Artist Response #8: J Dilla's "The Shining"

J Dilla or Jay Dee, was an American record producer who emerged from the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan. The Shining is the title of his second official solo album, and it was incomplete at the time of J Dilla's passing and was posthumously completed. Discounting the instrumental album Donuts, The Shining was the first full-length solo release by J Dilla (featuring vocals) since Welcome 2 Detroit five years earlier, and as such was highly anticipated. It was released on August 22, 2006 through BBE Records. An instrumental version of the album followed its release shortly afterward.

The album features extensive sampling from horror movie The Shining. A few of the tracks on The Shining are vocal versions of previously heard material such as "So Far to Go" (Donuts track "Bye" revamped and extended to serve as an intended remix to Common's "Go!"). This song was originally to be released by Common during the last quarter of 2005, as part of a special edition package. In 2007, an alternate version of "So Far To Go" containing new verses and a new mix was released on Common's Finding Forever album.

I think what attracted my attention to his work from the get go was how he was able to combine clips from the film and incorporate it into a rhythmic type of structure to fit accordingly to the overall composition. I knew of J Dilla from listening to his Donuts album, but it wasn’t until The Shining, until I was able to get the inspiration I was seeking.

Even though J Dilla is not a visual artist, I feel that his work is new media because of it's contemporary composition. I received a lot of inspiration from his audible background to incorporate that sort of feeling into my final project, especially in terms of “sampling” from various sources of sounds – from my own, from found material and from Pink Floyd.

Final Project in Progress (from April 27, 2009)

this was the extent of my final project as of two weeks ago. the photos and videos were being layered upon one another repeatedly to compose the overall sequence of animations. music, transitional phases, and sound were not incorporated at this point.




http://students.smcm.edu/bjboyle/Art314/selfportraitprogress.html

Artist Response #7: Chel White

Chel White is an American stop motion animator, film director, commercial and music video director, animator, actor, screenwriter, and visual effects supervisor on feature films. He is well known for his first person narratives and stylized use of images, White's films explore love, obsession, alienation, memories, and dreams. He uses allegory and frequently dark humor to paint pictures of the human experience. His narrative films are often told from the perspective of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in.

Between the early 1980s and the early 1990s, his passion was based on a non-narrative, music-driven type of filmmaking. He created a series of films which have much the structure of music, particularly their use of repetition and rhythm. He says that he thinks of these earlier works as "song films."

I first came across his work in my film class when we were looking at various animation clips over time – from his portfolio, we viewed two films of his, Choreography for Copy Machine (1991) and A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005). I was really interested and almost fascinated with his clip of Choreography of a Copy Machine. This film exemplifies the interaction between music and image. Also in this film, he was able to take it to the next level of animation by exploring an original animation technique, generating images solely by using the photographic capabilities of a photocopy machine. The Berlin International Film Festival described the film as "a swinging essay about physiognomy in the age of photo-mechanical reproduction."

I received further inspiration from this clip while working on my final project because it gave me the idea of also exploring the relationship between sound and image. I kind of had this idea already set in my mind but really wasn’t sure how to incorporate these two within my project, until now…

final project

initial brainstorming ideas - self portrait type of scenario





based after these artistic sources