Project number three has been my most ambitious venture all semester. Originally I had the impulse to work within my comfort zone (video production) but quickly opted to try something different. I wanted to do something with stream of conciousness wordplay. I wanted to build something big. I wanted to sculpt something. In the end everything came together in the form of… well, my piece.
It was a very intuitive process that utiilizes poetry, audio, video, and materiality to induce a sense of the uncanny.
Process:
I was working on a budget and therefore tried to use cheaper or already available materials. First I constructed a foundation to house three TVs to correspond with a mouth and two eyes using particle board, wood glue, and a nail gun. The framework was then covered in chickenwire in the shape of a head. I mounted an old stero inside the structure along with the TVs. Paper mache was used for the outer layer as well as some cheap returned latex paint. I then placed three VCRs in the back that each connected to a different Television. The audio for the VHS displayed on the mouthscreen was fed to the stereo.
For the audio/video I had recorded my spontaneous writing exercises on my Tascam 4-track and played with the sound extensively in Sound Forge. I then shot close-ups of people lip syncing, close-ups of eyes, and various other pertinent material on a Sony A1-U edited on Final Fut Pro, exported to quicktime file, then transfered to VHS.
The Result: A giant head with Television screens in place of orifices that spits out imagery and poetry at a rapid pace.
My second project explores the uncanny effect of video degradation from one generation to the next.
I am interested in the visual quality of electronic imagery found on consumer-grade video. As a child I spent many hours making my own TV show compilations on VHS. The result, and I don’t believe I am alone in this, was a strange attraction to VHS intermediates of my favorite media. Even today revisiting these compilations I find a great deal of nostalgic pleasure in the slightly distorted effect of the copied video signal. Inspired by this quality, I decided to make a short video installation in which the footage would be looped 3 times with each successive playback being a generation more degraded.
Process:
Hopefully, the contnet of the work will speak for itself. I shot on a cheap JVC digital camcorder, edited the footage in Final Cut Pro, and mixed most of the soundtrack independently on audio tape (finer cuts made in Final Cut Pro). Once everything was assembled I exported to 3 VHS and copied from one to another so that the final cassette began with a copy of the exported Final Cut quicktime, followed by a copy of the copy, and then a copy of the copy of the copy. When presenting I brought in my own projector, speakers and VCR.
I am particularly proud of the distortion on the third playback. The conditioning process of the first 2 viewings makes for a potent uncanny effect in that the material itself has become familiar to the audience yet takes on an almost new appearance and sound.
For my first project, I wanted to recreate the sound of children playing with their toys.
Before social interactions have been conditioned and constrained to culturally recognizable exchanges of words and gestures there is childrens’ play: human communication at its most rudimentary. This level of interactions, I believe, is ripe with strange and often times creepy behavior that is difficult to articulate with words. Children in particular are a great example of the embodiment of the uncanny in their right (small human structures with slightly altered features). Once a more “adult” perspective is adopoted, the child appears uncanny.
Process:
I collected varioius toy instruments: xylophones, a tambourine, maracas, drums and recorded onto audio cassette (for dirty levels) using a Tascam 424 MKIII 4-track mixer. The electronic sounds are from an original gameboy using LSDJ as a 4-Track sequencer.
