Live Image Processing and Performance is my first opportunity at ITP to incorporate my prior-to-school iteration as a performance artist. I was holding my breath this past week, not knowing whether I'd make it off the waitlist and into the class, which was a durational performance in and of itself. I think my response to the assignment—to take 5-10 minutes of cellphone video for MaxSP practice in class week 2—reflects that...hung up in a bit of an unknown liminal, I found myself not observing the world with the deep eyes I generally devote to my surroundings. Still, I'm curious to see what I can design out of what I feel to be fairly surface-level video captures of the last week... here's a selection of six of the eight videos I'm bringing to class...
Video 1 focusing on angle and manipulating camera in unexpected ways (literally kicking my cellphone around, do not recommend, do not care). This one was fun in that I felt like I captured the perspective of a cat's toy, which is kind of terrifying? I've been thinking of my feet a lot lately because of my ballet class, how to strengthen them and keep them from cramping en pointe. I get the joy of a Tarantino reveal here.
The next two videos focusing on color, light, and texture, soft abstraction, a little romance for Valentine's Day...
Next video was a result of me researching the sound that lakes make when they freeze... it's a video of a video, I wanted to explore revelation and like how computer/video screens look when captured on another video device. Sound was a big element on this one, the original video is called "frozen lake sounds like Star Wars"...
Next video is my exploration of oversharing on instagram, there's something about Instagram stories that encourages me to explore the very personal in the public realm... it's still part of the curated avatar that is the presentation of self on a social media platform, but it's a place where I enjoy sharing my "flaws" and my more illogical/absurdist humor. It's strange to study myself with the eye of my audience in mind. This is a tribute to that...
Final selection is some footage of me attending to one of my favorite ways to break during a work session: pinball! I placed my cellphone face down on the surface of the table, which added a new challenge to the game by literally blocking part of my view. I moved the camera around during the seven minutes of the game, trying to capture different elements of the table as they were triggered. It was interesting to try to record without being able to see what I was capturing, and equally interesting to feel how my game was affected knowing that it was being recorded.
That's the story for now. I'm planning on capturing quite a lot of footage for Rest of You that I'm going to bring toward my projects in LIPP so this is really only the beginning of my process. Going to be a weird semester...