Abstraction Screening Response

 I’m so excited for this project. I’m really fascinated by abstract and experimental film / video / multimedia work. Personally, I find myself more drawn to images and feelings than I am to narrative stories. I feel like traditional narratives don’t convey the real complexities and indescribable feelings and emotions of life.
I really like the kind of technique used in both Camera, No Camera and Dog Star Man. Taking numerous different clips and images and combining them in a way that makes them start to blend together makes all of the images displayed take on a kind of combined meaning. They create a feeling that each individual image wouldn’t by themselves. I really like that most of the projects in this screening don’t really tell us how to feel or what to think of what we’re seeing. It’s so easy to just expect that from film or television because most things really do tell you what you’re supposed to be feeling in each scene. In that sense I think many films and TV shows are kind of comforting for people because we don’t need to think about it too much, we’re guided through it, the work is being done for us. These more abstract projects strip that away and force us to understand it for ourselves in our own way. Each artist might know what their meaning was behind their projects, but they also let us create it for ourselves, and I think different people create different meanings. I feel like a lot of the projects in this screening display this idea of really utilizing the medium fully, as well as playing with the constraints of it. I thought the video essay on the “Dynamic Square” was really interesting. Aspect ratio is just one of the many pieces of cinema that we don’t ever really think about, it’s just how things have been and continue to be. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I have a lot of ideas for this project and was certainly really inspired by this screening. I have a few sounds I’d like to work with, I’m going to try to find more as well. I’m really interested in playing around with projection in some way after watching Pipilotti Rist’s interview. I wouldn’t be creating an installation, but just playing with different layers of images and light                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               with a projector. I’m excited to use the green screen as well. I don’t have much experience  using them, but this would be another really cool way to play around with layers.