User:Aitantv/TextOnPractice

TEXT ON PRACTIVE V1

DESCRIBE RECENT WORK AVP (2022) is a video which combines machine learning images based on a data set of lizards; moving illustrations of animal fossils, and live action footage of the Kennemerduinen nature reserve located next to the Tata Steel plant. The collage of imagery is underscored by a selection of climate emergency conference speeches, from the 1980s to the present day, spliced together into one continuous speech performed by an apathetic voicover.

CURRENT WORK Bubble Tours (2022) is an ongoing video project that examines property speculation and gentrification. In its most recent iteration, an autonomous, metallic, reflective, animated spiky 3D object, known as The Bubble, scans and surveys appartments in soulless high rises. Somewhere between a UN drone and an alien life form from a DC graphic novel, The Bubble has an agency of its own. At key moments we, the audience, share The Bubble’s gaze. Using an ultra-wide lens and post-production stabalisation plugins, bubble vision floats and gyrates offering a 360 persepctive of the architecture. This contrasts to the fixed, static, slow shots which observe the bubble and the architecture from a more objective perspective. This interplay of camera techniques lends the bubble agency, in the objective frame, and subjectivity, in the POV frame.

HOW ARE THE WORKS SIMILAR Both AVP (2022) and Bubble Tours (2022) are moving image projects with potential for becoming 3D or installation works. These films both exist in a fiction sub-genre I find myself increasingly identifying with: Utopia Apocalypse. This sub-genre of independent cinema, which I encountered on the festival circuit, imagines existential and socio-economic problems progressing leading to a near future where the symptoms and failures of Neoliberalism become unavoidably palpable. Nevertheless, in contrast to dystopian fiction, Utopia Apocalypse offers a seed of hope and humor, an imaginative or even transcendental well spring from which we can imagine new possibilities.

Both projects focus on non-human agents as the main protagonists, divorcing from mainstream social-realist drama and aligning with science fiction, monster movies, horror, paranormal fiction, and fantasy. These films confront the viewer with a megalothic existential threat. In the case of AVP it’s the climate emergency, and in Bubble Tours it’s the capitalization of home and shelter. By taking the unhuman or non-human as the central concern, there’s also an interest in experimenting with other ways of seeing, flipping the gaze and the standpoint from which the action takes place. In AVP I attempt to mimic how a lizard sees through stereoscopic vision and independent eye sockets, and through Bubble Vision we share the gaze of an autonomous monolithic life form. Both projects exist at the intersection of sociology, technology, and catastrophe, and attempt to probe our relationship to an ever-progressing capitalist model.

HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT

AVP explores the textures of landscapes, lizard skin, foliage, minerals. Bubble Tours dwells in characterless, dull, cookie-cut appartments in new-builds. AVP works with a mixture of image making apparatuses, but most importantly uses GANs or machine learning algorithms to create a majority of the imagery. Bubble Tours, on the other hand, is created through an interface and 2D/3D animation software. AVPs central theme is the climate emergency, whereas the existential concern in Bubble Tours is surveillance and AI autonomy.

FUTURE WORK

I’d like to develop Bubble Tours into a screenplay. I’m becoming very inspired by slow cinema and transcendental film, a term coined by Paul Schrader. I’d like to import this intrigue into Bubble Tours giving added weight and gravitas to the world in which the bubble operates. I’d like to work with a crew and multiple actors creating tableaus and a storyline to build a believable fictional world that mirrors our present. This fiction is a psychological realm that would have its own rules of conduct and where the bubble would become an indecipherable black box, like Kubrick’s monolith.

WHO CAN HELP Barend – VFX, Motion Design

Simon Pummell – script writing, pitching, production proposal

Rosella – photo real #D in Blender, cinematic CGI and architecture

Steve Rushton / Natasha – research, methodology, interactive text, script writing

Trip to the Moon – production company

IFFR – film networking, pitching

Film Fond, Mondrian, Stimulerings – financing

Sound – Wisse Barkhoff, using modulator synths to build the bubble’s character

INTERVIEW 20/04/22

What was the challenge with your latest project?

The challenge was really wanting to make this CGI lizard thing, which felt to much of a learning to curve to get to do it in time. Would have possibly be a more clear communication than the outcome that was. Started out with one idea that expended during the process. The end product was a nice summary of this process of research which started off about these conspiracy theories which turned into mixing different kind of fossils and mixing different kind of forms of media, speeches and experiments. The challenge with the end product is accepting that the viewer might not fully understand what every detail relate to. the challenge is finding a way to do the research, go deep but still connect with people. to be aware of the tone of the video, people partly where confused by the irony and the tone of the video whilst others enjoyed that. creating a productive, engagic confusion in audience.

In your current work, do you face similar problems?

In this new video i am trying to make, i realized its a bit flawd actually. It is going along the same line as videos i made before, which is about noticing a sociatal problem, finding a way to visaluze it and dwelling in this near dystopian future. Maybe using irony in the process to make it a bit unusual. Acutally would like to do something much more personal and human. after the workshop with laura milan last week we spoke a lot about kind of historical trauma, decolonializing, anthropoligy, startted to think more deeply about own history and place, wanting to make something that is about food and personal histories and the relationship betyween the stomach, food and migration and how food plays a role in bringing cultures, communitys together and how it is also a safe place, safe haven of comfort to deal with trauma. In own family food is very central, most comfortable moments are around food. sister has a very diffictult relationship with food, always eating to much, going on crazy diet, grandmother always in kitchen, obsessed with food. Wanting to start research into food, is it a generational trauma, is about religion, trauma, historie, personal. there is a strong connection between the food, the body and migration. does not need to be a video but can be. Can also be something different. using different mediums and opportunities on how to make an experience that involves people, takes over a room, is a whole wall, rather than an HD video file playing on a monitor. the challenge for aitan is making something really socially engaged and personal, rather than somthing in this utopia apocalypse genre. there is a risk in getting really negative with the future, fitizing technology, to much off a worked out genre, black mirror with a smile. why not play with other genres. involving oneself in the process. [NS: can you develop your draft TOP to talk about your reflections on process, following Laura's workshop? Are you starting to research artists/filmmakers who share your cultural origins who may have made work on this topic? Also interesting to consider how previous projects focus resolutely on the non-human, but this new direction feels very personal and intimate]

TEXT ON PRACTICE V2

DESCRIBE RECENT WORK AVP (2022) is a video [how long?] which combines machine learning images based on a data set of lizards; moving illustrations of animal fossils, and live action footage of the Kennemerduinen nature reserve located next to the Tata Steel plant. The collage of imagery is underscored by a selection of climate emergency conference speeches, from the 1980s to the present day, spliced together into one continuous speech performed by an apathetic voicover. [Can you be more specific about the source of this material, and give us more information about the process of producing/combining it?]

CURRENT WORK Bubble Tours (2022) is an ongoing video project [proposed length?] that examines property speculation and gentrification.[this is where you could be specific about your approach e.g. satire rather than documentary]. In its most recent iteration, [Can you expand on this below? What has the process been so far?] an autonomous, metallic, reflective, animated spiky 3D object, known as The Bubble, scans and surveys appartments [You could indicate that The Bubble does this from within the apartments – ‘scans’ and ‘surveys’ could suggest remote surveillance] in soulless high rises. Somewhere between a UN drone and an alien life form from a DC graphic novel, The Bubble has an agency of its own. At key moments we, the audience, share The Bubble’s gaze. Using an ultra-wide lens and post-production stabalisation plugins, bubble vision floats and gyrates offering a 360 persepctive of the [interior] architecture. This contrasts to the fixed, static, slow shots which observe the bubble and the architecture from a more objective perspective. This interplay of camera techniques lends the bubble agency, in the objective frame, and subjectivity, in the POV frame.

HOW ARE THE WORKS SIMILAR Both AVP (2022) and Bubble Tours (2022) are moving image projects with potential for becoming 3D or installation works. These films both exist in a fiction sub-genre I find myself increasingly identifying with: Utopia Apocalypse. This sub-genre of independent cinema, which I encountered on the festival circuit, imagines existential and socio-economic problems progressing leading to a near future where the symptoms and failures of Neoliberalism become unavoidably palpable. Nevertheless, in contrast to dystopian fiction, Utopia Apocalypse offers a seed of hope and humor, an imaginative or even transcendental well spring from which we can imagine new possibilities. [Can you offer examples of other filmmakers/artists working in this way, and reference a key work?] Both projects focus on non-human agents as the main protagonists, divorcing from mainstream social-realist drama and aligning with science fiction, monster movies, horror, paranormal fiction, and fantasy. [These genres crucially highlight human interaction with non-human agents…how do your films do the same?] These films confront the viewer with a megalothic existential threat. In the case of AVP it’s the climate emergency, and in Bubble Tours it’s the capitalization of home and shelter. By taking the unhuman or non-human as the central concern,[Do you mean ‘perspective’? ‘Concern’ suggests ‘theme’] there’s also an interest in experimenting with other ways of seeing, flipping the gaze and the standpoint from which the action takes place. In AVP I attempt to mimic how a lizard sees through stereoscopic vision and independent eye sockets, and through Bubble Vision we share the gaze of an autonomous monolithic life form. Both projects exist at the intersection of sociology, technology, and catastrophe, and attempt to probe our relationship to an ever-progressing capitalist model. HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT AVP explores the textures of landscapes, lizard skin, foliage, minerals. Bubble Tours dwells in characterless, dull, cookie-cut appartments in new-builds. AVP works with a mixture of image making apparatuses, but most importantly uses GANs or machine learning algorithms to create a majority of the imagery. Bubble Tours, on the other hand, is created through an interface and 2D/3D animation software. AVPs central theme is the climate emergency, whereas the existential concern in Bubble Tours is surveillance and AI autonomy.

FUTURE WORK I’d like to develop Bubble Tours into a screenplay [length?]. I’m becoming very inspired by slow cinema and transcendental film, a term coined by Paul Schrader. [how does this interest relate to the projects you describe above? ] I’d like to import this intrigue into Bubble Tours [what do you mean by ‘intrigue’ in this context?] giving added weight and gravitas to the world in which the bubble operates.[Develop? Are you referring to the visual language of the bubble’s environment in the objective frame?] I’d like to work with a crew and multiple actors creating tableaus and a storyline to build a believable fictional world that mirrors our present. This fiction is a psychological realm that would have its own rules of conduct and where the bubble would become an indecipherable black box, like Kubrick’s monolith.

WHO CAN HELP Barend – VFX, Motion Design Simon Pummell – script writing, pitching, production proposal Rosella – photo real #D in Blender, cinematic CGI and architecture Steve Rushton / Natasha – research, methodology, interactive text, script writing Trip to the Moon – production company IFFR – film networking, pitching Film Fond, Mondrian, Stimulerings – financing Sound – Wisse Barkhoff, using modulator synths to build the bubble’s character

REFERNCE Ed Atkins (+ WRITING)

TEXT ON PRACTICE V3

live link: https://hrnl-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/1028611_hr_nl/EV0Zi7OaomJEpaNFotpzX88BVEAQGyp_j91y6S6xdbw7pA?e=RtQigv

INTRODUCTION - DESCRIBE YOUR PRACTICE

As a video artist and filmmaker, I turn text into scripts into staged utterances. I call this process Regurgetations. Through video, I repurpose the stream of inputs we ingest into unexpected new forms. I direct, perform, capture, and edit soundbites, anecdotes, essays, and a host of other samples into concise new works. As a bodily process, it involves exporting inputs with the addition of the host’s saliva, bile, fat cells, DNA and so on.

With a BA in Social Anthropology, I’m aware of how culture shapes experience and is ultimately embodied. I’m motivated to alter the media we experience. The question of how and when text becomes narrative is a perpetual obsession. In AVP (2022) a mega collage of a thousand lizards is underscored by a remix of climate conference speeches. The content is reproduced, not replicated. To what extent can an audience generate a new story out of existing text? How can we invert the habitus of consuming media to invent new ways of seeing?

By remediating existing content, I aim to change its meaning and re-pattern the viewers ways of seeing. An example of this is Join O (2021) where cult recruitment film meets glossy tech ad, creating a third object. I don’t want to copy/paste material but augment, twist and transmogrify it. That way, the output can influence and even change reality.

Working as both a media Creative and a video artist, my interests are somewhat conflicted. This chasm is addressed in OOO (2020) where I recount the labor demands of my employer. I’ve incorporated molar techniques into my practice – continuity editing, cinematic framing, dynamic sound design – to ridicule these methods while leveraging their power. I explore themes such as late capitalist citizenship; self-sacrifice and memory; displacement, anomie, and Otherness. I enjoy diffusing dramatic themes with humor and intimate reflection.

DESCRIBE RECENT WORK

AVP (2022) is a mixed media two-channel video lasting 04:00. It combines machine learning images based on a data set of lizards; moving illustrations of animal fossils; and footage of the Kennemerduinen nature reserve located next to the Tata Steel plant. The collage of imagery is underscored by a selection of climate activist speeches made at climate conferences from the 1980s to the present day. The climate speeches include Autumn Peltier (2018) UN General Assembly, New York City; Hilda Flavia Nakabuye (2019) C40 World Mayors Summit, Copenhagen; and Severn Cullis Suzuki (1992) Earth Summit, Rio de Janiero. I gathered the texts from the online archive Youtube and spliced them together into one continuous speech performed by a voiceover.

During my research I was struck by the position of the activist in these institutionalized conferences. Is their position tokenistic? Are they used to emote Affect in otherwise bored and tired middle-aged politicians? Mostly I was saddened by the fact that the young female activist has been performing and re-performing the same role since the 80s and not much seems to have changed. The fact of her being there is a failure in itself. Therefore it felt appropriate for the voiceover in AVP (2022) to adopt an apathetic register, to evoke the listless, tiresome feeling of the body of the activist having to say the same thing in different ways to evoke a response from a disinterested political hierarchy.

DESCRIBE THE CHALLENGES OF MAKING YOUR RECENT WORK

I initially wanted a CGI Lizard to lip-sync the words of the activists. Why a lizard? The lizard occupies an in-between space, a point of slippage. I’ve been interested in intersections for some time. In my short film Join O (2021) cult recruitment film meets glossy tech ad, creating a third object. I like to fuse disparate objects to create new sparks. Join O (2021) operates at the fluid intersection between New Age religion and branding. The lizard, as an icon, also exists in an interzone – at once an endangered species and yet, according to the Lizard People conspiracy, a symbol for evil, elitist, exploitative power. My initial intention was to use the horrific reptilian aesthetic (which we relate to depictions of monsters and beasts in movies e.g. Godzilla, Alien V Predator, etc.) to reframe the climate emergency speeches and thus alter their meaning in productive ways. As I dug deeper into the Lizard People phenomena, which asserts that we are ruled by predatorial beings that take the form of Lizards, I realized, like many conspiracies, that at some point the Lizard People become a metaphor for the Jews and propagating antisemitism. Therefore, as a Jew, I realized that I am a lizard.

I doubly wanted to depict the Lizard as a climate activist, since I now identified with it as a misunderstood symbol for evil, but as my research expanded so did the idea; I believe for the better. I decided I wanted to include the lizard as part of an ecosystem. Rather than just focusing on one animal, there could be many. Rather than depicting the lizard with labor-intensive CGI, I could instead make simple line drawings of animal fossils, including lizards, dogs, rabbits, cattle, horses, to place the activist speeches in a broader context. All these animals could in theory inhabit the Kunemeerduinen where the rest of the video is filmed.

But the final product AVP (2022) is certainly met with confusion; primarily over the tone or register of the voiceover. For some the apathetic post-ironic tone comes across as taking the piss out of climate activism, a sort of post-woke irony; throwing the activists under the bus. For me, it’s trying to do the opposite. It’s about empathizing with the activists and wanting to reflect what I imagine to be their frustration; the disillusionment of repetition.

I wanted to bring a CGI lizard to life, to speak the words of the activists. But I felt obstructed by the steep learning curve of 3D software. Film production is an ongoing negotiation between pure storytelling and the expensive, inaccessible, production apparatus. I thus used machine learning and large data sets to create a more abstract gesture towards reptilian creatures. I felt the textural almost mosaic quality of the imagery gave the audience enough space to start creating their own narrative. The ongoing challenge is finding a way to do intensive research while still connecting with people. I don’t want to simplify the reality we live in, but I do wish to create a productive confusion where the audience feels invited to engage with issues.

DESCRIBE YOUR NEW WORK

My new work is a departure from AVP (2022) and the systematic, intellectual process of remediation. I want to return to the bodily side of Regurgetations, quite literally “exporting inputs with the addition of the host’s saliva, bile, fat cells, DNA and so on” as I said in my introduction.

In this new video I would like to create something more personal, bodily, and human. after the workshop with laura milan last week we spoke a lot about kind of historical trauma, decolonializing, anthropoligy, startted to think more deeply about own history and place, wanting to make something that is about food and personal histories and the relationship betyween the stomach, food and migration and how food plays a role in bringing cultures, communitys together and how it is also a safe place, safe haven of comfort to deal with trauma. In own family food is very central, most comfortable moments are around food. sister has a very diffictult relationship with food, always eating to much, going on crazy diet, grandmother always in kitchen, obsessed with food. Wanting to start research into food, is it a generational trauma, is about religion, trauma, historie, personal. there is a strong connection between the food, the body and migration. does not need to be a video but can be. Can also be something different. using different mediums and opportunities on how to make an experience that involves people, takes over a room, is a whole wall, rather than an HD video file playing on a monitor. the challenge for aitan is making something really socially engaged and personal, rather than somthing in this utopia apocalypse genre.

there is a risk in getting really negative with the future, fitizing technology, to much off a worked out genre, black mirror with a smile. why not play with other genres. involving oneself in the process.

[NS: can you develop your draft TOP to talk about your reflections on process, following Laura's workshop? Are you starting to research artists/filmmakers who share your cultural origins who may have made work on this topic? Also interesting to consider how previous projects focus resolutely on the non-human, but this new direction feels very personal and intimate]

HOW ARE THE WORKS SIMILAR

Both AVP (2022) and Bubble Tours (2022) are moving image projects with potential for becoming 3D or installation works. These films both exist in a fiction sub-genre I find myself increasingly identifying with: Utopia Apocalypse. This sub-genre of independent cinema, which I encountered on the festival circuit, imagines existential and socio-economic problems progressing leading to a near future where the symptoms and failures of Neoliberalism become unavoidably palpable. Nevertheless, in contrast to dystopian fiction, Utopia Apocalypse offers a seed of hope and humor, an imaginative or even transcendental well spring from which we can imagine new possibilities. [Can you offer examples of other filmmakers/artists working in this way, and reference a key work?]

Both projects focus on non-human agents as the main protagonists, divorcing from mainstream social-realist drama and aligning with science fiction, monster movies, horror, paranormal fiction, and fantasy. [These genres crucially highlight human interaction with non-human agents…how do your films do the same?] These films confront the viewer with a megalothic existential threat. In the case of AVP it’s the climate emergency, and in Bubble Tours it’s the capitalization of home and shelter. By taking the unhuman or non-human as the central concern,[Do you mean ‘perspective’? ‘Concern’ suggests ‘theme’] there’s also an interest in experimenting with other ways of seeing, flipping the gaze and the standpoint from which the action takes place. In AVP I attempt to mimic how a lizard sees through stereoscopic vision and independent eye sockets, and through Bubble Vision we share the gaze of an autonomous monolithic life form. Both projects exist at the intersection of sociology, technology, and catastrophe, and attempt to probe our relationship to an ever-progressing capitalist model.

HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT

AVP explores the textures of landscapes, lizard skin, foliage, minerals. Bubble Tours dwells in characterless, dull, cookie-cut appartments in new-builds. AVP works with a mixture of image making apparatuses, but most importantly uses GANs or machine learning algorithms to create a majority of the imagery. Bubble Tours, on the other hand, is created through an interface and 2D/3D animation software. AVPs central theme is the climate emergency, whereas the existential concern in Bubble Tours is surveillance and AI autonomy.

QUESTIONS ON PRACTICE

i am trying to make, i realized its a bit flawd actually. It is going along the same line as videos i made before, which is about noticing a sociatal problem, finding a way to visaluze it and dwelling in this near dystopian future. Maybe using irony in the process to make it a bit unusual.

CONCLUSION - FUTURE WORK

I’d like to develop Bubble Tours into a screenplay [length?]. I’m becoming very inspired by slow cinema and transcendental film, a term coined by Paul Schrader. [how does this interest relate to the projects you describe above? ] I’d like to import this intrigue into Bubble Tours [what do you mean by ‘intrigue’ in this context?] giving added weight and gravitas to the world in which the bubble operates.[Develop? Are you referring to the visual language of the bubble’s environment in the objective frame?] I’d like to work with a crew and multiple actors creating tableaus and a storyline to build a believable fictional world that mirrors our present. This fiction is a psychological realm that would have its own rules of conduct and where the bubble would become an indecipherable black box, like Kubrick’s monolith.

WHO CAN HELP

Barend – VFX, Motion Design

Simon Pummell – script writing, pitching, production proposal

Rosella – photo real #D in Blender, cinematic CGI and architecture

Steve Rushton / Natasha – research, methodology, interactive text, script writing

Trip to the Moon – production company

IFFR – film networking, pitching

Film Fond, Mondrian, Stimulerings – financing

Sound – Wisse Barkhoff, using modulator synths to build the bubble’s character

Suggested reference:

Ed Atkins (look at his writing also)

EXTRA TEXT

If cinema is a device to capture time, as Tarkovsky understood, then video can also expand or obliterate time. I don’t want to copy/paste reality but augment, twist and transmogrify it. That way, the output can influence and even change reality. In Commander (2021) colonial past meets speculative hybrid future, creating a new world out of sync.

Through video, I create personas, guises, and parodies, combining conflicting viewpoints. Catchphrases and slogans emerge in mundane parallel worlds. In OOO (2020) I meditate on transcending a dull domestic space where time (and my utterances) have been slowed down by 1/25th of a second. The result is startlingly opaque and mysterious, a performance only resembling reality

...to create aesthetic feedback loops between past and future.

FINAL TEXT ON PRACTICE

Aitan Ebrahimoff_Text on Practice_LB1 Semester 2