Electronic Arts > Video Art
2012
2012
Transitory
Transitory
My main body of work discusses concepts of emergence (from non-matter), existence, inter-connectivity through layers, and the relationship between contemporary Systems Theory and Eastern philosophy (chiefly Taoism). Though daunting at first, video art, like sound art, is a vibrant medium potentially full of movement and activity. I applied this “droning,” moving aspect of video to my overall concept through exploration of the transitory nature of memory and its connection to place, time, and recollection. Memory itself is unstable, at best unreliable, and full of pops, ticks, and even repetitive passages. Sometimes we are even stuck on a single, clarion “still.” By appropriating a video tied to a specific point in my history, “Transitory” deconstructs the idea of “proper” memory, highlighting the connectivity between image and recognition, emphasizing the gaps that come from missing data. The specific, personal memory becomes a universal comment about recalling space as a moment in time, literal location, and the transition of that space from memory, to reality, to conceptual reality.
The original video footage was recorded by Marcus Tee on 3-28-1987, using a VHS-based video camera. Tee stood in the parking lot of the Woolworth's shopping plaza in Palmdale, California, at the corner of Avenue Q-6 and Sierra Highway and provided a linear, spinning shot of the environment. Tee says he shot the video to capture the memory of this location from his childhood once he realized he would soon be disabled and would be unable to return to the location in person again. As a child in Palmdale, the Woolworth's shopping center was one of many shopping hubs, but my family visited it frequently. I have very personal memories associated with the shops here—too many to recount in a project statement (and many unnecessary to the subsequent transformation of the video). The plaza in the shot looks exactly as it does in my memory (I was 14 at the time Tee shot the video) and I recall most crisply the Woolworth's storefront, Shamrock Liquors, Palmdale Home Video, and the distant view of my brother's apartment building.
When I came across the video on YouTube, I was amazed someone had taken the time to record a mundane urban environment—and that someone shared a specific connection to a point and location in time, with tangible evidence. The connection between myself and the space depicted is fascinating. There is a space between myself and the videographer, between my current location and the location I occupied then, between times (1987 to present) and a separation of temporality (the entire shopping center no longer exists—it is transitively held in memory and video tape forever). It allowed me to open dialogue with the nature of memory itself. What do we remember about specific places, things, colors, locations, times? What details stand out? How do we store and re-access this data?
Watching the video revealed specific, familiar details I had “airbrushed” in memory. The nuances and textures of buildings, the play of light, exact signage—many of these precision details were no longer held in my “sentimental” memory. Watching the video reactivated actual memory and the nature of its rhythm, incongruity, and overlapping feedback. I became curious about the ways we recall, explore, and connect moments of memory and how a specific, personal video can be translated into something with universal appeal. I have tried to create a video art piece which references a lost point in memory, time, and physical place, commenting on the accuracy of data, using a space that no longer exists to speak about the literal process of image-memory recollection.
Method
I took the base video and dismantled it, fracturing the original linear format. By slicing, blending, overlapping, moving, and even erasing moments in time, the linear flow of the camera is unnervingly interrupted. The eye tries to follow forward movement, but finds that repeated image motifs (a painted 7Up sign, a blue car) and camera-movement implications become an impenetrable pattern. Things are out of order, moments blink in and out. The eye and mind can “remember” a specific sign or color, but the original layout and movement of such things becomes unreliable, like recalling the memory itself. The tumble of specific points becomes self-referential. As images flicker, the viewer begins to remember repeated shapes and points. As they filter back into focus, they become part of the viewer's own memory, a familiar point of reference in a chaotic flow.
The manipulation is done not to specifically replicate the holes in my own memory, or to force the viewer to “see what I see,” but to visually describe the way any specific memory can be used to reference the universal act of memory storage and connectivity. When one thinks of a shopping center they visited as a child, do they see a liner, fluid recollection? Or do various moments, colors, images, and points in time tumble in, overlapping, popping, and ticking, sometimes overlaid completely? Some of the data is sensory, some idealized and imprinted without clarity. The series of images and thoughts that we retain, related to different recollections, is like a network of image and impression, connected to us and related abstractly to the actual event or place.
The video is not intended to be sentimental or nostalgic. My intent was to take a video that had the aesthetics of something “older than the present,” without making it into either an old film or sigh-worthy recollection. Though some of the transitions resemble film stock, it is not intended to imply that the viewer is watching a film about memory, but rather the memory itself in a data storage format.
The audio track is my emergent sound scape. My video is originally silent, though without some kind of textural ambiance, the audience begins to focus on the process of time rather than the flow of data. I found the layered noise of industry and movement reminiscent of what I was attempting with the video itself—snippets of voice, music, billowing sound, and familiar (yet displaced) physical activities became an almost dreamlike addition to the incongruous flow of images. Having tried several natural ambient blankets of sound to accompany the video track, it seemed each was trying to narrate or illustrate the scene. I wanted the sound to be separate, yet overlaid. I was delighted to find how the two connected and played in a kind of separate, yet connected, harmony. Since both pieces were made with my fundamental, core concept of inter-connectivity and existence, it stands to reason that they blend.
Video Credits:
Video “Twenty Years Ago Today 03-28-87), recorded by Marcus Tee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ccvfwbe8-E
(YouTube video date 3/24/2007).
Music/sound credits:
The audio track was mixed and compiled by Ren Adams, 2012. The audio track is entitled "Emergent Sound Shapes" and makes use of original audio footage recorded by me on a Xoom portable audio recorder. It also makes use of several creative commons and attribution / sampling license tracks. Finally, it uses a heavily modified music track (cited below).
This audio track is designed as an art piece and is not for sale, nor do I make any claim to the sourced material that I did not record.
Miller, Andrew. Rainy front porch, 2006. Freesound.org (Sampling+ License).
http://freesound.org/people/andrewmiller/sounds/27855/
Monkay. Tibetan singing bowl, 2008. Freesound.org (Creative Commons License). http://freesound.org/people/Monkay/sounds/48325/
NemoDaedalus. 8mm Projector, 2008. Freesound.org (Attribution License).
http://freesound.org/people/nemoDaedalus/sounds/60453/
Nesmith, Michael and Craig Vincent Smith. "Salesman," 1966-1967. Originally under Colgems label, now Rhino.
Zoom H4. Footsteps in snow, 2010. Freesound.org (Creative Commons License).
http://freesound.org/people/Zoom%20H4/sounds/94327/
My main body of work discusses concepts of emergence (from non-matter), existence, inter-connectivity through layers, and the relationship between contemporary Systems Theory and Eastern philosophy (chiefly Taoism). Though daunting at first, video art, like sound art, is a vibrant medium potentially full of movement and activity. I applied this “droning,” moving aspect of video to my overall concept through exploration of the transitory nature of memory and its connection to place, time, and recollection. Memory itself is unstable, at best unreliable, and full of pops, ticks, and even repetitive passages. Sometimes we are even stuck on a single, clarion “still.” By appropriating a video tied to a specific point in my history, “Transitory” deconstructs the idea of “proper” memory, highlighting the connectivity between image and recognition, emphasizing the gaps that come from missing data. The specific, personal memory becomes a universal comment about recalling space as a moment in time, literal location, and the transition of that space from memory, to reality, to conceptual reality.
The original video footage was recorded by Marcus Tee on 3-28-1987, using a VHS-based video camera. Tee stood in the parking lot of the Woolworth's shopping plaza in Palmdale, California, at the corner of Avenue Q-6 and Sierra Highway and provided a linear, spinning shot of the environment. Tee says he shot the video to capture the memory of this location from his childhood once he realized he would soon be disabled and would be unable to return to the location in person again. As a child in Palmdale, the Woolworth's shopping center was one of many shopping hubs, but my family visited it frequently. I have very personal memories associated with the shops here—too many to recount in a project statement (and many unnecessary to the subsequent transformation of the video). The plaza in the shot looks exactly as it does in my memory (I was 14 at the time Tee shot the video) and I recall most crisply the Woolworth's storefront, Shamrock Liquors, Palmdale Home Video, and the distant view of my brother's apartment building.
When I came across the video on YouTube, I was amazed someone had taken the time to record a mundane urban environment—and that someone shared a specific connection to a point and location in time, with tangible evidence. The connection between myself and the space depicted is fascinating. There is a space between myself and the videographer, between my current location and the location I occupied then, between times (1987 to present) and a separation of temporality (the entire shopping center no longer exists—it is transitively held in memory and video tape forever). It allowed me to open dialogue with the nature of memory itself. What do we remember about specific places, things, colors, locations, times? What details stand out? How do we store and re-access this data?
Watching the video revealed specific, familiar details I had “airbrushed” in memory. The nuances and textures of buildings, the play of light, exact signage—many of these precision details were no longer held in my “sentimental” memory. Watching the video reactivated actual memory and the nature of its rhythm, incongruity, and overlapping feedback. I became curious about the ways we recall, explore, and connect moments of memory and how a specific, personal video can be translated into something with universal appeal. I have tried to create a video art piece which references a lost point in memory, time, and physical place, commenting on the accuracy of data, using a space that no longer exists to speak about the literal process of image-memory recollection.
Method
I took the base video and dismantled it, fracturing the original linear format. By slicing, blending, overlapping, moving, and even erasing moments in time, the linear flow of the camera is unnervingly interrupted. The eye tries to follow forward movement, but finds that repeated image motifs (a painted 7Up sign, a blue car) and camera-movement implications become an impenetrable pattern. Things are out of order, moments blink in and out. The eye and mind can “remember” a specific sign or color, but the original layout and movement of such things becomes unreliable, like recalling the memory itself. The tumble of specific points becomes self-referential. As images flicker, the viewer begins to remember repeated shapes and points. As they filter back into focus, they become part of the viewer's own memory, a familiar point of reference in a chaotic flow.
The manipulation is done not to specifically replicate the holes in my own memory, or to force the viewer to “see what I see,” but to visually describe the way any specific memory can be used to reference the universal act of memory storage and connectivity. When one thinks of a shopping center they visited as a child, do they see a liner, fluid recollection? Or do various moments, colors, images, and points in time tumble in, overlapping, popping, and ticking, sometimes overlaid completely? Some of the data is sensory, some idealized and imprinted without clarity. The series of images and thoughts that we retain, related to different recollections, is like a network of image and impression, connected to us and related abstractly to the actual event or place.
The video is not intended to be sentimental or nostalgic. My intent was to take a video that had the aesthetics of something “older than the present,” without making it into either an old film or sigh-worthy recollection. Though some of the transitions resemble film stock, it is not intended to imply that the viewer is watching a film about memory, but rather the memory itself in a data storage format.
The audio track is my emergent sound scape. My video is originally silent, though without some kind of textural ambiance, the audience begins to focus on the process of time rather than the flow of data. I found the layered noise of industry and movement reminiscent of what I was attempting with the video itself—snippets of voice, music, billowing sound, and familiar (yet displaced) physical activities became an almost dreamlike addition to the incongruous flow of images. Having tried several natural ambient blankets of sound to accompany the video track, it seemed each was trying to narrate or illustrate the scene. I wanted the sound to be separate, yet overlaid. I was delighted to find how the two connected and played in a kind of separate, yet connected, harmony. Since both pieces were made with my fundamental, core concept of inter-connectivity and existence, it stands to reason that they blend.
Video Credits:
Video “Twenty Years Ago Today 03-28-87), recorded by Marcus Tee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ccvfwbe8-E
(YouTube video date 3/24/2007).
Music/sound credits:
The audio track was mixed and compiled by Ren Adams, 2012. The audio track is entitled "Emergent Sound Shapes" and makes use of original audio footage recorded by me on a Xoom portable audio recorder. It also makes use of several creative commons and attribution / sampling license tracks. Finally, it uses a heavily modified music track (cited below).
This audio track is designed as an art piece and is not for sale, nor do I make any claim to the sourced material that I did not record.
Miller, Andrew. Rainy front porch, 2006. Freesound.org (Sampling+ License).
http://freesound.org/people/andrewmiller/sounds/27855/
Monkay. Tibetan singing bowl, 2008. Freesound.org (Creative Commons License). http://freesound.org/people/Monkay/sounds/48325/
NemoDaedalus. 8mm Projector, 2008. Freesound.org (Attribution License).
http://freesound.org/people/nemoDaedalus/sounds/60453/
Nesmith, Michael and Craig Vincent Smith. "Salesman," 1966-1967. Originally under Colgems label, now Rhino.
Zoom H4. Footsteps in snow, 2010. Freesound.org (Creative Commons License).
http://freesound.org/people/Zoom%20H4/sounds/94327/