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]