I've been thinking about film a lot for the last couple of weeks. Film, if done right, can be a fantastic communicator of work that would otherwise require reams of explanation. It brings narratives and connotations to objects that if left to stand on a plinth would mean nothing whatsoever. Also it's really fun. The moving image workshop I took in my second year was completely transformative to my work, bringing an element of performance, expression and systems communication that I really enjoy.
So there's no question film will be integral to my final project this year. First order of business was to spend every morning scrolling through Vimeo's Staff Picks. Next was to get some of the weird things I've been doing down on camera. The aim is to continually update this blog with equal parts inspiration and personal film work, especially over Christmas when I plan to drag my camera all around Tokyo.
So day one of this foray into the world of cinematography is about strange machines. Last time I talked about the materiality of biological substances like saliva, hair and sweat and had some simple competitions with my flatmate with human traits that you wouldn't necessarily train or value. Since then I've prototyped and built a machine for a game called Saliva of the Fittest, where you can compete to see if how quickly your spit will dissolve some potato starch foods.
So there's no question film will be integral to my final project this year. First order of business was to spend every morning scrolling through Vimeo's Staff Picks. Next was to get some of the weird things I've been doing down on camera. The aim is to continually update this blog with equal parts inspiration and personal film work, especially over Christmas when I plan to drag my camera all around Tokyo.
So day one of this foray into the world of cinematography is about strange machines. Last time I talked about the materiality of biological substances like saliva, hair and sweat and had some simple competitions with my flatmate with human traits that you wouldn't necessarily train or value. Since then I've prototyped and built a machine for a game called Saliva of the Fittest, where you can compete to see if how quickly your spit will dissolve some potato starch foods.
It's not quite finished, it still needs a bit of tweaking but is okay for the time being. I showed it to my mentor who referred me to Noam Toran's 'Desire Management,' which is a video about the home as the final frontier of privacy, featuring all kinds of weird contraptions that caters to people's bizarre desires. It's a great example of how film can be totally absurd, funny and also spark conversation about the ethics and context of psychological complexes. The machine to capture tears is especially lovely.
I think this conversation-starting element is what's missing from my video at the moment. It needs some thought into why I'm doing what I'm doing, and maybe I need to consider different ways of presenting the saliva that might change people's perception of it. At the moment it's all just a bit yucky, but perhaps it could be transformed into something else that makes it beautiful or fascinating or particularly useful.
