Exhibition

Well, i was planning on putting it in the spy space i acquired...but the sun shining made the screen shiny and impossible to see....
So laptop on plinth....job done.

filming

jack thinking, twiddling thumbs and pens.

josh on the toilet

next to the marmite

furry hat drawing, shaking pen

man with hood

look left

DIY emily

waiting room, studio

sniff

thinking about compiling all the street/crossing the road videos together....

Tomorrow is dooming...What could i present?

QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS

6 situations? In one long clip? Separate clips? Do i need images too?

Do i need to to 6? Shall i just pick the best ones?

Shall i use a projector? Film stills? Shall i mute the movies? Is the sound important or distracting?

In a perfect world i would like 5 projectors. To have all the videos running at the same time. How could i feasibly achieve that?

Which videos? How many?

1//jack thinking + (image)

2//emily hammering

3//josh toilet (+ image)

4//street - merge of the best (+ image)

5//kitchen - cupboard and outside (+ image) maybe not strong enough - too much of me and josh

6//justine and i in studio

We get to choose where we have our space in the studio, I'm thinking of using the outside space that i used today..fingers crossed that its not raining. But that would mean no projector? Unless I got an extension cord out there.

into the box

Just wanted to show the first few seconds of the camera going into the box i used to disguise the first few attempts. I like how it feels like the viewer is actually entering a new space.

cut out 'a'

Hiding the camera in a box in the studio. Not one of the most successful. But some quite good footage of jack thinking, and me and justine having a convo.

I have an image in my head of someone with a cardboard box on their head with circles cut out for eyes, a think Gromit did it in wallace and Gromit where he steals a diamond from a gallery. I like the idea of hiding it in a rudimentary disguise, something that you wouldn't expect to find a camera in. This box just has quite a nice visual to it.

Spy space

Filming from a small space unknown to most people at college, an outside corridor by my studio window. I was in the perfect position to film people without them knowing.

Although people were aware that other people were around them, there was still something interesting in peoples actions when they are unaware of being filmed. Most people were somehow acting as if they were being watched, always adjusting clothes and hair, looking awkward. Which made me think about that strange feeling you get when you think you are being watched.

Clips to follow...

Hidden camera

I spent today looking at how I can hide a camera to catch people on film in a mundane home situation unaware of being filmed.

When people think they are totally alone their behaviour will differ, catching moments on film that are priceless.

There is something very interesting about breaking down the social walls and boundaries that we put around ourself in social situations such as going to the toilet. Although it is a total invasion of privacy and may be degrading, if done tastefully and with editing which suits peoples needs there could be some really interesting film created.

I started by thinking about the visuals of hiding a camera. Making disguises, some comical, some which may actually work - a box covered in feathers, a green box hidden by leaves, a hole in a tea bag box, a plastic bag in the fridge.

The leaf disguised camera, inspired by Tue Greenfort and his fox photographs looked like a birdcage, and I started thinking about how you could attract birds to the camera, I.e. bird feed.

Wanting to steer clear of nature, as I am more interested in human social behaviour I started thinking about how you can draw peoples attention to the camera without them knowing its there.

Humans need something less obvious, so i started thinking about putting the camera in a position/place that people go to a lot, for example, the fridge or cupboard, the bathroom...etc. I did a few practise runs...which will follow.

There are so many routes i could take this, taking the camera out of the house...for example, a party situation. Putting the camera next to free cigarettes, next to the dj or ipod - watching people choosing music etc.

Possible situations

Cupboard - making tea / food

Fridge - making food

Toilet cupboard - brushing teeth

Toilet box - People on the loo

Shower - nakey (not sure about how people would react to this-maybe too risky, not fair)

Hoping to capture -

people talking to themselves,

humming,

singing,

facial expressions,

embarrassing moments,

stealing food...

Dziga Vertov

Cine-Eye

Dziga Vertov believed his concept of Cine-Eye, or "Kino Eye" would help contemporary man evolve from a flawed creature into a higher, more precise form. He compared man unfavorably to machines: “In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people [...] I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see" Dziga was quoted as saying.

Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the Soviet Union. Whereas Sergei Eisenstein viewed his montage of attractions as a propaganda tool through which the film-viewing masses could be subjected to “emotional and psychological influence” and therefore able to perceive “the ideological aspect” of the films they were being shown, Vertov believed the Cine-Eye would influence the actual evolution of man, “from a bumbling citizen through the poetry of the machine to the perfect electric man.”

Vertov believed film was too “romantic” and “theatricalised” due to the influence of literature, theater, and music, and that these psychological film-dramas “prevent man from being as precise as a stop watch and hamper his desire for kinship with the machine.” He desired to move away from “the pre-Revolutionary ‘fictional’ models” of filmmaking to one based on the rhythm of machines, seeking to “bring creative joy to all mechanical labour” and to “bring men closer to machines

Voyeurism - films to watch

mad torrenting

special thanks to josh millns

Andy Warhol Screen shots

Andy Warhol's Screen Tests were filmed from early 1964 - November 1966 (GM25). Factory visitors who had potential "star" quality would be seated in front of a tripod mounted camera, asked to be as still as possible, and told not to blink while the camera was running.

More than 500 Screen Tests were made. In addition to The 13 Most Beautiful Boys, some of the footage was incorporated into other compilation reels such asThe 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964) and 50 Fantastics and 50 Personalities (1964). Malanga also used some reels in his multimedia poetry readings calledScreen Test Poems in 1965. (GM26) In 1966 Andy and Gerard also prepared a book together of Screen Test stills from 54 subjects (17 women and 37 men) and Gerard's poetry called Screen Tests/A Diary (NY: Kulchur Press, 1967).

Tue Greenfort - hidden cameras and observation of people

Die Dynamik der Autoren - 2000

video on DVD

9 min

The video shows three people entering the space through a door. One of the people is the artist; the others are the organisers of the exhibition. The moment the three walk inside the space, the door is locked from the outside. The curators were totally unaware of this and left to their own devices, trapped inside the space. The video stills document their attempts to escape.

Untitled (Stufe zwischen Domstraße und Bischofsgartenstraße) - 2002 series of 6 photographs 20 x 30 cm / 7 3/4 x 11 3/4 in Wood construction for a possible trespassing or step between Domplatte and Bischofsgartenstraße, inner city of Cologne. In a small period of time the step was frequently used. It disappeared on the same day.

Daimlerstrasse 38 (2001) lured foxes living in the industrial area in eastern Frankfurt with frankfurter sausages towards a hidden camera.

Street Photography Street photography

After someone questioned why i need to read fashion magazines when there is so much fashion everywhere you look, i started to think about street photography and how it would be possible to portray the idea that different streets/areas around london have different people/trends that you can see without looking in a magazine. Playing on the idea of taking a magazines normal layout/content and turning it on its head.

Who needs a magazine when you can open your eyes when you are walking down the street? How to communicate this?

Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets,parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.

Street photography uses the techniques of straight photography in that it shows a pure vision of something, like holding up a mirror to society. Street photography often tends to be ironic and can be distanced from its subject matter, and often concentrates on a single human moment, caught at a decisive or poignant moment. On the other hand, much street photography takes the opposite approach and provides a very literal and extremely personal rendering of the subject matter, giving the audience a more visceral experience of walks of life they might only be passingly familiar with.

Robert Doisneau

Henri Cartier

Nils Jorgensen

SNIFF: public interactive projection

As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and get you to pay attention to him.
Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer

Day out at South Bank and Roger Hiorns

Peter Funch

Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot. For his “Babel Tales” photo series, Funch picked dozens of samey pedestrians — smokers, cell-phone gabbers, hospital-scrubs wearers, yawners — and Photoshopped them into the same frames in one photo.

Smokers smoking
Informing informers

Juvenile Bliss

Roger Hiorns

In his latest installation, “Seizure”, British artist Roger Hiorns has turned the idea of sculpture inside out. Rather than present a sculpture inside an architectural space, he’s turned every surface of the architectural space into sculpture. Mixing installation art and chemistry, he’s taken an entire abandoned apartment near London’s Elephant & Castle and transformed it into a gemstone. Covering the inside with blue copper sulphate crystals, he’s created an other-worldly, mineralized, glinting mirror of an everyday apartment. Jewels literally glowing from the ceiling and lining the floors.

Going to go and see it tomorrow so shall update with feedback.

Gordon Matta-Clark

Matta-Clark was interested in the idea of entropy, metamorphic gaps, and leftover/ambiguous space. Fake Estates was a project engaged with the issue of land ownership and the myth of the American dream - that everyone could become "landed gentry" by owning property. Matta-Clark "buys" into this dream by purchasing 15 leftover and unwanted properties in Manhattan for $25-$75 a plot. Ironically, these "estates" were unusable or unaccessible for development, and so his ability to capitalize on the land, and thus his ownership of them, existed virtually only on paper.

Daniel Rozin // Interactive wooden mirror

The 4 mechanical mirrors are made of various materials but share the same behavior and interaction; any person standing in front of one of these pieces is instantly reflected on its surface. The mechanical mirrors all have video cameras, motors and computers on board and produce a soothing sound as the viewer interacts with them. Amazing.