When filming our video Nicky came up with the an inspirational idea from this video by Gotye, Somebody I used to know about including it into our piece. I thought this was a good idea as I think our piece needed a bit of breaking up as it was very similar all the way through. So adding this would give it another view of abstraction and add to the visual qualities. We could also play around with how it to link to the sound and how it blended in with the mood and colour of the piece.
1912-1956 American Painter
He was well know for his unique style of drip painting.
Influenced by Benton’s regionalist style and by Ryder, and later by the Mexican mural painters and Picasso. His involvement with gestural painting, inspired partly by the sand painting of the American Indians and partly by Surrealism, culminated in his use from 1947 of a technique of dripping trails of paint onto a canvas laid flat on the floor. Painted a number of works in black and white in 1951-2, many with re-emerging imagery of anatomical motifs, etc.
This is a video showing how Pollock creates his famous drip painting work using large sheets of canvas and paint.
“My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.I continue to get further away from the usual painter’s tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.” —Jackson Pollock, My Painting, 1956
When looking into Pollock’s work It related to our ideas quite well as he is also a very abstract artist. Using paint to splatter onto a large canvas and letting the paint do as it wants gave a very free effect to his paintings, although he was in control of the paintbrush and where it was going, the way the paint splattered across the canvas was very loose and creative, allowing a sense of freedom come to his paintings but with intentions still there. I like the way in which the paint crossed each other layering up layer after layer of imagery and colour to create pieces of work that have a sense of imagination to them. Looking into Pollock’s work made us think about the techniques in which we could put paint onto our canvas, such as using sticks and other materials, as Pollock used brush’s, sticks and even basting syringes as paint applicators. His technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting. In doing this he was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas. With this in mind we thought about how we could create our piece. We wanted to use paint brushes to give an bold effect but also maybe use our hands to give an obscured effect and using the brush’s in different ways such as flicking and splatting with the paint depending on the mood of the music, some applicators bolder than others. I found his work very inspiring and after seeing his work at the TATE Modern myself I know how influential his work is in a gallery, a massive piece in a room which draws attention to the viewers eye, the busy effect of all the paint on the canvas attracting onlookers to see what it is.
“Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn”.
“Dots” was made by painting directly onto clear frames of film. Interestingly, the music was created in the same way, painting directly into the area on the film strip usually reserved for the soundtrack.
This film created by Norman McLaren in 1940, shows an arrangement of dots manipulating and changing to the sound of the music. I watched this film which was first shown to us in one of our early soundscape projects, as It related to the kind of animation we wanted to do for our final soundscape piece. Creating an abstract piece of artwork we thought that the music would work better with the visuals as over complicating things may distract from the purpose that we were trying to convey. With dots, it gave us inspiration with how we could show bold shapes at times when the beat of the music came in or if there was a certain part of the music that stood out from the rest. Because it used simplistic shapes and was quite simple in a way we also thought this a good idea as I wouldn’t be too time consuming and complicated for the time we had but would still be very effective and show our reaction to the piece of music we’d been given. I like this piece because as I said before it doesn’t over complicated things, it reacts to the music and highlights the key beats, making the viewer not just concentrate of the visuals but on how they link with the music to highlight it making it also the main part of the film.
These are they sounds we recorded in a group around campus. We were told to go off and collect sounds around campus to then show to the class.
Group sound 6
Group sound 7
Group sound 8
Group sound 9
Group sound 10
Group sound 11
Group sound 12
These are the Foley sounds I recorded.
Sound 1
Sound 2
Sound 3
Sound 4
Our ideas for this project stemmed from a piece of work Nicky done last year, where she used similar ideas of flicking paint onto paper and animating it as she went. We thought this would be a good but also simplistic idea to do for our project as we knew we didn’t have much time in which to create it. As we wanted an abstract effect to our piece as the sound sounded very much abstract, we thought this would be a very good way to portray the different sounds used. They way in which the paint splatter would project onto the page would show how we reacted to it, being uncontrollable in where the paint was going but creatively in control.
An Oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or y‑axis, plotted as a function of time (horizontal or x‑axis). This way, many types of signals can be converted to voltages and displayed. Oscilloscopes are used to observe the change of an electrical signal over time, such that voltage and time describe a shape which is continuously graphed against a calibrated scale. Some computer sound software allows the sound being reproduced to be displayed on the screen as if by an oscilloscope.
In this lecture we got set a city task of creating a 30 second video with sounds showing the city of newport and what we think represented the quiet and deserted town using photographed pictures and our own foley sounds which we should record ourselves. We have to make the sound and images show this in a creative way combining them together showing this without directly implying it.
Today’s lecture was a one to one tutorial for our groups.
So we spoke to Ben today about what we were going to do for our final project and how we were going to animate to the sound we had been given. As a group we decided with the short time frame we had because of our intense stop-motion week before the deadline we needed something simplistic but effective. With this in mind we though of doing an abstract idea with paint spatters onto paper using mixed media to animate to the music. We thought this method would be a good way in expressing what we felt when listening to the music and of what it reminded us of. Using mixed media we could produce a pice of animation that both looked at abstraction but also showed reaction to sound.
I came up with the idea of using flash to draw over the top of the footage to make the paint dripping down more exaggerated and to add effect into the film, so this would incorporate more animation into our piece as well as adding in shapes to go with the music. As a group we also discussed the idea of using stop-motion to add in shapes that would spring and pop out with changes in the music.
My role in this animation was to film Nicky animating the paint splatters to the music onto the paper canvas and to work in 2D flash after, adding in additional details and effects.
Nicky’s role was to create the paint splatters on the canvas reacting to the music and to also help out after with editing on 2D flash and adding in additional details.
Daniel’s role in this animation was to create the stop-motion shapes to layer over the top of the animation. Using simplistic shapes and designs will reinforce an abstract expression and react to the animate in terms of colour, size and shape.
With filming the footage we wanted to do this as live action as it would give us more range of filming media as well as restricting our control over the paint but also giving us freedom of visual expression.
When talking to our lecturer Ben about our ideas, he though they would work well and suggested some artist that we could look at such as, Norman Mclaren, Jackson Pollock and Charles Bukavski. He also suggested maybe keeping it to a simple colour scheme and using black and white with hints of colour when bold parts of sound came in, so simplicity but with maximum effect.
This video shows a chain reaction video created by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. I found this interesting to watch as although these have been done quite a lot, in this reaction you see scientific reactions and use different kinds of things to fall onto the next thing instead of objects all the time. I also like the sound in this video as instead of putting music over the top covering the sound that is created by the objects this doesn’t put on music and leaves the sounds of the objects, which works well with the piece, its gives it a realistic effect that doesn’t leave the viewer wondering if its actually real.
becky philpott 