GMU:Space Is The Place/projects/In the direction of the frontier

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a vision exploration by Kyd Campbell

video maquette (pretend the cow is a pony)
wodden cart for camera tied to the horse

Articles Tagged with “Space is the Place” in Kyd's Blog

Inspiration song: Grace Slick's 1980 solo song Dreams.

In the process of working on this project, I have physically explored the notion of frontier, nature exploration and thought about what it means to move into the distance.

I read about "dispersion relation" (a theory taking into account that which effects the path of a moving subject or object through space and time). I decided in these experiments that the subject should be attached to a heavy weight (fixed object) and try to pull against it.

Topics/Readings:

A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book, Stan Brakhage

Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney

Cult about north american indians in (East-)Germany

dispersion

frontier

other awesome links

Work documentation and process: video test 1: [1]


<videoflash type="youtube">itEhe0CRqvc|640|385</videoflash> in progress video, HD images for horse's body and small sounds. Invenstigation in looking at small detail.

<videoflash type="youtube">93NUMmdRaWE|640|385</videoflash> <videoflash type="youtube">xBBaFUy7y90|640|385</videoflash> I feel that the motion obtained is much more interesting than the focus on the subject. As I am most interested, at this stage, in alternate "looking" I will focus future investigations on using the rope camera mount from a "viewing" perspective, removing the subject and holding the focus from behind the lens.

documentation building the camera mount:


Ropecam.jpg click here for more photos of the camera mount.

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Ffrontierlab%2Falbumid%2F5449121130521861841%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="267" width="400"></embed>


My working process is as an abstract sculptor, holding materials and molding them intuitively. Through my work I loot to step outside of pragmatics, daily news and politics and return to a working pattern rooted in intuition, allowing new forms to emerge. I started this semester with concrete ideas, but realised many of them were "one-liners" or time-rooted, connected to this particular moment in time and even more specifically to the current moment in media art production. I hold a romantic belief that my role as an artist is to find "other" ways of looking and sharing. For example, if capitalism draws most of us to produce objects and move in a strong claimingly-forward direction, then I should slow down and look beside me instead of ahead, watching for the tiny details and patterns that exist or searching for other types of motion.


There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

Evident influences to my practice are experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage and manifesto-based moving picture makers, like the DOGMA group. Taking advantage of the flexible pace of time in this region, I'm changing the speed and motion of my vision, using camera tools and looking for what I could see and capture. My goal is to allow for poetic ways of looking and then assembling the images.

TIME WAS BY FAR THE MOST ARTIFICIAL OF ALL OUR INVENTIONS, AND IN BEING BOUND TO THE PLANET TURNING ON ITS OWN AXIS WAS NO LESS ARBITRARY THAN WOULD BE, SAY, A CALCULATION BASED ON THE GROWTH OF TREES OR THE DURATION REQUIRED FOR A PIECE OF LIMESTONE TO DISINTEGRATE...

IN ORDER TO RECKON TIME WE HAVE TO DEVISE AN IMAGINARY, AVERAGE SUN... -austerlitz

I believe this quote brings up the notion of looking beyond our usual constructs, even towards the essentials of 'time' and 'space'.

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