Read by Thu Oct 16, 8am
Reading Response due Thu Oct 16, 8am
Ant Farm (1968–2003), Media Burn, 1975
Why?
To familiarize yourself with basic video editing you are provided with tutorials using Adobe Premiere, DaVinci, and more. Dive in at the level you are at, and learn more than you currently know.
Required
Select at least sixty minutes of material to learn more about video editing. I recommend working along with all of the tutorials to solidify the information in your head and help you create muscle memory when it comes to hot keys, finding menus, etc.
This is an aggregated list of terms and definitions along with illustrative images and videos to help you understand some of the concepts around photo and video work—particularly dealing with cameras and understanding how they work.
Learn how to set up your DSLR camera for video shooting with pro tips and settings from photographer, Neal Walters. In this video Neal takes us through the tips and tricks he uses to get his camera set up for capturing video content.
“Learn how to organize your video files so that you never again have to go insane tracking down that one last piece of footage. Although I edit in Adobe Premiere Pro and the examples here specifically deal with projects created in that software, the same basic principles will work regardless of which NLE you're using.”
“Need help logging footage? Let’s look at six easy steps that will get you on your way and your next project out the door. No matter what type of production you do, at some point you will need to go through and log the footage and ready it for editing. This practice holds true for narrative, documentary, commercial, and industrial. There are some that I’ve met over the years who do not take the time to run through this process, and in the end their project suffers because of it.”
“Hey guys this is a simple video today explaining my folder structure and file management template for every new video project we produce in the commercial world. This folder structure is simple enough to duplicate for every project and robust enough to be expanded for larger projects.”
This is a series of tutorials on different aspects of Adobe Premiere—from working with graphics and titles, to color matching, to captioning videos, to audio mixing.
“Learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit your videos for beginners in this Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial video.” Note: There is a built-in ad for a business from 05:13 to 07:16. Feel free to skip that.
“Join Content Creator Motoki as he shows you his favorite tips and tricks for mastering the green screen. Ever heard of a blue screen? In this video, he'll show you when you might want to consider using a blue screen instead of a green screen, and how to edit your awesome effects in PremierePro.”
Note: You will want to download and install DaVinci Resolve (it is free). “Our complete DaVinci Resolve tutorial for beginners! Learn how to edit videos with DaVinci Resolve 18 & find out why it’s one of the best free video editing software right now.”
This is a quick introduction to DaVinci Resolve's Fusion, which is akin to Adobe After Effects. This is just part of the free DaVinci Resolve download.
“Join Content Creator Motoki as he shows you his favorite tips and tricks for mastering the green screen. Ever heard of a blue screen? In this video, he'll show you when you might want to consider using a blue screen instead of a green screen, and how to edit your awesome effects in PremierePro.”
“Learn how to use a green screen in just 6 easy steps! With this simple tutorial, you'll be able to create professional-looking videos with awesome backgrounds in no time. From setting up your green screen to editing your footage, we'll guide you through each step of the process. Whether you're a beginner or looking to up your video production game, this tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about using a green screen. Get ready to take your videos to the next level!”
“Learn the fundamentals of Animation step by step! Lets learn the Adobe Animate CC together! This is a crash course which will give you all the skills you'll need to start making your own animation. There is a whole lot more to Animate CC, but if you're starting out this is a good place to begin :)”
“Update- It looks like Adobe has removed Edit Multiple Frames from the timeline in the 2024 version... You can now find it in Control-Timeline-Edit Multiple Frames, or with Alt Shift E.”
Video Art emerged from the fields of experimental film and performance art and has grown in the digital age. To understand how it is practiced now and its potential for the future, it is important to understand where it came from and how it has developed.
Note: Due to the nature of video art including aspects of performance art, some material below may be inappropriate for sensitive individuals. If you have concerns, please contact the instructor and they can guide you to material that will be suitable for you.
“Ok, you say, so you have a person, that makes ‘moving pictures’ in one way or another. How does his work separates from the work of, say, movie directors who, as well, are creating ‘moving pictures’? The biggest difference between video art and movies is the disrespect of the aforementioned one to all of the latter's conventions and rules. Usually, there's got to exist at least one of three following things in a motion picture: story, actors and screenplay. Video art is not interested in that, but rather in exploring the maximum possibilities of the media, and/or to challenge viewer's ideas about the world that surrounds him/her. It usually has many forms - broadcasted recordings, projections, performances with TV sets, online streams, but today, video installation is the most common form of video art. Installation could be seen at museums and galleries, but it is often a part of some wider work, associated with design, sculpture, and architecture.”
“Why is this video 7 hours long? Why doesn’t it have a plot? Is TikTok secretly the future of art? Did Andy Warhol invent video art, or was he just a branding genius? And what do medieval churches have to do with our idea of beauty? We threw 8 naive questions about video art at Neus Miró—curator, art critic, professor, and certified cinephile. Her superpower is decoding the deeper story behind the screen or the white cube of the gallery. But one of her true passions is movies. The line for tickets. The flicker of the projector. That silver screen glow. For Neus, the magic of film and video art never fades. She walked us through the history of video art, breaking down the biggest milestones and revealing what makes this medium so impactful.”
“American and Swiss artist Christian Marclay emphasizes ‘the process.’ He deconstructs seemingly simple actions further into finite elements and creates collages from the scraps. Before Video Quartet and his monumental 24-hour effort The Clock was Telephones (1995), a piecemeal video collage [. . .] that plunders 130 Hollywood films.
“Using his building blocks—dialing, greeting, conversing, farewells and hang-ups—Marclay plays with the notion of cinematic continuity by splicing newer and older films into his own narrative. The video opens with a man walking into a booth, the word ‘telephone’ in all caps, he slowly dials. His action is followed by several more clips of dialing, technology jumps from clunky rotary dialers from the pre-area code days to ‘up-to-date’ push buttons phones (apple would later, ahem, appropriate the spirit of Telelphones for an ad). Perhaps most impressive is Marclay’s ability to create a story from such disparate sources. Clips begin to talk to one another—A man speaks deliberately into the mouthpiece ‘I haven’t been able to think or concentrate on anything except you.’ the video cuts to a second man who hesitantly says ‘I see….’”
“Rapture (1999)
Rapture is an installation of two synchronized black-and-white video sequences that are projected on opposite walls; large in scale, they evoke cinema screens. Working with hours of footage and a team of editors, the artist constructed two parallel narratives: on one side of the room, men populate an architectural environment; in the other sequence, women move within a natural one. The piece begins with images of a stone fortress and a hostile desert, respectively. The fortress dissolves into a shot of over one hundred men—uniformly dressed in plain white shirts and black pants—walking quickly through the cobblestone streets of an old city and entering the gates of the fortress. Simultaneously, the desert scene dissolves into a shot of an apparently equal number of women, wearing flowing, full-length veils, or chadors, emerging from different points in the barren landscape.”
“Explosive bursts of fire open Technology/Transformation, an incendiary deconstruction of the ideology embedded in television form and pop cultural iconography. Appropriating imagery from the 1970s TV series Wonder Woman, Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the ‘real’ woman's symbolic transformation into super-hero. Entrapped in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum's stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a music-box doll. Through radical manipulation of this female Pop icon, she subverts its meaning within the television text. Arresting the flow of images through fragmentation and repetition, Birnbaum condenses the comic-book narrative—Wonder Woman deflects bullets off her bracelets, "cuts" her throat in a hall of mirrors—distilling its essence to allow the subtext to emerge. In a further textual deconstruction, she spells out the words to the song Wonder Woman in Discoland on the screen. The lyrics' double entendres (‘Get us out from under... Wonder Woman’) reveal the sexual source of the superwoman's supposed empowerment: ‘Shake thy Wonder Maker.’ Writing about the “stutter-step progression of 'extended moments' of transformation from Wonder Woman,’ Birnbaum states, ‘The abbreviated narrative — running, spinning, saving a man — allows the underlying theme to surface: psychological transformation versus television product. Real becomes Wonder in order to "do good" (be moral) in an (a) or (im)moral society.’”
“In the video John 3:16...a reference to a passage so often quoted that its sort of the Biblical code for the New Testament that gives you the formula for salvation and eternal life. There’s an interesting kind of resonance that I see between this idea of a formula for salvation and eternal life and the promise of digital media that never break down and literally can live forever...that can always be copied endlessly. In a way, the medium itself represents a kind of promise that almost has spiritual overtones.” – Paul Pfeiffer
“The curator who founded MoMA's video program recounts the artists and events that defined the medium's first 50 years. Since the introduction of portable consumer electronics nearly a half century ago, artists throughout the world have adapted their latest technologies to art-making. In this book, curator Barbara London traces the history of video art as it transformed into the broader field of media art - from analog to digital, small TV monitors to wall-scale projections, and clunky hardware to user-friendly software. In doing so, she reveals how video evolved from fringe status to be seen as one of the foremost art forms of today.”
“In this overview of a still relatively new art form, Rush (director, Palm Beach Inst. of Contemporary Art) asserts that video art emerged as an important medium just as artists embraced conceptual and performance-based art. The popularity of video art marked a shift within contemporary art toward ideas and away from an interest in any specific medium. A key strength of Rush's analysis is his explanation of the link among performance, conceptual art, and video. Rather than exploring the technical qualities of film, artists stage performances on film to communicate ideas. Rush organizes this history around three major themes: the use of video cameras as an extension of artists' own bodies, the time-based qualities of video making way for new kinds of stories, and the combination of video with electronic, digital media to form new hybrid installations.”
“The emergence of video art in Latin America is marked by multiple points of development, across more than a dozen artistic centers, over a period of more than twenty-five years. When it was first introduced during the 1960s, video was seen as empowering: the portability of early equipment and the possibility of instant playback allowed artists to challenge and at times subvert the mainstream media. Video art in Latin America was—and still is—closely related to the desire for social change. Themes related to gender, ethnic, and racial identity as well as the consequences of social inequality and ecological disasters have been fundamental to many artists’ practices. This compendium explores the history and current state of artistic experimentation with video throughout Latin America. Departing from the relatively small body of existing scholarship in English, much of which focuses on individual countries, this volume approaches the topic thematically, positioning video artworks from different periods and regions throughout Latin America in dialogue with each other. Organized in four broad sections—Encounters, Networks and Archives, Memory and Crisis, and Indigenous Perspectives—the book’s essays and interviews encourage readers to examine the medium of video across varied chronologies and geographies.”
This is the Art21 database of segments concerning video art and artists. Be aware that not all content may be suitable for a BYU audience. Proceed with caution.
“Artist Shahzia Sikander, filmed in her Manhattan studio, discusses her animated video work The Last Post (2010). Sikander also describes how beginning to create animations was a natural evolution in her studio process because she had already been working with narrative and layering in her paintings and large-scale installations.”
“Jenny Holzer’s history as a typesetter feels obvious, once you’re acquainted with her signature text-based artworks. From PROTECT PROTECT at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Holzer recounts her fondness for programming the LED electronics that display her statements. Within the programming process, Holzer curates the speed of the revolving message, and orchestrates the pauses and flashes of the phrase. The emission of light by the LEDs is affected by each of these variables, simultaneously influencing the mood and energy of the exhibition space.”
“Jenny Holzer discusses her difficult relationship to writing during the installation of the exhibition PROTECT PROTECT at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. ‘I have no idea whether I’ll write again,’ says Holzer. ‘One reason why I left it is because I tend to write about the most ghastly subjects. So it’s not just the difficulty in having something turn out right, it’s the difficulty of staying with the material long enough to complete it.’While multiple factors have contributed to Holzer’s writing hiatus, her body of work remains as poignant and provocative as ever. Whether questioning capitalist impulses, or describing torture, Holzer’s art expresses concepts and questions through subversive lightworks which present her queries through projections or streamlined LED marquis. ‘My work might be like theater in that I hope there’s an audience,’ says the artist.”
“Known for his visually stunning, multichannel video installations, artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah shares a lesser acknowledged, but equally vital component of his work: sound. From his London studio, the artist discusses the transformative and essential role that sound has played in both his artwork and his experience of the world. Between sessions editing recently-shot footage, Akomfrah recalls his early experiences with sound. The artist witnessed the ways that music fostered the social connection at the nightclubs of his youth and co-founded the artist group Black Audio Film Collective, which saw itself primarily as an experimental auditory outfit. His seminal experience with sound came as a university student, when Akomfrah heard the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt for the first time. Pärt’s music reconfigured Akomfrah’s understanding of time and of himself within it, motivating his filmic work which weaves together footage from divergent time periods, histories, and themes. While aware that early critics of his work found his use of sound and music “vulgar,” Akomfrah retorts, ‘I like the vulgarity of it.’ ‘That’s the point,’ he adds. ‘The new comes into being via the pathway of vulgarity.’”
“French artist Pierre Huyghe discusses his use of Anlee, a Japanese manga character whose copyrights he purchased and loans out to other artists. ‘Normally this kind of sign [Anlee] is bought by people to make advertising or cartoon. It’s a support for narrative,’ says the artist. ‘We give this character to different artists. Different authors speak through this character, in a certain way.’ Anlee has been featured in Huyghe’s One Million Kingdoms (2001), Two Minutes Out of Time (2000), and as part of No Ghost Just a Shell (1999–2003), a collaboration with artist Philippe Parreno.”
“‘As I start a project, I always need to create a world. Then I want to enter this world, and my walk through this world is the work,’ says Pierre Huyghe, who lives in both Paris and New York. Huyghe’s films, installations, and public events range from a small-town parade to a puppet theater, from a model amusement park to an expedition in Antarctica. ‘I’m trying to be less narrative, it’s more an emotional landscape that I’m trying to reach here,’ he explains. Huyghe describes how, through the documentation of his scripted realities, he is ‘building a kind of mythology.’ Huyghe believes that his exhibitions are not the endpoint, but rather ‘the starting point to go somewhere else.’”
“Semiotics of the Kitchen adopts the form of a parodic cooking demonstration in which, Rosler states, ‘An anti-Julia Child replaces the domesticated “meaning” of tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration.’ In this performance-based work, a static camera is focused on a woman in a kitchen. On a counter before her are a variety of utensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceeds to demonstrate, but with gestures that depart from the normal uses of the tool. In an ironic grammatology of sound and gesture, the woman and her implements enter and transgress the familiar system of everyday kitchen meanings—the securely understood signs of domestic industry and food production erupt into anger and violence. In this alphabet of kitchen implements, states Rosler, ‘when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.’”
“This video depicts a pickup truck dragging an amplified, electric guitar tied by a rope across a Texas roadway to its aggressive destruction. The many-layered video work references the practice of smashing guitars during rock concerts and demonstrates Marclay’s interest in inventing new types of sound. The piece was also created in response to the 1998 murder of 49-year-old James Byrd, Jr. of Jasper, Texas by three white supremacists and the tragedy’s widespread repercussions. Guitar Drag not only resonates with our aural and visual senses, but also simultaneously investigates multiple layers of history, race, geography, and timely social issues. Since 2000, Guitar Drag has been shown 24 times in museums and galleries, both nationally and internationally, including the Hayward Gallery in London, Gallery Koyanagi in Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Sixteen years after its initial making, Artpace proudly presents the completed version of Marclay’s Guitar Drag for its Texas premiere.”
“Teaching a Plant the Alphabet is an exercise in futility, an absurdist lesson in cognition and recognition. The scenario is elementary: A small potted plant sits atop a stool. In the role of teacher, Baldessari holds up a series of children's alphabet cards in sequence, repeating each letter to the plant until he has completed the alphabet. The plant, of course, does not respond. Eliciting deadpan humor from the incongruous juxtaposition of the rote instruction and the uncomprehending pupil, Baldessari creates illogic from a logical construct, making nonsense from sense. An elaboration of working notes in which Baldessari wrote, ‘Is it worth it to teach ants the alphabet?’ this piece also responds to Joseph Beuys' 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare.” – EAI
“For this film, Nauman made a square of masking tape on the studio floor, with each side marked at its halfway point. To the sound of a metronome and beginning at one corner, he methodically moves around the perimeter of the square, sometimes facing into its interior, sometimes out. Each pace is the equivalent of half the length of a side of the taped square. He uses the hip-swaying walk in Walk with Contrapposto.” – EAI
Note: There is some bleeped cursing and adult content in this video. “This DVD includes lots of ephemera filling every color on the PANTONE wheel, but also including the recurring Alfe character in a brand new (never aired) TV Pilot. Also included will be the ultimate PAPER RAD "Guide to CD-ROMS" - essential knowledge for jammers everywhere. Also word comes from PAPER RAD HQ that this shiny video capsule will have "multi multi media, box eyes, and Future Genies out-takes" When all the footage is bonus, seated TV viewers come out ahead. This is for fans young and old looking for strange new voices! Put this on the next time you turn on, or the next time you turn on a small community through introduction of smiley faces into public water supply areas! Seriously buy a box lot of 30, the future is cheap if you buy in the present. Stock up for the Kulture Warz!”
“Fountain is a video that originated from a live performance of drinking water from a mirror. The image of confronting one’s own image recalls Narcissus, the Greek god that fell in love with his own image without recognizing it as his own, in some way being a splitting of the interior and exterior selves. In Fountain the image attempts to become whole again by drinking in the image of itself.”
“Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat’s video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who ‘invade’ the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.”
This is a 02:10 video looped. “The artist animates documentary footage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 Amsterdam "bed-in" for peace, a 2001 lecture delivered by the late media philosopher Susan Sontag at Columbia University, and Joseph Beuys' 1974 lecture at the New School for Social Research in New York. These three channels play simultaneously, projected side-by-side on one wall. These videos are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to Kota Ezawa.”
“Hand-painted gouache on paper animation. Film by Allison Schulnik. "Purple Mountain" song composed by Aaron MF Olson, performed by The Musical Tracing Ensemble. An ensemble of musicians is gathered in a performance space. Each musician has their own instrument, means of amplification (if needed), and pair of headphones. All musicians’ headphones are plugged into one outputting sound source (usually an iPod with many headphone splitters). Music (usually a well known song from the popular music canon) is played from the sound source and the musicians are instructed to play something, anything that they hear in their headphones as accurately as they can on their own instrument. The musicians never know what songs or sounds they will be hearing in advance. The audience only hears what the musicians are playing and none of the original sound source, thus creating a “tracing” of the sound source material.”
“Gnossienne No. 1 written by Erik Satie, performed by Nedelle Torrisi. MOTH is a traditionally animated, hand painted, gouache-on-paper film. It is animated mostly straight-ahead, with frames painted on paper almost daily for 14 months. The film seeded and bloomed from a moth hitting my studio window and continues as a wandering through the emotions of birth, motherhood, body, nature, metamorphosis and dance.”
“Isaac Julien is a video artist and a filmmaker who weaves powerful visual narratives when creating his multi-screen installations. The artist’s practice successfully dissolves the separations that are traditionally associated with different creative disciplines, uniting film and photography, dance and movement, theatre, music and sound art, and painting and sculpture. With works that often explore themes of class, cultural history and identity, this exclusive new media artwork Encore: Tabula Rasa (Ten Thousand Waves) relates to Julien’s nine-screen installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010), which examines the relationship between China's ancient past and rapidly-evolving present. In Latin, the term tabula rasa means blank slate, and here, we witness the cyclic depiction and erasure of traditional Chinese calligraphy, in a dance between older and newer generations.”
Response Question
Remember to cite specific instances from the “readings” to support your views.
What excites you about the prospect of doing video art? What gives you pause?
How might things we have discussed up to this point in the semester inform your approach to video art?
What possibilities opened up for your from watching these examples?
