Holy Continuing Work on Documentary, Batman!

Nearing the end! I'm so close I can taste it! Over the past few weeks I have been posting clips from the interviews we conducted in the Philippines on youtube so they can be translated into english.  Here are two of them:

Try to figure out what they are saying! It's hard!  Anyway, I have just received the translations from the second clip there, and am working on making subtitles now.  This is an important interview because Danny here talks in depth about the threats facing the cave bats and I think it is important to have a native speaker addressing these issues versus a foreigner alone.  I have also been working with a composer via email who has agreed to score the video.  I'm looking forward to hearing what he comes up with.
I will be conducting my last interview with Jodi on Wednesday.  I think this will also be a very valuable interview because Jodi will provide transitions between topics and fill in the necessary gaps in the video.  After Wednesday I will finally have all the footage I need to piece everything together.  I plan to have a 99% complete video for our screening, but I will continue to make tweaks over spring break. The last step I plan on taking is writing a transcript of all the English interviews to translate back to Tagalog.

I CAN HAZ ALIENATION?

I don't think the original investors of the internet had any idea what they were really getting themselves into.  The extent that the internet has taken over our lives is pretty crazy, and it doesn't look like it will be stopping any time soon.  In the article Alone Together, Sherry Turkle discusses how modern day technology is both connecting us more and more and at the same time we are drifting farther and farther apart, preferring to communicate via electronic devices over talking face to face.  Though this may be true, who is to say whether one is better than the other? We live in rapidly changing times and maybe human interaction is just slowing us down. Online we can create perfect versions of ourselves via avatars.  We can post photoshopped pictures of ourselves on facebook and update everyone on our day-to-day internet lives on twitter.  And then there's the cat videos.

Map of the Internet FTW

Basically, the internet is a really weird place and I have no idea how it is going to evolve in the coming years given it is such a relatively new technology (as are most things today).  Will everyone soon be doing everything online from their homes? Lots of people already do...  Thinking about it in this way can seem scary, but the internet is also such an immensely powerful tool that has the ability to help so many people.  Because it facilitates global connection, its existence helps solve global problems.  In The Garden of Forking Paths, Borges talks about an immense wealth of knowledge that can certainly apply to the modern internet.

I have been and will certainly be utilizing the internet to help create my own project.  I have posted versions of my videos on youtube for people I have never met to translate clips into English and I have corresponded with musicians via email and text message to make an original score.

Nothing

Ray doin somethin. Or possibly nuthin...

This past week we watched "How to draw a bunny"- a documentary about the artist Ray Johnson.  It was very interesting to see how his art compares with that of Beuys and Kaprow, since they were all (at least partly) performance artists and some of Johnsons pieces certainly were influenced by Kaprow's Happenings.  I also really like the idea of Johnson's use of the US postal service as a sort of medium for his work.  It seems to take art as far away as possible from a museum setting, since it is on the move.  While I enjoyed watching the documentary and learning about Johnson as an artist, I was left a little disturbed by his "final piece" as some would call it. Johnson obviously had some issues towards the end of his life to have planned something like that so meticulously.  That being said, it was quite amazing to see how he arranged his entire house in a particular way to basically tell what had happened to him.  Amazing and sad.

I thought that Mary Jane Jacob brought up some good points in her convocation speech the other day.  I liked her idea that art should be something that can be experienced anywhere, not just in a museum.  Johnson certainly would agree with this idea considering his history with mail art.  This idea was also important when we went to Depere to visit the WC Gallery in a bathroom.  I agree with Jacob's statement that museums tend to separate art from everyday life, and that with public art there is more of a direct exchange between the artist and the audience.  Jacob went on to talk about how there is a difference between the artwork and the experience of the artwork, which seems to be a recurring theme over the last few weeks, but is not only applicable to performance art.

I have had to find a new musician to score my video, as the previous has run into scheduling conflicts.  I contacted the dean of the conservatory and he gave me some suggestions.  Hopefully all goes well.  I have also posted another series of clips for translation.  This is an important interview and once it is subtitled I think I will have enough to make a few more segments of the video.  The last step is to interview Jodi as well to fill in the parts that haven't been covered yet.

PS: Did you know you can download a Ray Johnson font?
http://www.fontriver.com/font/ray_johnson/

Holy Happenings, Batman!

To me, Allan Kaprow makes more sense (I use this term loosely) than Joseph Beuys.  After watching the footage of some of Kaprow's Happenings, I was left feeling quite similarly to how I felt after watching that documentary about Beuys' installation in the Guggenheim, but I think in the long run I was a little less confused.

Kaprow is one happenin' dude

When I saw Beuys' work, I really did not (do not) understand the ideas behind it, and I think this is because so much of his work is deeply rooted in his own personal experiences, making it difficult for me to comprehend.  After learning his history, many of his works become very powerful, and obviously meaningful to Beuys, but I still don't really understand them.  When I see Kaprow's work on the other hand, I think I understand more the meaning behind more of it, while not necessarily understanding the work itself.

I think that Kaprow's idea of creating art without creating a physical product is really interesting.  I like the idea that this kind of art can be so interactive and how each performance is unique.  I also thought it was interesting to talk about how repeating or even discussing his specific Happenings would in some way take away from them, since they are meant to be seen only once and in person. I enjoyed creating our own Happening in class the other day, although the Happening we performed didn't seem to make anyone particularly uncomfortable, which seems like a common theme in Kaprow's other Happenings.  Maybe next time we should lick jam off of the mirrors or something.

I'm still working on adding subtitles to the interviews and will upload a few more clips to be translated be someone who speaks Tagalog.  Hopefully will find someone soon...