Pink Performance Video Experiments: Blender Video Textures and Runway ML

 I missed the part of the Low Residency where Alex Schady invited everyone to make costumes out of pick card and stuff (I don't really know what stuff, it was pink). Various people then filmed everyone as they put them on and marched around, and Alex invited everyone to experiment with the footage. I wasn't really sure what to do with it, and I was worried about the amount of time it might taken when I am already struggling with the compulsion to make projects and also the need to write the research paper... However, I asked JK if I should 'just play' and he said something like 'absolutely' and somehow that freed me up to mess around.

I tried (and am finishing off) a couple of experiments. Firstly I tried some experiments with putting video into Blender scenes - this was a sort inspired in a typically Tathos-contrarian way by Alex's suggestion to put the video behind a real physical scene. Instead of putting the scene in the video, I put the video in the scene.... I tried putting some footage of poor Catherine onto a giant 'billboard':

It was a bit 'meh', but the way the light from the billboard illuminated the scene inspired me to try lighting up a scene using a moving billboard - this time floating from a derigable (sp?!):

The sequence ended up being quite long, so I'm still rendering it - a derrigible makes one pass to give you better visibility on what it is, then one passes next to the windows, filling the room with moving light.

I also tried a sequence where I reflect the video in a 'silvered' mask of my own shocked face:

Obviously this was inspired by the play of light from the video, plus the experiments I did before with a silvered version of my face.

Secondly I used something called Runway Video Editor to edit video sequences using ML prompts to change the background - this was less successful but still fun:

The Blender video experiments were really interesting and definitely helped me to overcome my worries about video. It got me really thinking about light and how to play with it. Unfortunately it also helped to highlight (yet again) how puny my laptop is for doing 3d work, but I feel a stubborn desire to work with the tool destiny has given me, not rush out and splash the cash that Carolyn and I worked so hard to save.

Grass root masks: Grow roots into life-casting moulds?

My face casing is next week, and I'm still semi-sub-consciously thinking of things I can do with it. I was thinking of the woven grass structures I want to experiment with in the summer (trying to create people or buildings and then photographing their slow decay and return to nature). I was wondering if grass can be 'moulded'. I'm not sure as any attempt to search for 'grass' and 'mould' just returns stuff about lawn treatments for mildew ;) BUT it's definitely possible to grow grass roots into moulds. The process seems to use wheatgrass rather than native grass so it wouldn't be suitable for the idea above, since I intended to leave the art in public spaces as well as private ones, and I wouldn't want the wheatgrass to take hold. However, it could be suitable for an experiment in the garden I guess. I could also be a lot of fun!

A hundred days of death?

 I'm loosing the stomach for turning dead bees into art - it seems a bit disrespectful, but also very open to misinterpretation. I like the idea though... Another way to represent the idea came to me today - the PolyCam app seems to work well for doing 3d photogrammetry of small objects, e.g. this ornament of mine:

Perhaps I could 3d scan the bees instead? Maybe then 3d print them? It would be cool because I could capture them in-situ with the ground and other things around them. Thinking about "A Month in my Head", I could potentially do some sort of series - e.g. capture every dead thing I see for a day? A week? A month? Capture a dead thing a day for 100 days? The point not being to to 'yuk people out' with dead stuff, but rather to allude to how much death we are surrounded by. I could potentially explore recording different 'deaths' in different media - 3d prints, scans, photos, 2d art, etc etc

Some of us have to float the other way!

I drift through the warm still air of the rococo hall, unexpectedly well-lit, but a little shabby. Freed from my body at last, I float and waft, twist and drift. Around me, the other disembodied forms of those  labelled the 'good' by some unseen author, drift too. Evil is defeated, victory is ours. 

Slowly, like popcorn popping in slow motion, they begin bursting into firework nebulae of gold.

Finally, in this moment, they will come together, to find the ultimate state as a merged entity of unconscious unknowing bliss. The glowing amalgamation floats closer, waiting for me to surrender my identity. And in a moment, I know I cannot. This is not who I am. 

With a twist I propel myself away through the air towards the walls, calling over my shoulder "Sorry! Some of us have to float the other way!". The entity watches me go, with wry amusement. I am ever the trickster anti-hero. They expected nothing less.

"Frida Kahlo", Guerrilla Girls, on art as a community experience, not a competition

 "Can't we think about art as not being about winners, but as being about something we all need in our lives? There are so many cultural traditions where art is collective and it's done in a community, and artists work together. They might do individual work, but they somehow present a kinder idea of what it means to have a creative life."

I love this quote from "Frida Kahlo". It resonates with a lot of things starting to form in my mind about motivation. I don't expect to make a wage from art, so why keep doing it? Because I enjoy it, but also because I want people to see my stuff, and to see me... 

But actually, perhaps it's enough to just make stuff you love and share it freely? My mum wrote poetry occasionally and was so excited when a single poem was published in a local literature volume. My grandfather painted, for himself, his art only ever hung on the walls of his home. Making art to please other people is vanity, and vanity is ok, but perhaps the true reward is the enrichment it gives you to make it? Perhaps creativity is just a basic requirement of a life well-lived?

Paint it in blood: Are art galleries antithetical to what I want to do?

At my tutorial, to help me think about aesthetics, JK suggested I should consider imagining my interim show piece in a different way, and reflect on how the aesthetics change. One of my rants (which JK gamely read and responded positively to) was how the aesthetic of my piece clashed with the aesthetic of CSM. My pieces was 'beautiful mess' of human emotion that sort of vomited out of it's frame and took over the entire side of the constructed wall assigned to it. It was a million miles (in my mind) from the exquisite pieces on clean white walls aesthetic that I imagine CSM to champion. I really wanted therefore to imagine how I could have done it in a more 'CSM aesthetic.

Whenever I need to do some serious reflection, if I can, I go for a walk. As I tramped through the Kent countryside, I tried to think of stripping the work back to it's bare essentials - the postcards were a vehicle, as was the wall, what the piece was really about was sharing. 

As I grappled with ideas, suddenly unbidden an image popped into my head. Blood. FUCKING blood... Give everyone a bowl of blood and they write their messages on the walls in blood. 

I literally stopped dead in my tracks... The Tathos side of me was still yelling "hell yeah! blood! that's what they need!". The Tomgos side was shocked and curious. So much anger. Why when I was trying to think of a clean under-stated aesthetic, would my head go there? Why the anger towards CSM? Why the desire to incite people to metaphorically (or potentially literally!) splash them with blood? 

I could sense the blood wasn't about violence, but rather the desire to shock, the desire to shock people 'awake'. And then it struck me art galleries are (for me) immensely emotionally repressed spaces. They are, in a real sense, antithetical to what I am trying to do in my MA project. My project is about attacking taboos around grief and mental health, art galleries are hushed spaces, welcoming to few, with complex social rules about 'good' behaviour.

This felt like a really important insight. I'm not sure what it means yet, as in, what practical implications it has for my work.

Tutorial 3 with Jonathan 3 May 2024

 I came into this tutorial struggling with the lack of feedback on the art itself. To try to structure the tutorial and help JK understand the question I had (which was by no means clear to me), I used the old format of 'good, bad, ugly' that I used to use with my team. So my 'good, bad, ugly' were:

Good:

• I am exploring and expanding like crazy! I am discovering more and more and it's exciting
• "One month in my head" went well and was my first significant investment in a long term project
• The interim show went well, and did what I planned for it to do
• I've discovered and finally recognised that my work expresses a deep morose anger about what happened to me that I don't really feel in my day-to-day life, but which clearly exists at some deeper level
• I feel a real positive urgency to make work - I have lots of projects on the go, and I feel the need to keep making

Bad:

• I am far from my core skill-set of making work algorithmically. This is interesting and exciting and feels 'right' but means my vision for a piece often far exceeds my ability to realise it. I am forced to use cobble things together using ready-made components wherever I can - in some cases my 'pieces' being little more than an assemblage of ready-made items
• I feel I am working in a vacuum with very little external input
• I feel I am struggling to find enough time to make all the things I want to make

Ugly:

• I don't know WHY I am making art... It's for other people... but they don't get to see it. For me success isn't money or fame, it's people seeing and appreciating that I have something to say artistically. Failure is my partially rat-eaten corpse being found next to a dusty pile of my art which nobody has ever seen, and which is taken outside and burnt

This helped somewhat to frame the discussion, although my exact worry was still not very well articulated.

JK assured me that what I was doing was 'right' and I need to keep going. He said he was encouraged by some of the things I've said, especially the discovery and the urgency. He urged me not to think about the end of the course as 'the end' of my art making. He pointed out a few entries on my blog as being evidence that I am building that muscle to be able to be my own critic.

Feedback and how to get it

With regards to feedback, he suggested that my art could be very difficult for people to crit, as it clearly comes from somewhere very personal. In response to my challenge that almost every field places feedback front and centre, but it seems to be almost actively rejected in fine art, JK pointed out that fine art is unusual in that it's very hard to separate the art from the artist - to denigrate the art is to denigrate the artist themselves. I asked if that was like the psychotherapist principle that people's emotions are valid, even if they are not defensible (if you saying 'hi' makes me angry, my anger is still a valid and real response, even if it's not reasonable). JK agreed it was - good or bad, the artist's art is 'valid', it's their reality, and therefore critiquing it can be a VERY touchy business. He explained that giving feedback on art is an artform in it's own right. He explained that in a couple of the upcoming units, we have an exercise in giving feedback using very structured prompts that help to decouple the feedback on the art from being feedback on the artist themselves as a person.

JK said that ultimately the only person who can critique my art is me! He pointed out evidence on the blog that I am building that skill. We talked about sales as an analogy. JK said that great sales people probably seem to do what they do effortlessly. I pointed out that they are often terrible in their first pitch, but learn fast. JK said you probably send years refining your pitch, I said you do so in the context of customer feedback! Not explicit, but implicit.

Aesthetics

I shared that one area I am very uncomfortable with is aesthetics - I explained that I was scared I was making ugly art and wouldn't even know. JK explained it was something you develop over time, and that he could see evidence of my starting to develop it in the choices I describe making on the blog.

I asked if it could be 'learnt' or comes from working deeply with a material and/or form. JK said that you could, of course, learn some 'rules' like the golden ratio, and that was valid, but like many rules, you learn them to break them. He broadly agreed that it was something that developed out of relentless practice and a deep appreciation for what you are trying to do.

Finally he suggested I think about the piece I did for the interim show, the aesthetics of which I was very critical of, and think of different ways it could have been done with different aesthetics - he suggested for instance, with hand-made cards.

Update 4 May 2023

I had an overall feeling coming out of the tutorial that made sense, but I couldn't put it into words. I was an image of an empty railway station, with me sitting contemplatively on a bench. Chatting to Bethany, she's summarised it in words perfectly:

I hate to say it because it’s a craving you have but I deeply believe that wanting feedback is a fool’s errand. You’ll never get it. You might get helpful tit bits along the way that sometimes have a huge impact but I do think the grinding longing for feedback is something we as artists just need to conquer and dispense with. Trusting your own process is hard and lonely but it is the only way to your best work.

Yes. That. I am at peace I think...

Started "Art and Laughter" by Sheri Klein

Started reading "Art and Laughter" by Sheri Klein (Bloomsbury Publishing) as background for my Research Paper. Despite being ironically dry for a book about humour, it's thoughtful and readable, and has already opened up some interesting angles.