Final Piece

My Final Piece

Link for the video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgNy745qGY

My final piece is based on reverse video/back-masking.  I thought that this linked in very well with the subject of story telling, in the way that there can be a story revealed by flipping it round and being reversed.  This video consists of clips I have recorded that are played backwards and then reversed to make a song, I thought about using something that I enjoy doing and have it as a hobby to use in my final piece.  I was then inspired by a video on YouTube by a guy of reverse guitar where he plays the song backwards and then reverses it and then the outcome is a famous song.  I took this idea of recording a song and playing it backwards then reversing it for it to be heard as if it was played normally, I wasn't quite sure what song to use but came up with the idea of using 'Final Countdown' by the band 'Europe' as it is a well known song/anthem.  I then looked at the notation/tab for the melody on guitar and turned it around to play it backwards, I had to then learn the song backwards and record myself playing it.  I also added a second guitar to add more fullness and make it more song like.  Making this video was quite a complicated procedure due to the fact that I had to get the tempo right for the guitars so when played together they didn't sound completely out and fitted together, to do this I used a metronome, which played through my headphones in the background.  To actually begin recording this I set up a tripod in my room and I had the guitar connected up to an amplifier, then after recording all the clips I put it all into sony vegas where I edited all up together.  Although the video isn't the most smooth, or the song doesn't sound exactly as the original, or hasn't got the greatest visual or audio quality, due to the lack of good technology, I think it works because it shows the whole meaning of stories and what I was looking into, in the sense that there can be a story in something which when played normally doesn't sound like much, but when reversed has a completely other angle and more meaning to it.

This is a still image of the video which inspired me, which is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvjokgT86ds

This image shows the tabs which is what I had to learn to play.  For this video then to work I would need to learn this the opposite way so when edited and reversed it plays forwards.   
  

 Here is a grid of stills from the olympics opening ceremony countdown.  This links up with my project of things being in reverse because a countdown is numbers which go down backwards down to 0.  Also the song I played in the video is called 'The Final Countdown' therefore countdowns links with that too.

This my sequence of numbers like a countdown, where I took photos of numbers from different items around my house.

This

This is a quick animation of a countdown which goes from 10 to 1.  I was trying to imitate the Olympics opening ceremony, choosing different objects where they have numbers on them I could use.

My Final Video Explanation 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS_MDw9ofSk&feature=youtu.be

Research

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger is a British artist.  His work 'Angel' caught my eye quite a bit as it linked very well with my theme of reverse play and backmasking.  As a video, I found it very intriguing how he has managed to recite some verses from the bible but saying them backwards and then editing them and inverting them to make them sound as if he is saying it forwards.

Angel

Mark Wallinger has a film he made which has been reversed, where the actor is speaking in reverse however saying words that when reversed are understandable for us the viewers.  Here is the summary:

Angel is a seven and a half minute video.  The video is played continuously on a loop and can be displayed on a monitor or projected so that the image fills the gallery wall.  Each video explores the theme of religion and features Wallinger playing Blind Faith, his sightless alter ego. He is seen in a different situation in each one, singing or reciting a text drawn from classical or popular literature.

In Angel Wallinger wears dark glasses and taps the ground with a blind person's white stick. He is seen walking on the spot at the foot of a moving escalator in the Angel underground station, London. In this awkward position he delivers a monologue, repeatedly reciting the first five verses of St. John's Gospel from the King James version of the Bible:

The words are oddly indistinct and Wallinger's voice has a garbled quality that could be said to evoke the speech of the deaf. This is because the artist recorded himself saying the words backwards while attempting to maintain the original speech patterns and emphases of the correctly spoken piece.  Angel finishes as Wallinger stops walking and talking and, in a mock ascension, he rises slowly up the escalator, carried away to the triumphal sounds of Zadok the Priest.

In Angel Wallinger presents the spectator with a series of paradoxes: time and speech appear to run forwards while in fact playing backwards, going up is going down and moving is staying still. As a result viewers are unable to believe their eyes and the supposed truth of the documentary medium appears to be undermined. 

I found this video very inspiring and it has made me think of ideas of what to do as a final piece.  The idea of talking and moving is really interesting, I will be experimenting many ideas inspired from this clip.

Experiments

This video is a set off experiments I made which are about reversing video.  They represent how a story can be told by different ways of reversing clips and what you do in these clips.

Backmasking

Backmasking (not to be confused with backward masking) is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward on to a track that is meant to be played forward. Backmasking is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional.
Backmasking was popularised by The Beatles who used backward instrumentation on their 1966 album Revolver. Artists have since used backmasking for artistic, comedic and satiric effect, on both analogue and digital recordings. The technique has also been used to censor words or phrases for "clean" releases of rap songs.
Backmasking has been a controversial topic in the United States since the 1980s, when allegations from Christian groups of its use for Satanic purposes were made against prominent rock musicians, leading to record-burning protests and proposed anti-backmasking legislation by state and federal governments.

Experiment

This is an experiment making a video by taking clips and editing them together, influenced by Paul Harrison and John Wood.

Video experiments

This video is another experiment based on a journey, however this time it's the journey about a hat.  I just filmed me throwing the hat then putting it in sony vegas and cutting and placing together the clips to make it look like one whole movement.  

This second is exactly the same just with a different ending.  I also added music to make it more interesting.

Video experiments

This video is an experiment I filmed during lessons where I got a football and recorded myself throwing it and rolling it around the school to produce a clip of the journey of the ball.  I then put these little clips together in Imovie to createone whole film.  This experiment was a idea to begin with, to be able to build on.

In this video I got the film I made previously and edited it in imovie.  I reversed a few clips and switched the positions too make the journey have more of a meaning, I also added music to add more entertainment and a bit of humour.

Paul Harrison + John Wood

John Wood and Paul Harrison are a duo which do film based work.  They do small films in their studio which are done with whatever they can find or make which the human figure can fit in and interact with.  They have work in the tate modern called 'Twenty-six drawing and falling things', it’s a series of 26 videos based on the human figure interacting with everyday objects or architectural spaces.

 

Triptych experiments

This a triptych i made of my dad doing movements while watching football.  I had the shutter speed to about 2.5 seconds to take these photos as the lighting wasn't that great.  I also put each photo into Photoshop and edited them with adding more contrast to them and also cropping them.

This is just me editing one of the photographs in Photoshop.

In this triptych of my father watching football I thought about how someone that loves football as much as my dad is so passive whilst watching the game so I looked up, John Goto who exagerates his images with the things he gets his actors to do, whilst the context being political and important.  I specifically looked at his crowd scene photographs, which are about the iraq war and politics, they have have also been very set up and made into a montage which makes them more jokey.

   Crowd scene 2

Crowd scene 1                                                      

These images in crowd scene 2 are gestures that John Goto found in newspapers that George W Bush did.


Here is an example of two.

In the Crowd scene 1 image John Goto got the actors to recreate the expressions of people tortured and suffering in iraq.

Here are some football crowds which show the exaggeration that people have at matches.

   

My idea to relate John Goto's work in my experiments I am thinking of looking up football celebrations by profesional football players and get a friend to recreate each celebration and put them in photoshop to create a montage.

 

Here I have my take on celbrations from profesional football players.  I have editted photos in Photoshop and created this montage over these photos.

 

Francis Bacon Triptych Research

The Irish-born artist Francis Bacon (1909–1992) painted 28 known triptychs between 1944 and 1986. He began to work in the format in the mid-1940s with a number of smaller scale formats before graduating in 1962 to large examples. He followed the larger style for 30 years, although he painted a number of smaller scale triptychs of friend's heads, and after the death of his former lover George Dyer in 1971, the three acclaimed "Black Triptychs".



Bacon was a highly mannered artist often preoccupied with forms, themes, images and modes of expression that he would rework for sustained periods, often across decades. When asked about his tendency for sequential paintings, he explained how, in his mind, images revealed themselves "in series. And I suppose I could go long beyond the triptych and do five or six together, but I find the triptych is a more balanced unit." His career began with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, an instant critical and popular success. The format appealed to him; he said, "I see images in series", according to Bacon images suggested other images and series became his dominant motif. He moved past the triptych format, and from the late 40s to the late 50s produced works in series of up to 10 works, many of which rank amongst his finest, including his series of Popes, heads and men in suits.

triptych experiments

With this image I used Ben as a model and by adjusting the shutter speed to 5 seconds.  I got him to move his head and try keep his body still in the first two images to get the effect of a distorted head but with a crisp clear body.  In the last Image I got him to move his arm up and down to get a sprt of effect that he has a wing.  I then put them in photoshop and changed the contrast and brightness to give them a more of a strong effect.

Book Experiment

These experiments are all to do with books as books are what mainly the things that contain stories and information.  We use books to learn and that is how we have learned all of the things we know today.

 In this photograph the book is shown very crisp and clear and looks very pleasing to the eye.  The composition is very nice and different, also in this photo the women looks like she is actually there.

With this photo I experimented with the shutter speed and moving the pages to see what it would look like and how it would manipulate the image. Also the light in the women's face changed which gave it another quirky look.

With this image I also experimented with the shutter speed and the movement of the pages and also with placing my hand on the book to create like a layer effect.

This photo is yet again to do with shutter speed but with the flicking pages in the book to have another motion effect.

This image I had more edited as I flipped it and added some blur to it,  also this image I find very interesting because it is a tiny bit open and you can see like little snip-its of different stories which like makes you curious about the whole thing. 

This photo has a great composition as the book has not been perfectly placed yet is still pleasing to the eye.  It also has this very strange quirky image which has a story behind which is mistifying.

Triptych

This is my Self portrait Triptych, In this image I have a football, a guitar and a Spain shirt.  I have the football as I enjoy football a lot and is my main sport, the guitar is because I also enjoy playing guitar enjoy listening and making music, the Spain shirt is there as I am half spanish.

Stories

Stories have been passed on for many years and have been interpreted in many different ways.  The earliest stories were those in caves which were told by paintings up on walls.

The ancient Egyptians also had a similar way of story telling with painting on walls and had there vision of perfection in there paintings and stories.

The Ancient Greeks also told of many stories, old mythological stories which have been kept on being told even today, for example prometheus which is also a film now and has been interpreted in a different way to how the Greek mythologic original story was.

Stories are also seen as convincing people with religion, a theory and other things but a main example is Hitler in the war and the book he wrote minecampf and how he wanted everyone to be like what he thought was the perfect human, and to hate all others who are different in this case the jews.  Jews are known as the people of the book, the book writers, Hitler destroyed all of their books.  This image is known as 'The Burning of The Books'

The Jews are mostly remembered from their torture and abuse during the war, especially with the holocaust where thousands were killed.  Rachel Whiteread  was assigned to make a piece of art to commemorate this devastating event, she created a monument with books inside like a library and had all the books all together covered in cast.

There are many artists like millais who tell stories in their painting for example with ophelia.

 Artists like Tom Hunter and Gregory Crewdson have done modern versions of this painting

Triptych

For my tryptch creation I was given this picture of a bus with someone look out of the window.  I thought through about manipulation and creation and in lessons we spoke about mythological stories and creatures so I began to think how I could make a tryptch with the idea of mythology and creation.

I decided to take a photo of my head and get the lower part of a dogs body.  I found this created a very mysterious, curious and quirky composition.  When I was coming up with the ideas I thought about a modern take on mythology, a metallic body with someone inside controlling the 'mythological monster' from the inside and a head of a normal human with the legs of a modern day dog.  I found this very affective and brought a different perspective to the original image.  I then decided to put these images and have this montage more clean and clear.

Obviously this is not a triptych so I had to try make this montage into a triptych with meaning and a story behind it.

I put these images on Photoshop and had them as the three panelled images for the triptych but there was nothing linked between these images, they are just three pictures side by side, but however this experiment was helpful to fully understand the full meaning off a triptych.