BRAINSTORMIN'

1. What should our site be?
I'm thinking a garage. Emphasized sound would be cool, plus it's dark enough for the lights.

2. How will it be performed?
Yikes! I visualize everything being super abstract and fluid movements. I wish we could incorporate glow paint.

3. Theme?
RAGE.

4. What are we performing?
??

Open house brainstorm - Erica

1. What should our site be?
Obviously we will have to be in one of the rooms with a ceiling in order to lower the lights enough for a long-exposure picture. I think we should have as plain or monochromatic a background as possible for our performance so that the lights we use stand out more vividly. Will we use multiple colors of lights? I think that would have a cool effect.
2. How will it be performed?
I think we could give each person a certain shape to try to make while playing (spirals, circles, zig-zags etc) but not really choreograph anyone's movements. I think we shouldn't stand in one place when we perform, but trade places and overlap so that we have a cohesive light painting instead of several small groupings of shapes.
3. Theme?
My suggestion is that it could be a focus on movement, and we could emphasize each individual's motions for the audience and then maybe highlight the combination of several people's motions working together? I don't know...
4. What are we performing?
I think we need to compile our respective instruments and tools and things that we're going to/want to use in our performance and work from there. Once we know what we have, it'll be easier to decide what to play.
5. I know there were five things but I can't remember what the last one was. Sorry.

This is the scene from the film "Hour of the Wolf" that I mentioned in class earlier. Enjoy your weekend.

Seth M - Response 6

It would seem that Krauss was a bit ahead of her time when thinking through the digital age as "narcissism." It's an idea that is clearly visible in her essay and also in Richard's "Boomerang" as well, but I think it might be even easier to identify today. Not just in that instance when we first hear our own voices played back to us or see our faces move independently on a screen, but in our digital lives also. With all of the technologies that exist today, most people are primarily concerned with their various selves; digital representations across all mediums have become just as important as maintaining our physical selves to some. They might not work quite like a prison, but they definitely surround us and sometimes may even have an unfortunately effect on reality/our tangible lives. More than anything, it's kind of interesting to see how in depth Krauss goes in to this, I don't think too many of us would have ever thought twice about centering, prisons, or narcissism next time we start up our webcams.

Graham Response 6

I liked the boomerang video, it was interesting to see how she reacted since everyone has experienced that on cell phones before. Holt describes a prison, from which there is no escape, a present time which is completely severed from a sense of its own past. I feel the prison analogy is a little extreme, but it's definitely weird to hear your voice play back to you. I was a bit annoyed during the video because I found myself wanting her to speak at a normal speed instead of so painfully slow. What I got from it though was she was doing it because she felt the weight of the "collapsed presence". I agree with Erica when she said it would be really interesting to see that conducted with technology today, instead of in 1976.

Erica- response 6

I understand when Rosalind Krauss writes about a separation of self caused by reflective video or sound. I was particularly struck by Boomerang because I have experienced the same effect with cell phone echo and I know what it is like to be very distracted by the sound of your own voice. I understand using a video monitor as a mirror to track my movements because I have done it while using skype or google talk. Krauss writes that video’s medium is the psychological effect it has on the viewer reflecting on (or participating in) these dissociations from text, history, and one’s surroundings. Doesn’t that mean that the majority of people using web cameras and cell phones for communication have unknowingly been a part of this psychological media just by experiencing the reflective nature of this technology? This article was written in 1976; I wonder what the author would think if she was writing about this concept in the present time. The use of video, especially in recording oneself, is so widespread today that I think it partially ceases to be as spectacular or profound as she makes it sound.

Readings + Video

Here is a link to Rosalind Krauss' Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism : LINK

Also, here is a video she references in the essay that we didn't watch in class -- Richard Serra's Boomerang (1974)

Make sure to watch this one -- it's too good to miss.

ALSO -- Here is a link to your fourth assignment, THE INTERMEDIA MOMENT II