29th May 2012 - Last Class & Mash-ups

Last official class tonight. Covered the Creative Commons Licencing and Copyright...very useful information, although I had recently come across this information, it was nice to go over it in class. Other than covering the CC over view, we had brief  reviews with CJ to confirm group progress and answer any questions. For the remainder of class Beck and I worked on editing the video for one of the main components for our group assignments.




On another note....one of the members of our group posted this and I thought it was 'Hilarious', but more importantly I realised it was created using many of the principles we have been learning about. Once upon a time I would never have even considered that creating something like this would be a possibility for me....and now....who knows, maybe I could. One thing is for sure I now have an absolute influx of ideas I would like to have a go at using some of these very techniques.  Mash-ups....who would have thought....

Sweet Brown

26th May 2912 - Video Editing with Beck

This is the first real occassion we have had to go through the video footage since the day of filming. We did have a brief veiwing after class on Tuesday 22nd May, but time did not permit actual editing to begin until now. Well....we have quite a large amount of footage to edit in order to create a short film with which we can feel happy to present. There is well over two hours of actual video footage which we intend to cut down to under 10mins. Obviously it is better to have more footage than not enough as trying to reschedule a re-shoot can be difficult. However this is a large amount of footage to view and decide on what works most effectivly before we can even begin to edit.  After editing and bring the footage together we also have to choose the appropriate music to asign to the film as that can make or break a film and has a huge impact on what we are wanting to present. However, this task will be made a little easier with the site that offers 'Royalty Free Music' at no charge that I have found. Overall, It is a daunting task but one for which we are excited to tackle. There is a lot of work to be done and neither of us expect we will be complete it this evening.

22nd May 2012 - Class Presentation 'Danae Stratou'

Artist Research - Danae Stratou - Visual Artist

Visual Artist Danae Stratou was born 1964, Athens, Greece and still to this day lives and works in Athens, Greece.

Employers - Stratou is an adjunct professor at the Superior School of Fine Arts (Athens) Athens, Greece and has a Masters of Fine Arts Degree.

Grad School -Central Saint Martins Class of 1988 · BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture · Art installations

High School - Moraitis School Class of 1982 · Athens, Greece

Danae Stratou is one of the 3 partners of the collective D.A.ST. Arteam, who created the work 'Desert Breath' - Egypt, 1997; which is an Earthwork covering an area of 100,000 m2, situated in the eastern Egyptian Sahara and borders the Red Sea.

In the 48th Venice Biennale -1999, Stratou represented Greece as well as in the 1st Valencia Biennale held in 2001.

Danae Stratou has participated in a variety of international exhibitions that were organized by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in Athens:

· The Transcultures Exhibition held in Athens, 2004 featured her video installation 'The River of Life', for which she tracked the flow of the 7 major terrestrial rivers: The Ganges, the Niger, the Yangtze, the Amazon, the Danube, the Nile and the Mississippi.  

· In the Transexpiriences Exhibition held in Beijing-2008, Statou showed her work 'Cut–7 dividing lines', for this work she travelled and photographed the ever present divisions in Cyprus, Kosovo, Belfast, Palestine, Kashmir, Ethiopia-Eritrea and along the US-Mexican border.  

The Zoumboulakis Galleries held solo exhibitions of Stratou's work 'See through'-2005 and 'CUT - 7 dividing lines' - 2007 in Athens. 

Stratou has regularly participated in a variety of shows held in Museums and Biannual exhibitions internationally since 1999 to the present date. The works of Stratou belong to either private collection or Museums in Greece, France, the US, the UK and Egypt.

Danae Stratou has been part of "Vital Space" organization since 2010 up until now, the present day. Vital Space is built upon the belief that art has the power to change the world. It's premise revolves around two main axes being: 

· the creation and production of visual artworks.

· the ability to reach and influence a wide and diverse audience by the initiation of research programs, conferences, publications and the formation of educational and media products.

Vital Space  was founded by artist Danae Stratou and economist Yanis Varoufakis in 2010 and is a non-profit organization.  

21st May 2012 - Review of Filming

Well...Well...What a busy week on Facebook I have had trying to encourage extra participation within the group "Power to the People". The continuous stories have had some extra entries and we as a team have been able to tie the two stories together for what we hope will be maximum effect.

Yesterday (Sunday 20th May)....what a day! The premise for this video will be a truely colaborative effort, with the participation of our friends on facebook, our willing models and even a couple of  unsuspecting strangers that we approached and asked to participate, although we only ended up getting one to follow through. At this stage we have not had a chance to go over the footage to edit, fine-tune or create what we hope will be an interesting artwork, but will be busy doing so over the next 2 weeks. 

Prior to the shoot we had been somewhat concerned with weather as it had been wet leading up to Sunday. However, on the day we could not have had better weather, 20 degrees and sunshine. The day went exceptionally well, although in retrospect I would love to have set off earlier and had more time. Beck and I had sorced a selection of clothing in white, from dresses to shirts and skirts. The 4 models - Sarah (37), Tahlia(18), Charlotte and Lucia (12 years) tried all of the clothing on before we set off in order to make sure what they had chosen fit and suited them.

Our photo shoot began at the Botanic Gardens as we were interested in a 'wood' style scene, for which we beleived this would be perfect. Shortly after arriving we were pleased to find the perfect location, which saved us having to continue lugging around the extensive amount of accessories we had brought along. After setting up, we directed the girls on exactly what we wanted from them to acheive the desired results. Consequently, after only a few takes, we managed to get some great footage. Once we had completed the 'Wood Scene' after about an hour, we proceeded to look around for other suitable locations, but did not find anything else we were as pleased with as our original location. Hence we decided to move on to the consecutive scenes at Semaphore beach. Prior to the day of the shoot, we had decided least busy section would be the best option. Fortunately, we found exactly what we were looking for with a location that had a scattering of pine trees and sand dunes. However perfect we had initially thought the location, it seemed to become busier while we were shooting, sadly some of the shots being ruined with unexpected traffic and passers by. There was also an issue with the girls when they all got the giggles, which delayed and hindered the filming.  However, not all bad though as we did get some great footage.

While preparing for the final shoot, I had the idea of asking a random male to join our little troup, to add to the collaboreative approach, with which the process had begun. Thus, I approached a young man (Ben) who graciuosly accepted and willingly agreed to participate. I gave him specific directions on what was required and he was unflinching. I requested Ben head out in to the water as far as he could go in order to submerge and then emerge slowly, walking slowly towards our model Tahlia who would hold out her hands to greet him. Upon reaching her, he was asked to hold her in a loving embrace. Ben was a champion, not only was he generous with his time and efforts he did a fabulous job and we only had to film the scene once. Although this may have something to do with the fact the water was freezing and we suspected he was pretty keen to do it in one take. Tahlia was also a good sport, but clearly not made of the same tough stuff, as we could visably see her shaking and then start to turn blue. However it all worked for the scence, so we were more than happy with the results. 

After we had completed the shoot, we fed the girls and Ben some treats we had organised earlier. After a good amount of hot chocolate to warm up and some snacks to recharge, we packed up and then proceeded to head home. Beck and I have arranged for me to stay at her place in order to edit the footage next weekend. The plan is for us to endevour to weave the video footage in with the continuous story created by the group. It does not need to be an exact translation,but contain certain elements symbolic elements to move the story forward.

20th May 2012 - Filming Day

Check List - Items needed for filming

-Video Camera     (Ensure it is charged)

-Digetal Camera's (Ensure it is charged)

-3 Tripods/Reflectors

-Spare memory card

-Copy of the continuous story

-White dresses/skirts/tops/scarfes/wraps etc for models

-White lace umbrella/Key/white bead cross necklace/Angel cards

-Flowers from markets

-Makeup for touch-ups

-Hairbrushes

-Towels/Blankets

-Dry change of clothes/thongs

-3 Thermos of hot chocolate/nibbles/snacks

 

Schedule for the day

10:00 - Meet at my place - Beck and Models

10:30 - Models select clothing items to wear11:30 - Head off to the Botanic Gardens
12:00 - Locate suitable site and set-up
           Film the girls wandering through the 'woods'
1:30 -  Head off to next location - Semaphore Beach

           lunch when we arrive before next shootLunch (prepared earlier)

2:30 - Film the models walking through sand dunes.

          Film card scene under the tree and water scene

4:30 - Snacks (prepared earlier)

5:00 - Head home

15th May 2012 - A1 Results In & Update

Had not checked my Uni email for a couple of days....Oooops. Wish I had as my assignment results were waiting for me....very pleased indeed. However on a concerning note....apparently the video's had no audio? Now I know with a cetainty the file I downloaded on to my hard drive and the Uni hard drive definitely had 'Audio', as did the file uploaded to Youtube, Blog and Facebook, so I am confused as to what happened when it was viewed. Regardless of the fact that it apparently did not affect my grade as tutor CJ had already seen the videos with audio, it is still concerning.

On another note...Beck and I have scheduled a video and photo shoot for this upcoming Sunday and models are set to go. We will touch base on Saturday to go over last details.

11th May 2012 - Update on Group Assignment

Beck and I met yesterday in relation to our group assignment and are pleased with the progress on the interactive Facebook page "Power to the People" and the level of participation. Oddly some of the people that we expected would participate quite actively have not, yet others that we had not anticipated would interact, have done so quite avidly. Either way...we have progress. We will continue to make posts and encourage members to interact in this experience and analize if there is another way to magnify participation. As a further way to gather information, we have decided to generate a survey to gather extra data towards our experiment.

7th May 2012 - Assignment 1: Final Video

Well....my final for Assignment 2 was handed in on Friday 4th and now....we wait. I hate the waiting game for results, a true test of patience. Regardless, I am pleased with what I have achieved and learnt. However, the time passes so quickly, especially since the semesters at uni have been made shorter and yet will are still required to fulfill the same work-load....gripe...gripe...gripe. It would have been great if we had more time to outwork ideas that evolve throughout the creative process and experiment further.

Anyway time to concentrate on Assignment 3 and make the most of the time available. As part of our intention to bring the course full-circle, Beck and I have uploaded our video's to Youtube and created a link through our interactive Facebook group for our members to view, then like or comment on and then possibly evolve further towards our installation in our virtual gallery. These two video's have been created by myself as an artistic approach to making a serious social commentary on Domestic Violence (DV). Please like if you think we need to initiate change.

But He Says He Loves Me

Behind Closed Doors

When I went online to view my own video on Youtube, I came across this video by the same title and ironically it covers the same subject matter, but a very different approach from the child perspective and the imapact on them. It is vey effective. (We posted this video in power to the people also.)

Behind Closed Doors

2nd May 2012 - Assignment 1:Update

As several people have not completed their assignments and asked for extentions, CJ has given the entire class an extension until Friday 4th May 2012. Although, I had finished my assignment I have decided to make a few changes after my chat with CJ, which I think will make an even bigger impact.

Lisa Reihana - Double Take (Anne Landa Award for video and new media art 2009)

After seeing Reihana's latest works as part of the 'Restless' Exhibition at the Samstag Art Gallery and Museum I am absolutely a fan. I had a real De'Jevu moment and remembered seeing some of her previous works. How I could have forgotten how amazing she is,  I do not know.....but not again. This latest series really resonates with me and has given me some inspiration and fresh ideas for some topics I wish to further outwork and explore.

1st May 2012 - Royalty Free Music at no charge

Aaaaargh....what a frustrating few days trying to find 'Royalty Free' music at little or no charge. Many sites claim to have music available, but either charge at quite a fee or the music is not of quality. After many hours I have found a great site that has done the homeworks for us and has several links attached that list free music under the Creative Commons Licence...very helpful. Yay!

Royalty Free Music at no charge - http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/tips/freemusic.htm

Finally....I have finished, not 1, but 2 video's for personal assignment. There have been a few challenges along the way, but I have grasped the techniques much better and far quicker than what I could ever have imagined. Throughout the process I have experimented with various effects and different approaches to the same subject matter in order to extract the most from the process. Although I am very pleased with the results, there are a couple of small points that I am unsure of and would like to gain some feedback from CJ in order to confirm last choics. However, generally I am more than satisfied with results.