I would pay lots of money to have coffee delivered to me right now.

I just finished reading Laura Mark's letters from Beirut and found them incredibly interesting. 1.) Because I am an American, impacted by the American media and Bush's decisions, and 2.) Because I grew up in a fundamental Christian household, and therefore was raised in an Israeli-supported atmosphere, and 3.) Because I don't know as much about this conflict as I should. Marks is an intelligent and insightful writer, and her opinion is very respectable and scholarly.It was amazing and tragic to read her first-hand accounts of unjustified destruction, and it's embarrassing to acknowledge that my country supports it. My country attempts to justify the unjustified with political propaganda and hidden agendas. I sit here unshaken and ignorant, and merely accept what's going on out of the mere fact that I'm not motivated enough to learn what's going on and develop a sense of urgency. I can't wait to hear her talk, as I hope her speech is as fascinating as her writign.

I took the time to read the Convulsive Fables as well, but I will need to read it again. It was a bit abstract, and the fact that I don't have any coffee right now is preventing me from a lot of complex thinking matters.

Thoughts on D'est: Beautiful imagery, a little too long, but eloquent. The term used in one of the follow-up questions, "a documentary bordering on fiction," is a perfect summary of my feelings after the film. In discussion, we talked about how the shooting techniques used to film the people created this desire to want to learn more. For example, what's that person's story? How did they get to be doing what they're doing in the minute that we're observing their life? How much was staged? Or did Akerman say, "Show me something you do every day." I kept wanting to create stories behind the people, and I believe the shooting techniques that insinuating this desire were the portion of fiction that is accurate, as opposed to shots being staged. The film had a certain rawness, transparency, that makes it hard for me to believe the assertion of defined, directed acting.

D'est

I'm not sure what to expect with D'est. I think it's going to be an interesting film, but I think it would be a good idea to drink an adequate amount of coffee before coming to my first Monday morning class. I scanned through the readings and read through all the questions for screening, but will do so one more time before class time. Watching one longer film will be a nice change of pace as watching 6-7 short films makes me antsy. Each film becomes a block of time, a checkmark out of the day's agenda almost. I don't think that's necessarily because I'm not enjoying the films, but merely because I'm so enthralled in the rigor of "to-do lists" that I automatically go into "Let's get things accomplished mode." It's kind of a sad state because it seems that it's caused an inability to truly sit back and think about things, but at the same time, it's the very system that's screening these films that's demanding this state of mind from me.

Regardless, an interesting goal for Monday would be to attempt to retain concentration on the film and its content, rather than micromanaging tasks or the progression of questions.

Searching for words...

Tomorrow's agenda is to read the writings for the upcoming "D'est" screeing on Monday. I think I'm going to go to Fuel, drink a bunch of coffee and read all those articles.

Today, I'm going to talk about my next Motion Graphics piece, a Slate creation about myself. I think I'm going to make my best friend video tape me playing drums and my band's show next Friday and use that footage to make a 30-second slate.

Writing in this blog daily? Totally sucks...I don't have much to say about anything anymore. The whole theory of "daily practice" is a good one IF IT RESULTS IN PRODUCTIVITY. However, between yesterday and today, I haven't done anything relevant to this journal and therefore don't have anything to say.

This should count as post #2

My wireless wasn't working at my house last night. So. This is "daily practice" entry #2.

Two projects have come to mind for my Film 222 final project video and my Web Design portfolio entry.

1.) For my film piece, I want to base it off of Peter Lunenfeld's "Solitude Enhancement Machines" chapter in his book USER and a poem that I read a long time ago in Cometbus. There will be a man and a woman in an open, dark room and they will both be on laptops. The camera will watch the clock ticking on the wall then focus on the man. The two are in a relationship, but they do not talk, only type on the keyboard. They manage their files on "feelings" for each other. For example, he asks the girl to marry him via instant messenger and she will navigate to her "feelings" folder, use "excited" and accept. They're sitting right next to each other. The screens fades to black. And so it goes on. At the very end, it finishes with the couple breaking up and the guy simply dragging all his files on her to the trash. This sounds confusing to explain, but it's merely a rough outline.

2.) My friend Sam took an awesome picture down by the lakefront (top image). I want to use that picture for the homepage, then create hotspots around the picture with pop-up text explaining some sort of "first time" or "last time" experience in my life. For example, a hot spot in the sky would pop up "I star gazed with my best friends the last night before I went to college," or something like that. I just thought of that idea yesterday.

Monday would've been a good day to come to class stoned

Here's post number one in the attempt at "daily practice." The question is how will this change my writing--will it affect the style? What I say? I think it will condense my thoughts into smaller segments. So far, it's been natural for me to update once-twice per week. These posts tended to run a bit on the longer side and expressed opinions on a broad range of topics. Tonight, I'll start with what I thought about the films screened in class on Monday.

To be honest, I didn't enjoy this week's series nearly as much as other weeks. There has been films/videos that I've really taken something away from, and there where those I wasn't too impressed with all that much. This week was mostly the latter. i did enjoy Renato Umali's "I Learn Something New Everything Single Day." It was interesting to watch his changing emotions and try to read the underlying journal entry. He put together pieces of his personal histories about every day thoughts. It was unpretentious, interesting, and often times, amusing to read the next frame's musings.

Su Friedrich's "Gently Down the Stream" was a spastic journey through dreams illustrated by shaky, hand-written text and fluttering frames on images. Robert Breer's "Fist Fight" was single images in quick succession fusing into motion. Both of these pieces contained flashing, chaotic texts and images and hard-to-discern content, bombarding the viewer with colors and images. From my notes regarding these two pieces: "I feel like I should've been on hallucinogenic drugs to enjoy these films." Friedrich's work was dark and macabre, attempting to piece together the pandemonium resulting from the dream world beneath our consciousness. This concept seems like a good idea in theory, but really isn't as interesting as one would think in execution. I was bored, confused, and had a headache from the rapid movement of the frames. Breer's film had the same feel and texture, except without a potentially interesting concept. He used considerations of taste and timing, but again, it gave me a headache.

A few quick pieces we watched were Cory Arcangel's "Date Diaries," an awesomely geeky concept, but tiresome to watch for ridiculously long periods of time, Leighton Pierce's "Thursday," Bruce Baillie's "All My Life," and Fred Worden's "Every Day Bad Dream." I enjoyed Baillie's simplistic and energetic imagery related to household activities. I enjoyed this film the same way I enjoyed Nathaniel Dorskey's "Variations."

TOMORROW: Reflections on discussion, and thoughts on my upcoming Film 222 projects...

If every (person) had a (video) diary...

I really really enjoyed this week's theme of personal statements presented on video. Although I would classify myself as someone who prefers editting over actually taping, if I did make videos, this would be the medium that I would choose. If you have something to say, anything, you can say it and make a video that somebody somewhere can relate to. I just finished watching the Screen Dump V-Log festival videos on YouTube and thought they were all really fascinating. Some videos focused on events such as a train stop or a highway during rush hour, but others were just people talking about their lives. Or people representing something other than themselves and talking to the camera (i.e. sadlonelyanimeeye girl or whatever her name was). The one girl, lonelygirl15, had a bunch of posts about one of her friends coming to her play and one of her videos was just her, being excited about him coming to her play. Posts like that make a person think about are there really any limits on "art" or "video art?" Or is a "diary" on screen relevant enough to culture that we all leave with something more when we're done watching? Or is personal statements through video cultivating an entirely new facet of entertainment culture where just like online blogger and myspace captivated the technologically saavy, we're now speaking through video and posting for the world to see?

Regardless, I think this genre of video is the most relevant and accessible because we can all relate to it. As Lisa Steele was introducing the audience to her scars and defects, I couldn't help but think of my own. In Vito Acconci's piece, I felt like I was right there with him in his living room with his striped couch as he confided in me. And I think that's the desired effect of this kind of video and the magic that's contained within it.

Maybe sometime soon, I'll get around to making my own personal statement video because after watching not only the class screenings, but the YouTube videos, I realize that maybe I'm left out of a cultural phenomenon that could make my life a lot more interesting and most likely rewarding.

Some Excursions With Camera

Monday's screenings all seemed to be threaded by the common goal of caputuring images from unexpected perspectives. Stan Brakhage's Commingled Containers and Diane Kitchen's Wot the Ancient Sod were both short excursions into nature's imagery with Brakhage's focused on water and Kitchen's focused on leaves. These films, out of all the films screened, most obviously were linked together by their common focus. Both films attempted to capture a specific facet of nature's changing imagery using techniques of lighting, shadowing, or obscuring. The fact that Brakhage's film was created entirely while testing his camera is a remarkable achievement. While both Brakhage's and Kitchen's films contained stunning footage, I think the concepts behind both of the films were a little weak. Brakhage has an excuse in that he wasn't initially planning on shooting for a film. Kitchen however, was following a concept that in all honesty, I don't necessarily think was that strong or original. It was interesting to note this following the viewing of Nathaniel Dorskey's film, as his concept came across so much stronger. Dorskey managed to intergrate different topics, emotions, imagery, and filming technique into a striking and very authentic portrayal of every day events below our consciousness. Dorskey attempted to film through obstructions and portals, and found scenes that were almost "gritty" in their presentation. A woman behind the frosted window of a coffeeshop in the city struck me the most, as I was reminded of Saul Leiter's very underground capturing of New York City life. He also used shadowing, opacity, lighting, and obscurity to present raindrops on windows, plants and trees near buildings, and many other beautiful phenomenons. Kitchen's film lacked that sort of depth. There were leaves. And they changed. And admittedly, she captured some beautiful footage, but it was like looking at a National Geographic in motion. I have seen pretty pictures of leaves and something about the film as a whole failed to catch my interest.

The other strong film that I enjoyed was Market Street by Tomonari Nishikwa. Although we also viewed his Clear Blue Sky, an impressionist sort of imagery film, I personally though Market Street had more bite. The sharp angles of the buildings and alleys, which were accentuated by the deepness of the blacks and whites, were very successful in this sort of film presentation. I liked the one image per frame method, and as a happy urban dweller myself, enjoyed the different perspectives of a foreign city life. I love cityscapes. I love works that are are very focused on the concepts unique to urban settings. This film catered to these particular interests of mine, so I thought this film was very interesting and provoking.

As for the readings which I mentioned in the last post, I sure am glad that paid really close attention to who wrote which article...yeah right. I guess I should've focused less on the content and more on which specific filmmaker wrote what? Regardless of that terrible, terrible quiz grade I'm going to get, a second read through was useful following the Monday screenings. Stan Brakhage's writings were especially more meaningful following the focus on how the eye perceives different visual effects and perspectives. His first quote in particular makes me wonder what my eye would see or notice if it were not distracted by everything going on in the world around me and in my head. So often, I forget to notice things as I'm fatigued or distracted or focused, etc., and I don't often remember to look around and witness things as we did in the screened films.

Jonas Mekas' piece, I read as a battle cry for more independent thinkers. The article doesn't go too deep, and explains that the creative aspect of the industry needs to be revived under the torturing crush of the coporate world.

Dorskey's article reflects on vision in the same way as Brakhage did. He asks, "Where does vision take place?...Is everything mind or is everything not mind?" A few sentences later, he struck a huge chord with me regarding vision and experiencing life in general. "Sometimes...turning my head to look arond, I realize that what I'm seeing is just an image field shifting, an aspect of my own brain. But then I can experience the opposite and say no, the world is really out there and I'm here looking at it." These statements have very significant philosophical implications that plague my existence experiences all the time. I think he raises issues that can not merely be explained or answered, but just are because they are.

Mary!