Today we will introduce you to Studio Artist. Meera Darji will be helping to run a training session so that all of you can get to use SA. We will spend most of today as a learning laboratory and you will get to know SA and experiment with it. We will also set a short exercise the DaDa Project. This looks at taking human action and transforming it through SA. Once you get access to the software this is what you will need to do today and over the next week:
1. Record a short clip of around 30seconds of a human in action doing a very simple task. Full body shots are more useful than limited actions and the less clothing the better to be able to use the human form. Dancers and sport people could be a good source of this but you can also do it with your friends.
2. Select 10 seconds from this clip and import into SA. Explore the software and treat the entire clip with one of the SA actions. Enjoy the process and transform reality into art.
3. Export the clip and then repeat it 3 times so that you end up with a 30 second file with the same clip repeated. You can also distort or add an effect on your editing software at this stage. Bring it into next weeks session on December 8, you can continue working on it until 3:00PM.All the clips will then to be put on a group timeline which should end up as a 12 minute piece.
4. At 4:00PM we will be going over to the TANK where we will set up a HD Projector. We will be projecting from inside the TANK onto the side of the University Building opposite for a public screening of your work.
Media: 30 second clip. Visuals only no audio.
Delivery: Thursday 8 December.
Software: All students will get a licence for SA on their personal laptops.
Influences: We have mentioned Duchamp as well as Muybridge. Duchamp was a proponent of DaDa, an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature. Think about the nonsense of work when choosing your 30 second clip to film. How absurd is the human body when forced into production? Manual work, by its nature, can be repetitive and boring but there is also power in the rhythm of the mechanics of the body. Consider also the pleasure of the human form liberated from the mundane. Whatever aspect you decide to focus on by transforming it through SA and then projecting onto the building you will be making an interpretation, and a statement, about the human body and the wider environment.
MA 21st Century Media Practice 2017 