For my final video project I really wanted to test my self and try something I definitely have never done before. I found that all of my previous projects have been very personal and centered around my beliefs and experiences and I wanted to transcend that with this final project.

The initial inspiration came from two lessons I had learned in Film Theory class I took here at Lafayette College.

1. Hollywood agenda
2. Lack of homosexuality but heavy use of homoeroticism

To go into more detail, it was the idea that basically the production companies on the larger scale are arguably biased and have only money as an incentive for their work. The second point is that non humorous portrayal is still very rare in movies, but movies like Die Hard and Rambo seem to sexualize men in very homoerotic ways. I heavily believed that both of these ideas were completed B.S. and that there was no validity to them at all. I love Hollywood movies and I don’t like Die Hard cause of all the guy hugs. But as I re-watched such pieces of work with this now in mind I realized there is truth to these points.

This is how I decided to come up with Breaking Point, a video art project that eventually evolved into a trailer for a movie called Les Amoureux (lovers). Basically I took what is my favorite movie of all time that definitely would fall under both these points and used my little editing skills to bring out these themes in the movie.

What I realized is unreal, after my first sweep of the movie I had 16 minutes of clips that without audio one may think they were from a piece of gay pornography. I also realized how Hollywood this film really was in its ideals that it portrayed for its characters. I was even able to take the title “Point Break” and redefine it as the breaking point at which a gay person would come out. The product was truly uncanny and unbelievable revealing to myself.

Going into this assignments I had my doubts about being able to produce some sort of citizen journalism video and within the 48 hour period nothing in my experience offered any sort of opportunity whatsoever. Going into Tuesday Night I realize that if I wanted to be able to post anything worth capturing, I would need to either stage a scene or go out of my way to an area guaranteed to produce something, anything remotely interesting which was simply something I couldn’t do.

In the end I did not record any video, but this did not deter me from gaining a lot from the experience. This gave me true insight into what manifests this type of media, and that is the spontaneous nature of environments where there is little to no prior warning of what unfolds. I offer that time frame to account for the arrival of news organizations and the battery/memory limitations of smartphones. I also believe there is a specific mentality of the kind of person who records these events as a citizen. Not only must the decision be made quickly to began recording, but a sense of heroism and distrusts are key ingredients. I also believe that urban environment’s seem to produce more of these situations as there is way more content in a concentrated area.

Despite my failure, I did not want to rob the class of a video, so I am posting this one that has leaked rather recently and felt like it would be a prime example to show since it is almost a reversal of the videos we had watch in class on Monday. It is a rather peculiar situation and not one I am sure occurs frequently which in my mind makes it much more revealing. It is also interesting to hear the camera man speak at the end where he states “I doing this for everyone’s safety”. This is the icing on the cake for me as I am definitely interested in the mentality of the cameramen or camerawomen involved in these “works” and that it takes place in a college building with all students involved.

Here it is:

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UPDATE: Just now in class I realized I had an old video I filmed from where Professor Rhudy was leaving Lafayette which I was able to catch on film the last day of class where we broke out in song.

As with most of the projects so far, I tried starting out with something that really meant something to me and I could relate too. When the prompt of choosing a historical text was introduced to the class I immediately though of my favorite book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I have found Motorcycling to be one of the things I really enjoy the most and this book captures the philosophy I have towards both cycling and life in general. Another source I immediately thought of, especially for the element of sound, was a self narrated reading of Alan Watts speech entitled “The Real You”. This speech is something I usually listen too when stressed out or depressed, just like how I would ride my motorcycle if I felt the same way during the summer.

Originally, my plan was to overplay Alan Watts reading of The Real You with my own narration of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle to draw the parallels and also provided some sort of imagery. Instead I scrapped my own narration and replaced it with motorcycle sounds from YouTube to create the final product: Zen and the Art of Real Sound.

I tried to use the motorcycle sounds as allusion to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to match how his speech made me felt and personally I found the result very powerful.

I found this assignment to be extremely difficult as far as finding inspiration for what my Performative Photography would be, basically I needed a starting point. After Professor Skvirsky had recommended that the class began first by choosing and audience, I figured I would try and start with whom that would be. In addition to that advice I found myself inspired by the outside participation in performative art work examples shown in class, particularly “Cut Piece”, which produced a highly unpredictable and interactive form of art. I also found inspiration in the idea that selfies are absolutely preformative which definitely resonated with how interpret selfies. My last source of inspiration, and what led to my “lightbulb moment” was actually a talk during my Thermal Fluids class where we talked about how powerful graphs and figures are in communicating ideas, and I figured I could attempt to translate that into my Preformative Photography. It was the intersection of these four ideas that consequently to create a combined sequence of four images that encapsulate these goals: Translucency.

The idea was simple. I would find 5 selfies of both guys and girls. The hope was that each one of these selfies was different in how Preformed they in fact were, meaning the first would be extremely stage and the fifth would be a mistake or capturing of true emotion. In was pretty incredible how the sources of the collection of photos varied greatly but correlated between the guys and girls group. The more staged ones were mostly collected from pinterest and Instagram while the true emotion came from confessions of suicide attempts and reactions to world events. While I believe they all were somewhat preformative it was interesting to attempt to find the silver lining between it all.

The second step was to show each set to my roommates. I had them rank them from most authentic looking to the most staged (they are both guys and picked the same exact order which was pretty interesting).

Finally, I laid these photographs on top which different transparencies, both going from the most staged to least and the reverse as well. I added the numbers to help provide the relationship being shown so that the photograph sequence would be stand alone with an explanation (this was derived from my Thermal Fluids inspiration). I was upset with end resolution of the image as major editing and techniques reduced the quality and decided to proved the individual segments as well to help the quality of the project. I put the photo in a GroupMe that I have with friends from home to see how they interpreted and they almost picked it up immediately with no explanation. It was also interesting to see how they had very different comments on the different gender and order combinations.

Selfies are preformative, and arguably Narcissistic, and I wanted to show that drawing in inspiration from my recent experiences and in that regard I think I succeeded. Although this was the most difficult assignment I also found it rewarding and very enlightening. Although I definitely began with the notion that preformative art was “weird” and “pointless”, I can now say I have a deep respect for these pieces and recognized how challenging they can be.

TRANSLUCENCY:

THE FAKE GIRL

THE REAL GIRL

THE REAL GUY

THE FAKE GUY