CHAPTER THREE

After watching a few films i have noticed that not all films have a narrative structure. Some of them have nothing close to a narrative whereas some will deliberately follow a narrative. Videos such as Landing Lights start and end in exactly the same way, just from a different camera angle. However Doll Face has a beginning middle and end, it also appears to apply Todorov's theory of three acts. The first act is the beginning, the equilibrium. The second is the middle, the disruption. And the third is the end, the restored equilibrium. Doll Face begins with a robot in a box, the equilibrium. Then a t.v. comes along and the robot wants to imitate the image, the disruption. And then eventually the robot breaks trying to reach the television, the restored equilibrium.
Art videos often don't have any narrative structures as the artists behind them would not have necessarily needed to follow a narrative, as most of the artworks would have got straight to the point, to reveal the artists impression straight away. This is because if a piece of video art was in a gallery, those in the gallery will not be in there just to watch one video, they will be there to see much more, so to see a whole video within the gallery will absorb peoples time as they wont want to hang around one place for too long as they would like to visit the rest of the gallery.

LANDING LIGHTS

Landing Lights by Graham Young. This experimental video is computer animated. It was inspired by the tragic events of 9/11. The craetors main concept behind this film was to create a scene as if it were a dream, although some may take the interpretation that it is a nightmare. The original intention was to create an "antidote to the prevailing politics of fear." The message i got from this film is that even though the plane continuously flies through the building without causing any damage, there is a moment when it knocks over a chair. Which could mean that not everything is invincible, not everything will escape unscathed.

CHAPTER TWO

Technology has evolved over the years and is still evolving rapidly. But how has technology changed the way in which films were made? In the beginning the only way of creating films was to simply film it with a camera and just have really long and non-edited pieces of film which was the extent of their capabilities back then , however nowadays there are so much more options such as stop frame and computer animation, SFX and all sorts of things that can be done whilst editing. All this has changed the technique and style of the way films are filmed, and has also radically changed the media industry itself by opening up thousands of jobs with each and every aspect within the media now.

ASTRONAUTS

Astronauts by Matthew Walker. In this eight minute long video you see two astronauts after losing a set of keys, return to space, then one of them sees a button which says "Do Not Press" and curiously presses this button. Only to later realise it has terrible consequences. After the consequernces have taken place the other crew mate appears to have a look of regret on his face and wishes he had not punished him. The concepts that i have recieved from this film, other than humourous one, is that sometimes the punishment does not fit the crime. The craft of this film is obviously computer animation.

CHAPTER ONE

There have been many experimental videos over the past few years. I am now going to compare three of them, to contrast the differences and similarities between past and present pieces. The three pieces that i have chosen to compare are, Girl Chewing Gum by John Smith, MUTO by BLU and Doll Face by Andy Huang.
In comparison to the other two Girl Chewing Gum (GCG) was created in the 1970s, whilst the other two were created within the last ten years. For something like GCG to be done in the 70s is quite a feat as having that technology then was very fortunate, as televisions had only become mainstream a few years ago with the Queens coronation in 1953. So this video was quite advanced, for its time, making the craft as important as the concept. Whereas the computer animation seen in Doll Face is quite common today so the craft behind this video is not as important as the concept. However in MUTO you can see the technology being used and the craft thats taking place. You can see the amount of effort that has had to be put in this video make it work, picture by picture, which makes this video have equal importance to the craft and the concepts.
Doll Face and GCG would seem to have similar concepts as the could both portray the mind as being easily fooled, whereas MUTO would seem more of an expression or evolution of the mind.

DOLL FACE

Doll Face - by Andy Huang. This is an animated experiental video of what appears to be a robot or machine trying to imitate an image shown to it by a television. As the robot keeps changing its image, the television keeps getting further away, until the television gets out of range and the robot reaches too far and falls and breaks whilst the TV goes snowy and remains out of reach. The concept behind this piece, in my opinion, is that the TV represents the progression of the media's representaion of beauty and the robot represents the public and all people who aspire to be that image.

CHAPTER SIX

An audience can have very different opinions or reactions to different pieces of art, some might feel shocked, some might feel humoured and some might feel inspired. They may also have different interpretations of the artwork, and some of which may not even be the interpretation that the artist intended, the artist would have only had one meaning or interpretation to portray and yet it will do so much more. These interpretations occur uniquely to everyone, there may be similar reactions however there may ones that are completely obscure, it depends on the individual. They may feel disgusted toward a piece of work because of the manor of which they were brought up, as they may have never seen an obscene piece of artwork, whereas someone who has a very keen interest in art and who has visit many art galleries will find it intriguing. An example of this is the piece of video art by Paul McCarthy in the Tate Modern called Material Gestures, where a man was wearing a mask and jumping around, naked with his genitalia tucked in behind his legs. This video could have two particular reponses, one of disgust and shock and the other one could be quite comical.

MUTO

MUTO by BLU. This is a wall painted animation that would have taken weeks or months to create with a very skilled artist who paints over paintings over and over again and then have a man with a camera who will take a picture of each one to make the image seem like its moving. The can be many concepts received from this experimental video, the particular one that i got was that it seemed to be one long idea showing evolution. This isn't the well known kind of human evolution fro apes to humans but this is all mainly human its just the evolution of intelligence, for example towards the end of the film there is an image of an intellectual head with mechanical legs like a spider. This could represent the evolution of technology or intellect throughout mankind. It would seem to begin with inhuman shapes and then eventually turns into a more humanoid figure, so this could very well be significant. Or not this is just my opinion there are many ways to read this piece, it could be to do with life and death and regeneration, this can be shown by the amount of times that one of the drawings of men would die and one would walk out of its stomach and then the same would happen to that one, so it would seem to be constantly regenerating. Unless it would mean never-ending life, but this would be cancelled out by the very last scene of a head being eaten by loads of ants leaving a skull for the final image kbefore fading out. So this could mean that human life can only keep reviving itself before it would eventually kill itself.