Blogs Round 3- listen up!

When I arrived at the Haggerty Museum of Art on the campus of Marquette University to see the stop.look.listen. exhibit there was a group of about 20-30 children sitting around tables at one of the displays. After they left there were about 10 adults making almost as much noise as the kids and then they finally dispersed. The whole thing took about an hour and during that time I wandered around among the different displays, some of which had the sound turned off as I found out later. Even after the large groups of people left it took a while for the guard to get the sound going on all the displays. I had a chance to sit through Salla Tykkas amazing Cave Trilogy once with no sound and once with sound. Even when the sound was finally turned on it was at a low volume.

Cave Trilogy is so strong visually that it made little difference to me whether the sound was on or off. Tykka chose to use music from well known films in all three parts of her trilogy and they all worked perfectly, mainly by staying out of the way of what's happening on screen. In part three ,Cave, we hear music taken from the 1984 David Lynch movie Dune which had a score written by Brian Eno and the band Toto. Eno's The Prophesy is combined with the Paich/Paich song The Box. Many people are fans of both the movie Dune and the sound track written for it but I thought the sound track and score simply ruined the movie which needed the expertise of someone like Jerry Goldsmith who has sc-fi films like Planet of The Apes and Alien in his long list of credits. The music written by Eno/Toto for Dune works well in Tykka's Cave though. It provides a suitable backdrop to the story of a woman who is searching for something, and it gives the film both a futuristic and a retro setting. Eno's ambient synthesizer sounds fit well with the main character who is wearing some kind of white jump-suit, for some reason.

Before leaving the museum I decided to listen again to Amy Globus' display Electric Sheep, this time with and without the use of the provided headphones. On screen is an octopus that is working it's way through a series of glass tubes, some of which are very thin. The background is solid black and the whole scene is eye-catching. Emmylou Harris's version of Neil Youngs' "Wrecking Ball" plays as the octopus moves. At one point in the song I heard a sort of flanging sound that affected only short segments of the song, and the soundscapes of Aaron Zimm immediately came to mind. Zimm likes to keep his amibient sounds intact and modifies only portions of them to enhance them, instead of using the more typical approach of chopping up the source file and rearranging the various parts. Zimm's aversion to looping also adds originality to his work. Globus uses the same approach as Zimm here in that she is adding to, but not cutting up the music in Electric Sheep. I found the use of music to be distracting overall and the display would have been better served by the use of ambient sounds and sound effects to enhance the video. Both Tykka and Globus use previously recorded music but the effect is quite different in that Tykka uses it for dramatic purposes to enhance a story and Globus uses it more in the context of a music video. Zimms approach of putting the listener in a particular place with ambient sounds could have worked well with Electric Sheep but overall it's still a very interesting display. There are many things to consider when adding sound to enhance visual images and many different roads to take.

on Senses of Cinema

One of the highlights of SensesofCinema is the virtual library of film directors from many different genres. I chose this site based on Nelson Kims excellent interview of fellow director Charles Burnett. The general tone of the director write-ups is positive which is good since the profession of directing itself is a hit and miss proposition. After having read several bios one of my favorites is John Carpenter. He is best known for his horror and sci-fi films but doesn't work in these genres exclusively. Assault on Precinct 13 would be a notable exception that was redone recently. Carpenter is considered by many to be low-brow but his use of sound in a minimalist way always impressed me. Many of the scenes in his films are accompanied by a single note played on a synthesizer that is very effective in enhancing the action onscreen. The sound is similar to that produced by drone instruments such as the tambura used in India. His do it yourself approach gives his films a certain continuity that has spanned several decades. Carpenter may be be best known for his Halloween series but many of his films, such as Escape From New York and The Thing have stood the test of time and become classics of their respective genres.
Like John Carpenter, George Romero chose to work within the limited scope of genre films and is best known as the director of Night of the Living Dead. He's been an inspiration to many filmmakers looking to get a start by doing genre films, in his case horror. Romero has had some success since Night of the Living Dead such as Monkey Shines but it would be hard to measure up to his first effort. It would be hard to say what the horror genre would be like today if it wasn't for Romero.
Sensesofcinema is also a resource of information on festivals in various regions and also has a number of articles on different subjects. The site also includes a section on book reviews. Nevertheless, the main focus of sensesofcinema is on directors, but used along with other sites it can be a valuable tool for any student or fan of cinema. One aspect of the site that I like in particular is that most of writers of the director bios' avoid a Freudian type of analysis of the directors work. In the future I will be spending more time reading articles and keeping up with reports of festivals and other activities.

Act /React-Milwaukee Art Mueeum

The Act/React show at the Milwaukee Art Museum turned out to be a pleasant surprise as did the museum itself. Once past the cold exterior of the building the inside changes into a place that is varied and inviting. If anything the show was a reflection of the contrasts that could be found inside the rest of the museum. Rooms with large expanses sit next to small carpeted spaces and going from one display to the next feels like a journey through time. I decided to view Act/React twice with time spent at the rest of the museum in between. My planned one hour visit turned into three. While looking at a painting by a french impressionist who's work hung next to a Renoir, but who's name escapes me, I noticed that the thickly applied paint produced a shimmering effect in some areas of the canvas. The painting is of some boats on a river on a sunny day and as I moved slightly in front of it the painting seemed to have a life of its own by giving the impression of the sun beating down on the water. This sparked my interest into the use of the the word "interactive". After a while I found my way back to the Act/React exhibit.

Brian Kneps exhibit entitled "Healing #1" is a display that rests on the floor as it reacts to the footsteps left by those who walk on it. Stepping on the surface displaces objects that appear to be organic or biological. The combination of orange and yellow cells reminded me of close-up photographs of the photosphere of the sun with the granules on the surface constantly changing over time. It's not surprising that Knep has worked with the likes of Industrial Light and Magic. At one point one of the gallery guards got on the floor for a spin. This exhibit is a reminder that everything in the universe is connected and moving at the same time. Looking at Kneps other work there seems to be a consistency in his use of organic imagery as opposed to the actual use of organic material that could be found in Liz Phillips fascinating but frustrating Echo Evolution. Phillips exhibit was simply in need of more. More neon, more sounds, more activity. This was the exhibit I was most draw to but it needed some fine-tuning. Kneps "Healing" on the other hand gives a sense of completion and simplicity, whereas Phillips display was more ambitious in design. Phillips use of metallic dissonant sounds was a perfect contrast to the inviting glow of neon glass, both of which were triggered by motion sensors.

The first time I heard the phrase "interactive cinema" was several years ago when reading an interview of french video-game producer David Cage. Cage was commenting on his successes and failures with his game Fahrenheit, better known as Indigo Prophesy in the U.S. Cage decided that the best way to make his games interactive was to connect to the player/viewer on an emotional level by getting them involved in a story that has to come to a conclusion. Having the player play the role of a number of different characters worked remarkably well. Cages' company Quantic Dream knows they are onto something and it's not surprising that they only produce one game every 5 years dispite employing hundreds of people, many of whom are artists. Cage even went so far as to hire composer Angelo Badelementi to do the soundtrack for Fahrenheit. This raises the issue brought up by Roger Ebert as to whether video games are art. Ebert feels that video games are inferior to traditional art because the viewer/player is making choices. I believe it's a non-issue because video-games, like music videos needed a genre they could call their own. Music videos were perfected to a certain extent in the 1980's whereas video-games are in their infancy because of the technical challenges. One thing that sets video games apart from other creative projects is that they are made for movement so the possibilities are endless as to how the "game" engines can be used. I can't help but think that all art is interactive in one way or another after my visit to MAM. Kneps' Healing Pool is an example of a work that goes one step further than traditional art in it's level of interactivity but can't, in fairness, be compared to a video game as an art object.

The Act/React show is both thought provoking and fun. While the exhibits provide a sense of completion it may be much harder to achieve with other forms of creativity. All in all the exhibit raises ones awareness of the nature of interactivity in its' different forms.

Link to Selected Journal

Here's my link
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/

I chose this site because it has a balanced approach to different types of cinema.

Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

"The desire to bridge what we call art and politics is in fact a fear of both." At first glance this statement made by Paul Chan in a recent interview would seem to contradict his recent work. In light of the success of the production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with New Orleans as the natural backdrop, there seems to be a method to how Chan goes about his business. His organizing of the play could be seen as purely artistic, or purely political. Or neither.The original project has evolved into a multi-faceted program with many people involved. In a place in need of everything, including entertainment, it's not surprizing the play was well recieved.
Chan did his homework by talking to many of the local residents from different backgrounds who offered a variety of perspectives on the possibility of staging the play in New Orleans. "A country road. A tree. Evening." A perfect stage. Susan Sontag may have provided some inspiration with the showing of Godot in Sarajevo also.
Strangely, nowhere in the readings is the question of whether New Orleans should, or can be restored to it's former glory, pre-Katrina. The only people qualified to answer such a huge question would be scientists who understand the problems and expense of maintaining a city that is in large part below sea level, and in a hurricane alley. Maybe avoiding this issue was Chans' approach from the beginning. Instead of waiting for the congregation of politicians, scientists, commitees and everyone else to help, why not put on a play?
Chan's statement about the separation of art from politics makes sense in that his project was the result of the aftermath of a natural disaster. The situation in New Orleans became political in large part through the media. His simple idea to put on a play has taken on a life of it's own and politics have very little to do with it. It will be interesting to see if he tries to repeat his success with Godot or forges ahead with something completely different.