Electronic landscape phase #4 reflection

I will begin with stating that I may have missed out on a element of this project, for I didn’t fully work from a group. Although attempted to work in a group of two I found myself doing most of the tasks and the conceptual brainstorms were one sided. So for the most part I gathered a large portion of the original material and there was little collaboration in this respect. But I feel I still experienced this idea of telecommunication with this project despite the fact; for the exchange of the four videos and watching the evolution of our first film, and the evolution of everyone else’s shows the loss of control and at times distortion of meaning and conceptual intent.

It is hard handing work over to people you don’t know, or understand their artistic nature; It becomes a trust exercise in a way and in this case displayed both positive and I feel negative results. In the manipulation of each other’s work I think the understanding of the original video or the video one is working off of is essential otherwise you create your own agenda and can ruin the original meaning. I don’t think in all the videos the original concepts were understood which is due to both not watching the original video closely enough and not creating concrete enough ideas in the source videos.

In the final class upon watching all the videos I know I am personally guilty of drastically altering the originally video from lack of understanding. The first alteration we did was on the video entitled “conversations”. It was a series of conversations from apples and oranges, to huge grant to people using sign language. I swept away almost all the video and kept the audio. I felt it was the strongest element of the piece and began editing the audio having fun with layers and repetition. I didn’t fully notice till we reviewed it in class that our edit had removed the overarching dialogue. We had created a parody of conversations and the interaction/ back forth nature of the original had been lost. The final piece was so far removed as a result of working off what we had done, the idea of a conversation had been erased.

This is part of the process though, not everyone is going to get what your intentions are as everybody naturally, whether they intend to or not, will create their own perspective on the theme or change the theme all together. That’s the beauty and the issue with the process, and what makes the trust factor with those who you work with the more relevant. I played with the audio of their conversations and by deleting the video two more edits after us had removed the original concept all together.

This applies for the video of the three little pigs (which had a clear coherent initial theme) that in the final fourth video turned into an add/ mockery for touch screen products. This happened because people have their own personal aesthetics; they take what they are familiar with and what they like, sometimes despite the prevailing theme. The second and third videos created a non-linear take on the first video, kept roughly the overall themes but played with how it was presented showing it on multiple screens and re-arranging the order. The final video took the concept of a touch screen and made a commercial out of it. from what i can, the creators latched onto the technology shown in the third video, dropped all the other content presented and made a commercial.

The concepts were lost, not just manipulated in this case and I think it is an example of poor evaluation of the material we are too work with. It is too much a representation of the person creating the video and not a representation of the video they are working with.

I had an issue with our final fourth video, the material we were to work with in my opinion was very poorly put together (I have a rant in a previous blog entry “phase 4 timing horses and rant on university caliber work" that you can look into for my full opinion). This piece left us with no clear material or theme I wished to work with. The theme was more of a joke, a fail blog joke that needed no elaboration on. I couldn’t add to this humour for it appeared in the 2^nd edit of the video and the 3rd had no positive contribution. The 2^nd half of the video felt like the creators ran out of time and stuck in a single shot of a video game. I used barely any original material in this fourth edit, but found the only two themes present and worked with them. I feel I added more onto the first video without watching it then I did to the 2^nd or third by taking this approach. The concepts were dissolved and I couldn’t discern any direction from what was presented so I took a new approach off what I could salvage. i feel it was a positive result, others may disagree but the final video had a more coherent theme, that complemented the original video. it was different then the initial but drew on a larger source, and i feel adds more to the original idea.

i think this final project was a great introduction into the idea of telecommunications. we began experience what it is like to loose control of ones work, to see the effects of collaboration on a piece of work and understand what works and what can be destructive; not necessarily in a negative way but in an way of exploration. i thoroughly enjoy it,