User:Nan/Graduate Research Seminar T4
Name: Nan Wang
Title: ????
abstract = 250 words
“For the microscopic debris that covers our clothes and bodies are the mute witnesses, sure and faithful, of all our movements and of all our encounters.” Every contact leave a trace is a term from Edmond for analysis crime scene, however as a filmmaker and media artist. I take it as a comparison with contact print on film. I took the evident of my existence. Force it to leave a trace. • Manifest a story, which is not yet been decrypted.
Chapter 1: the story of dust
Let’s say, everything starts with dust.
1, what is dust? (Forensic reference: Locard, Edmond, The Analysis of Dust Traces,
from forensic angle experts look at dust and trace to deduction a crime, however, I am looking at dust try to let audience to construct images and narrative by themselves/)
2, culture interpretations of dust. ( at certain environment or scenario related to big political or cultural events, dust become a mediated object.)- impure matter.
3, What’s my interpretation of dust?( reference from skin study, how much percentage of house dust is human skin. From BBC .)
"If you're wondering exactly how many skin cells fall off, get ready for some staggering numbers. Scientists estimate that the human body is made up of around 10 trillion cells in total. Your skin makes up about 16 percent of your body weight, which means you have roughly 1.6 trillion skin cells [source: BBC]. Of course, this estimate can vary tremendously according to a person's size. The important thing is that you have a lot of skin cells. Of those billions of skin cells, between 30,000 and 40,000 of them fall off every hour. Over a 24-hour period, you lose almost a million skin cells [source: Boston Globe]. Where do they all go? The dust that collects on your tables, TV, windowsills and on those picture frames that are so hard to get clean is made mostly from dead human skin cells. In other words, your house is filled with former bits of yourself. In one year, you'll shed more than 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) of dead skin. "
--→
Our bodies are constantly processing the sloughed excess and waste produced by our contact with other species or by the frictions occurring between different specimens. And we in turn deposit minute trace evidence of our passage through space and in time wherever we move and whenever we make contact with another surface.
--→
my research method of using dust material to let audience take the active position as viewer and investigator to construct the story by themselves.
Chapter 2: Put dust on film:
1, I will try to research and compare my dust works with and structure film and current audiovisual performance. Researching the similarities and differences between these works and my work.
2, How to sort out randomness and chaos. By manipulating(editing) images.
3, my fetish of Shapes and materials.
Problematic aspects:
structure materialism film been defined as non-illusionist and each film is a record (not a representation, not a reproduction) of its own making.
however my dust film on the other hand the material itself also become the narrative itself. and my approach is sort out analog noise image by archiving it and manipulated through the film process.
it have similarities and differences at the same time. if i compare my work to early structure film and also current audiovisual abstraction work.
in a way, my working method is comparable to structure film, because of its non-illusionist
and also technique i been using like Flicker effect Loop printing and use film or tapes as material.
through this comparison: i try to investigate my position as image maker. also the position of my work.
beside my own fascination towards material nature of image, i also looking at other objective factors which influence my work. for examples:
available technique and also the current lifestyle. the thirst for intensive audiovisual experience also expecting for narrative twist.
What's the position of viewers:
"The mental activation of the viewer is necessary for the procedure of the film's existence. Each film is not only structural but also structuring.
This is extremely important as each moment of film reality is not an atomistic, separate entity but rather a moment in a relativistic generative system
in which one can't simply break down the experience into elements. The viewer is forming an equal and possibly more or less opposite 'film' in her/his head,
constantly anticipating, correcting, re-correcting - constantly intervening in the arena of confrontation with the given reality,
i.e. the isolated chosen area of each film's work, of each film's production."
Chapter 3:About works related or reflects on this topic. and my practical hand on research and final work for graduation
Dust is everywhere:
dust is A perennial presence in the corners of culture, our live, our body the sign of existence and substance of decay.
Dust is the stuff of which we are made-----------------the Bible: “ashes to ashes and dust to dust”,
how it related to visual culture and filming history?
As dust just the small physical particles, however, have been meditated through out history both in cultural and political way.
in my practise, i would take my position to look at dust in a personal perspective, and how to use its meaningless noisy nature to create my work.
intro = 500 words
[existing material: proposal and essay on practice, notes from methods class - texts that relate to your work]
chapter 1
Project description and aims = 250 words
[existing material: proposal and essay on practice]
.Dust cinema
- Towards my fascination of small physical material: dust and small trace. I start to collect dust and trace on transparent sticky tape.
- Using the images of dust and trace to produce abstraction animated audiovisual work.
- Later on, in my work <Dust synthesizer>; I use already made dust video feed to the screen and trigger analog synthesizer device to generate sound.
- After that I am more aware of the connection between images and device (Screen and audio device).
- Since collecting dust is my own fascination toward the abandoned disconnect spreading meaningless nature of dust. Put this meaningless abandoned material into digital device.
- Deconstruct a screen and filling with dust. Use the dust to deconstruct digital image or more romantically: attempting to bury it. in this work, i try to built a cinema set small device which use hacked LCD screen,
- Overhead projector, analog synthesizer to built my own dust cinema set. which will display my abstract work with both digital moving images and vibrating physical dust material.
Past work and contextualisation = 1000 [existing material: 'what, how and why' texts; notes from methods class - texts that relate to your work.]
.Dust narrative
Dust narrative is a 10 minutes 47 seconds audiovisual work. The visual part of this work is made of 6593 frames of dust which I have been collecting and scanning manually for two months. I use those dust images as sequence of animation playing in 30 frames per second editing with some digital video footage in the background, in this case those dust not longer stays as still images, but appears as flickering and moving particles. The Intensive visual elements and visual information of this video allowed me to apply "Pulfrich Effects" to create 3D illusion. I made a special glasses which has one darker filter over one eye in order to create 15 milliseconds delay of signal transmission for one eye. (visual system latencies are generally shorter so that the visual system responds more quickly.) In this way, this 3D effect create an illusion for the viewer that the flickery dust movement slowing down and flowing horizontally in space. The sound part of this work including recorded sound and computer generated sound composed together in separated left and right stereo sound channel. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at. Ideally this work should be presented as three separated screen audiovisual work with independent sound channel. however as a draft version and prototype. it temporarily stay as video format with stereo sound track.
.Dust sensitiser
Dust Synthesizer is an interactive audiovisual intallation. The visual part of this work is made of 10000 frames of dust which have been collected manually from artist's daily life, then achieved, edited and used as sequence of animation. The changing of the luminance of the dust moving image trigger and twist the sonification of the analog synthesizer through LDRs (Light Dependent Resistors). Dust always been consider as insignificant and annoying little particles. However, in this work, those physical dust material not longer stays as still maters, but appears as flickering and moving image also part of the sonic instrument. Dust Synthesizer tries to examine relations between physical materials and audiovisual work and forming a material based noise aesthetic. Dust Synthesizer has one big one small two screens, two sets of Hacked mini analog synthesizers and two sets of stereo systems. The big screen plays low luminance dust video in order to generate continuous low frequency sound. Small screen plays dust video with different luminance, which allows Audience place the light sensors and generated sound live, so that audience could create sound integrate into the dust symphony. The audience will experience immersive interactive visual music by surrounded with two sets of stereo system with four speakers.
.Dust poetry
Small dust is used to produce intense visuals and sound. The beauty of materiality is revealed by overlaying both digital and analogue media.
Together, they create a noisy, poetic dimension built upon on the body of meaningless abandoned dust material.
Dust Poetry is a nine minute film that combines 7000 still frames of digitally scanned dust with six minutes long contact print black and white 16mm film of small plants and insects.
Towards my fascination of small abandoned physical material, I try to imagine their memories and emotions, before they separate from their original material root becoming abandoned dust.
The recorded sounds of insects and wind blowing among plants are used to simulate their language and poetry.
The aim of this work is to use dust and sound as elements to construct another reality, which beyond, however, reflects on our mediated fragmented noisy world.
.google map test
this work is attempt to use online image to generate a imaginative land.
chapter 2
Continuation of past work and contextualisation: 1000 [existing material: 'what, how and why' texts; notes from methods class - texts that relate to your work.]
chapter 3:
genesis of current project = 1000 [existing material: proposal and essay on practice]
chapter 4
current project and contextualisation = 2000 [existing material: proposal and notes for proposal]
chapter 5
exhibition = 1000 words
Conclusion = 500 words
Word count 7500 words
trimester 1: I wrote about watching and being watched through cybernetic filters., which inspired by the experience sitting in the train and watching moving landscape through the window. And I consider the half- transparent class interface(dusty train window) functioning as screen.
trimester 2: noise study: I use my own definition of noise and give it a physical form, which is dust. I develop a personal method to collect dust and use it create visuals and compose sound. Trimester 3: I take dust into network base of understanding public accessible and diffused personal information. Built installation dust synthesiser, which is a work aim to explore the possibility to feed my film into machine and regenerate sound accordingly. Trimester 4: dust poetry
Graduation year:?
T1:
inspiration.( experience of derivative fear) On the train way back from Einhoven to Rotterdam. Through the old train window covered with dust, I saw the landscape and train track moving horizontally with high speed. Every thing outside the window was blury, unclear and impossible to catch any memorable detail. I am in a passive position again: only could sit and watch. At that moment a certain type of fear is occupying me, this emotion without clear source and also hard to defined. “the fear is more terrible when it is diffuse, dispersed, not very clear; when it floats freely elsewhere, without bonds, anchors, home or a clear cause” (Zygmunt Bauman) I realized that is what we experienced every day. Imagine the train window is the cybernetic interface; the moving landscape I saw through the window is the overflowed modulated data; the viewer is “the man in control”. watching and being watched through cybernetic filters 1.images and reality There are two conversed ideas Susan Sontag claimed she felt an irresistible temptation to quarrel with. One is the vividness of images bring the “war” to the viewers. When there are photographs, a war becomes”real.” Thus the protest against the Vietnam War was mobilized by images. “The influence of photographs in shaping what catastrophes and crises we pay attention to, what we care about, and ultimately what evaluations are attached to these conflicts.” “The other idea is that, in a world saturated, no, hyper-saturated with images, those that should matter have a diminishing effect: we become callous. In the end, such images just make us a little less able to feel, to have our conscience pricked.” 2.cybernetic filter selected: the most shocking bizarre images hit the headline. repetition: after repeated exposure, images becomes less real. viewing from distance: intensity: non-stop feed flooded with images of the sort that once used to shock and arouse indignation, we are losing our capacity to react. Compassion, stretched to its limits, is going numb. open to Manipulation every on-line footage open to manipulation, reedit remix. 3.fantasy and reality In comtempery society there are no boundaries between fantasy and reality. Examples: 9.11 United States. Japanese tsunami Catastrophes and entertainment. 4.social fragmentation and derivative fear 5.self- broadcast contribute to the continuous data and cybernetic filter. 6.self-generated loop
• Reference: Regarding The Pain Of Others, Susan Sontag The work of art in the age of digital recombination, Jos de Mul Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze Liquid Fear, Zygmunt Bauman Society and its Liquid Fears, Maxi Korsta
Dust Narrative
Dust narrative is a 10 minutes 47 seconds audiovisual work I have been working on this Trimemster. The visual part of this work is made of 6593 frames of dust which I have been collecting and scanning manually for two months. I use those dust images as sequence of animation playing in 30 frames per second editing with some digital video footage in the background, in this case those dust not longer stays as still images, but appears as flickering and moving particles. The Intensive visual elements and visual information of this video allowed me to apply "Pulfrich Effects" to create 3D illusion. I made a special glasses which has one darker filter over one eye in order to create 15 milliseconds delay of signal transmission for one eye. (visual system latencies are generally shorter so that the visual system responds more quickly.) In this way, this 3D effect create an illusion for the viewer that the flickery dust movement slowing down and flowing horizontally in space.
The sound part of this work including recorded sound and computer generated sound composed together in separated left and right stereo sound channel. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at.
Ideally this work should be presented as three separated screen audiovisual work with independent sound channel. however as a draft version and prototype. it temporarily stay as video format with stereo sound track.
Self-directed research essay
My method
Almost all my work start with grabbing an emotional moment or fragmented thoughts, memories, which important to me; or sometimes, I use piece of me (my personalities; my behaviors...) then, process it and interpret it in my work. I frequently ask myself why and where those feelings and emotions comes from? And will try to answer this question in bigger context in order to investigate the relation between my personal experience and media theory, group conciseness or phenomenon stand behind it.
critical examination of my own work
For me, the value of artwork contains two important factors. The first one is rather personal: whether the work and the creating process satisfied my eager for emotions and expression release. This important factor is my motivation of creating. The second one is about communication and interaction: I believe that the value of an artwork start at the moment when viewers and audience approach to it and the message of the work has been delivered, in my case is memories and emotions.
Description of recent work - Monolog Machine"
Monologue Machine is a self-communication machine. A machine like human being constantly talking to itself. It simulate human mental statues as self-examination. Monologue Machine generates sound from reading the change of lights. Then, generates graphics from its sound and read the changing graphics again in order to keep generates sound. The machine has two parts: one hacked TV set and eight light dependent resistor connected to Arduino board attached to the TV screen. Eight light dependent resistors receive lights and through a programmed Arduino board translate the light value into musical scale and send this sound single to a hacked TV. The hacked TV screens generates black and white trembling lines feeding back to the light dependent resistors in order to keep generate sound single create a non-stop feedback loop. In this circumstance, it creates a data loop which read, process and generates its own data again and again. However, the sound and graphics changing every time the machine processing the data. The only variable make it constantly change its sound and graphic is something we called "noise". Randomness and unpredictbleconditions and environments. It will keep updating the content of its own talking.
Description of recent work - Dust Narrative
Dust narrative is a 10 minutes 47 seconds audiovisual work I have been working on this Trimemster. The visual part of this work is made of 6593 frames of dust which I have been collecting and scanning manually for two months. I use those dust images as sequence of animation playing in 30 frames per second editing with some digital video footage in the background, in this case those dust not longer stays as still images, but appears as flickering and moving particles. The Intensive visual elements and visual information of this video allowed me to apply "Pulfrich Effects" to create 3D illusion. I made a special glasses which has one darker filter over one eye in order to create 15 milliseconds delay of signal transmission for one eye. (visual system latencies are generally shorter so that the visual system responds more quickly.) In this way, this 3D effect create an illusion for the viewer that the flickery dust movement slowing down and flowing horizontally in space. The sound part of this work including recorded sound and computer generated sound composed together in separated left and right stereo sound channel. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at, but there is no way to escape. Ideally this work should be presented as three separated screen audiovisual work with independent sound channel. however as a draft version and prototype. it temporarily stay as video format with stereo sound track.
The soundtrack for dust narrative. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at, but there is no way to escape.
The inspiration of my work and research related to it
My fascination towards "noise" start with my biking experience in a windy and heavy snowing weather in Rotterdam. Intensive snow flares coming towards my eyes with strong wind. I can't see the road ahead. Everything is white and blurry and flickery. My sense was weaken at that moment. I can hear Traffic is passing by. But I don't know which direction they are heading. Coming towards me or passing away? At that moment I feel like I am in another dimension. I don't know where I am. Where I am heading. I am seeing and hearing intensive information, but somehow I feel lost, experiencing silence and void. This experience trigger me to think how we process intensive overload information. Not only in physical world, but also online virtual world. The quick way of browsing; different realities and multiple identities we are frequently switching not longer new to us. When intensive information keep overloading to certain level which beyond we could process. We lose our concentration and ability to understand. In other words, those information become noise to us. When we have everything in front of us in a fragmented way, at the end we have nothing. We are confronting to the fact that our world and ourselves is divided into multiple copies because of overloaded information fragmented realities we are facing every day. The notion of fragmented and overloaded information lead me to the topic of noise, pre-mediated experience, multiple realities, fragmented online information. And, start to investigate what kinds of psychological and sociological impact this delusional and sense of lost orientation react to this noisy overloaded information could bring to us.
An eassy Web Video and The Screen as a Mediator and generator of Reality written by Robrecht Vanderbeeken selected by< Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube>
mentioned how this fragmented intensive online information virtualize the truth and how the public constantly observing without digesting information.
“For the most part, our browsing attitude seems to prevent us from putting clues together: we gather bits and pieces of information, but forget to come to a conclusion. In a way, the surfer’s experience often mimics CCTV. We are constantly observing everything, everywhere, but the incentive to reflect properly and respond accurately to what we are seeing remains absent. we keep on clicking, investigating, searching for new information, until we forget what it was that we discovered. We tend to ignore the uncomfortable truth. Or we resign ourselves to it, as one of the many dissonances of life. In sum, as a democratized medium, web video takes part in a process of the virtualization of truth. Ultimately, this leads to a situation of schizophrenia: a lot of hard facts circulate freely, but on an individual basis it is hard to accept them as such. The mediation of truth seems to have shifted from manipulation, to fragmentation, and finally to castration.”
Dust
1- the physical body of “my noise”.
2-the trace of being, evidence of existing
3-trace of our multiple identities
4-element of creating my own interpretation.
One day, I start to clean my black coat with a transparent sticky tape. When I look at those small dust particles through sunlight. I realized this is "the body of my noise". Dust always be considered as something unwanted, annoying or unpleasant. Dust use belongs to something meaningful, like sweater fabric or human skin ... However, when it scatters into small particles isolated from their systems. They become dust flowing and spreading around us. Finally, end up inside vacuum cleaner and threw away. The process of gathering dust for me is collecting my life in a fragmented way or finding a trace of being, evidence of existing.
When I am scanning and digitalizing those dust. I start to wonder: once I digitalised those physical dust. What is changed in the process? What those digital copies stands for? I am using those dust images as an element to creating my own world, my own reality to present to audience. However, I am using digital copies. A mediated material which never has been over-mediated before - the "unwanted insignificant dust". This idea of mediated something insignificant and use it as an element to interpret my own realty immediately attract me. In the eassy Web Video and The Screen as a Mediator and generator of Reality, Robrecht Vanderbeeken believes that The screens mediates our perception of reality, and it generates another reality in a new, mediated environment. Web 2.0 invites us to ‘immigrate’ to virtual worlds, first via funky avatars and later with our Facebook ego-profile, real-life interaction is delegated to a virtual substitute. editing, uploading, sharing, poking, connecting, replying and updating, our digital presence entails a vast amount of interpassivity: first-order experience is postponed, or even replaced by virtual activity. Indeed, we are living in the age of multiple realities, we put our self-copies, identities and mirrored self into different realities (online or offline). As I mentioned above, the dust is the trace of being in physical world, then what about those other realities we put ourselves into. If every virtual realities is the mirrored image of physical world. Whether virtual world also have dust? The trace of being we leave in the virtual realities? As we have multiple identities in online social platform so that dust also followed us into those multiple realities. Imaging those blogs, user account we registered years ago, but never log in again. It is unwanted it is isolated and flowing on the World Wide Web. However, it is our trace our evidence of being just like dust in the physical world. Whether I could use the digital version of those dust images as a metaphor and emphasis of being and present in virtual world? At that moment I realised the dust project have potential of further development.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that the dust and noise piling up in both realities (online and offline). The simulation and manipulation nature of those realities change into fragmentation. Facing extremely intense data and confined within a complex mixed reality which full of noise, what left to our psychological experience is silence and void. Without any focus and direction and expectation, we forgot what we were searching for, we just keep browsing into those noise. Expectation and context is absent, we feel totally detached from either world. Left in between, end up nowhere. Generated the sense of detachment from either worlds. Immerse into dust. We couldn't see. It weakened our sense organs. We are facing the void not freedom or self determination. We feel lost. And, this will go on. We have to accept the truth that the world we experienced not only "the one" any more. There no freedom neither imprison. All we got is extremely noisy and silence and void. In short, sooner or later, every user will become socially and psychologically confined within a complex mixed reality. Either lost or immerse into noise and dust.