Assignment 5 – video element

The brief is to make a presentation which might be a video (max 3 mins), a PowerPoint (max 14 slides), Prezi, Padlet, or a PDF (max 10 pages); and the advice is to use key points to carry it, show don’t tell, and to consider the audience. Working with your strengths is also advised. Taking the last, first; video was inevitable. It also reflects most keenly the work I’ve been doing and very definitely lends itself to showing rather than telling. I took the key themes from the course notes in Exercise 6 and answered the questions using a Word … Continue reading Assignment 5 – video element

Subversion – personal painting, #rift

I’m quite fond of subverting what might be described as genre output by juxtaposing or underpinning a relatively traditional piece with something that jolts it a bit. So when I came across an ad for a painting-by-numbers Van Gogh, my mind had already raced to an idea involving tracing and cutting out the numbered areas then enlarging and exploding them over an A1 card. But reality had other ideas. The schematic is printed onto the canvas which, unlike the ones from my childhood, is real and not a piece of cardboard. But even if it had been a firm surface, … Continue reading Subversion – personal painting, #rift

Fruit flies like a banana …

Two triumphs in one – my very first home-made greenscreen stop motion video featuring that banana, and an editing discovery that subverts YouTube’s recent no-choice Shorts conversion for videos that might a) be less than a minute long or b) portrait aspect ratio. These links don’t embed in WordPress or are recognised for the making of QR codes so, in case you’re reading this and it’s happening to you, the trick is to edit the link thus: Your YouTube generated link might look something like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/_thV9qFt_u0?feature=share [Note; this link is for illustration only, I removed the video it originally … Continue reading Fruit flies like a banana …

On a mission!

Not sure if I’ll succeed but I’m aiming to have everything I show at the forthcoming Steyning Arts art trail fully Artivive-enabled. That means making videos for each of the pieces of work – pertinent ones that add something to the original – setting the videos up alongside their target image on the Artivive bridge, then making sure they scan via the app. After that, I can make cards or posters – table mats if I fancy it – and the app will bring up the video. Well, as long as there aren’t blobs of tomato ketchup in the way! … Continue reading On a mission!

Option 1, exercise 1.2: the digital

I’m calling this exercise 1.2.1 because there is going to be at least one more. This exercise builds on appropriation and collage, introducing the notion of the glitch and informed by, for example, Gordon Cheung. I was more than pleased to see that I could use primarily digital methods in the making of the images. I used three random screengrabs; one of a zoom meeting about book cover design run by the Edinburgh book festival last year, the second of a spider’s web across the live stream webcam at Porthcawl pier, and the third of a google search for ‘obliteration’ … Continue reading Option 1, exercise 1.2: the digital

Artivive in the wild!

I’ve mentioned the Artivive app before – it’s an app that calls up video hosted on their site and linked to a specific image. For now, it’s mostly used in galleries where lighting and connectivity are generally good. I used it for my contribution to our lane’s Advent Window fundraiser (for the local school) whereby one window a night is ‘unveiled’ and then stays lit for the rest of Christmas, which meant viewing in the dark from the garden in a village where mobile signals aren’t always great. It was a big test and it passed! Artivive has a torch … Continue reading Artivive in the wild!