Month: March 2015

John Cage: The Art of Noticing

Alaine Thompson on

John Cage was born in late 1912 and died on August 12th, 1992. And yet, his mark still remains on music and art history. Cage challenged the very idea of what constitutes music, playing amplified cacti and plant materials with a feather:

‘Waterwalk’, in which Cage uses a variety of things (mostly containing water and surrounding a piano):

John Cage’s music challenges the very notion of what music is. Just as we as media practitioners must find the malleability within our art form, Cage constantly tests the boundaries of what music is by distilling it down to its purest and most basic forms and then experimenting. By doing this he creates his own ideas about sound and does not rely on the limitations already put in place by musicians before him.

In Cage’s 4’33”, Cage performs, quite literally silence, but as you will notice, silence does not exist, as when a room has no external sounds, we become acutely aware of all the other sounds constantly surrounding us, such as our heartbeats, breathing, coughs, chair squeaks, etc. Any sounds that we’d normally place in the background come forward. I could place a video example here, there are plenty of them on YouTube, examples of people performing nothing, or you could just find a silent spot and sit and listen to the ‘silence’ for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

The question is though, is this music? Cage is quoted as saying that, “everything we do is music.”, so every sound, every little exclamation or breath we take is music. We just don’t hear it very often because it’s cluttered by all the other sounds we create and subject ourselves to for entertainment. Cage was very interested by the concept, or sounds which silence produced:

John Cage, even though he may be a practitioner of sound, ‘silence’ and music, is vital to study when undertaking any arts related course, because looking at Cage’s work forces you to look differently at a medium you may have unknowingly perceived as being within a strict, stationary box. Whereas Cage’s work, and many other experimentalists like him prove, that there is no limit to what can be achieved with a medium.

Media is Everywhere

Alaine Thompson on

Today for our media lectorial we were asked to go out and explore the city and see how much media we could discover. As you could imagine, it was a lot.

DSC_1160 shop fronts and displays

DSC_1170 DSC_1173 shop signs

DSC_1179 DSC_1182 sale signs

DSC_1167 DSC_1165 DSC_1181 posters

DSC_1174 DSC_1188 DSC_1186 DSC_1187 grafitti

DSC_1178 DSC_1168 public notices

DSC_1184 public art/sculpture

DSC_1163 public protest

DSC_1191 buskers

DSC_1159 trams

Of course, there were many more things that I didn’t take photos of, such as my phone (which was taking all the photos), people’s clothes and accessories (yes, you are a walking piece of media, whether you like it or not), sales people, newspaper stands, people’s conversations, music, signs of all kinds, flags, giant billboards, billboards tv screens, lights, etc.

And that was only between LaTrobe and Bourke St…

This only proves how filled our world is with media, and how little control we have over our exposure to it.

 

The Essential Art of Noticing

Alaine Thompson on

In our week 2 lectorial Brian Morris talked to us about media itself, and this quote pretty much sums it up, “The media are not so much ‘things’ as places which most of us inhabit, which weave in and out of our lives. Their constant messages and pleasures seem to flow around and through us, and they immerse most of our working lives”. (Morris, 2015)

Brian then went on to talk about texts, “sites where meanings are generated through the manipulation of materials and codes [and] do not simply ‘picture’ or ‘reflect’ a reality where meaning resides.” (Morris, 2015) This means that while media texts do in a way represent our reality, as they are created by an individual, they are therefore influenced by the way that individual percieves the world and thus the text is only a reflection of reality through that individual’s eyes.

Texts also tend omit certain information, as though attempting to persuade opinion or win an argument, as through omitting content in various ways, different effects can be achieved. This idea of omittion brought up another idea, of mediated vs. unmediated communication, as in communication utilising a medium such as books, films, the internet, etc. Unmediated communication, such as face to face interaction has an authenticity and a direct experience associated to it, whereas in modern society where social media communication is predominant, communication is more distant, as in order to communicate we have to go through another conduit to reach the desired person.

Media is everywhere, whether it’s assaulting your senses as you try to read on a Melbourne Central platform, or just sliding past you on your Facebook feed. The trick is noticing the interesting little details that inspire you to create or appeal to your view of the world.

Noticing things is surprisingly difficult. We don’t take in half the things we see as we are “multi-sensate beings, we are inundated with sense impressions all the time.” (Mason, 2002 ) Researching Your Own Practice, The Discipline of Noticing. This makes it increasingly difficult to notice even an instant of a moment and take note of it.

John Cage’s most famous performance emphasises our ability to notice things, as well as how cluttered our lives can get, as in his performance 4’33”, also known as ‘sounds like silence’ he performs nothing, allowing the people in the room to stop and notice the things they normally take for granted, such as breathing or the beating of their heart. He also created an emotional reaction and awareness, as many people panicked at the idea of sitting in a theatre and waiting for something that never happened, allowing people to become more readily aware of their bodies reactions as well.

Do you take the time to notice that the sun is actually shining when you’re having a horrible day? To see the interesting grafitti on the street? To see the birds dance through the shopping centre? Do you notice the life around you, or are you too focused and crowded in your head that you forget that the world is huge and yet small at the same time? These are all questions that are worth thinking about, if you just take time to notice the eccentricities of life.

– Morris, Brian. Lectorial, week 2

– Mason, John. “Researching Your Own Practice. The Discipline of Noticing.” Routledge Falmer, 2002

Media is Re-Learning: Experimental Film

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To me, the summation of this first week’s topic is the way in which the many mediums we utilise to express oursleves are constsntly challenged reworked and experimented with, to create entirely new artworks we never thought to exist before. Experimental film is one such explorative art that challenges the very meaning of media every day and causes us to re-learn and challenge what we know about media.

Stan Brakhage is one such experementalist, creating pieces of art described as music without sound, created only through the moving image. He does this by painting directly onto film stock. The funnt thing about this technique, besides how painstaking it is to create even a minute with 24 frames a second to paint, but beneath the paint there is always an underlying image, which at times Brakhage allows to come momentarily to the surface. This technique allows Brakhage to combine two very different techniques for incredible effect in ‘the Dante Quartet’:

Another form of experimental film is one which utilises found footage. ‘Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy’, is a short experimental film by Martin Arnold and it uses only footage from Andy Hardy films. Arnold takes apart each film to find footage which, when slowed down or quickened, reversed or played forward, creates an entirely different meaning. One not necessarily PG. Through ‘remixing’ the footage, Arnold creates an entirely different plot, one that creates quite the oedipal complex:

One of the earliest forms of experimental cinema came out of Dadaism and post-Cubism in the 1920’s (Tohline, 2013). This form of experimental cinema often had an anti-establishment bend to it, and this film follows that genre through its contratsing of the human form and static, mechanical objects, emphasisng the now mechanical nature of humanity (as is evident through the title). “Ballet mécanique constitutes one of the most famous and most successful examples surviving this brief-lived but highly innovative, highly influential period of experimental production.” (Small, 2015):

As you can see through the examples above, experimental films reshape our understanding of exactly what ‘media’ is, and reminds us that there really are no limitations within it, only those we put on oursleves.

 

– Small, Edward S. “Le Ballet Mecanique.”

– Tohline, Max. “On Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger, 1924).“

My First Lectorial, Dear Future Self

Alaine Thompson on

Yesterday was my first media lectorial. We talked a lot about how we learn and Brian Morris put a poem up on the board by Tom Wayman called ‘Did I Miss Anything?’, a poem which I thought was hilariously quirky and really emphasises the need to be present during a lecture, because you never know when you’ll miss “Everything”, “Nothing” or even “an angel or other heavenly being”. But the poem truly says it all, stating that you will miss everything as the classroom is “a microcosm of human experience assembled for you to query and examine and ponder. This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered. But it was one place. And you weren’t here.” And now, whenever I feel the urge to not come to a class for whatever reason, I’ll read this poem and smile, and think ‘hey, maybe, just maybe something crazy will happen that you’ll want to write about, that you’ll never be able to see. Because you weren’t there.’

And now I feel like I won’t miss anything as I feel the urge to be present in this brilliantly zany environment, and take this course by the horns, especially if such awesome poems are going to be thrown around.

We also had to write a list of goals for the course called ‘DEAR FUTURE SELF’, it sounded like something I did in Year 7, only now it would mean something to me, have substance over the next few years as I try to accomplish those things. I’m truly no longer that wide-eyed high school child any more and I’m ready to embrace it, ready to challenge myself by learning how to use a DSLR camera, how to use lighting properly so I can manipulate it for my own uses instead of being blinded by it, become better at drawing so I don’t just draw stick figures when I storyboard, and might actually give animating a shot, be able to develop all the fantastical stories I have stored in my head that are just chomping at the bit to burst forth onto a page. All this and more I can’t wait to achieve, and hopefully, being more of a hyper attentive learner will help in this journey.

First Day in the Life of a Uni Student

Alaine Thompson on

So yesterday was my first day at uni at RMIT. I had quite a few bumps getting there. Not as in, into the course itself, as in to uni on the day. You’d think it would be easy to get into the city unscathed, but no. I almost forgot to charge my laptop and I tripped UP the stairs on my way into the building, leaving me breathlessly asking if I was in the right place.

Luckily, I was organised enough to get myself to the right building, level and classroom and even had the skill to get there ten minutes early. I know, right? The struggles of university life. Bumbling haphazardly from place to place. Once I was in the classroom though, I found it was far more relaxed than I thought it would be. Hey, I’m doing a media degree, I should hope these people are as happy and open-minded as me.

We even got our first assignment. I’ll admit, at first I felt like I was being thrown in the deep end, but once Robbie started explaining it to us and how we can do anything, bend the mediums to our will so we can show the world who we are, show ourselves who we are, I couldn’t help but get excited. And the ideas just started to flow.

I honestly can’t wait for this degree to really push into motion, because I know that it will inspire me and challenge my creativity at every turn. And I can’t wait for it.

Here are some helpful places I’ve found over the past year or so that I know I will need at some point, and you guys might too:

‘No Film School’ is a great website for the filmmaker on a budget. They have all kinds of crazy solutions to problems, you possibly might need one day. And also all kinds of interesting info on the industry and its technology.

‘Film Riot’ are a bunch of cool people who do video tutorials on YouTube on a regular basis that could also help you out in a jam.

Here’s a list of Auteurs whose entire filmographys you should watch, because they are incredible.

Enjoy! (: