Videos

Act 2 - Object, Action, Recording

 Object, Action, Recording - Artist Statement

The line between private and public space seems to have disappeared. It’s now typical to post vlogs and get-ready-with-me videos online, strangers inviting one another into their kitchens, bedrooms, and even their showers. What does it mean to turn these private, sometimes intimate, moments into a performance? In this video, I’ve come up with two answers by putting one of the few distinctly private moments that remain on display: washing your hair.

Exhibiting a private moment in public can make the audience feel like intruders. I made an effort to dial up the discomfort and vulnerability of this dynamic, emphasizing the voyeuristic role that the audience falls into. By not acknowledging the audience, and refraining from making stylized choices in editing during the first half, this emphasis naturally happens. On the other hand, roping an audience into taking a peek into one’s private space can be an amazing opportunity for an artist. It’s a chance to immerse the audience in your experience, and maybe even convince them to care about it. Even something as mundane washing your hair can evoke a trance-like feeling, the repetitive movements blending together. The velvety hair products, the texture of hair, and the soft heat of water and steam engulfs your senses. By overlaying video clips and layering sounds of waves, river murmurs, as hair combing over the shower ambience, my hope is to convey the sensory and conceptual experience of standing under the faucet, combing through knots.

 Object, Action, Recording - Reflection 

When I initially settled on this idea for this project, it felt a little self-indulgent. I rarely decide to use school assignments as an opportunity to investigate my thoughts and feelings about something– it’s much easier to already know what I think and go from there. I started out wanting to create an experience that would help me figure out what I think. What was most interesting to me was how it would feel to record what is usually a private moment, what it would be like to edit and think critically about how I present it, and how it would feel to see other people see it. I thought it might make me feel vulnerable, or maybe even embarrassed, and I’ve been curious about what it means to intentionally explore those types of feelings as an artist. I also wanted to try sticking to a simple concept that might even be boring because I tend to represent my ideas in a way that’s complex to the point of having too much going on. Because I can’t really imagine what the viewing experience will be like for other people, I felt like I had to put a lot of trust into my aesthetic sensibilities, which felt pretty good to do. I agree with the feedback that my final video has a certain contemplative quality to it, which was not intentional, but makes sense given how much contemplating I was doing while making it. Overall, this project just felt like a whole lot of thinking on my part, which I love doing, and went quite smoothly because of all my planning. 

Act 1 - As Light/As Air

 As Light as Air - Artist Statement

In my head, the passage of time is deeply related to my understanding of identity and my relationship with myself. I conceptualize myself as being made up of five different versions of me; five different characters coexisting at all times. A directionless and overwhelmed adult, an expressive and vulnerable child, and a fusion of the two who is much more grounded, hopeful, but still not completely whole. Then, there's future me, the missing piece. Sometimes an elder speaking to me through my intuition with my best interest in mind. Sometimes a looming sphinx, speaking in riddles, years or seconds away from devouring me. It's the interactions between these five characters that shepherd me through four distinct emotional seasons, over and over.

Winter is stagnancy, coldness. Spring is vibrancy, being born again. Summer is real life, feeling and doing and so many possibilities. Fall is the last chapter before the next inevitable winter, and death. The ending portrayed here is a hopeful one, where rather than being eaten by my future, I am the one who takes a bite out of it. Each character's unique qualities are expressed through their form, shapes and lines pieced together by various digital drawing tools. The four emotional seasons are constructed in a similar way, abstracted environments made by layers of digital collaging.  Color, timing, and sound all come together to represent the story of me: then, now, and probably moving forward. 

As Light as Air - Reflection

I was very excited for this project when I read the prompt. Thematically, it fits right in with the kind of subject matter I am personally interested in thinking about as an artist. I also thought it could be a fun chance to try creating a narrative and drawings with some touches of surrealism. Getting started was easy, and so was fleshing out my idea. However, I started running into problems when the time came to put my images into Adobe Premiere Pro. I spent hours after class and a few afternoons and evenings on the weekend in the lab working on this project. There were times when I had to redo a few things, my process was probably unecessariy convoluted, but I my excitement about my idea kept me from getting too terribly frustrated. I really cared about it, and it paid off when I finished putting everything together in time! But then, the time to export the video came.

Trying to export this video had me on the brink to losing my mind. Or maybe even well past the brink. Turns out, most of my tediously placed short clips to create quick movements are skipped over when the video is exported with the settings in accordance with this assignment, and when I would export with settings that didn't do that, the quality of the video completely disappeared! I ended up having to sacrifice some of the quality, but ultimately, I did what I could and just had to accept the less than ideal outcome. Overall though, I think this project has been a very solid stepping stone in figuring out ways I am interested in visually conceptualizing my more abstract ideas. I'm grateful for it.