Finding the Narrative

To kick off the assignment we were required to make a short presentation on wednesday morning on one video

artist who works with narrative in their work. I pretty much knew who I wanted to work with and that was ( in my opinion) the amazing Bartholomew Cubbins… no not Dr.Seuss' hat wearing character, I'm talking about Jared leto.

Here are a few slides from that presentation of mine: 

You might have seen Jared Leto playing one of the roles below, Mr. Nobody, Chapter 27, Lord of War & most recently and famously Dalles Buyers Club.

But he is incredibly well known as the lead singer, musician and song writer for his band 30 Seconds to Mars.

Cubbins (Leto) has directed, produced and (sometimes) edited every single one of the bands videos for each single they release. Turning a music video into a short film and using different actors, locations and props to put across the narrative of the song is a breath of fresh air in the music industry… Because I really rather not see Miley Cyrus naked on a wrecking ball just because its the name of the song somebody else wrote for her..

But Anyway..

It is hard not to admire Leto's vision and creativity. I had a harder time understanding the narrative behind "Up In The Air" as it seems like some much more of an in dept, conceptual video compared to "The Kill" which is in some ways pretty literal if you do a bit of reading about the meaning behind it. 

If you haven't watched any of their videos I highly recommend it, even if you'r not into the music (but I guess it helps that I am). I was considering doing a narrative music video for my assignment but will have to do some more thinking on the matter :) 

Contemporary Video Art, Moving Image / Narrative / Audience

New year new project :)

Honestly, I'm not a fan of video or filming.. I like watching them.. with popcorn.. and a duvet.. in bed.. :) but thats usually as far as it goes!

Before Christmas we had a short project where our aim was to film a documentary and I quite enjoyed that but perhaps that was because we were also working in groups at that time.. this time the pressure is on!

My first task is to come up with a narrative for this film, I have a few ideas but how easily constructed they'll be I don't know. Then the script which I'd like to have a little humour in but again that depends on the narrative.. can't really have dancing lobsters in a film about confinement and entrapment of the human mind….. or can you :P

I've heard loads of people come to really enjoy filming once they get over the inital terrors of having to do all the jobs at once, by yourself…. alone. Lets see if the same will apply to me :)

Google Changes Like The Weather

Google, like any other company is always trying to keep up to date and perhaps exceed our need for technological development. But not so good when your in the middle of a project based on their previous software version :/

All while I was collecting images like this one below from Google Maps,

and like this one,

little did I know they were about to become a lot harder to get!

So I logged in one morning to carry on with a bit of work when suddenly Google Maps had transformed from I guess what can be described as the cringy old guy 'dad' dancing at the end of the bar to this young, hip, sleek model version..!? 

Basically what I'm saying is I hadn't head nor tail of how to work it now.. all the familiar 'remove tags' and 'map to satellite to earth and back to map' options were suddenly somewhat out of sight..  

However I was able to use the new 'Explore' option to my advantage and it is absolutely wonderful! You can breeze from Ireland to Hong Kong to Bora Bora then on to The Great Barrier Reef in no time and see almost all the amazing sights you'd hope to on the way! You can travel the canals of Venice or visit the vast destitute landscape of the Antarctic. It is.. may I say.. Amazeballs! Here are some images I nabbed from this for my project.. because well.. it would have been rude not to :)

Jenny Odell - Satellite Collections & Signs of Life

Jenny Odell was the first Google Maps artist I cae across when doing this project and admittedly I didn't really feel towards her work in the beginning. It was only at a much later date in my project that I came across her again and decided to put my mind aside and learn a bit about her work. Just from looking at these images you can see how much time and dedication has been put into the whole series!

Signs of Life, 2012
These images are mainly concentrated on structures of business and advertising all cropped out of their surroundings and placed on a blank background with other fellow signs. I felt that she aimed to prove how the structure can be easily overlooked and the only thing that gets any notice is of course the advert, that is until it is peeled away and the next one is in place. These adverts could be placed on any street, sidewalk, building, cows behind.. you name it and yet the first thing that will click in the human mind is what the sign is representing, for example the MacDonald's trademark 'M' or the Shell symbol for the Shell gas station groups.

Satellite Collections, 2009-2011
Theses are all prints that Odell herself has collected and cut out from Google Satellite View. I read somewhere that she stated the satellite view Google now provides us with is one which we were never ment to see. She continues "But it is precisely fro this inhuman point of view that we are able to read our own humanity, in all of its tiny, repetitive marks upon the face of the earth" she says they mark our having been here and I can't say I disagree with her.

Only after reading Odell's own explanations of her work did it completely click with me and then I began to enjoy it and see it in a whole new light!

Here are just a small few of her works;
 

Google Mapping Crazy..

Hello.. my name is Belinda Kiernan.. and I am an avid Google Mapper.

I honestly think it has taken over my life.. I woke up in the middle of the night last night due to an uncomfortably hot bed and asked my boyfriend if he had remembered to turn the "Google Maps off"... instead of electric blanket.. Not a joke folks! Use Google Maps responsively and not excessively. 

Anyway, I wanted to share with you some photos, or should I say Screen Grabs I have gathered over the past weeks, well months actually since having begun this project in November! But here are some of my favourites that I will be displaying for my end of semester assessment, hope you like.

The only unfortunate thing about the images is that I had to crop them from screen grabs and then adjust the pixels to fit two images on one A3 sheet for printing. It was difficult to resize the so as to not stretch them too far one way or the other and effectively lose quality. But all the same when they are displayed together they just seem to fit :) 

David Hockney - Joiners

I've been reading a bit on David Hockney lately and they collage works titled 'joiners' by him. Simply they are just wonderful, but you don't need me to tell you that, right? But on the off chance you did need me to tell you that you should go here -> http://www.shootingfilm.net/2013/01/joiners-polaroid-collages-by-david.html now!

I love his work, and this is what inspired me to (almost) carry on basing my self directed project on collaging instead of Google Mapping! Here is one of my collages from a trip to Dublin awhile ago..

However I just didn't see me getting the results from this idea that I did from Google Maps. But anyway, here are some more Hockney works I enjoyed and I know you will too.. 

Self Directed Project... From Old Ideas to New

For the self directed project, having a brief that was so open seemed a bit daunting at first and so, being afraid and taking baby steps first I decided to go back to an old project as continuing on with something familiar seemed like the 'safe'option.

However it was only when I tried to get stuck into this project again that I'd realised I was finished with it already and I just kept meeting dead ends as to what more I could do. At this point I had already been getting interested in and exploring Google Maps for awhile and found it enjoyable so I began to look at it as a new project prospect!

Here is a pretty interesting article about the whole lot :) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217177/Google-Street-View--Please-dont-stand-middle-road-waiting-camera.html

And a video about Google Street View Cameras.. because, why not.
http://petapixel.com/2013/08/30/google-business-photographer-talks-shooting-street-view-inside-businesses/

Mockumentary - David Attenborough Style

The given brief required us to choose a subject and make a documentary about it that is 5 minutes long that describes the subject in as much detail as possible.

So we were split into groups of 5 and following some workshops on audio, lighting and film cameras we got to work!! To begin with I had so much fun filming this documentary, I think that perhaps because we chose such a light hearted subject it made it all the more enjoyable.

The Concept: Our idea was to secretly film our fellow students in the college environment as though we were filming a strange wildlife species and we intended to include a scripted voice-over along with some very realistic sound effects (all in a typical David Attenborough documentary style).

Personally I was happy with the outcome of the 'Mocumentary' and we got a few laughs when all our finished pieces were shown together in class, all in all I enjoyed the project a lot :)

Hope you enjoy!