Artefact 3-Spectacle

Here is my third artefact on spectacle:

Artifact 3-Development

So for my final artifact I want to incorporate both what I’ve learned from my last artifacts and what I’ve recently been researching about spectacle. It will be a video piece that represents myself as a spectacle. I will take the literal idea of putting pictures on Facebook and actually take the ‘tagged’ pictures of me from the site and by making each picture 10 frames long, one after the other. This will create a video collage effect of what is effectively ‘me’!

Facebook-A Reflective Review

Although the social networking site Facebook claims to be just that, a social networking website, where friends and family can communicate, share photos with each other ect, there is still a level of spectacle incorporated within the concept of the site. Primarily people ‘tag’ their pictures of themselves and others on the sake for others to look at, they want to show people what they’ve been doing, where they’ve been, how drunk they were on their birthday: They want to make a spectacle of themselves. So on that basis this whole blog is a spectacle of me, and if I was that bone idle i would just say that this blog is my final artifact. Luckily I’m not, yet I do want to incorporate this idea into my piece.

Idea 3-Spectacle

For my final artefact I want to make a spectacle of myself (not like dancing on the table at a wedding or something of the like). I want to create a spectacle that reflects me, and my points of veiw.

A spectacle is defined as:

“Anything presented to the sight or view, esp. something of a striking or impressive kind.”

dictionary.com

This definition makes it easy to create something as a spectacle, as long as its visual, it can be seen as a spectacle. But to make something spectacular is something else. Now, I’m not saying that this piece will be visually stunning, I just don’t want to fall into the trap of making something that easily defined as a spectacle because its simply ‘visual’. I want to show myself as a spectacle, an object of spectating.

Power Artefact-A Reflective Review

Let me begin by stating that the poem that is read in this piece is by Wilfred Owen, one of the most famous WWI poets. How does that change your perspective of the impact of the meaning of the piece? And that is the feeling I wanted to convey. The sense of power that is produced as a product of not knowing either where something has come from or who has produced it can come from anywhere. The piece makes the spectator question what is going on. It engages them by making them query the story behind the poem, and who could have created such vivid imagery. It’s almost the same feeling created by my first artefact: The engagement of the piece by making the spectator ask who, what where and why?

With the constraints of only using audio imposed on myself, by myself, made me really think about what was going into the piece. I knew I wanted to keep it simple, so by only using two audio tracks: 1 background atmosphere and 1 spoken word track, I kept the simplicity to a minimal. I had to create all the sounds myself, so a lot of thought had to go into if the two tracks would work well together and I think they do. I originally wanted to use juxtaposed background atmos to the spoken poem, however this didn’t work. It sounded too confused and detracted from the original message I wanted to convey.

This is exactly the piece I wanted to create, so regardless of how entertaining or fun it isn’t to listen to, it still explores what I wanted it to from the set off. I also got a lot out of the process of development, things that I can apply to my future video projects. Things like the importance of making sure the atmosphere audio tracks fit with whats being said.

Artefact 2-Power

Here is my second artefact on power:

Idea 2-Final Idea

So here’s my final idea for my second artifact on power:

An audio piece that uses an atmosphere track in the background with a poem being spoken over the top.

The poem that will be read will be one from the first world war and by an unknown author (hey look at that, I’ve given myself an obstruction!!). I aim for the background to reflect the spoken word.

Idea 2-Development

After looking into poems I noticed that a lot of first world war poems were written by unknown authors, and that reading a war poem by an anonymous poet has the same effect as looking at a Banksy installation, the sense of power it invokes is a lot more poignant due to its anonymity. Here’s an example:

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

It’s quite a famous poem from the second world war. Although it’s origins are still unknown there is speculation as to who the original author was. Most people believe it was writen by Mary Elizabeth Frye although not everyone is convinced. Even this anonymity, as vague as it is, adds a sence of forboding to the poem. This proves that the unknown has the power to emphasise an artifacts point. It also shows that the unkown doesn’t create meaning, it simply emphasises what meaning is there.

Idea 2-Research

Having researched ambiance and atmospheric sound scapes, I found this:

London

It invokes everything I want to achieve in my piece. It makes the spectator use their imagination to create the images that go with the sounds and almost puts them in the scene. I think that using a track like this in the background as atmos with more visual audio (if you get what I mean) in the form of a poem or something.

By going with my theme on the power of the unknown, I will look into poems that produce power, or are a product of power and that come from an unkown source.

Idea 2

I’ve thought about it and I think I want my next piece to be an audio based one. Having mainly used video before and not really grasped the sound aspect fully, I think this will aid my development of creating video artefact’s. I think I want it to be a sound scape style piece, with atmospheric background layers and a powerful foreground track. Sticking with the power of the unknown theme and using only audio simultaneously will work quite well because of the way you cant place an image to sounds, which adds mystery and makes the audience create their own images what what the scene might look like. I will now look at other sound scapes and see how they portray power through the unknown.