Student Video

"A Thousand Words" by Chris Justus is a great example of what is possible with only a couple of weeks of training in Final Cut. It is definitely a good autobiographical piece, but I'm not sure about the narration. It didn't have the same flow as the rest of the moving images, especially the part with the leaves. The transisition was incredibly smooth but the voice was a little too rigid. However, his voice in the part about his sister being a hairstylist and "progressive" was pretty hilarious.

Allahu Akbar

In class we also watched an animated short by Usama Alshaibi called Allahu Akbar. It was made up of geometric patterns moving around the screen and music that fit perfectly with the animation. The continuous swirling motion was slightly nauseating but completely enthralling. These patterns reminded me of Islamic drawings that I saw in a comparative religions class a couple of years ago. I was curious about the title and looked up its most common translation - "God is greatest." This video gave me a new perspective on animating still images but it also showed a unique way of communicating with the viewer.

Society of the Spectacle

Society of the Spectacle (a digital remix) was quite entertaining... I agree with other people that the text was hard to read because your eye constantly wanders to the barrage of images racing across the screen. But I think this was definitely intentional. We are living in a time where everything, especially technological advances, must be faster and better than the next in order to survive. With this race of technology, how is the common person supposed to stay connected to this ever-changing, ever-growing world? With all of the news and world events being brought to us by blogs, radio, newspaper, television, etc, it is almost impossible to stay in the loop. In SOS, the subtitles seem to imply the desire that we have as humans to want to know what is going on; but we as humans also become easily distracted. The visuals feed our distraction, and our eyes eventually settle on letting the images penetrate our mind. This work seems to emphasize the basic nature of our lives and the fact that we will never be able to understand and know exactly what is happening with everything, everywhere.

Brent Hirak Video

Okay I'm inspired...I just need to see if I can pull it off. I haven't really used any video in my art before, but I've got some ideas. The video by Brent Hirak opened some new doors for me. I like how he layered the text so that it gave a visual aid to the chaotic nature of the words that his sister was speaking. I would like to try something similar, but with overlapping voices instead of text. The corresponding visuals will be both video and photographic, but I want to blend them together as well...maybe have some overlapping still photographs and video at the same time. First I need to learn how to use some video editing software...

Global Warming

It snowed last night in Tucson, Arizona. Here is some evidence from this morning:

Encode. Store. Retrieve.

These are images from my series Encode. Store. Retrieve. Check out my website for the full description and artist statement.