William Kentridge - "The Refusal of Time"

I went to the MOMA to see William Kentridge's exhibit entitled "The Refusal of Time." It was on the second floor, and the installation was comprised of a mechanical, moving wooden centerpiece with five screens around it. The screens were all very large, and showed different scenes of animation, filming, and even music. At first, each screen just showed five different clocks, all moving at different rhythms, which gradually sped up in an exponential fashion. The scenes then show an old man walking amongst book pages, then cuts to different figures speaking different storylines. Finally, an empty black space is shown, with white figures appearing that seem to allude to stars. Finally, an animation shows with black silohuettes.

The wooden sculpture in the center was a very complex and impressive piece of work. It contained many parts and was huge. It reminded me of an engine of sorts, especially one with steampunk aesthetics and themes.

"The Refusal of Time" is referencing the fact that everyone knows that they're going to die, but of course will try to resist death with every instinct and action. I looked up what Kentridge said about the exhibit, and he stated that it wasn't about escaping mortality itself, but escaping the pressures that mortality imposes onto us. I think that time and death go hand-in-hand, and by giving this concept of escaping mortality the name of refusing time, Kentridge does something very interesting and unexpected to set up the frame behind his exhibit.

Final: Text Adventure Essay in MS Word

I wanted to experiment with a few different forms of media for my final. As we were getting into the concept of a labyrinth and how it relates to the repetition of time, I thought that the form of a text adventure game would demonstrate these ideas perfectly. To emulate the effects of a text adventure game, I used Microsoft Word and video capturing software to record my typing and subsequently the text that I copied-and-pasted from another document. This became the interface between the user of the game and the computer / narrator of the game. I then began a playthrough of the "game." In the first run, I make a lot of bad choices, choices that would have negative consequences in the real world, and so that translated to the game. Each bad choice I made would lead to a subsequent event / conflict, and with enough bad choices, you lose the game, meaning that you failed to rescue the princess you promised to save. At first, I seem reluctant to play the game, but the story (Around 2000 words of text) draws me in, and I decide to restart the game and play it through. This time, I learn from my mistakes and seemingly make all the right choices, and the events are completely different than the first playthrough. Still, though, in the end, the princess dies, and the ending screen shows me attempting to restart the game for yet another run.

I also put an indie rock song that I synced with the video to help make it more engaging. I also sped up the gameplay to over 150% than the speed at which it actually occurred, to give it a brisk, game-like pace.

I enjoy writing fiction, and while this story is as stereotypical and archetypical as it gets, I still had fun writing it, and it's definitely a medium that I never thought about working with before (A video of text). It was a pretty unique project, and it's a piece that I would put in my portfolio for its concepts as an art piece as well as to present the writing itself.

Memento

Memento is my favorite of all the films that Christopher Nolan has directed. It was based on a short story that his brother had written, which I have also read. The film's a very successful adaptation of the story, and the story itself is one of the most interesting and engaging setups in cinema, in my opinion. The protagonist has retrogade amnesia, and therefore is unable to make any short-term memories after being attacked by burglars. He now spends his days performing his own investigating, to the best that he can, as his wife was raped and murdered in the attack, and he believes that one of the attackers got away.

The fact that the opening scene was actually the ending scene was a really brave and interesting choice. It also definitely set up the tone and plot structure for the rest of the film. Having to figure out the story in reverse (As that's how it is shown to us) is very similar to how the main character has to figure out his memories by looking at them in retrospect after having forgotten them. The way that this film was made to replicate and correspond to the ideas of forgetting and repeating time was brilliantly done.

The temporal labyrinth is in the narrator's own mind. He even sets up his own obstacles for himself. In the end, when it is revealed that the narrator found and killed the real attacker long ago, and that he actually chooses to forget in order to continue the only semblance of a life that he knew how to live now with his condition and his wife gone, that to me was the most interesting component of the whole story. The actor who portrayed the protagonist was so charismatic, and the protagonist himself so likable, that this reveal almost ruined the experience of the film for me when I first watched it several years ago. However, now, I am able to appreciate the aspect of an unhappy ending, and it's added that much more to the film for me.

Labyrinth

The Circular Ruins was a very intriguing read for me. I thought that it was beautifully and lucidly written despite the subject matter being all about dreams. The narrator goes through dream sequences attempting to "dream a man," the perfect, idealized man. Immortality is referenced and achieved in the story through the process of cloning, The narrator seeks immortality by dreaming up his own son by visualizing a beating heart. In the end though, the narrator eventually realizes that he himself is just the product of a dream, from another person. The labyrinth in this story is metaphorical and temporal. It all takes place within the world of a dreamscape.

The second story, The Library of Babel, also contains a metaphorical and temporal labyrinth. In this story, a library functions as a metaphor for the universe. The narrator talks of spending his youth, like most others, in search of a book within the library. The books in the library supposedly contain every possible combination of the characters in the alphabet. However, because of the massive wealth of information, many of the readers in the library feel despair, and actively try to destroy books. Others believe that a messiah of sorts exists as a figure who read and has access to a book that perfectly indexes the library's contents. I rather like this idea of a library as a a labyrinth. Visually, it works very well, with the endless shelves filled with endless scores of text.

The tale of Sisyphus contains the most literal representation of a labyrinth out of all the stories. His labyrinth is also the most inescapable and inevitable. He was doomed to roll a massive boulder to the top of a steep hill, however, before reaching the peak, the stone would always roll back down. Although this is a labyrinth, it's much more simpler in structure than the labyrinth in the other stories. While the other stories contained labyrinths that could be traversed, navigated, and even journeyed through, Sisyphus's labyrinth just functions as eternal punishment.

Documentary (Mockumentary)

We changed the plotline of our documentary so that it would be better-suited to the story. The filming was shot in one location in just three different rooms. We wanted to contain the tension of the film in an understated and somewhat cramp manner. I played the role of a psychic predicting a global disaster who is being interviewed by Kevin, the skeptical student journalist. We worked hard on the lighting to give it a gritty, dark feel. We attempted to use some creative filming techniques, such as intergrating filming performed by Kevin's character with conventional cinematography techniques, as well as incorporating a long one-take scene at the ending of the film to maximize the tension.

Documentary Storyboard

We were asked to make a documentary, and to take into consideration fictional elements of cinema that we could incorporate into our documentary to make it more interesting while continuing a sense grounded realism. We were told to choose a partner to work with for this project, and my partner is Kevin Banos, who did the illustration for the storyboard based off of rough sketches and scene descriptions that I relayed to him. For the story of the documentary itself, we wanted it to be an interview between a college student working for the local newspaper (Played by Kevin), and a self-proclaimed clairvoyant who is attempting to warn people that a global disaster is about to take place. The scenes will cut from an interviewing room to shots on the street, where a series of effects will be used  for each scene (Blurring, levitating subject, and finally a CGI UFO in the sky). These scenes are the documentary's showpieces, in that they will be the most visually engrossing shots, designed to captivate and to instill a sense of surrealism in the film.  

Exit Through the Gift Shop Review

I have been a fan of Banksy's work, but despite his widespread name and recognition, I didn't really know too many details about his life or his thoughts behind his work. Although I liked the idea of keeping up the intrigue and mystique behind Banksy's work and identity, I really enjoyed the story behind the film, and learned a lot more about who he was, as I had never heard or seen any recordings of him before. And I really connected with Mr. Brainwash in that in the beginning he just liked to film everything as I am a photographer / videographer myself, and I like that he got interested in street art through first-hand experience with meeting artists. I think the film did a really good job at incorporating cinematic and conventional storytelling to make the documentary more engaging and interesting without sacrificing the integrity or exaggerating the truth to the point of losing its credibility. Of course much of the film was entirely fabricated I'm sure, but the message the documentary carries is still strong, even if it's similar to a conventional movie. It never became ridiculous to me at any point. I found the human elements of the film, that is to say, the personal interactions and dialog between the characters, particularly Mr. Brainwash and Banksy, to be the most sincere and truthful aspects. They are also aspects that are almost easier not to fake in this case. But, like any movie, the dramatic portions are for the purposes of tension and narration, not as a reflection of reality. The security scene, for example, where Guetta is interrogated and alerts Banksy, had to have been altered if not entirely fictional. Nonetheless, I still really enjoyed viewing it, and everything about the film challenges our perception of not just street art but art in general.

Sound Recordings

My sound piece was designed entirely from noises made in my dorm kitchen. Recordings included the sound of a knife slicing on a wooden board, the juggling of juice in a bottle, the humming of the microwave, the kicking of a box, the chopping of the same knife on the board, and more. Total, I believe there were 14 recordings used in all. Each recording was imported as an audio sample in FL Studio, software that is digital audio workstation. I wanted to turn all of the pieces into a song, specifically, an electronic sound, with elements of the dubstep and hip-hop genres. I wanted the original noises to come together to produce a piece that was completely removed from the setting and context the were created in.

Link to piece: https://soundcloud.com/doe-eyes/kitchen-noises

Sequential Movement (Charcoal Animation)

I don't have a lot of experience in drawing, so the charcoal animation was a very time-consuming project for me, but it was enjoyable and I'm pleased with the end result. I always knew hand-drawn animating was a long and varied process, and the technical aspects of digital animation seemed daunting and intimidating to me. The charcoal animation process that Palimpsest developed to me was a very engaging and creative way to compose an animation in a manual, old-fashioned way more efficient than drawing it all frame-by-frame. For me, the total time ended up being over several hours, and I ended up with a twenty-second low FPS animation. If I really wanted to have it been refined, it would have taken me twice or even three times as much time. So for me, when I view my short twenty-second animation, I really take a good look at it and focus, because I want the time of the viewing experience to justify the length of time I spent working on it.

Graphic Novel

I wanted to do something different for the graphic novel project. I am a photographer, not an illustrator, so I thought at first that the project would have been exceedingly difficult for me. However, after reading Scott McCloud's chapters in Understanding Comics - The Invisible Art, I realized that all the effects that could be achieved through comic illustrations could be done through photographs. Motion, action, and transitions in comics can easily be replicated with actual photographic imagery, as rules of composition are the same in photographs or in illustrations.

I wanted to an adaptation of a scene from Macbeth, specifically, Scene 2 in Act 2. Macbeth is one of my favorite works of literature, and I had wanted to do a modern adaptation of it, with Sin City style graphic novel effects. The end result turned out very similar to what I had in my mind, and I was satisfied with the overall aesthetic. I edited each photo uniquely in a filter to give it the cartoon look in Photoshop, and ended up with a fairly consistent selection of images that translated well to the graphic novel medium.

Time-Lapse

Our third project asked us to create a time-lapse video in Adobe Premiere composed of photographs taken in a location of our choice for an extended period of time. I chose to film the street directly outside of the Forever 21 store in Union Square. The images gradually fade to black-and-white throughout the video, and is set to an audio clip of the song 'Your Hand In Mine' by Explosions In The Sky. 

Long vs Short Time

Our second project asked us to create a piece that juxtaposed the concepts of long time and short time. I chose to create a certain type of image called a cinemagraph, in which only one selected portion of a photo is moving and seamlessly looped repeatedly. The short bit of motion, my reflection walking alongside a store window, is repeated infinitely. 

Time Map

Our first project assigned in our 'Time' class asked us to take twenty consecutive photographs of a single action, in order to create a time map. I chose to film one of my roommates playing the piano. My time map is linear, and reads from left to right than goes downwards and to the left. My time map is also designed to be a bookmark, with the two images on different sides.