The Class as New Media

One of the questions that I was willing to answer my self with this course was how education can be approach with new media. After Hansen reading in addition to other readings related to the field. I realize than more that approaching education with new media is more about education as a new media. One particular statement from Hansen argument caught my attention, the importance of the body.

For Hansen the body is the place where the digital takes place. For me his argument can be well adapted for new education: what is new about new education is that the body is the center of what is possible in this field. If education takes place in our bodies it means that we are in an undefined terrain. I believe that it is only in the undefined where emergent education can evolve. We go back to Deleuze, it is only in the becoming where new education can take place. As Ellizabeth Ellsworth quotes in her book Places of Learning: media architecture, pedagogy. What really exists is not things made but things in the making. Once made, they are dead… (William James).

It is in our bodies where we learn and trough our bodies how we learn. A great metaphor that Ellsworth brings to the field of learning and education is the parkour the sport of the art of moving trough the environment. I saw it clearly: art, architecture, the body moving with out previous maps. But best of all it is understanding this as a metaphor, because it means that this is what should be going on in our minds, in the minds of the teachers, in the design of a syllabus and in the goals of a class, among others. How to achieve the desired skills (just as in this sport the basic movement that you have to master in order to move smoothly) and at the same time be open to the new maps that each learner will trace? That is the challenge of the new education.

The concept of the prominence of the body in Hansen, although is radical about new media, is pertinent for education. First it is the understanding of our bodies as political beings that must be respect and developed consequently. Second as the place where ideas take place, it is about movement again, but the movement that takes place in our bodies even when we are resting, even when we are immobile in this point I disagree with Hansen because what he stating is that movement only occurs in the visible movement. Bergson (the body as an image in continuous movement) will further support the idea of the movement even in motionless.

Finally I would like to say that what is different in new education from Hansen’s postulate about the body it is that in new education the body is not only the receptacle of information or the framer of filter of information, instead of that, the body, the human being is the producer of meaning in education only in its continuous responses to knowledge is where becomes a learning being. What if we start seeing the class as a new media, as a new space where bodies inhabits the universe of knowledge? I’m sure that this is the only way of facing the world to come.

Susana

Telling A Story Without Telling A Story

As I posted days ago, I’m interested in the audiovisual image as a way of learning and exploring my own story. I have been in this research since I arrive here. “Smell The Roses Now” is another attempt of digging in my own memories and using them as the trigger for learning and telling. In this opportunity my research was about the time in the image and the time content in the image. I wanted to work with long takes, with an image that is non-figurative and with a non-narrative structure.

The long take in documentary was my first interest. How can observation, almost contemplation tell a story. Nathaniel Dosky with Threnody (2004) and Ben Rivers with This is My Land (2006) are two authors that inspire me through this search. Even if I don’t achieve the complete sensibility necessary for the long shot (both in the shooting and in the editing) the process is more than important, is transformative. If I review my images from a few months ago they were almost snapshots, now I can wait, and wait.

The non-figurative image was the second exploration; in doing so I reviewed a lot of found footage and experimented with images of buildings as part of the piece that I’m going to show tonight. It could have worked but I didn’t really like it. Any way in which I could treat my images as found footage, how could I take them out of context? How could I liberate them from the pressure of representation? I believe that this goal is better achieved in my documentary.

Finally my big struggle was not having a narrative structure, my internal fight with the beginning, climax and end. I wanted the viewer to ask himself about what is happening, to complete, to assume in one point and doubt in the other. I wanted these images to trigger other memories and questions. It was difficult since at some point I wanted to tell a story. I felt the pain of not having a fixed narrative structure. I felt the pain of trying to find the rhythm in the images and sound without turning it into a simple documentary or, on the other hand, without being intentionally entropic. 

Susana

Are Our Bodies Mediums of the Digital?

One of the theses that Hansen supports in “Between Body and Image” is that the digital needs our bodies to exist “an embodied aesthetics of the digital” and that this is the newest of the new media. Ones wonder: is he claiming is that the human beings are the mediums of the digital? Can a dog be also a medium of the digital? This is pretty intriguing for me. First of all it seems to be radical, because when we cease to exist or just when we are not there the digital expires? Secondly I find this statement opposite to Frampton´s, who defined film as a thinking entity by its own.

I am not convinced about Hansen´s postulate I not quite convinced that our bodies are the materiality of the digital media. Any way a Brazilian artist gives me some elements to think further about it.

Luiz DuVa in his audiovisual installation “Suspensao” plays with the elements that Hansen is highlighting. DuVa performances as a VJ only occurs once, each exhibition of the same images will be different, since he works with real time cutting of the images. According to the artist this installation goes one step further that his previous experiments with video and embedded sound. It has two video channels and sound in four channels that is mixing or aggregating in real time until the moment of the suspension of one body. The sound comes from the samplers embedded in the images. He explains that the computer “hears” the sound that the moving images produces and cuts from one image to another. In short, he works with the video and the cuts are executed by the sound that the images produce. It makes me think about an hybrid human- machine and in some extend supports Hansen’s arguments “Suspensao” only exists in that specific moment when the artist is mixing, and when the audience is experiencing it. But at the same time it exists in the image of the images of this performance, and in the idea of the author that is not necessarily our bodies or his body.

Other elements link this author with the idea of the embodiment and the digital image. The scene has bilateral screens and the author in the middle, as part of the image, as an extension of the image. DuVa Claims that as VJ he wanted to create “an atmosphere with expanded image and distended time and space” he experiments his multilayer screen trying to transcend the limits of the screen borders, and trying to explore the space between the eye and the screen.
Susana

http://videolog.uol.com.br/video.php?id=277185

References:
Interview to Luiz DuVa at:
http://rraurl.com/cena/3370/Do_audio_video_da_quarta_onda_e_da_suspensao

24 City and the Time Image

This movie, directed by the Chinese director, Jia Zhangke, brought me clarity about what we have been talking about lately in our class. I believe that it has the formal attributes to be considered an example of modern cinema.

The use of the long shots and depth of field and the approach to a reality intertwining fiction and documentary are the two characteristics that I would like to highlight.

The long shot takes us to another time within time and to another space within space. From the credits scene to the opening scene to the last scene we are transported to the history of factory 420, to the history of the expectation in a modern Chinese society, to the history of the characters, to the history of China, to the history of image and to the history of cinema.

The power of the long shots puts the viewer in touch with the subject even if we lost track of what they are telling, it doesn’t matter. One has so much time to delight in the image, to find the beauty where there is no apparent beauty, that the words of the speakers became just texture, not words anymore. Furthermore it is possible to apprehend history in layers, first the layer of the history of the character, second the layer of the history that this character are in touch with, third the layer of the history of image.

The framing, use of long shots, long takes and depth of field in this film took me back in time to Citizen Kane. Most of the shots used windows, mirrors and the architectural structure to create the framing within the framing. The camera movement occurs only when is absolutely necessary Je Zhangke is capable of generate a film experience, “a moment of awareness”. I’m sure that I will forget the whole story but the images will remain. The same image becomes 1000 images as in Citizen Kane, the transparencies, the mirrors, the windows makes the viewer fly more that just see. I wonder is here is an explanation or a link to what Deleuze meant when he was talking about the crystal image.

The feeling of being face to face with the exceptional characters that he brings to the screen is exceptionally convey in the scene of two men looking at the camera until they laugh, they laugh and the viewer laugh at the same time. They are looking at us and we are looking at them, is a game. I felt that the director was laughing too, making fun of him self, criticizing his own proposal.

Other aspect that interested me was the blend of documentary and fiction, stressing the boundaries between these two genders, just as in Neorealism. He plays another mirror game with the actress Joan Chen whose nickname is Little Flower. She is playing the role of Gu Minhua in 24 city and in her story she talks about how the people in the factory used to tell her Little Flower because she was very similar to this actress. I believe that these games bring to scene the inherent question of reality in cinema.

Finally I will like to say, that with this film I understood the power of the time image as the generator of a unique and whole reality, just A reality not THE reality It does not matter if it is documentary or fiction. Some might complain that he is leaving behind “the moral contract” with the viewer but I believe that he is generating a new relation between him and his work and between his work and the viewer. He is bringing back the “aesthetic contract”.

Susana

From Tarkovsky to My Grandmother and Vice Versa

Last semester I was walking around Sheepshead Bay and a rare house caught my attention, a house full of ornaments in its front yard. Questions and assumptions came to my mind. Who lives here? It is a hermit? It is an artist? The image of that house in front of the Shore Boulevard took me back in time to my grandmother’s house, it made me recall the memories of my childhood and adulthood observing my grandmother’s unique decoration style. I want to tell the story of this house and of the lady that lives there as a way of bringing back the memories of my grandmother and her house. Furthermore I want to tell this story as a way of telling my own story. In a way it will be a portrait piece with elements of auto-ethnography. (I don´t know if this tag striates the project!)

The fundamental things that resonate about my grandmother and my connections with this house and this lady are the memories of the objects of my granny´s house. I was always fascinated with the shelves full of saints, her glass dresser with little bottles of old perfumes, the plaster dogs and cranes at the entrance. Just like the lady in Sheepshead Bay the fact that my grandmother transformed her modern 50´s house into a pastiche has been always a shame for my family. Mildred family doesn´t like her decoration neither. The objects, the shame and that stubborn character of both ladies the one alive here in New York, and the other already death, but so much alive inside my mind, are the elements that I will like to approach in my video piece.

Is not easy to make the connections and that’s where Tarkoski and Godard inspire me. Only in the uncertain in the interval is where these memories will emerge to a new life. I believe that the only way of actually achieving the goal of this project is following Deleuze description of time image, combining shots in new ways, rejecting continuity editing, playing with time (the factual time and the subjective time - both mine and the viewers).

The other interest that I have with this project is repetition and the invisible links that our living experience is building. In this search I find associations with Bergson's Matter and Memory: each image exists in relation with all other images, the universe is always shifting it center, the perpetual movement of life.

I will use HD video footage from the lady and the house in Sheepshead, from NYC buildings, and found footage from NYC. The sound will include also the house, the lady and some of my thoughts and conversations with my sisters and my mother.

Susana

Orozco Makes Me Laugh

Some though about my visit to the Gabriel Orozco exhibition at MOMA (February 2010)

Gabriel Orozco is one of the prominent contemporary Latin American artists, born in Mexico in the 60’s. His particular approach to objects and to the craft of the arts makes him unique. I found his work permeated by immanence in the sense of objects as organism; repetition as in a rhizome, more than in arborescent pattern and in his consciousness of art as a form of eternal recurrence that exist per se rather than as a symbol.

Objects as organisms

First of all he treats objects as organisms. Two of his art works are specifically related. The first one “Yielding Stone” a big ball of plasticine, that matches the artist weight, is rolled across a city to end up with the imprints of this voyage. I believe that is gorgeous as a concept and as representation of immanence (although it is tricky to say representation of immanence!): a object that in the museum could be perceived as in mutant is mutant, so mutant that one has the felling that it will continue changing because of its materiality. Is only through movement that an object or a material becomes an art piece. The second one is the series “Spune Fin” and “Spune Stream” he is dealing with materials that behave as organisms. In the latest, he is just letting the materiality become another thing. Or perhaps pushing it to become another thing, but at the same time letting it free, letting it flow.

Orozco Rhizomatic

He multiplies images with fake patterns or patterns that are not a pattern at all. One can notice this rhizomatic “trend” in “First was the Spitting IV” where he plays with the geometric pattern of the notebook page and the random stains of his spitting with toothpaste. Less obvious, but also rhizomatic in my opinion is “Maria, Maria, Maria” where he seeks for repetition trough sound and memory.

Orozco the Joyfull

Furthermore I believe that Orozco is an artist concern with the concept of immanence, because of his joyfulness and playfulness. Some times his art is just a gesture almost a joke, as he would say a moment of awareness, a moment of complex happiness “Yogurt Caps”, “Empty Shoe Box”, “Elevator” or “La Ds” are some examples of this approach. He disclosures his research, he knows that he is very good with the craft of art but at the same time he is aware that the core of art is elsewhere I dare to say that this artist understands that art exists per se, that it is not a symbol of nothing.

Susana