Death to the Projectors

I presented my Small Town Clowns film "in progress" for winter term review. It's funny I don't think I have been as proud of my own visual art ever, but my presentation was tangled in a gnarly mess of technical errors.

Initially my problem began with the death of a projector for transferring the film to digital. When this projector broke I turned on my back up only to watch the lamp suddenly dim, chased by the curious sound of a bubbling noise. It took some luck but I eventually found another projector on short notice to use....but once I brought it back to the studio I noticed that it too was broken-the part that grasps the take up reel was slightly broken enough that the reel couldn't lock. At this point the screening room had become a pretty sorry looking projector graveyard. It was at this point that I recruited Nina to unravel the film slowly off of a Pérrier bottle while I yanked on the other end to slowly guide the strip through the projector's belly. Thanks again Nina! Needless to say this left me with much less time than I had expected for progress. I'm using this spring break to stock up on good projectors. I want them to be my friends again.

After having come to a reasonable point in the project to be "showing" it for critique, I had made a DVD with Dustin. As it turned out, we discovered too late that all of the videos worked on the DVD except mine! Ridiculous. This is what I get for thinking Super 8 is Digital Art I guess. Ultimately, my work being in progress for critique turned out to be a really good thing. While I really wanted to be prepared to show off a finished product-I think I wouldn't have taken as much away from the critique if I had. The phrase "in progress" seems to invite viewers to speak freely and critically without the work without the idea that it is "done" and not open to suggestion. I could go on about what was said but thats a totally different blog - I'll just settle to say it was definitely helpful.

On the other side of the pet rock my sound/music project at school has been thriving, even through break, and I am nearly finished with a full length album or document of sorts. I have been considering the project conceptually, attempting use the same approach as my films - by incorporating sound documents and archetypes from art/sound art/music history into my songs. I am hoping to use them as tools for creating accessible music - in some weird way. For instance right now I am deconstructing the notes involved in a composition by Marcel Duchamp to be rearranged into a pre-existing structure in a pop song. Long story short I have been spending a lot of time in that little sound room. I consider this album to be my ode to that little closet of noises.