A SERIES OF IMAGES - 'the project'

A  SERIES  OF  IMAGES

in no discerned order

artist's statement:

(reflection contains artists statement content, do not be restricted)

 Here is a series of images, presented as a series of images. Some are videos, but these are also just series of images with 'closer' relations to each other image. Throughout the term they were made with a ranging degree of care and specification. Content sources range from a kid's digital camera (worst quality possible), movies, musical performances, broken cassette player, taxidermy demonstrations, and synthesizers. Image sources are blend of digital cameras, photos of screens of separate content, and internet sources (details at each file). 

Each image or file was created throughout the term and with consistent association and connotation of reading Baudrillard (or the experience of reading Baudrillard). Each video follows a common construction template by pure association to the other through their production--They are a series of images. Some content is thematically richer than the other, but presented as it is, this should not matter. 

Each individual file is as equally 'the main piece' as the whole of them are 'the main piece'. It is a series of images: Order does not matter, content is all color cells, and solidity of project-ness is arbitrary. If analogies help, it is a solid 'image', but the puzzle pieces don't 'fit together'. 

All is montage. 

Video titles are the original file names, grammatically altered for title purposes.

Image titles are arbitrary to everything but the (my) memory of the image.

'moving plants / A Video Slowed Down is a Slideshow'

'Wires'

'Run'

'Lawnmower / BW'

'Purplegreen Chant Forest'

'Searching / Abduction'

'Pete Drake / Blue'

'Pete Drake / Gold'

'Pete Drake / Dancer

'Pete Drake / Flashlight'

'Wumwumwumwum / Trees'

'Taxidermy Bushman / REDUX'

'Taxidermy Bushman / Sped up / BW'

'Montage for Convenience'

'A Whole Folder Full of TV Newsset Photos'

'Alien'

'When Dream Symbols Overlap Like My Images Do'

'Diagonality'

'The first and most dream-like image I created'

'An Attempt to Turn Three of The Same Thing Into Gold'

'Pointilism'

'Noftalgia'

'Overlapping Images of a Real Tree and a Digital One'

'We Don't Need to Know Where the Mountains Are Anymore'

'Two Images of Drastically Different Quality Smashed Together'

'The Most Memory-of-a-Dream-like Image I Created'

'My Oscillator's Glowing Insides and Glowing Tongue' 

Reading Baudrillard and making images, videos, and sound fragments parallel and in direct experiential response to his comments on the hyperreal, process and project became a quick target for me. Below are five pages of notes I took throughout the 9 weeks, a mess of notes on Baudrillard, project ideas, concepts, unrelated notes, and drawings written with a increasing degree of formless organization, overlapping text and text wrapped around other bodies of text/markings. Taken as a whole form, forgoing like it did of itself the idealized image of a finished form of work (there is no form), then these five images contain the strongest concept of anything else presented. In pure unrefined form, this is the main project. 

Another significant moment was finding my Discovery Channel-branded kid's camera, which can only hold about 90 seconds of footage, or however many photos that equates to. It is the worst digital image quality I've ever seen and I couldn't be happier with it. The first 'complete' video I made was 'moving plants', made with one video taken with the camera out a moving car, the framerate was so bad it only took slowing it down to become ten times stronger than my Fall term project with nearly the same subject matter (blurry trees, a theme apparently!). Videos are only montages. This piece was possibly a catalyst for the rest to come, as well as Baudrillard and works of Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman to blame (tv advertisement and taxidermy). 

Beyond Pete Drake and the broken Beatles tape used in 'moving plants', all the sounds are my own. Sourced from and altered by myself, they match their companion imagery by pure association and in-the-moment choice. From that point on only is their significance of placement together anything real--I just felt it fit and felt it fit better once I finished. 

In my anti-process, anti-finished approach to the 'project', I feel that in a physical space these would be set on TVs, strewn about the room and on the wall, projected, hung, and thrown around. In a purer form for its presentation, they must be as 'tossed together' as possible (assuming degree of arbitrariness is funny to me, what the hell does 'as tossed together as possible' even mean?!). 

'Theme' often implies some sort of homogeny in appearance. The theme here is lack of discernibility and consistency of concept or goal. I read Baudrillard, his ideas dangerously interesting and his writing maliciously dizzying to read. What was produced along those 9 weeks is "The Project". There is no need for finality of form, or synthesis of concepts into a singular, main work. Videos are images strung together in succession so as to create another dimension of representation (time, editing). My videos have layers which go at different framerates, they interact through dimension and contextual space, now forming their own contexts and therefore their own 'significance' (ie- is it cool). The sounds are there for your equal pleasure, I hope you like them.

This is a rambling, formless reflection. I hope it fits with the theme. 

Ethan

'Notes Obelisk'