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

Artist Response #6: Blu's MUTO

I recently came across the Italian street artist known as Blu from watching his animated clip called “Muto” in a film class that I’m taking where we are discussing the history of animation. I don’t really have much of a background in street art or graffiti, but I have a background in studying and working with various animation software (Maya), but this takes what I’ve known about this genre of art to a whole different level. While watching the animation for the first time, I just felt completely baffled by the creativity, imagination and sheer determination that it took for the artist to plan and complete the project. The various characters, situations and scenes that are being illustrated just seem to come to life through the way that they are composed on various surfaces that I would never expect to see animated in such a way as in Muto. I also feel that the other 5 million people who have seen this video on Youtube they must feel as amazed as I am.

Muto is a work of art that is comprised of a series of two-dimensional painted renderings across urban landscapes throughout Buenos Aires, Argentina and Baden, Germany. These works of art are very large and continuous in their fluid appearance while also being shown in very surrealistic depictions. I read a little bit of the background and history on the artist and I discovered that what he does is perfectly legal in those various locations, which I think is pretty interesting.

Viewing a work of art such as this really makes me look at street art in a larger context now. I guess in a way, I’ve always been impressed with a lot of the elaborate displays of art I have seen on brick/concrete walls throughout the city, but I feel kind of spoiled now when I see someone like Blu come along with their new approach. It inspires me to look at my own artwork in a different context as well – maybe I will take my next drawing and break it down into an animated sequence that shows the process of making it? Even still, I don’t think it would even come close to the process that is involved in a project such as Muto.

Artist Response #5: Ken Goldberg - The Robot in the Garden

I remember being introduced to the artist, Ken Goldberg, for the first time last semester in out 3D Animation class when we were working with projects in Maya. I really took an interest in Golberg’s project with “Telegarden” because I thought it was just a really interesting idea on how we can reach out and gain control over something from a distance. The fact that this was first established in 1995 is even more fascinating because I really didn’t even know that they had these kinds of capabilities with computers at this point regarding the capability of actually being able to program it to have the public have access to controlling the outcome and results of the project.

Goldberg bases his work off of his theory of Telepistemology, which is the study of knowledge that is acquired at a distance and is considered to be in the category of Telerobotics. And he says that his mission is to look at technology, especially the internet, as a form of communication that will helps us resolve our issues of disbelief. Over the years, the concept of the internet has formed a bit of disbelief amongst society where people are generally wondering if things are actually “the truth”. “Telegarden” is making us ask each other if the garden really exists and are the results valid. Ken Goldberg’s response is that the accessibility of the garden and its results are very real and that is what his project is trying to establish to form the overall idea that we should look at internet technology in a different perspective.

I really like Ken Goldberg’s way of thinking and the projects that he works with because it makes me think about the access of knowledge that we have on our fingertips. Information that has been created over centuries has now put us in the priviledged position to actually have control and make an impact. I don’t know, maybes it’s because I’ve kind of had a fascination with Telerobotics since I watched a documentary about the telerobots and advanced camera software to investigate the Titanic, but I think his work really does make us add significance to our belief in what the internet is capable of technically and conceptually.

Artist Response #4: Computer Art Therapy

Before I came to St. Mary’s, I had often heard of the different and beneficial methods of art therapy, but I really only considered it to consist of drawings and paintings. But, over the past few years, I have come to understand that there are many other forms that can also play a helping hand in improving the overall well-being of the human mind. One of these methods that I have really found myself working with a lot is the use of digital video.

Video art therapy is seen in the Computer Art Therapy world as being a form of psychotherapy that consists of making video that will then be used as a mode of communication. This type of therapy can be really helpful for people that have a memory or time in their life that they want to express, but rather than talking about it, they create a video as their platform. For instance, some people who have suffered something extremely devastating in their life may not be able to actually talk about it because it is just way to stressful to express in words. Their voice is presented through their use of their video making skills.

The artist that I did some research on for this form of art is a guy by the name of Bobby Warns. Bobby, an amatuer filmmaker, went through the process of creating a video tribute for the family of a military vet. This use of art helped improve the very difficult situation that the family was going through, showing the many benefits that the digital video format can produce.

I think the first thing that intrigued me about this topic of art therapy is the personal connection that I have with it. After I graduated high school back in 2004, I was involved in a near fatal car accident that put me in a coma for two months, etc. When I left the hospital, I didn’t feel the need to speak to a psychiatrist about what I went through, but instead, preferred to express my frustration and pain through art. My art therapy began with drawing with pen and ink, and then started to progress into digital photography, and then I combined those two concepts into the use of digital video.

Artist Response #3: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is a French Academy Award-Winning Film Director and screenwriter. He has directed films that include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and also music videos for artists such as The Chemical Brothers, The White Stripes, Radiohead and Foo Fighters. He has also created many commercial advertisements and even created the style of film called “Bullet Time” that was used in such movies as The Matrix and Blade.

I remember seeing Gondry’s work for the first time when I saw the video for Foo Fighter’s “Everlong”. I instantly noticed that his type of style was very different from most videos that I remember seeing at that point in time because he was using this surrealistic method of visual communication. But, it wasn’t really until I came across the videos that he made for Daft Punk (“Around the World”) and The White Stripes (“Fell in Love With a Girl”), where I really took an intense interest in the type of work that he does.

I think what intrigues me the most is how he takes certain situations that the viewer may have come across in their lives without really noticing them, but the way that he edits and composes the various frames, makes those familiar situations, unfamiliar. Whether he is using legos, or reversing the playback of a sequence of images and playing it forward, he is manipulating the way we view the world (especially in a New Media type of perspective) and the reality that we have come to understand and trust to be authentic.

When you see his work, in most cases, you will have to ask yourself, how is he doing this? A question that came to mind over and over when I saw his White Stripes video when he used his animation of legos.

His work has inspired me over the years to start mixing it up with music and digital video. I have also been inspired to stretch the limits between the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of what is considered normal in our realistic view of the world.

Artist Response #2: Diane Ludin and the human body

I first came across the work of Diane Ludin about two years ago when I took a class on Visual Thinking in the Digital Age because I was investigating (for a project that I was working on at that time) how some artists incorporate different varieties of scientific and medical concepts within their work to create a statement on how such topics are seen in the public audience. I was introduced to Ludin’s work because I was amazed at not only how complex her methods are but how she is able to put them into her own terms - her own way of communicating to a larger audience based on her investigative and methods of research.

A lot of her work is based on dealing with the building blocks and the foundation of the human body (DNA and the human genome project) as well as different varieties of diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Hodgkin’s, and HIV:AIDS); she has created many different interactive computer software programs to illustrate her ideas such as MemoryFlesh2.0, Viral Portraits, and I-Biology to name a few. Through this approach, she artistically creates a powerful relationship between the communication and information of these Biotechnological issues and how they are currently being presented to the media by the masses in our contemporary society (especially through the internet).

My background is far from the medical atmosphere, but over the years I have been fascinated in how it can be applied to digital art. Viewing her work, I have especially been inspired to view art in a different perspective. The thought that is brought to mind in regards to this is how the media has a tendency to guide our opinions on how we look at the benefits of a certain “miracle pill”, but three or four years later, new research discovers that the miracle pill also has the ability to cause cancer or some kind of terrible disease or illness. To apply this to art, I think it would be interesting to stage several types of graphically blown-up versions of microscopic slides of certain disease spreading bacteria, and disguise them as being the “miracle drugs” when we are only temporarily being disguised from the danger that lurks beneath the cancer-spreading surface.