2.12.23 Week 4 Radical Check-In

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Points of Interest

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Think of the piece in three (yet unnamed) segments. The following focuses largely on just the first:

I have outlined the first segment of the piece. That means it has been written, and I am putting together a basic "shot list" (meaning, an ordered sequence of ideas that I'd like to intercut with text). I still want to incorporate found footage into the piece, so I have been compiling video and audio clips that I might use across the entire piece. I also plan to shoot some of my own footage, though these shoots would be "in the field" and not require much pre-planning.

Recently I read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and have been thinking a lot about not only my original concept, our relationship to the idea of God, but also our ability to percieve and question such things - consciousness, hyperconsciousness, and "consciousness inertia". These are big concepts. They are hard to explain. And yet the idea and nature of an "underground man", as Dostoevsky puts it, the paradox of simultaneously longing for and detesting, etc... it is alluring. This novel is regarded as one of the first existentialist works, and this piece I am working on is very existentialist in nature, which I think is why something about these concepts has found its way into this piece and is infecting it. It becomes more personal to me, and less about "making sense" or having some inherent meaning to it. "Meaning only exists where we choose for it to exist"; I think that this concept not only strikes the heart of this project, but also applies to what we have been learning about in class. But that is besides the point.

I think that a personal goal I have for this piece is to "get my hands dirty"; or dip into several different mediums and directions and try new things and techniques. Thus, I have been contemplating incorporating paper stop motion and sillhouettes, creating my own puppets and using the down-shooter(?). I want to use paper, because I feel it can uniquely portray tactility and texture, and I want to use stop-motion animation because I haven't had the chance to play with it in a while. As of now, the events of the first segment of the film will be partially portrayed with this stop-motion.

I asked my friend to narrate part of the piece. He said yes and was very excited to work on a film. His name is David. Yay :D

The final point is in regards to the piece's installation. I have sketched some concepts, focusing on the idea of physically sitting with the piece and listening to it. I would really like to include a mannequin hand, and that hand is reaching out to the viewer holding the headphones. If not that, then maybe just a hand if I can get my hands on one (hehe), or maybe several hands, or maybe even a full mannequin. They are hard to find, and very expensive, so I would probably ask some department stores if they have anything like that they'd be willing to let me borrow.

Also, I don't know if CRT TVs even have an input for headphones, or anything about their interface, so maybe this can't work.