Project 4: Video Emulation

" 'Lights' Emulation: From the Garden to the Casino, to the Sky"

For our fourth project we emulated or recreated a chosen video. The video I chose was Marie Menken's "Lights." She filmed various light sources, such as Christmas lights and  street lights, and affected the way they appear by moving and shaking the camera. I emulated her video by mimicking that sort of technique, but mine is digital video.

I also have different light sources, because it is not Christmastime and to give my video a local flair, I filmed the lights of different casinos in downtown Reno and Carson City. For a personal element I also have garden lights from my house, the solitary light source moving across the screen is more different from Menken's video than the other parts. This is because the main and overall feeling I get from Menken's video is a dreamy, mystical feeling, and at parts specifically of faeries.

The audio is something put I together in Mixcraft 6 using some of their default sounds. The goal for the audio was something simple that adds a bit of dreamy or transient ambience.

Video Project - Choice

The video I will emulate is Marie Menken's "Lights" from '64-66. 

http://www.ubu.com/film/menken_lights.html

I like the idea of using a camera to 'draw' with lights against a dark background. Rather than try to recreate Menken's video, I'm going to do my own but with her techniques, like shaking and moving the camera to make lines with lights. Also, instead of the Christmas lights she uses, I might try using Casinos for some local flavour. 

Menken's video is also silent, so I'll probably add just a little bit of audio for ambience.

Reading 2: Video Art

1.] Throughout the chapter the difference between "art" and "artful" is brought up several times, and the use of the electric medium for video art as opposed to used for stuff like news or documentation.The chapter talks about early video artists who were established in other mediums and then called their new work video art. So, the artist themself defined what they did as art, and is at least in part because they were recognised as an artist already.

The chapter seems to take the institutional theory that established artists, galleries or other art institutions are the ones who define what is classified as art. But a videographer or camera person doing work on a documentary may consider their work as "art", however this would be considered only as "artful" by the chapter's standards. What does it take for a video to be considered as a piece of art, and more than just a recording? Who gets to decide?

2.] Towards the end of the chapter, it mentions artists of 80's and 90's focusing on different issues for their art, that they "reflect a quest for identity (particularly cultural or sexual) and political freedom." Many artists use modern issues or personal identity in or for their art and the results tend, at least to me, to be better/more powerful/more engaging.

With video art, the artist can be shown literally interacting with the world, and the video can be controlled and manipulated for an end result that goes way past just performance. Keeping this in mind and the viewpoint that art is a means to interact with the world and to show that interaction, does video art benefit more for this purpose from its particular medium?