New, post-MA blog is up and running on my website. Check it out! Add it to your RSS feed. Contribute your thoughts or links that you think I'd be interested in. I would love it to be a place to continue creative, collaborative debate and idea sharing.
That's where I'll be posting from here on out.
Thursday 9 October 2008
Monday 29 September 2008
Medialab Prado.
AVlab at Medialab Prado has been an amazing experience. I, too, feel the need to migrate my blog to a new one for my post-graduate art practice; so I will post a proper review of the experience on that when I return to London next week. A notice here will also be posted, but it will be embedded in my regular websiteIn the meantime, my post-MA performance life begins! at the wrap-up party for the lab. Will be fun to see what my work is like in a nightclub with typical set up of 1 projector, darkness and big (ish?) sound.
Here's the info in case any of you find yourselves in madrid:
October 1 / 11pm / @ Tempo Club
TRANS-AVLAB EXPRESS
AVLAB 1.0's last sonic stop. Live sound, experimental and audiovisual performances by artists of the workshop: Olaconmuchospeces aka Diego Javier Alberti / Sotaques (VJ Xorume + DJ/MC Gérson De Veras) / Servando Barreiro / Noish ~ aka Oskar / James Webb / Groundrush aka Simon Dell / Hans Christoph Steiner / Raúl Bri Díaz Pobrete / Tom Tlalim / Josecarlos Flores / Lena Schniewind / Jaime Lobato / Alberto Cerro / Roberto Moreno Maya / DJ Hidráulico.
@ Tempo Club (Duque de Osuna, 8. Plaza de España Metro Station). Free admission.
Saturday 23 August 2008
Everything, all at once now.
The next month is going to be insanely busy, but I'm looking forward to it. As I wrap up my MA, the first steps into the next phase have already fallen into place. And of course, are overlapping! I'm on a roll. Just a matter of keeping the momentum up through the next couple of weeks.
I did manage to do 2 runthrough
s of my show yesterday, the last one with an audience member who hadn't seen my work before! Both runthroughs felt really solid and my audience member was interested in what was going on. I'm happy to have gotten the show to this point since I've got things that are future looking happening this coming week.
Here's a brief overview of what the end of August and beginning of September hold for me:
- do my final show at Wimbledon College of Art!
Will post my performance schedule here in a separate entry this weekend.
- fly to Vienna to interview Pamela Z
Lucy pointed me to her work early on in the course, I blogged about it here. Very excited to see her live and get a chance to talk with her about her work and the themes and common interests we might (or might not) share.
- Movement for Dorks at Burning Dork
I'm running a workshop with the dorkbots where I get to test out my strategies for getting tech-based artists out from behind their gear. This will be a prototype of workshops I'd like to lead in the future and I'm really curious to see how it goes! I think it'll be fun. The dorkbot crew have been an amazing community for me here in London. Don't think I've blogged about them here before. Will try and do an entry in the future when I have more time. Oh, and yes, to add to the ridiculousness: the camp is being held in DORKING. naturally. ;)
- AV Lab 1.0, Medialab Prado, Madrid
I will be heading to this workshop in Madrid for the last two weeks of September. Get to collaborate with a bunch of interesting sounding A/V artists from all over the world. Great opportunity to start finding a broader community doing similar work to me and also a great chance to finally get to Madrid!
OK, back to this weekend's activity: assembling/finalizing documentation!
I did manage to do 2 runthrough
s of my show yesterday, the last one with an audience member who hadn't seen my work before! Both runthroughs felt really solid and my audience member was interested in what was going on. I'm happy to have gotten the show to this point since I've got things that are future looking happening this coming week.Here's a brief overview of what the end of August and beginning of September hold for me:
- do my final show at Wimbledon College of Art!
Will post my performance schedule here in a separate entry this weekend.
- fly to Vienna to interview Pamela Z
Lucy pointed me to her work early on in the course, I blogged about it here. Very excited to see her live and get a chance to talk with her about her work and the themes and common interests we might (or might not) share.
- Movement for Dorks at Burning Dork
I'm running a workshop with the dorkbots where I get to test out my strategies for getting tech-based artists out from behind their gear. This will be a prototype of workshops I'd like to lead in the future and I'm really curious to see how it goes! I think it'll be fun. The dorkbot crew have been an amazing community for me here in London. Don't think I've blogged about them here before. Will try and do an entry in the future when I have more time. Oh, and yes, to add to the ridiculousness: the camp is being held in DORKING. naturally. ;)
- AV Lab 1.0, Medialab Prado, Madrid
I will be heading to this workshop in Madrid for the last two weeks of September. Get to collaborate with a bunch of interesting sounding A/V artists from all over the world. Great opportunity to start finding a broader community doing similar work to me and also a great chance to finally get to Madrid!
OK, back to this weekend's activity: assembling/finalizing documentation!
Friday 22 August 2008
21 August runthrough
Managed to do a full run through yesterday without crashing Isadora.
I spent the morning organizing some final bits of tech and writing my notes from Tuesday into an actual score sheet that I could reference during the run. The score has ended up being 6 sections with a reprise of the second one towards the end. I don't have the sheet with me here at home, so will have to wait to post it later.
The runthrough felt spotty but overall I think the score is going to work. Most of the sections run between 10-15 minutes, which is perfect timing for the 90 minutes I have allocated as "performance" times over the weekend. The run yesterday ran about 70 minutes including some hiccups.
Watching the video recordings of the performance continues to be really helpful for me to get perspective on what I'm doing. I will tend to fixate on the parts that weren't working and extrapolate that to the whole performance "not working". Reviewing video shows me that I was right about the parts that I thought weren't working, but also shows me all the parts that are working.
Plan for today: I'd really like to try and run through it TWICE. Will be exhausting but interesting.
Plan for weekend: Get documentation to at least 75% completion. I'm feeling the time crunch and know that this is the last serious chunk of time I have to concentrate on it while I'm locked out of rehearsal space for the bank holiday weekend.
I spent the morning organizing some final bits of tech and writing my notes from Tuesday into an actual score sheet that I could reference during the run. The score has ended up being 6 sections with a reprise of the second one towards the end. I don't have the sheet with me here at home, so will have to wait to post it later.
The runthrough felt spotty but overall I think the score is going to work. Most of the sections run between 10-15 minutes, which is perfect timing for the 90 minutes I have allocated as "performance" times over the weekend. The run yesterday ran about 70 minutes including some hiccups.
Watching the video recordings of the performance continues to be really helpful for me to get perspective on what I'm doing. I will tend to fixate on the parts that weren't working and extrapolate that to the whole performance "not working". Reviewing video shows me that I was right about the parts that I thought weren't working, but also shows me all the parts that are working.
Plan for today: I'd really like to try and run through it TWICE. Will be exhausting but interesting.
Plan for weekend: Get documentation to at least 75% completion. I'm feeling the time crunch and know that this is the last serious chunk of time I have to concentrate on it while I'm locked out of rehearsal space for the bank holiday weekend.
Thursday 21 August 2008
Last week wrap up.
Finally got a chance to upload 2 more batches of videos from last week. The week ended with final tech setup and trying to work out what to do with two projectors. Having two dramatically changes the dynamic in the room, in a way that I like and want to work with.
Big thing that I noticed yesterday is that I feel there is now an even bigger "Stage" area to the room. I will be breaking that wall with my own movement, but I can't gauge how audiences will respond until I have an audience. The only thing I know from past experience is that most people respond to projectors by ducking out of the way of them or avoiding them altogether. This would cut off about half of the space once both projection areas are revealed and leave everyone squished into one corner. I'll probably end up being more explicit when I invite people to move as they wish around the space and tell them they can walk in front of the projector beams.
I haven't had many visitors to my space, so I'll do my best to anticipate and plan for it and then make adjustments once I have people in the space with me. That all said, time has not been wasted! The time alone(ish) in my space has allowed me to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse.
Which one needs to do as a performer! This week I have begun working up to a full run of the "performance" section of my work, which I have scheduled to be an hour and a half. So far I've made it to 40 minutes. The thing that seems to be ending the run throughs is that I crash the program! This only happens when I try to record something on a track that is already playing. An easy mistake, especially when you're in the throes of performing, but I hope that the continued rehearsals over the next 7 days *gulp* will smooth this out as I become more comfortable with the final structure of the show and the technology setup in its final configuration. And it'll happen during the shows. I have no doubt of that! I'll take it in stride. It's Isadora telling me that she's done with that performance. :)
So finally, the clips I uploaded yesterday are going to be the final video clips as the run throughs are getting too long to easily review, digitize and publish to the internet. I've got a bunch of other things I need to be pulling together for the final assessment outside of rehearsal time which take precedence over video clips. Will still update progress here on the blog though.
Here are some clips that contain my favorite pieces from the recent uploads. In both of them, I noticed that I interacted directly with the TVs that I have dotted around the space. I haven't been prone to do that much, thinking that they're mainly there for the audience to play with. But of course, I can use them too and really should do.
This second one starts off a little rough (with wacky iMovie jump cuts...), but I like how the video inspires the sound and how I was able to connect the recorded and live actions through echoing and complementary sound and movement.
Second half to above video:
Big thing that I noticed yesterday is that I feel there is now an even bigger "Stage" area to the room. I will be breaking that wall with my own movement, but I can't gauge how audiences will respond until I have an audience. The only thing I know from past experience is that most people respond to projectors by ducking out of the way of them or avoiding them altogether. This would cut off about half of the space once both projection areas are revealed and leave everyone squished into one corner. I'll probably end up being more explicit when I invite people to move as they wish around the space and tell them they can walk in front of the projector beams.
I haven't had many visitors to my space, so I'll do my best to anticipate and plan for it and then make adjustments once I have people in the space with me. That all said, time has not been wasted! The time alone(ish) in my space has allowed me to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse.
Which one needs to do as a performer! This week I have begun working up to a full run of the "performance" section of my work, which I have scheduled to be an hour and a half. So far I've made it to 40 minutes. The thing that seems to be ending the run throughs is that I crash the program! This only happens when I try to record something on a track that is already playing. An easy mistake, especially when you're in the throes of performing, but I hope that the continued rehearsals over the next 7 days *gulp* will smooth this out as I become more comfortable with the final structure of the show and the technology setup in its final configuration. And it'll happen during the shows. I have no doubt of that! I'll take it in stride. It's Isadora telling me that she's done with that performance. :)
So finally, the clips I uploaded yesterday are going to be the final video clips as the run throughs are getting too long to easily review, digitize and publish to the internet. I've got a bunch of other things I need to be pulling together for the final assessment outside of rehearsal time which take precedence over video clips. Will still update progress here on the blog though.
Here are some clips that contain my favorite pieces from the recent uploads. In both of them, I noticed that I interacted directly with the TVs that I have dotted around the space. I haven't been prone to do that much, thinking that they're mainly there for the audience to play with. But of course, I can use them too and really should do.
This second one starts off a little rough (with wacky iMovie jump cuts...), but I like how the video inspires the sound and how I was able to connect the recorded and live actions through echoing and complementary sound and movement.
Second half to above video:
Friday 15 August 2008
Flipping, finalizing tech.
I have 3 new videos to upload to YouTube, but they take so long! Will try and post them soon.
Recap of what they illustrate from the last days work:
I've been fleshing out the 3 core phases of the score I developed. On Wednesday, while waiting for final approval of my tech setup, I started to think about how I might use the second projector. I ended up flipping the image horizontally and worked with reflections of simple movements. I think this works quite nicely. Not convinced that it will always be this way.
I then continued to practice building up sections using the three pieces in the score. I was happy with the progression that came out of it:
- simple movement with arm and feet captured on video
- sound sample of my feet stepping on the floor as base for sound, layered with residual sounds from the previous day's work
- live mirroring if movement on video, in front of the video screen, and then also moving through the space
- capture of a new video of my face in which I open my mouth really wide!
- this new video encouraging vocalization to complement it, live wandering around the space
- I then recorded a variation on the vocalization and looped that
- it didn't line up with the video track at all! This is fine by me.
- Then finally, live movement that related to either sound or visual cues, but couldn't possibly link to both since sound and video were asynchronous.
Videos to follow early next week. This post clearly more notes for me than a clear sharing for others!
Yesterday, we got our final tech allocation. I set up all 3 monitors for the first time and am happy with the way they mark the space in a subtle way. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I see the TV monitors as my "audience" in a very traditional way. They are all placed on chairs and are watching the events unfold in the passive way that an audience often does, and that a TV has no choice but to do. A friend visiting from the USA came by the studio and I was pleased to see him looking at the performance live, in relation to the video projection, AND through the 3 monitors. It reminded me of a goal I had for my audience: even though they are being filmed from different angles, I want the overall feeling to be one where they are free to move around and experience the performance in a way that is comfortable to them. I don't want to give them a prescription for how they can interact with the work (aside from obviously keeping them from wrecking the equipment.)
Jera also stopped in briefly and helped me make a simple statement. She said that video work is so often about the image, and I said that my performance was about foregrounding the body that created the image.
And today: wrestling with a signal splitter to see if I can get the two projectors running off my computer. and hopefully enough time to do another runthrough.
Recap of what they illustrate from the last days work:
I've been fleshing out the 3 core phases of the score I developed. On Wednesday, while waiting for final approval of my tech setup, I started to think about how I might use the second projector. I ended up flipping the image horizontally and worked with reflections of simple movements. I think this works quite nicely. Not convinced that it will always be this way.
I then continued to practice building up sections using the three pieces in the score. I was happy with the progression that came out of it:
- simple movement with arm and feet captured on video
- sound sample of my feet stepping on the floor as base for sound, layered with residual sounds from the previous day's work
- live mirroring if movement on video, in front of the video screen, and then also moving through the space
- capture of a new video of my face in which I open my mouth really wide!
- this new video encouraging vocalization to complement it, live wandering around the space
- I then recorded a variation on the vocalization and looped that
- it didn't line up with the video track at all! This is fine by me.
- Then finally, live movement that related to either sound or visual cues, but couldn't possibly link to both since sound and video were asynchronous.
Videos to follow early next week. This post clearly more notes for me than a clear sharing for others!
Yesterday, we got our final tech allocation. I set up all 3 monitors for the first time and am happy with the way they mark the space in a subtle way. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I see the TV monitors as my "audience" in a very traditional way. They are all placed on chairs and are watching the events unfold in the passive way that an audience often does, and that a TV has no choice but to do. A friend visiting from the USA came by the studio and I was pleased to see him looking at the performance live, in relation to the video projection, AND through the 3 monitors. It reminded me of a goal I had for my audience: even though they are being filmed from different angles, I want the overall feeling to be one where they are free to move around and experience the performance in a way that is comfortable to them. I don't want to give them a prescription for how they can interact with the work (aside from obviously keeping them from wrecking the equipment.)
Jera also stopped in briefly and helped me make a simple statement. She said that video work is so often about the image, and I said that my performance was about foregrounding the body that created the image.
And today: wrestling with a signal splitter to see if I can get the two projectors running off my computer. and hopefully enough time to do another runthrough.
Tuesday 12 August 2008
Settling the score, part 1.
Lots of videos posted to YouTube, only highlighting some here.
Ambient sounds and images when you're the only one in the room turned out to be quite fun. The door to my studio space has a sweet little jingle bell to it when it shuts, so I started walking in and out of the room and recorded the sound. I built up a soundtrack from this, often leaving the previous track running so that it bled into the next track and created quite a nice muddle as the tracks were layered further and further. The video ended up being signature "lena" I think. I am able to get 3 layers (2 recorded, 1 live) of me walking in and out of the door with decent quality when you are actually in the space. The poor quality of web based video means that you probably won't be able to make out the second recorded layer.
Here's a video clip from today which I think shows a good cross section of process and how it might all fit together. It's quite slow, but the camera was right next to one of the speakers, so the sound is fairly decent.
From watching these, I know that I need to spend more time repeating the action and figure out other ways or positions from which to watch the piece of video I have just created. Too much hovering near the laptop!
Ambient sounds and images when you're the only one in the room turned out to be quite fun. The door to my studio space has a sweet little jingle bell to it when it shuts, so I started walking in and out of the room and recorded the sound. I built up a soundtrack from this, often leaving the previous track running so that it bled into the next track and created quite a nice muddle as the tracks were layered further and further. The video ended up being signature "lena" I think. I am able to get 3 layers (2 recorded, 1 live) of me walking in and out of the door with decent quality when you are actually in the space. The poor quality of web based video means that you probably won't be able to make out the second recorded layer.
Here's a video clip from today which I think shows a good cross section of process and how it might all fit together. It's quite slow, but the camera was right next to one of the speakers, so the sound is fairly decent.
From watching these, I know that I need to spend more time repeating the action and figure out other ways or positions from which to watch the piece of video I have just created. Too much hovering near the laptop!
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