24-30 September – Rework and Refinement

Posted on October 5, 2019 Posted in Final Major ProjectTagged Exhibitions, Video ProductionLeave a comment

Fresh off the critique of last week it seemed I had my work cut out for me. I had to rework both the videos I had completed and rethink completely my approach to including some wildlife photos in the exhibit. I tried a few approaches to the intro video eliminating the photos completely, but it seemed too much to lack context. I then tried leaving some photos and reducing the number of words. I used animation effects to bring the key words in and out with a select group of photos and it had the effect of reducing the overall time to less than 2 minutes and serving as a perfect trailer to introduce the key themes of my work without telling the whole story. I plan to set this up at the exhibition entrance so it is the first thing people see when they enter the space and it will be positioned next to the artist’ statement.

Capture

The second video to be reworked was the Changing Faces piece that had already been through several iterations. I took the suggestion to consider using synchronous view in PowerPoint and the result was quite effective. Rather than requiring a viewer to stand and wait for the next sequence and either ‘forget’ the prior comparators or get bored and walk away before seeing what I would like them to see, the synchronous view allows four separate seasons to be viewed simultaneously. The message of change is unmissable and it has the advantage of keeping the eyes moving from frame to frame looking for comparisons. It also has the advantage of three of the four frames being essentially identical in their perspective and timing. There are slight variations due to wind and other flight affecting factors but they are close enough so as not to be a distraction. The fourth frame was a video created before I had pre-planned mission profiles that provided the repeatability of the other three videos and while it starts off differently than the other three it synchs up rather closely toward the middle section where the differences in the four scenes are the most dramatic. The changing perspective of the first frame also contributes to the need for the viewer to keep their eyes moving between frames and creates attention holding interest that causes the 8 minutes to go by rather quicker than realised.

Capture2

I also did a revision to my Artist’s Statement to put it into first person rather than third person narrative. I did create some new aerial work, still images and sound recording to augment the final video expect to capture next week with the new mission profile I created that overflies all of Coul Links perimeter of the proposed development area capturing video rather than the still images of the typical profile.

For the wildlife photos, I created on A3 paper a 4 x 5 grid of images and printed three sheets (60 images) that are 5 x 6.5 cm and are sufficiently large to be able to see what they are if one gets close enough. I considered different ways of displaying these images ranging from mounting them all on one large board with windows in the top mounting board to mounting on one board with a slight stand off to create some additional dimensionality. In the end I decided to mount them individually on foam core board and distribute them randomly around the exhibit including suspending some so they ‘floated’ in space. This approach does two things. First, the scale of the landscape to wildlife in actuality is more closely approximated by the scales of the landscape to wildlife photos. The birds occupy a very small segment of the landscape and are constantly moving with in it. Which leads to the second point and that is the random distribution of the small wildlife photos is again a metaphor for how they exist in nature. One never knows exactly what one might encounter and when.

Another week with significant tangible progress. Next week the large format printing and mounting will be done along with one more new capture video showing the overview of Coul Links. I hope to have the exhibition layout completed next week and all of the technical issues sorted with respect to projecting the video imagery in conjunction with the still images in the exhibition space.

16-23 Sep – New Work and Unseen Amsterdam

Posted on October 4, 2019 Posted in Final Major ProjectTagged Exhibitions, Experimentation, Face to Face, Projects, Self Discovery, Video ProductionLeave a comment

I finally caught a break with some good weather at the right time of day and was able to make some new work with which I am very pleased and some additional sound recording. In fact I am so pleased with the new work that two have been added to the edit of large format photos that I will be printing the first week of October.

The first part of the week was also spent doing proof prints after recalibrating the computer, both monitors and the printers. Lots of prints with different print profiles were made to determine the most faithful rendition of what I see on my screens. After about 10 prints of the same photo that had a particularly rich set of colours, I arrived at best my printer could produce and began the proof prints in A4. I would be taking them to Amsterdam for the portfolio review. The multimedia files were also refined some more and in the case of “The Changing Faces of Coul Links” reworked completely after some peer feedback. I leave for Amsterdam feeling pretty good about the work so far, and am anxious for some tutor feedback on how I can make it better.

The opening exercise Gary McCleod conceived was very engaging and interesting and served as a great way to get to know some of the other MA students who were attending as well as facilitate some critical thinking about one’s own work and that of others through an interrogatory process.

An afternoon visit to Huis Marseilles, brought me my first exposure to the brilliance of Berenice Abbott. As was not uncommon in that time here work spanned several genres, but that she was a woman pushing boundaries was. Her portrait work had a way of feeling as though she captured the personality of her subjects, but her architectural and science work were fascinating.

I did a review of my FMP work with Gary McCleod and Paul Clements the first evening since I was commuting from outside Rotterdam and was hoping to not have to come in Sunday just for a portfolio review. And a solo review turned out to be exactly what I needed since a group review would not have allowed the time to get to the depth we did.

There was no question about the quality of the work, but there were many questions about how I was presenting it and whether I had a clear narrative. Gary specifically noted that I needed to be bold and radical and elevate the sophistication of the exhibition. While some of the ideas they suggested seemed quite radical redirects, they insisted they were only refinements. Some specifics were:

The Beyond the Noise video that I was thinking about as the centrepiece that set the tone for the exhibition Gary thought I should remove all of the images and just use the words. He suggested that it might be better placed as an introduction and that I should revisit the video considering the images and the pacing. It would require some extra thinking and experimentation next week.
When I explained I would be doing the principal photos in large format A1 or A0 and some of the wildlife photos small in A4, I was informed that A4 is not small and rather these were ‘too loud’ in the overall context and that they were confusing the story. They suggested ‘small’ so people would stop and look so that too would require some rethinking, but I quickly warmed to the concept and have several ideas on how to execute.
On the Changing Faces video which I had reworked several times, Gary suggested I try synchronous view in PowerPoint; a feature of which I had not been aware. It is something I wanted to do but wasn’t able to make it happen with Adobe Premiere so far. Again back to the computer to see what I can make because this approach solves a couple of the nagging reservations I had about this particular video which I believe is important to my narrative, but needs to be captivating as it is shown.
The last major point Gary had for me was to think about the experience from the viewer’s perspective. Take them on a journey and don’t be tempted to spoon feed them along the way. This was the essence behind his suggestion of removing the photos from the Beyond the Noise video. He also enjoined me to be sure what was the ‘main meal’ I was serving and to not let the story get muddled with the fact that I am using various media to communicate it.

On Saturday, I visited the Unseen Exhibition and found it much more enjoyable than last year’s show. While there were quite a number of cyanotypes, they were different enough so as not feel like a trope and the rest of the work was sufficiently diverse to really keep my interest. I thought there was a much better mix of genres this year than last and was happy to see landscapes represented.

I also took in the exhibit that was on at FOAM. We had some intense and interesting discussions about the non-photographic work, but I found the Brassai work again quite interesting and was particularly amazed that there was a sharpness of focus that was not always common among his contemporaries using the large format cameras. His night time Paris work is an especially good example.

My last event of the day was a super visit with Liz Halls and Addie Elliot at the Elliot Halls Gallery. Liz was very generous with her time and we had a lovely discussion about the work they had on exhibit and even a bit about how my worked related to it and Matthew Murray’s work. I was very excited to find they had copies of Saddleworth as I had been looking for nearly a year for one.