I arrived in Kenya late on Monday night and took a bus with the other 10 students to our apartment in Westlands. When we arrived the power had been shut off only in our apartment and we were told, "It's Nairobi, sometimes you don't have power." We didn't really care though as all we wanted to do was go to sleep.
On Tuesday, we left for Naivasha, a small town West of Nairobi near Lake Naivasha. We spent an intense two and a half days learning about the program and learning some basic Kiswahili. We spent Wednesday afternoon at a campground playing games and enjoying Lake Naivasha. The lake didn't resemble any other lake I had been to. The water was very shallow and mixed with red dirt until we reached the end of a very long, dangerous dock. The area around the lake was beautiful with green grass and trees and monkeys. On Thursday morning, we did a drop off. The bus drove us outside of town and we had to find our way to a place we had never been before. As Lynsey told us, "It was our time to go for a walk and get lost." I really enjoyed the drop off. It was my first chance to test my new Kiswahili.
Friday and Saturday we spent time getting to know our way around Nairobi. The first day was really overwhelming with all the people and the insane traffic that never stops for pedestrians. We went to the grocery store in Westlands to buy food for dinner that night. We helped our program assistants Collins and Ruth make dinner including Chipati with carrots and cinnamon and beef stew. It was fantastic. Saturday we visited the Kenyatta International Conference Center and the memorial museum for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy.
Today has been our first day off and as a result we've been incredibly lazy. Monday we learn more about our externships and start classes at ISIU.
Intro: Stop action photography scene of a young woman with wet hair and a bare face standing in front of a white wall with fluorescent lighting. As the scene progresses, the woman's face transforms into a full face of makeup, and her hair is done. She transitions into a softly lit room.
Transitions: I've decided to use clips of female dancers performing traditional dances I'm going to film at the Cherry Blossom Festival this weekend as transitions between my vignettes as an expression of female roles.
Vignette 1: The main character is observing another female interact with various characters. The female is pantomiming with a girl she is close friends with, a boy she is interested in, and a girl who has crossed her. Her pantomimes are accented by the Queen song, Body Language. Her actions are a caricature of how females act and change instantaneously with the change in characters she is interacting with. The characters transition within several frames, giving the illusion of popping in and out of the scene.
I originally was going to film the as a static shot, but I've decided to cut between close up shots of subtle body language and wider shots of the interaction between people. The last shot will be wide and include the main character observing the background.
Vignette 2: The main character enters and exits a room changing into wildly varying outfits that suggest the role she is setting out to play for the day. She exits a room wearing a business suit, a going out outfit, an outfit she would go to class in, and outfit she would wear to do dirty work. As she exits she carries herself differently representing how the outfit makes her feel. The scene is sped up as to create a different dynamic and give the illusion of a hectic busy lifestyle.
Vignette 3: The main character navigates her way through a busy quad and student union. She is observing the women around her. As she sees one exhibiting a specific female role she is highlighted, drawing attention to her. The soundtrack transitions from ambient noise, to music, to chaotic sounds that are overwhelming to the main character and the audience.
Vignette 4: The fourth vignette, to be viewed either first or last is a collection of television and media clips that exhibit the different roles women are shown to play. They range from female politicians effectively speaking to an audience to women being shown in overtly sexual roles. The screen will transition from the video clips to the main character gazing into a television screen.
Lynn Hershman makes a direct and surprising statement when she writes, "Television is a medium that by nature is fragmentary, incomplete, distanced and unsatisfying, similar to platonic sex." But does creating a video piece that is interactive create a sense of control and emotion for the audience? Lynn Hershman's example, Lorna, was a series of life choices the audience could make for the main character via buttons on an interactive video. Although an audience can affect a narrative, does that reduce the fragmentation and distance of the story? The story, remains mainly in control of the artist, and if anything, delineating from the story line may make the story more fragmented and removed from reality. In my opinion, unless an artwork is totally dependent and reacts in real time to audiences there cannot be that connection between audience emotion and involvement and the artwork.
I find myself playing many different roles throughout the day, student, intern, work study, friend. Many times transitioning between roles requires drastic changes in clothes, behavior, and the way I talk. I would like to do a video project on the roles females play in society and how they can be drastically different. I live with three uber-feminine girls and I find that they play quite different roles than I do. I think vignettes that explored the ideas of playing roles through wearing clothes and makeup, body language between females and males in different settings, and cadences in conversations between females and females and males and females would be an interesting concept to research and think of ways to express in video.
Piggy backing off this idea I also thought about doing a gender spectrum and creating vignettes that highlight or caricaturize masculine males, feminine males, masculine women and feminine women through same themes of physical actions, clothes, presence, manner of speaking, etc.
Self- described 'trans-architect', Marcos Novak, explores the idea of liquid architecture, in his article Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace. He describes liquid architecture as a totally fluid environment contained only by cyberspace that reacts and changes to interaction and time. In his work, science and art merge without any restrictions and without abiding the rules of nature. Novak explores this theme in his digital work that portrays architecture and design in a completely cyber environment. He incorporates time into his pieces making them truly four-dimensional.
In his words the definition of liquid architecture:
"I mean involving the total but rigorous variability and the idea that form can be driven by both data and presence, both when we are immersed in information and when information is everted on to the physical world."- Marcos Novak
Novak extends his definition to include art that is dynamic and changeable by both time and audience interaction or art that is variable and based on an algorithmic system. He bases his idea of liquid architecture on three pillars: reference, delineation and modulation. His idea of reference means that liquid architecture is only defined by artist created boundaries. The extent to which the environment is artificial is defined by its modulation. Delineation the most interesting pillar is defined by audience particpation. Novak suggests that a space that can be observed by the audience is sculpture, a space that can be inhabited by the audience is architecture and a space that can affected by the audience is liquid architecture.
His still images demonstrate building with new and innovative forms that are not constrained by the physical limitations of our world. The only constraints on his structures are those of cyberspace. He explores the idea of structure and form in time with video works. His website disclaims that the videos have no music, because you are able to "see" the music in the movement of the forms.
This concept of "seeing music" emanates in Vibeke Sorensens's work, particularlyTemple. Sorenson explores the idea of data driven visuals. Her animations were created via the inputting of data, in the form of sound waves through an analog computer. They explore the connection between form, space, time, and music incorporating Novak's notion of new dimensions.
Vibeke Sorensen also explores the ideas of limitless architecture in works like Diamantia. Her work shows architectural forms and movements in a totally fluid environment not confined by the laws of nature.
One point that Novak emphasized in his essay was the idea that liquid architecture has an evolving definition that changes with the advancement in technology used to create it. Sorenson pushes the boundaries of the definition of liquid architecture to include the idea of sharing culture and personal interaction across distances through the use of telematics. She references the Global Visual Music Jam Project as a manifestation of liquid architecture through the interaction of music, visuals, and media arts. She discusses the idea of a human element that is the driving force behind interactive art and experiences that are unique. She also discusses her work, Morocco Memory II as a work that incorporates a cultural aspect to the idea of liquid architecture. She defines the cultural element as a person's identity and thoughts in a specific moment in time.
Leo Villareal's work exemplifies the theory of liquid architecture on its spontaneity and mathematical randomness. His work Multiverse incorporates Novak's idea of algorithmic driven art that includes movement and space. The lights contained with this art work together in order to form shapes and patterns unique to the point and time and angle at which they are viewed, allowing us to observe this idea of a fluid environment.
His other work like Field shows Villareal's acute interpretation of liquid architecture and its ability to work with frozen architecture. His works show a keen and delicate sense of light, movement and color and an understanding of how they affect the audience.
The idea of liquid architecture can be found not only in the work of artists like Sorenson and Villareal, but in the media that surrounds our everyday lives. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, facing serious budgets deficits, decided to integrate advertising into the unique architecture of their metro system. They installed a series of 139 back lit still inside the tunnels. As the train moved past the stills, they created a flipbook effect. The backlit pictures merge into an animation that is dependent on the unique architecture of the space.
This innovative advertising system incorporates the themes of liquid architecture including movement, light, fluid environments and the idea of an interpretation being specific to a point in time and a movement.
The underlying theme with all these works is the idea of incorporating four dimensions, height, width, depth and time into structure and art. These pieces combine art, science, math and technology into a form of art that is only contained by the limitations of cyberspace. In the instances of Leo Villareal's work and the DC Metro advertisements, the art that incorporates liquid architecture works symbiotically with the frozen architecture of its surroundings. These ideas culminate into pieces of art that demonstrate color, form, movement, and music in fluid manner manipulated by both time and interaction.
Vibeke Sorenson's idea of "liquid architecture" refers to the unique way light and sound are experienced in a space. The use of a black box theater to display media art incorporates the structure needed to experience the liquid architecture of piece.
The use of surround sound in a black box theater enables the viewer to experience the sounds of the actual experience recorded as well as allowing the artist to manipulate the experience to invoke emotions and reactions from an audience. The work of Ori Gersht exemplified this technique. His muting and amplification of the noises of trees falling brought out a variety of emotional reactions in the audience.
Also the spaces darkness and seperation from the rest of the museum create the suspension of disbelief neccesary to experience the entire piece of art. Sorenson discussed this in her lecture, the idea of being surround by light, sound and motion in order to get the full experience of the art.
Collectively the space and equipment used in a black box theory helps an artist to utilize the theory of "liquid architecture" and better facilitate a connection between the audience and the art.
This is my soundscape I created from sounds I recorded at a Kids At The Katzen day. It includes the ambient noise of children working on an art project to bring the listener back to the creative days of their youth. It also includes sounds such as a lighter lighting, unzipping and opening doors to symbolize the process of opening your mind to new and creative ideas.
