RECYCLED IMAGES

ASTROLAND PICS 7

2010-07-21T15:44:00.001-06:00

ASTROLAND PICS 6

2010-07-21T15:42:00.001-06:00

ASTROLAND PICS 5

2010-07-21T15:40:00.002-06:00

ASTROLAND PICS 4

2010-07-21T15:38:00.003-06:00

ASTROLAND PICS 3

2010-07-21T15:37:00.002-06:00

ASTROLAND PICS 2

2010-07-21T15:35:00.003-06:00

Pics from ASTROLAND FILM SHOW MAY 2010

2010-07-21T15:32:00.004-06:00

all photos: Meagan Flannery

2010-05-04T20:23:00.002-06:00

getting excited about our FILM SHOW next Wednesday at AstroLand!!!!!!

2010-04-30T11:15:00.007-06:00

Curious about ASTROLAND? They might be Boulder's last hope, and by 'they' I mean YOU.

Our poster is coming soooon! Here is the talented Ryan working very hard on it in the projection room attended by his muses Anna and Tara. We are collaborating with C.Battle's Focus on the Frame class for this show, plus local punx Thee Gootchi Boiz --you know that golden haired drummer, right?

SPONTANEOUSly

2010-04-25T10:54:00.002-06:00

Editing in the basement, or, we heart MACKY!

2010-04-18T20:33:00.009-06:00

2010-04-01T12:31:00.011-06:00

URLS for in-class web day:

Marshall McLuhan
Lawrence Lessig
Creative Commons
CCMixter
Prelinger Internet Archive
Illegal Art (film and video)
Lost in Light project
Crash Course in Copyright

artists projects:
Olia Lialina
Bobby Abate
Young Hae Chang Industries
Cory Arcangel:
super mario
born to run
Ray Harmon
eTeam-SL dumpster

The Ecstasy of Influence

2010-03-29T19:15:00.005-06:00

image by Owen O'Toole from back in the day

OK so now READ THIS article by Jonathan Lethem called The Ecstasy of Influence: a plagiarism, originally published in Harpers Magazine in early 2007, essential reading for all of us recyclers/appropriationists/samplers/remixers/fair users/ supercutters/and masher-uppers out here. Author Lethem even has his own project called Promiscuous Materials that is very similar to Jay-Z's 2005 online Construction Set , where the tracks to his Black Album were made downloadable specifically for musical remix use. WE listened to a little bit of DangerMouse's The Grey Album (2004) that was a direct result of that project, which certainly shook the copyright laws up--check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's reportage on the federal copyright exception called 'fair use' specifically surrounding Feb 24, 2004, the day of coordinated internet civil disobedience known as Grey Tuesday. George Harrison was probably rolling in his grave, after everything he went through with the My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine trial in 1976.

perfect as is

2010-03-17T12:37:00.006-06:00

left: PerfectFilm(1986), Ken Jacobs,
and above: Beirut Outtakes (2007) by Peggy Ahwesh

We've spent some time on readymades and gave ourselves permission to think about found films as found objects. We watched Works and Days (1969) by Hollis Frampton, What Makes Day and Night (1998) by Yours Truly and of course Perfect Film by Ken Jacobs. But we didn't stop there -- we spent some time with 3 very recent and very short found footage works pointing to the African American experience from various archives as unearthed by Kevin Jerome Everson; check out his Ten Things About Vegas here. And finally we watched two of Peggy Ahwesh's films dealing with the found deterioration of film material to very differnt ends: the entertaining and political Beirut Outakes from 2007 and her outrageous 1994 fem/porn/tango piece The Color of Love .

Detournement!

2010-03-09T20:23:00.005-07:00

Busy day in class, what with a basic Introduction to concepts of 'detournment', which according to our friend wikipedia, "is a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one has a meaning that is antagonist to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhat familiar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message."
Read this comic and this other comic for a funny unsparing introduction to their ideas!
This strategy of detournemnt was initially practiced by the Situationist International, and we read some excerpts from Situationist theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord, most famous for his text and film Society of the Spectacle, where he states " The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images." He is often spoken of in the same breath as his contemporary Jean Baudrillard who used the term 'simulacra' rather than Debord's 'spectacle'.

We watched an excerpt of the classic 1973 SI film Can Dialectics Break Bricks? by Rene Vienet, which influenced many works such as the Bay Area's st01len collective's The Lord of the Rings of Free Trade (2001). See more of their activist remixes here.

Another work worth mentioning that we didn't quite have time for is an audio tape collage called Reagan Speaks for Himself (1981) made by sound artist Douglas Kahn. As you can see from the picture above it was distributed via a flexi-disc that btw was inserted inside Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's comic-art magaizine RAW.

Up next: Duchamp's Readymades and Ken Jacobs Perfect Film (1985).

A+B=C

2010-03-04T19:59:00.007-07:00

Busy busy cutting at the Steenbecks and working with found film now, sharpening our scalpels and making precision cuts in bursts of three--in homage to Eisenstein, japanese haiku and the general round magic of the number 3 . I like to call them simple machines myself, which can later be assembled into larger more complex machines otherwise known as, um, films...
It would be lovely to her about everyone's edits on their individual blogs!
Here's John's:

Here's Hogan's:

Here's Michael's:

and here's Kevin Rice's (last years class)

Artists and amateurs

2010-02-25T15:30:00.008-07:00

This week we studied the amazing amusing films of American artist Joseph Cornell, locating them at the intersection of his deep involvement with collage and his love for the cinema. "ROSE HOBART" (1936)is his infamous 16mm film-collage portrait of the actress Rose Hobart made from the 1931 jungle drama "East of Borneo" in which the artist essentially excises from the film all that is not the object of his devotion. Your fearless leader spent many years holed up at Anthology Film Archives studyng and cataloging his film collection, and wrote this monograph for the SFMOMA Cornell exhibition a few years back.

Looking further then into amateur film--home movies, family films and personal archives . Abigail Child's The Future is Behind You (2004) was one example of an artist using films from a family's collection and creating her own story around those images and people--if you liked that you might be interested in reading a short interview with her in the Wees book as well.

The first real history on that subject was Patricia Zimmerman's Reel Families: A Social History of the Amateur Film (1995), Here's an excerpt for you!

exquisite corpse

2010-02-19T00:07:00.005-07:00

still from REMOVED (1999) by Naomi Uman

here is our exquisitely distressed destroyed corpse of a collaborative film project--we started with a movie called JUNKYARD and each person had a section to alter in any way they saw fit, a result of various experiments we have been making with the film material over the last month. I am so glad we can watch it again and again--there aer so many details I missed during the screening! Who did that contact printing?? Maybe each person can discuss their particular section and methods? Yay.
Oh, and here are a couple other class collaboratives, one from The New School in 2008 and one from Boulder 2009.

After watching our project, we projected Naomi Uman's 1999 film REMOVED where she used nail polish and bleach selectively on a found piece of Italian soft-core. This film shows up on several DVD compilations, most importantly on the ILLEGAL ART dvd collection (a project related to STAYFREE magazine). You can buy the dvd or download/stream and watch here.

collage films? said bruce

2010-02-11T17:03:00.012-07:00

That's right, we are still making, thinking, watching and breathing collage...

We took our first look at some found footage collage films by the recently departed SF artist Bruce Conner, notably A MOVIE ( 1958) and REPORT (1967), as we compare collage to montage. But first, here's Michael reading from his New York Times Burroughs-style CUT-UP poem--btw, I sure would love it if some people would post their cut-ups on their blogs since we unearthed some interesting poetic details about life on this planet IMHO--

Alot of people worked with the transfer method and so many collage films were heavily text based --we started with Michelle's awesome film of T.S. Eliot's J.Alfred Prufrock that she talked about on her blog--I was so transfixed that I totally forgot to shoot it (sorry Michelle).
Here are a few that I did manage to shoot :

Melissa's Cosmo Movie (materials list includes mascara)

Hogan's TAKE 1,2,3 ( movie trailer in shreds)

and Jeri's Who the F*ck Am I?--check out that keystone "cinemascope"

Papier colle

2010-02-02T22:02:00.017-07:00

"The sensation of physically operating in the world is very strong in the medium of collage..." Robert Motherwell

George Braque, Violin and Pipe, 1913

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1913

This week's workshop on Magazine Transfers was pretty great as you can see from our class film below made with a large variety of materials .
We also investigated William Burroughs Cut up techniques using the New York Times and revealed some pretty interesting information hidden on those pages.

But meanwhile how about some readings on COLLAGE: the first is in relationship to the visual arts and the second is in relationship to the literary arts.

The Synthetic Century: Collage from Cubism to PostModernism, by Elisabeth Hodermarsky
and
The Cut-Up Method, by William Burroughs

magazine transfer film:

COLOR! PATTERN! RHYTHM!

2010-01-28T17:21:00.012-07:00

(frame enlargement from the hand painted Film #3, Interwoven, Harry Smith 1947-1949,
and inspirational Seminole Patchwork designs above that)

oh yes, it's all about color, pattern, and visual rhythm in hand painted film this week.
We watched Harry Smith's Early Abstractions (above), which you can peer at here in a very compressed version w/ Teiji Ito soundtrack = NOT Meet the Beatles. More Harry Smith links are here (grammy award) and here (his archives at the Getty). We also watched Stan Brakhage's stained glass-inspired Chartres Series (1994) and Richard Reeves Linear Dreams (1997), among other handpainted films.

This week's reading is VISUAL MUSIC , an essay by Jeremy Strick from the amazing catalog to a 2005 travelling exhibition called Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Music and Art since 1900.
And if you like that you might like to check out The Center for Visual Music in L.A where abstraction reigns king.

But back to the present--here are a few of our own hand-painted experiments !

Red Dot, Black Dot, by Christopher:

Mike's brand new bag:

Tara's acrylic determination:

Casa Bonita by Katie

Scratch My Emulsion

2010-01-22T14:20:00.006-07:00

top: detail from Marco Breuer’s Untitled (C-498), 2004, made with scratched chromogenic paper, courtesy Von Lintel Gallery , NY
bottom: detail, frames from Stan Brakhage hand scratched titles

This week we watched everybody's first attempts at hand scratched films --this was our first assignment in direct animation! It's a fun though laborious method of making your own titles and credits, like the venerable filmmaker Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) famous for his hand-scratched titles.

Directly working on the film and photographic material has been around as long as the materials themselves, but there's been renewed interest in direct techniques in the art world recently.
In 2008, The Drawing Center in New York -- which only shows drawings--had an amazing exhibit called DRAWING ON FILM that featured artists works from the 30's till the 00's. And check out the photographer Marco Breur whose most recent body of work finds him scratching directly onto exposed photographic paper, as above. Aperture published an awesome book of this work called 'Early Recordings '--we have it here in the Norlin Library .

Ok so here is John's scratch film--looks like he's all set with his end titles and all he has to do now is make the rest of his film!

Before there was cinema...

2010-01-19T17:33:00.005-07:00

Today was the first project on pre-cinematic devices:

(See Jeri and Ryan's tricky little thaumatropes below)

We WATCHED some 16mm film prints :

'Free Radicals'(1958/79) by Len Lye, 'Gently Down the Stream' (1986) by Su Friedrich & 'Abrasions'(1991) by Joel Schlemowitz for inspiration and research towards our next project in hand scratched and etched film--experiments to be posted very soon.

+CHECK out this very interesting article by Polly Ullrich,

originally printed in the New ARt Examiner out of Chicago, called

THE WORKMANSHIP OF RISK: the re-emergence of handcraft in the post-modern age.
Looking forward to your comments!

New Semester! New Decade!!

2010-01-12T17:12:00.002-07:00

Greetings from Boulder Colorado, The United States of America, and a special welcome to the new generation of Recycled Images students! We all just met today for the first time and watched a couple of films dealing with afterimages. I really love this short magical ghost-film NADJA by Brian Frye.

Zoe Beloff has a great site devoted to pre-cinematic optical devices 'Philosophical Toy World"

And for future reference, here is the RECIPES FOR DISASTER film cookbooklet , edited and organized by the late filmmaker Helen Hill-- .

Stay tuned for some unique cinema from our new Recyclers!

FINAL SCREENING--the first Colorado edition!

2008-12-14T17:11:00.002-07:00

discovery comes from doing

2008-12-06T16:42:00.008-07:00

Kevin sorts it out on the floor
JT scratches away frame by frame.

Abby working with her 8mm home movies

Lindsay isolating a laugh track moment

hard at work...

2008-12-03T15:35:00.005-07:00

This week is an all-workshop week, and here are Jo-jo, Abbey and Sarah at the Steenbecks, contemplating which shots they really need for their final films... and Matthew, Abbey, and Kevin in the projection room...

a little Thanksgiving fun!

2008-11-25T21:44:00.005-07:00

Watch the hilarious "USO JUSTO" here!

In case you didn't get your fill of culture jamming...

2008-11-13T18:14:00.006-07:00

Today we were pretty excited by the beautiful fake New York Times edition produced and distributed for free by international pranksters The Yes Men a few days ago. And here's what the New York Times had to say about it.

Anyway I couldn't have said it better myself, so in the interest of free time for free people I will just post a link below to our 'kindred spirit' bloggers at SIX-BY-ONE who often dip into the same MEDIA honeypot--they have a few culture-jamming embedded videos worth watching over there so check 'em out, and thanks guys!
http://mothership6x1.blogspot.com/2008/10/week-10-in-case-you-didnt-get-your-fill.html

ps. the icing on the cake

The Ecstasy of Influence

2008-11-05T18:03:00.003-07:00

Here's the article The Ecstasy of Influence: a plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem that was published in Harpers magazine last year, which starts with this quote by English poet John Donne (1600's) from Meditation XVll
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...

happy election day!

2008-11-04T18:22:00.003-07:00

Reagan Speaks for Himself (1981), by Doug Kahn

haiku editing!

2008-11-04T18:11:00.003-07:00

Well we are busy working with found footage now, sharpening our scalpels and making precision cuts in bursts of three--in homage to Eisenstein, japanese haiku and the general round magic of the number 3 ... I like to call them simple machines myself., which can later be assembled into larger more complex machines otherwise known as, um, films... here's a few examples.
Lets start with Kevin:

Rose Hobart and Zidane?

2008-10-24T10:26:00.011-06:00

city as collage

2008-10-09T18:15:00.003-06:00

just a little glimmer of the chaos: a tourist posing for her friends becomes part of the street collage this weekend in chelsea,nyc...and on a similar tip, Banksy is at it again

Laser surgery, or film destruction?

2008-10-07T18:07:00.008-06:00

Group project where each person got a few seconds/feet of a found film about lasers and had their crazy way with it, incorporating various handmade techniques* in working directly on the footage-- then we spliced it back together in order more or less, like this:
*scratching, spray painting, chemicals, magazine transfers, rub-on letters, hole-punching, and even photograms!! (also see posts under 'March' for similar examples...)

THE DOCTOR'S DREAM

2008-10-02T08:57:00.003-06:00

The Doctor's Dream (1978) 16mm, black and white, sound, 23 min

BY Ken Jacobs

THE DOCTOR'S DREAM, not the title of the found film as originally made for television... the editing device was to count the number of shots and start the film off with numerically middle shot and then, after that, the shot that had preceded it, and the shot that had followed it, and keep fanning further and further out until you saw the first shot of the film followed by the last shot, which was of the painting the movie is based on... It's called 'The Doctor;' it's in the Tate Gallery in London... and it has an interesting subliminal image appropriate to my discovery, via this reconstruction, of the real story of the film. A powerful sexual event was hidden within its banality. Maybe without intention, but it's what was gripping in the movie, if ever the movie was gripping. And now in the painting, seen from a little distance, the doctor contemplates the sleeping girl with, you don't have to agree with me, his curled fist doubling as a penis entering his mouth (I'm sad to find myself so constrained in my speech)... Maybe this is the traditional method of smuggling forbidden information, hot stuff, through customs from unadmitting mind to unadmitting mind. --K. J.

The Kuleshov Experiment

2008-10-02T08:51:00.003-06:00

as illustrated by Alfred Hitchcock

Collage 1

2008-09-30T08:41:00.007-06:00

Our first excursions into the world of collage included our magazine transfer film made in class from bits and pieces of the NYTimes and various film magazines, posted below.
Then we made a newspaper cut-up from instructions by William Burroughs of the front page of the NYTimes in the hopes of yielding a new answer to the bail-out problem --we got some strange poetry but nothing the feds would find too useful I'm afraid...
...meanwhile LOOK up at this lovely slide image by Bradley Eros, in the spirit of our recent discussion about collage techniques regarding Stan Brakhage's classic film MOTHLIGHT .
OK, 2 film experiments with magazine transfers below, the one on the right has the compound interest of hair in the gate ;)

Found Footage and the Turkey Film Industry

2008-09-25T19:44:00.008-06:00

In response to our discussion on found footage...

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) [a.k.a. Turkish Star Wars]

From the Wikipedia entry...

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) is a Turkish-made cult film commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious bootlegging of Star Wars clips worked into the film.
Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam was released in 1982 in the midst of massive political upheaval. As a result, American-made films weren't easily acquired and were often remade with a Turkish cast and setting. The four most notable films to be so bootlegged are Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, The Exorcist and E.T., all of which have Turkish variations.

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I think the first twenty minutes may have an interesting relievance to the topic of collage, montage, and found footage...

Paint by hand

2008-09-18T16:22:00.007-06:00

, So after watching some inspirational films:
Fear of Blushing by Jenn Reeves,
Chartres Series by Stan Brakhage, and
What the Water Said by David Gatten,
we projected our own hand painted films .

Here's Sarah's colorful world:

and JayTee's cthonic BLUE HEAT (which looks blue on the filmstrip but doesn't look blue at all when projected--or you might hold a blue gel over your eyes to watch it?):

while Matthew discusses his process (& i love red) :

For more colorful information and resources check out the excellent Center for Visual Music's Online Library

LIVE!!!

2008-09-17T11:48:00.005-06:00

Following up on Scratch my Emulsion : this Tuesday we were treated to an in-class film performance by Brian (seen at left) --OK so he did scratch his name in upside-down, *erp*, but he quickly redeemed himself by doing some risky live augmentation to his loop, using a razor blade to carve into the moving strip which also resulted in some interesting new optical sounds-- creating the experience right before our eyes , and ears! In the clip below we see the room installation and film detail:

BTW, speaking of direct sound, here's an interesting example of optical soundtrack made by the image, in this cameraless film TBTX by filmmaker Roger Beebe , and his explanation here...

Stay tuned for new posts about paint and color---one place to look for inspiration is the great "RECIPES FOR DISASTER: a handmade film cookbooklet" an independently published collective project brainchild of and edited by the late filmmaker Helen Hill, rip.

early abstractions

2008-09-15T17:30:00.002-06:00

im pretty sure this guy was on drugs while he was working/envisioning this piece. overall i liked most parts of this film. the soundtrack got a little old but i thought the visuals were enough to keep me attentive. it seemed as though he was just experimenting with different techniques in abstract film making and seeing what the potentials/limits of this form may be. i liked abstractions the most and as for the other two films neither of them really were that interesting however i did like the sound in Aberations.

SCRATCH MY EMULSION

2008-09-15T11:36:00.004-06:00

This week we are watching everyone's scratch animations,
for one example check out KC 's peace out signature:

I'll post more examples soon...

...meanwhile we were talking in class about Anthony McCall's 1973 Line Describing a Cone which has recieved alot of renewed interest lately, and can be counted as a major influence in 21st century film intallations--for an extremely imperfect example see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vr_lYSTfIo

"Early Abstractions" Pt. 1 (1946-57)

2008-09-11T16:51:00.002-06:00

I watched this scratch film and thought it was really incredible. I got it from a previous blogger. Is the work really during the 1940s through to the 50s? It's spectacular. In the beginning it looked like someone was using chopsticks to form a square. Then slowly it moved into an amazing picture that looked as thought it was being filmed. Around the four minute mark he uses a number of geometric styles with bright colors and it looks really amazing. The filmmaker really did an incredible job.

EARLY ABSTRACTIONS BY HARRY SMITH+soundtrack

2008-09-11T09:06:00.005-06:00

Ah, yes, Meet the Beatles, that's almost 50 years ago! A controversial choice among many indeed and one which some purport to be a certain sort of 'folk music',...but for soundtrack variants, of which there were several, see these versions on youtube with score by Teji Ito (of 'Meshes' soundtrack fame)

EArly Abstractions part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYJ51nSXRQ
EArly Abstractionspart two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJAoJVp8cU
EArly Abstractionspart three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrZxw1Jb9vA

for more information on Harry Smith:
The HARRY SMITH ARCHIVES
WIKIPEDIA ENTRY
SENSES OF CINEMA ARTICLE

In The Wake of the Beatles 9/9/08

2008-09-11T00:19:00.004-06:00

The first film we screened today in class was In the Wake by A. Curtis. This film consisted of found footage with animated text scratched into the emulsion of the film. Because this is a scratch film, it leaned on the short side, but for the tone and feel of the piece it was ideal. The words appeared as if they were scratched and then written over with some sort of marker or paint. It is unclear what specifically he used to achieve this effect. The words, originally written by James Joyce, supplimented the images upon which they were scratched. As far as scratch films go, this was not my favorite... it was somewhat like the hiaku of scratchfilmland; short, poingnant free, and over almost as soon as it starts.

Next we screened a series of films by Harry Smith. These consisted of animated geometric design and collage, depending on the film. Because all of the films have a Beatles song as it's soundtrack, all of them had the same feel for me. It seems as if he used a variety of techniques, from handpainting to live action shapes moving, to computer assisted image generation. Very entertaining, but little higher meaning or substance. Im sure all of these were very time consuming to complete.

After Thought

2008-09-09T22:02:00.002-06:00

I, personally, have nothing to say about these films...

2008-09-09T21:25:00.004-06:00

Of all the three I enjoyed Early Abstractions the most. I thought that Smith's formal outlay of shapes and colors strung together beautifully, although at times I felt that he was still trying to figure out the material. I was more entranced with the painted films, than with the shapes and colors; aesthetically is appealed to me more. It was unfortunate that a soundtrack was just slapped on there for no apparent reason, other than to keep an onlooker from falling asleep.

I could not grasp In the Wake at all. Everything was fairly fleeting, especially the words that would appear for either side of the frame or from no where. James Joyce's words seemed to hit the film with less integrity that if it were on paper. His language may be fleeting, but the film is too dependent on just copying the style.

In The Wake..., Early Abstractions, Abrasions

2008-09-09T19:57:00.002-06:00

Of the three I was most drawn to the animated nature of Early Abstractions the most, although, myself not being a massive fan of insects, especially those from across any ponds, I was kind of more put into a trance watching a kaleidoscope or standing in the middle of a lightshow than oulled into any deeper thinking. This was fine--the colors, man, the colors! And I was jazzed by the dancing on the moon sequence, but all in all they seemed more like excercises in color and shape than an attempt at anything with depth, although, still, that may have been the pop music. I did enjoy it, though.

Abrasions, again, was cool, though it very much embodies the title and I really don't like the anticipation of when the next bulleted sounds and white smodge would appear. It's like watching a horror movie for the second time--you know it's coming, and for some reason that just makes it worse.

I am not so sure what I feel about In The Wake....I was equally torn between a funeral wake, and imagining myself water skiing. The words were very well formatted. They hardly jumped around at all. By the use of the peaceful words of James Joyce, I'm think this is intended, but the effect was to lull me a bit into sleepiness. I guess I just wish he'd done something more.

In the Wake of early Absractions with Abrasions

2008-09-09T16:44:00.002-06:00

The sound of the boys from liverpool infects my head at the moment, but even though the soundtrack of Early Abstractions could have been....better...the images were amazing. Moving through different works by Harry Smith we can see an advance in style and complication; from paint and ink, to very interesting collage, including images of which I remember; tarot cards and Buddhist symbols and a very cool skeleton. Can you say mind altering substances? And I can't forget to mention the excitement of S&M in Abrasions--who knows what's going on behind that black screen and flickering noise...In the Wake seems to fall a little short in deviance, but I was never one for poetry.

Wake, Abstractions & Abrasions

2008-09-09T14:28:00.011-06:00

I found Curtis' In The Wake to be somewhat calming. Images such as sunbathing ladies, men and women chatting and laughing with one another gives an easy-going feel. I found these images distracting in that I hardly paid attention to the text and was mroe captivated by the found footage. The "voice" I heard that was narating was feminine; something about this film gives off a feminine feeling. The shots of nature and the poetry combined to form this sense of fragility and seems delicate.
Early Abstractions is a delightful experience for the eyes. However I thought the pop music took away from that experience. I believe that the soundtrack worked at certain points, however for the most part the music severely took away from the wonderful images. What is the significance of using traditional pop love songs? "Til There Was You," "Take a Chance With Me" and so on.. Very similar to Anger's Scorpio Rising and Rabbit's Moon, where old pop tunes make up the soundtrack. Toward the end of Early Abstractions, some strange themes are presented: snakes, eyeballs, skeletons and then a baby doll- to the song "Til There Was You." Bizarre.
The soundtrack to Abrasions creates tension and discomfort. Altogether, picture with image produces a sci-fi type of feel for me. There is something non-human about this film, sort of like "creating the monster" type of feeling, as if we are looking in on a scientist, whether that be Joel or perhaps Joel is the "monster."

Visions on substance

2008-09-09T14:28:00.005-06:00

"Early Abstractions" seems to be a cinematic representation of an LSD trip. Upon reading a little history on Harry Smith it seems his artistic path began upon meeting San Francisco bohemians and smoking pot at a Woody Guthrie concert. It seems appropriate that in his early work there is a looming feeling of drug induced visions. The use of layering is prominent throughout the different styles of abstraction. HIs films incorporate surrealist images as well as basic collage of colors. It is a beautiful piece. I find it interesting that he seems to play with the word "end." He uses it often to end an image while the soundtrack continues which I suppose suggests the soundtrack was added in later. It fit well, but as was said in class, it distracts a little bit too much from the images.

Early Abstractions, Abrasions, and In The Wake

2008-09-09T14:06:00.003-06:00

i am enjoying the simplicity and flow of abrasions, and in the wake very much in contrast to harry smith's piece. i think a simple idea can have better luck at being cohesively enjoyable. lots of the early abstract animation films just seem like a showcase of techniques that the artist has learned. in this way they remind me of student work. when i watch an abstract animation such as early abstractions, i just slip into the mode of looking for technique and figuring out, how things were done, and how i could incorporate the better ideas into my own work. the work and my mind become very concerned with surface, and some of what makes many films so powerful is lost. the sound track just furthered my pull to surface only. it seemed as a hook to draw in others that would not usually care to sit through the film. like explosions and sex might do in a hollywood movie.

"o brave new world" RECYCLED IMAGES AT UC BOULDER!!

2008-09-02T19:31:00.013-06:00

WEEK ONE: THAUMATROPES &PHENAKISTASCOPES

(pictured at left is Anne's magical dragon phenakistoscope)

Greetings from Boulder Colorado, it's a brand new semester and this is the very first post!
All the filmmakers are getting down and dirty with their investigation and construction of various pre-cinematic devices . Stay tuned for lots more film projects and posts from this talented crew.

Here's a start:
Matthew 's color-blending thaumotrope:

Sam's thinking about bears:

& Kevin's thinking about psychedelic birds, but in phenakistoscope format (apologies for my poor shooting here--I'll do better next time):

oh! for more inspiration (and better phenakistoscope movies) see this page by Kevin T Allen
http://www.phonoscopy.com/recycled.html

3 IMAGE EDITiNG=film surgery!

2008-04-08T12:32:00.000-06:00

Well we are busy working with found footage now, sharpening our scalpels and cutting together short pieces in bursts of three--in homage to Eisenstein, japanese haiku and the general round magic of the number 3 ... I like to call them simple machines myself., which can later be assembled into larger more complex machines otherwise known as, um, films..

Here is Rose's work, she has 2 three-image edits in a row.

CLASS DESTRUCTION!

2008-03-20T10:52:00.000-06:00

Group project where everyone got a few seconds/feet of a found film called Millions of Bubbles and had their way with it, then we spliced together the sections as you can see here.

COLLAGE COLLAGE COLLAGE!!

2008-03-11T21:59:00.000-06:00

oh my. its been a few weeks since any postings, but we have been busy as bees learning about the history of collage in music art and film, and trying out a variety of collage techniques on filmstrips as you can see here.

Anne's MANGA SQUARES :

and JEDs' VISUAL MUSIC #1:

stay tuned for next week's first contact with found footage...

HAND PAINTING, and other surprises...

2008-02-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Today we watched lots of hand painted films on 16mm--one by Jenn Reeves, one by Stan Brakhage, and ones of our very own, each one looped on the projector so we could really watch the rhythms. Watercolors ruled the day, Jon had some fancy toothbrush tricks up his sleeve, Josh experimented with handscratched optical sound, and Theo thickened the plot with goache, see here:

One place to look for inspiration is the great "RECIPES FOR DISASTER: a handmade cookbooklet" independently published collective project edited by filmmaker Helen Hill.

Plus a big inspiration for this class blog is the sixbyone blog out of Wilmington North Carolina, props to NC, thanks guys! We did the magazine transfer project too, yes in the last fifteen minutes of class we made a little collective film from scratch, so fun!!
Check it out:

Scratch My Emulsion

2008-02-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

WE watched everyone's scratch films today. Almost everyone has the credits for their film now! They were all really beautiful, amazingly different.

Oh and this is the link to the Visual Music website http://homepage.eircom.net/~musima/visualmusic/visualmusic.htm

Look at Shanna's handmade film credits:

RECYCLED IMAGES /2008!

2008-02-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our class blog, for the New School Media Studies and Film course called RECYCLED IMAGES AND NON CAMERA FILMMAKING. This blog is a brand new venture for this course, but hopefully we will be able to upload our various class experiments on pre-cinematic devices, direct animations, hand-painted films, and found footage collage films.

So far we have been really inspired by:

ERnie Gehr's Panorama's of the Moving Image installation at MOMA
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=5626

Zoe Beloff's Philosophical Toy World website
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/illusions/index.html

and a webpage by Kevin T Allen of a Recycled Images Phenakistoscope workshop
http://www.phonoscopy.com/recycled.html

Ok everybody, are you ready for a really BIG thaumotrope?