video art 'lasts' longer than other art, for all art is subject to both temporal and physical decay. The last part of the sentence: "Video as mind" conjures analogies to consciousness. Human consciousness is more easily likened to video than a painting or other 'stagnant' object, as the mind is described and describes itself as a motile 'object' in time and space. Metaphor is language, and this simile provokes one to conceive of oneself as a stream of images flashing quickly on a screen. (That's a very stupid idea. What is the screen? What are the images? What is producing/editing them? What is projecting them? What is watching them? "video as mind" implies passivity on the part of the viewer, I interpret this viewer as the 'ego', or, better put and with less Freudian baggage, 'attention'.

Maybe I'll stop this analysis of consciousness, because if I don't, I'll not complete what I assume I am assigned, and I'd rather not get zero credit on an assignment because I wrote something tangential to your intentions.

But I don't want to write any more about the intro, because the rest of these quotes are (like Viola's) initially intriguing, and, upon several seconds reflection, completely ridiculous.

Except:

• Bertolt Brecht is cool, he points out "the risk of enforced conformity and indoctrination". This kindled discussion of media from a philosophical and sociological perspective. 

More will be posted, I do promise.

The 1960's

• 
  

The 1970's

• 
  

The 1980's

•