Final Project of ART 345

My final project was a short performance video. It was an exploration of sounds created by using various materials to play a violin. The reason I chose violin because I have played it for eight years and I'm really familiar with this instrument. I started it based on my interest, so it has taken a significant part in my life. I always enjoy listening to violin, but I'd never tried to see how many interesting sounds it can make. By having the opportunity from this final project, I would use different objects to explore the music of violin. Two major focuses for my project were to search uncommon sounds from it and examine various video effects.

My idea for the project was inspired by John Cage and his prepared piano. John Cage, a talented American composer, developed many playing styles in music performance. His works often involved using chance, unstructured composition, improvisation, and multiple techniques. His most famous work was 4'33", performed by the "silence" technique. 4'33" was consisted with three movements. When every movement started, the performer would closed the lid of piano, sat in front of it, and kept quite until the whole performance was ended. Although 4'33" seemed like a simple piece, it had applied many music theories. Because the instrument did not make any sound, all the sounds heard were all depended on how they interacted with the environment at that certain moment. In other words, the audience was the performer. 4'33"  could be performed differently every time depended on how audience wanted to react during the performance. It was a typical work that had used chance and unstructured composition. Among many Cage's works, I was really attracted by the prepared piano. He inserted objects between the piano's strings. When pressing the keyboard, various and unusal sounds came out based on which string contacted with which object. Furthermore, he made it as an improvisation piece, so the prepared piano was also a work performed with chance, unstructured form, and multiple techniques. The part I liked about it was its interdisciplinary. It combined a classical instrument with the objects that were usually not considered as a part of instrument, and created a playful way to perform music. A performance of the prepared piano was not the same as what we used to see in a concert, but it was not hard to understand the meaning of it either.

In the beginning process, I was planning to present my project as a live performance. Then I changed my mind to an interdisciplinary video because I wanted sounds had ability to interact with each other. By a video, I could overlay and rearrange the sounds.

Unlike piano, I thought it was more difficult to find objects that could make unique sounds to a violin. I also had to be careful to select items would not hurt my violin. After few days of searching, the final objects used in the video were: two strings tied around the violin, two pieces of a vinyl record, a 12 inch-long ruler, four key chains, two Ping-Pong balls, and a feather which was meant to pay Cage's respects. My most favorite sound was the on created by the Ping-Pong balls when tapping on the strings. Because the hollow structure of the balls, they made a funny twisted sound. Even though my project's idea was come from the prepared piano, nothing was placed on the strings or any part on my violin. The objects were only used for playing note and tapping the backside.

Originally, I wanted to use GoPro as my filming camera, but the one I borrowed might be broken because I wasn't able to turn it on. Therefore, I used my own Canon camera to do the filming. Before starting, I placed a navy blue blanket for the background so the viewer would not be distracted by anything on the back. Without using GoPro, setting camera to place I wanted really became a challenge, and it also limited filming angle. But in order to film from many angles, I tried to set my camera on violin by a stand, to tie it on some objects with rubber bends, and to held it by one hand when performed the sounds by another hand.

I edited my video by Adobe Premiere. I divided the performance into three parts. In the video, the first clip shown as the beat, and the other parts were just showing how I made the sounds. The three clips were not exactly match with each other was to show that it was an unstructured piece. To emphasize that point, I also put various visual effects, changed the size and moved the position of clips around. The problem I had faced was trying to completely overlay a clip on top of the other. I tested every effect in the blend mode of opacity section but many of them switched the footage to a strange color. Finally, I picked Color Dodge mode. Although it made the clip be slightly transparent, at least it did not change much on the color.

I got a lot of responds in the final critique. Most people reacted my video with a feeling of strangeness, even though I wasn't intentional to do that. More feedbacks were like wishing to see a score or to film myself when I was performing. I thought the score suggestion was good. I found out some audience was confused with the sound pattern because there was nothing served as the guideline. Filming myself was also a useful suggestion. But the reason I didn't do it was due to my discomfort of showing myself in front of a camera.

If I were going to redo the project, I would keep searching the perfect effect for the overlay part and made the transition smoother. At 1:37 in the video, there was a gap between the two clips. The disconnection was done on purpose, but the black screen was popped up as an accident. Also, I would make a graphic score so my audience could more relate to my performance.

One way of trying to set the camera

Took almost three hours for one of my sequence to be encoded

Artist Lecture: Scott Tsuchitani

Scott Tsuchitani's artist lecture was held on September 2^nd. Tsuchitani is interested in interventional activism. As a Japanese American, his works often involve to cultural norm, especially Asian culture in the U.S.

Two projects, Memoirs of a Sansei Geisha and Lord It's the Samurai were introduced during the lecture. The names actually came from the titles of the exhibitions taken place in Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Tsuchitani thought the displays only showed the fascination toward racial stereotype of Asian culture. He said we often saw the same problem in popular songs or Hollywood movies, but when it happened in a museum, which supposed to be a learning institution, it definitely would cause a stronger impact. So he decided to take some actions. He used the poster from the museum and combined his face with the geisha image as a message about how Asian looked like in the reality. Then, he printed a large number of parody flyers, and put them everywhere in the city and the visitor center front desk in the museum. The feedback from people were quite successful. The samurai show was also done in a similar way. But besides using Photoshop to the poster, he created a parodic webpage, a branding, and many information cards of the exhibition to pass around. The whole intervention had even greater response than the geisha project. It had been spread out by interviews, newspapers, and academic journals.

Tsuchitani had a great humor. As being an Asian as well, I felt his works were extremely funny but also contained powerful message. People in the U.S often concern racial problem of African American, Tsuchitani's projects may be able to let us pay more attention to the minority group issue.

Exhibition Review: Nate Clark Four by Fives

            Nate Clark is a painter and an alumnus of University of Nevada, Reno. His exhibition had hold for two months from September though November in West Street Market.  The name of this exhibition, Four by Fives, was based on the actual size of paintings.

The seven paintings were shown in a small gallery space and were painted with the same composition. It was a repeated plant cell-like (or oval) pattern which filled the entire canvases. Each work was various in colors and presented as a monochrome. On the sheet of artist introduction and work list, Clark said he was interested in the simplicity. This project emphasized the ideas of simplicity, repetition, and regularity.

Four by Fives paintings probably had some relations with Minimalism. Minimal art is a form of postmodern art. It started as an abstract art movement during the 1960s. In general, it focuses on approaching essence. In Clark’s another exhibition Once Again, holding in 2013, it was mentioned that he is strongly inspired the artist Julie Mehretu. Mehretu is also an abstract painter. Her works are often shown with numerous geometric figures and intensive lines. It maybe seems that Four by Fives had nearly no connection to her works, but I think both Clark and Mehretu try to use various shapes as a way to explore art.

One of the ways that make abstract art be interesting is that it  is allowed to be analyzed differently depends on the audiences. For me I viewed Four by Fives by a biological aspect. Because the pattern reminds me plant cells, I think the paintings might imply how even though lives are so diverse, they all begin from a single cell. That is, Clark might create this pattern to represent the simplicity of life.

Reference: Local Art: Once Again by Nate Clark

Project 3: Experimental Video Triptychs

The three clips of the triptychs from the left to the right:


      My triptychs video is an appreciation of water. Water is one of the main element for a life to begin. I placed a tiny river in the middle part as the emphasis of my theme. However, I made a mistake that I tried to record the river video too fast. When I did the editing to lower the speed, it lacked enough frames so it didn't play very fluently. The two side videos both contain various animal clips, which I tried to express the strong connections between water and lives. This may be hardly noticeable, but all the clips I picked had water appeared somewhere inside them. It was shown either visually or aurally. Furthermore, since water comes from nature, I kept all the sounds of the video for showing my appreciation. I wanted the audience to be able to feel the natural beauty from my video.

Project 2: Performance Score

        I performed this score which was made by my classmate Mason Furr. I played the score from the left first, went through the right-upper part, then moved down and kept going to the edge of right side. Every straight line I performed it by the ruler. The hollow circles were presented by the tick tok sound and the tiny dots were the pile bottle.

        And this is my music score for my another classmate Marina Thomassian. Her instrument was a flute, which reminded me wind. So I drew the background lines by lines to make it looks like the flow of wind. I drew leaves in various colors and sizes to present the pitch or volume of the flute. Because I wanted to let the performer decide how to play my score, there is not really a clear way to tell where to start or how to perform the leaves.

Project 1: Artist Instrument

        I used my sheet music stand as the backbone of my instrument. It could create three different sounds. The pile bottle made a maraca-like sound by snapping the rubber bands. I tied two rubber bands on it; the thicker could made louder sound and the thiner one had lighter sound. I put a bookmark made by iron wire into the can so it had the tik tok sound when it swung back and forth. I thought the ruler with shower curtain hooks made the coolest sound from my instrument, especially when it was connected with mic, which made the sound more like a bunch of dishes were been breaking.