Thursday, January 24, 2008

The duality in all my life or “He's gonna make it out! He's gotta make it out! “*

Alright, I wanted to speed up my pace and blog more often, so I better do so now, because it's already been 4 days since the last. Another short thing because it distracts a lot of people. The headlines are always followed by an alternative headline starting with “or ...”. These are lines out of songs that represent my mood at the moment. So if you want to figure out, just listen to the song.

Anyway, I also wanted to post something on duality. Well, I found something on duality in beauty as a conceptuality, but that's fairly dry theory and I don't want to bore you that much. Actually, you can find duality in all kinds of things that my project is relating to concept wise. Grotesque represents more or less duality/ambivalence. Especially in its visual appearance. For example you have creatures being half bird, half snake. There's a whole lot to write about, but instead of making this postings text too long again, I will put some pictures underneath so you can get an impression.

The pictures are all out of a book (Chatel, 1997) that I name at the bottom of this post. I will not title/reference every image, and some have no title anyway. One last thing I would like to end this post with, an nice interpretation or describing of the grotesque. I can't quote it literally, but it basically was saying this: The grotesque has given shelter to thousands of little inventions, that not have a story.(Chatel, 1997, p40)








And because my pictures are so blurry her are two more found on wikipedia:




Chastel, André; (1997): Die Groteske : Streifzug durch eine zügellose Malerei, Berlin, Wagenbach Verlag


* “Labyrinth” by Enter Shikari


Sunday, January 20, 2008

“Somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream my memory has stored “*

Just a short one, that came to my head yesterday. I was a huge Nirvana fan back in the days and of course I had the “Live! Tonight! Sold Out!” video. To get to the point, there was this one sentence Kurt Cobain said in an interview, that really burned into my mind. He rather uses curious and odd lyrics that don't have a straight forward meaning/statement but instead “paint a nice picture”. Something that always made music great for me: strange lyrics. And the ambivalence of melody/singing and brute/screaming. It is the same for visual arts, like illustrations, animations, collages and so on. They don't have to make sense on the first look, but should leave enough space and freedom to see things in it. Without giving you the feeling of pressure in terms of that there must be a specific meaning to it. There might be and of course will be one, but the piece works, because everyone can see something in it. Which might even lead to speculations of the meaning. Resulting in discussions/communication between the listeners/audience. And again, this is where I even see parallels between this comment of Kurt Cobain and E.T.A. Hoffmann. As “to understand artworks, means to take active part in continuation and completion of it.” (1)

Damn, this again was fairly much. I guess it will never be less. Anyway, here is a link to an youtube video with an excerpt of the interview. Jump to about 2 minutes in time and enjoy (which is a bit strange for me after all the years).


1 – Schmidt, Olaf (2003):”Callots fantastisch karikierte Blätter” Intermediale Inszenierungen und romantische Kunsttheorie im Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns. S.114, Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag


p.s. I know referencing a guy who took heroine and blew his head off, is not the typical source to cite in a diploma thesis. But, well, I think, I explained why it is of importance for me.


* “On a plain” by Nirvana


Saturday, January 19, 2008

Pace full and quiet or “ “*

Alright, I want to try to keep that pace. So there (hopefully) will be postings more often in the future. Also, my flatmate mentioned, one problem is, that I always come up with this huge amount of news, which usually results in no one wanting to read it.

This gives me a hard job today as I read through nearly hundred pages of theory.


I mentioned in an earlier post, that E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote his “Fantasy Tales” in the “manner of Callot”. Hoffmann wants to prepare the reader for the “romantic view”. It's not about copying, it's about taking inspiration from him; no one-to-one translating. Callots visual art and Hoffmanns art of narration differ in the way they're accomplished, but the inner images are identical. (1) Hoffmann wanted to transport the deducible principle found in Callots engravings to his literary outcome. This actually fits to my conception/idea of how to reflect the inspiration I got from his tales. Take the inner view I share with hoffmann, at least in terms of duality, which I will tell you more about in later posts, and apply them to motion graphics/animations.

There is also more about how Hoffmann comes into dialog with his reader/recipient and takes them towards an individual perception by scrutinizing along with them. The idea of the recipient being an artist himself, creating something new and so continuing the cycle.(2) ...

But, whoah! That's already a fairly big chunk. Hope someone reads it, still. (-;



1 – Schmidt, Olaf (2003):”Callots fantastisch karikierte Blätter” Intermediale Inszenierungen und romantische Kunsttheorie im Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns. S.104, Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag

2 – ebd. S. 114


* I rarely listen to music when working


Thursday, January 17, 2008

Final decision!(?) or “you know you're gonna live through the rain “ *

Well, first things first: I can't find the shy pod anymore. It must be somewhere around here, but, sigh, I don't know. I'm sure it's just hiding. I already tried to lure it with its loved sweets and toys. No chance! Anyway, no one of you guys has won it.

However, at the moment I'm working on a front and back projection. By walking in front of the projection screen you cover a part of the animation/video and so see things singled out. I don't want to explain it that much further by now. Just take a look at the videos. In the first one it is slightly hard to recognize the effect, as it is projected onto black gauze and the camera has hard times recording it. In the second one I've just shoved a normal screen in between and that did it.







* Keep the faith by Bon Jovi


The shadow side of life or “so hurry up and wait “*

Alright it's been a long time. I've been partly busy, partly depressed and partly just myself.

Somehow I couldn't find a chance to capture the videos of the new projection tests, that were related to the shadow idea. I do this now even so it's not important anymore. But it lead me to where I am now, which I will explain later.

I made an animation and set it to black and white so it appears as if it were shadows when being projected. It's funny and I just realized now by watching it that it actually looks like I'm “in the scene. The grass on the floor seems to be (a layer) in front of me. On the other hand when standing in front of the projection you can sense a feeling of being “in” there, too. I guess that's mainly due to the fact that you are close to the projection and it's bigger then you which gives you a feeling of depth/space. On the other hand it did not feel the same when projecting the colored version.






Next I tried out a combination. Projecting shadows and colored elements of the same animation from opposing sides. I did not found it that impressing. The projection was fairly small then, and that makes a difference. By watching it now I found one nice thing so. In the second video when I move in front of the projection the squares suddenly get a depth. This is because they have a shadow and appear towards the front (on my body).






* “hurry up and wait” by Stereophonics