What the..!?!
Thursday, 24th September 2009Posted under: life ,
September
So let me reveal some of the artistic process, or should I say, my artistic process.... for those of you who are actually curious.... and why shouldn’t you be... what makes Alex tick? How does some of that manifestly idiotic stuff froth forth into that poor maladapted imagination of his? Indeed I’m glad you asked. Let’s do a little experiment. First I want you to watch the following short clip and try to remember what your impression was......
This work represents the conflict between man and the environment.... the driving pulse, screaming and distorted instrumental voices belonging to the modern ultra energised, frantically paced human experience are juxtaposed against the calm, meditative presence of the natural environment....which in turn is twisted and abstracted into an electric psychedelic wash of pulsing colour and movement, morphing clouds of darkness flow like smoke across and between the mayhem like malevolent shadows stealing something precious and hidden.... the ultimate source of this bizarre transformation revealed in the closing moment of the work.....
Shit! that even has me convinced......
It’s true, this is a piece inspired by a bush walk I made near my first camp spot. It was a beautiful day, I was walking on a remarkably well maintained track that wound down from a saddle, descending through a pristine gully between two sandstone cliffs.... old growth forest on either side, magnificent old trees reaching for the sun in an ancient and timeless prayer, scratching their backs against the weathered cliffs. Originally I decided just to take some reference footage to add to my video library..... so I innocently did a pan in a circle only to be confronted by the “shocking” evidence ...excuse the pun... of human technological invasion.... to which I had to respond.
So.... when I arrived at my second camp spot for my next stint of work, my goal was to record a short piece to match my experience with that video clip and edit the whole lot together into a crazy psychedelic little number before I packed up and moved on. It was an exercise to practice making a different style of music using my electric cello, and to explore some more creative video editing. Indeed, the finished product in those regards accomplished what I set out to do, but not in the way I wanted it to, oh no!
This piece caused me no end of frustration. I learnt to hate it, but I soldiered on like a politician with a catch phrase. The music was my first abscess. I started by trying to be way too clever, penning a 3 part rhythm line, a toe tapping extravaganza that was to shock and awe with it’s cleverness..... then against this rhythmic spine I would weave some chillingly quirky atonal squealing that would have you on the edge of your seat drooling for some form of Wagnerian resolution..... none of that worked... it was dismal in fact, and after having waded far too deep into that ulceress swamp, a voice from within gargled “keep it simple, stupid”....
Well, you have heard the result of that.....
I intended the relationship between the image and the music to have a similar type of correspondence as D-F-R (Discovery-Familiarisation-Recognition, which you can view on this site), considering it is the style of visualisation I am intent on developing further, however because the video material was taken without any consideration towards being set to music, and the music was created without any real consideration to the video clip other than the sentiment involved, matching the two up in such a structural fashion had about as much chance of success as me getting laid out here..... or at least the level of complexity involved to do it was so intense I didn’t have either the patience or the time to dedicate to it. I wanted individual trees to have streams of psychedelic colour move up their trunks and then jump to the next tree in relation to the individual musical voices. I wanted the voices to follow the contours of the cliffs.... but I found isolating individual trees while the shonky camera work made them move with annoying irregularity across the screen was a headache, and when I managed to get it to work with one tree, the effect was so mild it was difficult to discern it as having any relationship with the corresponding voice. Ultimately all my permutations to this notion of developing some form of structural representation of the music within the image failed dismally and with great sobs of humbleness, and relief, I conceded defeat, bandaged up my very bruised forehead and allowed the imagery to find its own abstracted relationship by building in a heap of randomness into the various moving components. Although I should note that I did not discard all the work I had done and if you look closely you can still see the creaking bones of what I was intending to achieve, and some pretty obvious compromises I made to include some form of syncopated imagery. The morphing shadows are just an unintended artefact from the multiple shifting composites. At the end of the day, it was a good lesson in assessing my source materials and understanding the limits of their potential. It was also a great effort in exploring the possibilities of composite editing by way of what can be extracted from a single video file.
The question is, now that you know how much of a compromise the final result turned out to be, does it change the way you interpret what you see? Would you rather just have the arty spiel influence your interpretation of the work, let you believe that every nuance was planned and executed with meticulous detail? Does my struggle and dissatisfaction colour your own perception of the quality of the work, to my detriment? These are valid questions for an artist. You, the consumer of my art, do you feel as if you have had some of the mystery of the work diluted by my confessions? And if indeed this is so, than is it not within the interest of the artist never to divulge the true process of making their art? If you feel compelled to respond to these questions in the comments section below, please do, I am most interested in some feedback concerning the issue.
By the way, it is still pretty cool when you can experience it on a bloody big screen in high definition.... these crappy low resolution internet vids just destroy the full impact.
I am now at my third camp spot, somewhere near Taree. I am now fully isolated on a property belonging to a friend of mine, who visits only a few days every fortnight. The nearest neighbour is a few kilometres away. It is wonderfully peaceful, calm, beautiful here. There is delicious silence..... aside from the brain piercing crickets and a hillbilly chorus of amorous frogs. I have cows to keep me company.... we have staring competitions......There is fresh water that trickles from various forested hills, it has an aromatically pungent taste of dung....
After sharpening my claws it is now time to start the hard work on my major project. It is a daunting prospect. One tempered by this idyllic location....
And as my first toe dips in to test the waters..... the dust storm. Oh dear.....
Stay tuned..... if you get bored, read all the earlier posts.... put some perspective on this adventure...don’t whinge.... just do it!
K
Had me thinking "an ode to a bushfire? did he set the valley alight?"