The internet of things…all things

Almost everything catastrophic seemed like a good idea. Both communism and capitalism, Catholicism and Islam are all beautiful ideas, but in the wrong hands, in hands that desire power and wealth those things have meant death and destruction to millions of people. The same is true with the internet of things.

Connectivity and surveillance are the same. Whilst we have convenience that means more and more data is being handed to corporation and state on a platter.

 

Posting movies presenting crisis situations and heightened emotional manipulations may see extreme, but it took less than two seconds on my university library site to bring up a screen full of companies published articles on pervasive surveillance uses for ioT.

We’ve just been studying units on cyber warfare and cyber crime and how easy and common it is for data to be seized and used for nefarious purposes. I can’t wait to see the time where someone holds my fridge hostage.

 

The firs ioT device was a vending machine connected in 1981 #BCM206https://t.co/QKuCi7Bl7p

— Christina Donoghue (@cherokee_flower) October 29, 2018

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This can be where we are headed, Black Mirror we are here #BCM206
Banned cameras are being used by the Australian Government https://t.co/k1xGgXuogE via @ABCNews

— Christina Donoghue (@cherokee_flower) October 29, 2018

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Process Update 4: and we wait

My unfavourite part of making in the digital sphere is definitely waiting. Waiting for software to work. At this moment I am waiting for Protools to completely open on my system—5mins.

My schedule this week was as follows:

Monday – filming

I have been noticing light. So, in my photography work I’ve been studying what I like in certain photographs and film, notably the work of people like Sally Mann. What has stood out to me was how light falls within the frame. So I’ve noticed for a while that my garage is a pretty interesting space as far as light and surface textures go. The man who built it was a carpenter, so there are high windows that let the light in and windows at the opposite end from the roller door that open behind wooden shutters. There is also power in the garage which enables me to plug in extra light if needed. And it’s close by so if I need to reset and refilm anything it is close at hand, with the same light.

So, I filmed some dancing, and some close ups from different angles. I need the footage to edit side by side the sound. All in all I took about an hour’s worth of footage which took most of the day to complete. I liked the result. Much of it is very dark, but I really like the aesthetic.

The writing studio a.k.a Corrimal Beach

Tuesday – editing in class

Well basically this plan didn’t work. The computers at uni hadn’t been updated for a while so I was unable to open my files on Adobe Premiere as they’d been saved on a newer version. Beyond annoyed, I thought of the other tasks that needed doing. So, I took myself to the beach to write the narration/poetry for the soundbed.

The hall studio

Wednesday (today) – Sound recording

Today I’m taking everything that I have written. I recorded it all into Adobe Audition using my Rhodes NT USB condenser mic, it’s very sensitive, but it has a nicer timbre to it. After removing most of the impurities from the tracks I’m moving them into protools. I have a better range of plugins etc available, and it’s just a personal preference. I’m going to make an audio poem of sorts from my fragmented vocals and see if I can find clarity here. I’m a bit excited about it.

Thursday – Uni

No time for the project today.

Friday – Uni & Continue sound edit

As far as the research for this project goes, I’ve been looking at a few artists. Referred by my tutor/lecturer/provider-of-cake I looked up Isaac Julien who I have looked at previously, but in this case I was looking at ‘Black Skin White Mask’ about Franz Fanon. It was beautiful and thought provoking as Franz Fanon is already a great inspiration to me in my study of post-colonial theory.

Isaac Julien, movie still ‘Franz Fanon Black Skin White Mask’

In his film, Julien uses simple framing and both digetic and non-digetic sound. There is narration and music in addition to on screen dialogue. He uses music to create a powerful aesthetic and connect to sound to the imagery. It’s a layer that I would like to experiment with in my own film.

Bill Voila, ‘Earth Martyr, Air Martyr, Fire Martyr, Water Martyr’, 2014

The other artist I’ve been looking that this week has been Bill Viola in his work the ‘Martyr’. His use of video as installation is simple. It is almost as if they are still photographs in composition but are moving pieces of art. I am really interested in the way he uses place to create another layer of meaning to his work. Awareness of not only the space within the frame, but the space around the frame and how the people viewing it will interact with it.

This coming week, I’m really focussing on just getting things made so that I have time to edit them and have a buffer for any technical difficulties.

Process update 2: Introspect, grounded, maturing, still

I am a great believer in putting action in a direction and just doing the work until the idea begins to find its own truth. I’ve had a couple of points epiphical points in the past week where some pennies have dropped.

I’ve been pursuing this work with ‘skin’. The idea has felt solid and true, but I’ve been struggling with its form from the beginning. Which is good, it’s just like working into a painting and building up layers only to begin peeling it back. I’m happy to build the layers to this project. But, the layers of thought that I have been building upon is this.

As I was speaking to one of my interviewees and explaining my topic and reasoning, it struck me that my story is one of heart. It’s grounded in experience and I have the ability to build a visual story around that. I am a writer, poet, dancer and actor there is no reason why I can’t be my material. That may be the truth I am searching for.

Watching Stan Brackage’s Window Water Baby Moving, got my head thinking for two class works. Both about the footage I already had of my fathers death as well as footage I might create. The treatments I could use that would be more emotionally appealing and personal that the question/answer format to which I have become accustomed during the last 5 years of journalism.

Brackage’s work got me as it focussed on a central idea. Although there is a narrative of sorts that works in a roughly linear way. The idea was more important that the temporal locality of the narrative. Montage was used to move through the narrative and to play with the time and the space, to create pace and intensity and moments of stillness.

Another point that stuck with me, that seems unrelated, but is not. My friend J when interviewed was speaking about how knowing how to moisturise is one of the only things that she has that is passed down through the women in her family. She feels that this ritual is precious. It got me thinking about skin and the performance of skin in relation to ritual. I can see this performance within the gallery context being quite profound.

So, my immediate plan of attack is to create some footage myself and write or find some poetry and story. I think this is more powerful and I am feeling connected to this idea. Essentially this is scrapping one manifestation of this project and metamorphosing into the next.

Process update 1: technical setup

The more responsible part of me has realised that I had made a commitment during this project to document my process more faithfully. I have been failing miserably on that count.

So, I’ll try to briefly play catch-up through the next series of posts.

The goal with this project was to gather my interview footage early in the development phase so that assemblage and manipulation of the material could take most of the time.

I arranged my first two interviews for the 17^th August in the lighting studio. I had Karolina who is a forty-something writing student and Laura who is a young Communications student.

The equipment used was:

• 1 x EOS750 Canon using zoom 24-105 lens, 1 x D5 Canon using 85m portrait lens
• Zoom recorder (H2N?) with Sony wireless lapel mic
• Black background
• 3 x soft box lights

I had the studio booked for 2hrs. I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to do the first set up. So, Karolina ended up waiting for 30mins and we were unable to complete her interview.

What we did complete was great. She was animated and even though in the headphones the sound was echoing, when it was uploaded the sound was clean, but the levels were low. Aaron had dropped by and checked the audio, he said it was fine. I will play with the equipment before the next session to see if the gain can be increased to give me more volume.

The next interview with Laura was great, it only took about 30mins and the lighting worked well and the sound.

I’m going to start working with these interviews separately. I’m going to try cutting them together different ways.

I also need to start making them into shorts that can be used in my DA and inspire interaction and feedback from my online community.

Skin: the beginning

Artist’s Statement

Title:                Skin

Artist:              Christina Donoghue

Medium:          Digital video installation

Skin is a series of interviews that asked the participants to share the life experience of their skin. Skin was conceived from a desire to have a conversation about identity from a common baseline. By allowing people’s narratives and emotions around their skin to unfold organically on film both our sameness and our differences are discussed by association in a microcosmic fashion that relates to the larger discussions of personal, ethnic, generational, gender, sexual and minority identity. Travelling from the textural to the visceral Skin speaks to our awareness of self and explores the connections between our internal and external journeys.

Influences: Installation film format

When trying to find the best possible, achievable way to present my film installation Skin, I’ve been looking for other ways that people have used a screen format to present documentary like film. I’m interested in how the format affects the way the content is received. How the aesthetics of the film effect the content.

FOUR – TELL from Kathryn Ferguson on Vimeo.

I came across this film called Four-tell by Kathryn Ferguson. The project interviews four influential women who are speaking to being woman from a space of power and influence. What was especially striking to me was the aesthetic quality of the film. How colours, geometrics, costume and shadow and light had been used to create interest for the eye, whilst subjects were being interviewed. The interviews were cut together so that all the subjects were responding to the same topic areas, within this subject area it served to bring more meaning or weight to the discourse.

I’m not as confident that act of cutting the interviews together would work with my work. But, I do plan on experimenting with that to see how it impacts the work. Whether my fears of creating conflict between the voices are realised or whether it just creates a pace or friction that is more stimulating for the viewer.

The animation between squares and movement on-screen is interesting. I would also be interested in experimenting with that approach to see if it adds or detracts from the quality of the piece. The idea of creating an aesthetic uniformity throughout the piece appeals to me, but I would like to look at doing this without losing any of the ‘everywoman’, ‘everyman’ quality to the documentary frame.

Under my skin

I suppose I should preface this post. There are no great theoretical discussions, just a relaying of my raw practice, which is all you are likely to receive after several days of interviewing and editing.

I’ve mixed down an advance version of my project for marking. But, as with all of my work, it becomes apparent once I start to put the project together, how much better this could be with time.  This project needs years rather than hours, this is where it is right now.

Interviews

The interviews have been pretty amazing. As expected the skin has been this interesting doorway with which to view a persons life, how they see the world and how they believe the world sees them. Perception of perception. There are many common themes that have come up, medical conditions, race, personal memories, sex. I am not sure how they would be if they were sorted into subject categories and then placed side by side. I felt like that would be moving toward the didactic, so I steered away from supplying the opportunity for comparison. The interviews were left edited, but untouched in the affect. I aimed for leaving them to be interesting in their authenticity and real consideration of the topic. They interviews are very natural and human. Presented in real time.

As interviewer, I find the process of interviewing each new subject both delightful and draining. Having to draw out the subject one by one. Interviewing on a topic such as skin can be arduous as no one considers the world through their as a matter of course. So it takes some prodding to reach beneath the skin (pun intended) of the questions and speak through our own bodily experience.

Format

The format is video split-screen. Ideally I think eventually I can see a series of handmade silk screens coming from the ground, encouraging the audience to sit down and experience them as a conversation, or to just walk from screen to screen, receiving impressions from each. The projector screen is split in three, the one large is a mid-length to full length shot of the interviewee speaking direct to camera. The subject was placed in the centre of the frame and cropped in post. In the small third I have placed a profile shot of the subject that is not in sync. The profile shot offers the viewer the chance to examine the subject of the interview unobserved. It also appears that the close-up profile shot is listening to the main interview and responding.

In the third split sect there is a range of loosely related textural images interspersed. I played with this frame seeing what impact it had on the frame as a whole. I found it interesting, and at times distracting which was not unpleasant. I found that the interest it provided pleased me visually and the interplay between the three frames was interesting to watch. It’s interesting to watch the ‘skins’ of other things living and inanimate. Juxtaposing the verbal expression of race or freckles with water or tree bark acts to ground and speaks to a larger truth and shared experience.

The larger truth of this work is that it is a work in practice. It needs the time to breathe and be massaged to allow it to express itself completely.

Completely aware of this 2am rant. I will attempt to dissect the piece with increased clarity in a future post.

_____ enough?

For those who are none the wiser, this post is a brief description and proposal for digital art project form yet unrealised. For now it is a busy soup of ideas and potentiality which I am now charged with translating into a cognisant whole.

Power & Identity

Last year I undertook a writing work that was occupied with post-colonial theory. In this time I came across theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Franz Fanon and Eduard Said and was already painfully aware of Foucault who seems to have something to do with everything across the humanities. What stuck with me was this idea of erasure of history and culture and therefore people’s concept of identity. Franz Fanon said it most succintly for me in Black Skin, White Masks, “Without a Negro past, without a negro future, it was impossible for me to live my Negrohood.” Fanon (1952, p.153) I had a similar experience when reading Spivak’s response to Macauley regarding the codification of Hindu Law by the British in Can the subaltern speak? 1988. Foucault refers to these actions as ‘epistemic violence’. A theme inspired by all these texts is the idea that ones identity cannot be known as it has already been erased or stolen. And all that you think you know about yourself, if it is based of misinformation or the space of erasure, how do we form our identity and authenticity.

The interaction with power in this space, is the power enacted by the dominant discourse to create a reality based of a context designed to support the dominant power.

Realising large concepts in finite space

Going forward with the idea of keeping this project reflexive so that it is doable within a shorter period of time, I plan on using myself as the subject. Growing up black/white biracial a subject of societal binaries I would like to explore the space that is unsatisfied with who we are and seeks to define and classify.

My idea at present is a combination of photography and video. I would like to use time lapse photography and apply make-up to camera and ask the question “am I _______ enough?” This comes from the experience of growing up in both Australia and the USA and being told by both Australian and African-American communities “where are you from?”, “You can’t be from here?”, “You’re not very dark?” or to my mother, “Oh, whose girl is this?”. Dealing with questions of visual displays of cultural identity and how the power is enacting on us.

The Process

1. Research – Together with my team I will be researching identity theory. Looking at the three main classifications of identity formation; individual identity, social identity, cultural identity. As well how as power interacts and/or influences the construction of identity. Research into other artists that are working with similar themes and mediums will be part of this body of research.
2. Project planning – Final plans will be made for how to begin shaping the material to express the ideas cohesively. This will occur with the openness to the process of making quite often changing the direction of the project.
3. Creation – creation of the material project in consultation with the group.
4. Exhibition

Feedback and collaboration with ideas is part of my project model. For this we will be using in class time as well as Facebook groups and Google Hangout as well as face to face closer to exhibition time.

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https://vimeo.com/156908266

Video piece by multimedia artist Jessica Wimbley who deals with themes of erasure and identity within the American landscape. During the research phase I will be seeking more artists that have used these contemporary mediums within this space of inquiry. I also love her use of photography and film.

 

References

Bunch, A 2015, ‘Epistemic violence in the process of Othering: Real-world applications and moving forward’, Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark, vol. 1, no.2, pp.11-18

Fanon, F 1986, Black skin white masks, trans. CL Markman, Pluto Press, London

Spivak, GC 1988, Can the subaltern speak?, Macmillan

 

 

Following the path

From the moment my team stepped into Puckey’s Reserve and the boardwalk groaned as we stretched its ageing back. The conversation switched from easy to uncertain. My mind tripped to my own children as the younger students around me revealed their immediate loss of direction and feeling of being lost and isolated despite only being several feet from the main road. As we went on the mood grew easier, rocked by the meditative pace of an easy walk and respectful smiles and nods of the runners and dog walkers passing by, the conversation meandered with the path.

We started theorising about paths, noticing how we ourselves would follow a constructed path without question. So conditioned we even know how to behave on the path. How do I feel?  I resent paths. This is not reasonable thought I know. If left to my own devises I never follow them choosing to ‘go bush’ and follow an instinctive sense of direction. I may be comforted though, knowing that the path is there.

This idea can be taken as an analogy for anything really, so for the purposes of this post what if I use it to explore possibilities for my art practice… Intrigued? Of course you are.

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Is every unexplored path a missed opportunity?

Staying on the path – available opportunities

SAMSTAG Scholarship – Is an award of $48000 to an art student to cover the reasonable costs for one year to study outside of Australia. To be eligible for this you must be completing or having completed a practice-led Visual Arts university level program.

Artshub – has a list of grants and scholarship opportunities available

Arts Council Australia – has grants available for all disciplines, as well as companies.

Art Almanac – listing of Australian Art Prizes

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Veering off the path  – opportunities created

Veering of the path for me looks something like what I used to do with my Hip Hop Dance work. Go out into the community or come up with a concept or piece and create it, recruiting people along the way. There are many grants and residencies that can assist with this process, but there seems to be a dollar amount necessary and an element of the starving artist to this route. But there is an amount of temporal freedom and lack of accountability except to the self that is attractive in this package. Not completely though.

Residencies available in Australia – https://visualarts.net.au/space/studio-residencies/list-studios-residencies/

International art residencies – http://www.resartis.org/en/

Self organised projects – hire a venue such as Campbelltown Arts Centre’s performance space, publicise the project myself and create and manage the project myself.

Creating an Arts Company or Cooperative – one of the ideas I’m definitely toying with at the moment. Is the creation of a theatre company in Campbelltown (South-West Sydney) that has a focus on telling diverse Australian stories and acting as a breeding ground for new writers, artists, designers etc coming out of South-West Sydney. Giving a voice and a platform for the public performance for people considered marginal, but shown to be integral.