https://youtu.be/-tKi6SQwd9E

We are all aware of the global pollution problem, but hardly anyone realizes just how much trash we produce daily. I inspired by an artist called Tim Gaudreau who does a project that he takes photos for everything before he throwing away for one year and in the end the photos occupy one whole wall.  I record this video in the trash room and it records the process of throwing trash. Most trash are thrown into the garbage can but some are not. In addition, I observe that plenty of the garbage we produce is unnecessary. We all need to realized this serious problem. I also record the person who collect trash.

My final project is a continuation of my performance piece. I wanted to explore the behavioral shifts encouraged by social media and new technology. I decided to go through my daily routine while very obviously taking videos on snapchat of myself. I had been thinking of ways to push my earlier piece to become more dynamic. I decided that putting my Snapchat experiment in both private and public settings would be an interesting way to compare the dynamic. I tried to take a few videos everywhere I went in an afternoon. It was much more difficult than I expected. I found myself joking about the project or trying to defend it to friends I encountered along the way. I felt extremely uncomfortable in front of camera in a way I’ve never experienced before. The camera’s presence gave me a heightened sense of self-awareness. Snapchat is ultimately a social platform, and constantly Snapchatting my day made me grow more and more concerned with how much time I was spending on social media, others perceptions of me and my own image.  The video piece would up inducing a sense of paranoia and discomfort which we all feel in an age where media has become relevant in all areas of our life. I hope my video performance piece alludes to the obsessive, invasive nature of social media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n6LmcuMPYI&feature=youtu.be

I decided to go off a similar route that I did my performance piece on since I wanted to stay within the medium of performance art.  In my last piece, I found the part that spoke to the most people visually and artistically was the use of golf and imitating the game to create art.  I wanted to examine gender roles within the sport, since coverage of females within the sport is almost non existent.  I tried to dress up like a male golfer while doing the piece (don’t know how well that was communicated).  I finished the piece by putting it on display in a grandiose male setting, which ended up being my fraternity house’s atrium.  I was aiming to give it a hyper masculine feel, so I edited it to show the power and force going into each of my shots.

While doing the piece, I had some trouble since I did not expect the balls to make it through the canvas without leaving a decent amount of paint. Rather less paint got on the canvas and bigger holes supplemented it.  However, one thing I was pleasantly surprised at was the effect that dirt and grass had on the piece.  By making it dirty with these earthy elements, I thought it gave it a down and dirty masculine feeling as well, which only added to my message.

I was interested in the movement of dance for my practice video performance. I had my cousin who is still in elementary school perform her dance for me and I focused solely on her legs. I wanted to keep it simple and show the evolution of dance. We all have seen professional performances, but those dancers had to come from somewhere. By focusing simply on her feet and legs, it takes her age out of the picture but it is clear she is a novice. I didn’t want the focal point to be on her but the dance itself. The grass and weather add another aspect to the dance in that the glass blades add a bit of an obstacle for her feet and her shoes.

My video performance begins with a person’s hand (mine) opening a knife and starting to play with it. The face is unseen until fairly far in. The playing with the knife and implied intentional unanimity of the person who would choose to film this implies a glorification of knives and violence. The intense music also communicates this. However, once I drop the knife, the illusion is shattered. Clumsiness is implied, which implies comedic innocence, and the unanimity is broken when I come into frame to pick it up. As the work continues, it seems indeed this character does not really know what he’s doing with the knife. I do like the song, which may seem somewhat violent and scary to an unfamiliar listener, but the song just makes me want to relax and play air guitar. The knife is essentially an imaginary instrument I don’t know how to play. I’d like to learn how to play this song on guitar, but I can’t play guitar. It is somewhat self-depreciating.

Lately, I’ve been reevaluating the amount of time I spend on social media. I had read a quote that really resonated with me: “there’s a fine line between social networking and wasting your life away.” I decided to use my video performance to explore this concept. I went through snapchat and tried every filter. I sat with the filter for the longest amount of time Snapchat would let me – 10 seconds. I captioned the videos with blunt titles to get at the monotony and sheer waste of time I spent trying each filter. I slowed the videos down in post-production to exaggerate the amount of time I wasted. If I continue this as a final project, I’d like to involve more people and focus on a few particularly absurd filters. I will interplay a video shot with a DSLR of the subject using snapchat with the actual footage from snapchat.