Alas, there will be no squirrels to be found....

No more squirrels.  I've got a plan and it involves many high-tech bird feeders.

Some moves will be classic...

Some moves will be "plus"...

ANd of course, PRIMOS.  Please note the CD.  It is important to the squirrel busting.

Now if I could just beat those KILLER ROBOTS!

I wanted to do research on abstract art, in many mediums.  I had asked myself, "How do painting, photography, music, and film/ moving image intersect?  Where is the resonince of harmony?"  I went to a bookstore in Pittsford and start a search though the art/ criticism section. I found what I was looking for:  Late Writings by Clement Greenberg.       

The section that caught my attention was the subheading "Picture Making" in his essay "Detached Observations".  It dealt with "picture making, not just picturing or depicting.... As abstract art has shown, any kind of mark, any kind of inflection on any kind of surface, can serve to make a picture." (Greenburg p63).

He goes on to venture opinions on abstract painting, sculpture, photography, and film.  He maintained that being a good painter is important to making good abstract art, what ever the medium actually being utilized.  While I'm not exactly an amazing painter, I felt encouraged that the most successful part of the film had utilized moving image excerpts of one of my paintings surfaces. I was moving in the direction I wanted to go before I even realized it.  

I'm sorry I didn't touch on Greenberg's observations of "heavy" and "light" arts, his comparisons of various mediums and cultural outlooks for different points of perspective, his take on straight photography.  I am not doing a book report, but relating what I took away about abstraction for this film project.

     After deliberating the form my film will take, I have realized that I need to take more "chance" out of the mix. I have also realized that my tendencies to revert to "stock footage" image making tend to run rampant if I am not self-conscious about my decision making.  My solution for both of these problems lay in an seemingly obvious place: abstraction.  

     I consider the first two vignettes turtles that drifted away on my path across the stream toward the finished project.  Keith's comment about harmony really hit it for me.  I need to compose all of the parts, visual and audio, in concert.  Gathering random bits and making a collage is fun, but I don't think I have been achieving the desired effect.  I need to realize my deeper intentions.

     I see this new approach as a return to form of sorts. I have been drifting away from painterly/ abstract/ visual texture explorations for a while.  I should be embracing the desire to abstract and be compositional.  

     The third vignette was compositional on many levels.  It contained audio text that set the tone for the music, and in turn, the visual.  This created a harmony that the jolting camera work and jump cuts of the more representational, gathered "stock footage" lacked.  The music was made primarily as an exploration of new resources, and was successful in that area.  The idea for the film from here on in is a more controlled composition of abstraction.  -__-__-__----