Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Art Bike Parade working statement


The goal of my work is to engage the community. Art Bike Parade specifically focuses on celebrating bicycles as an alternative mode of transportation. My role in the Art Bike Parade is minimal. I’m setting it up, getting the word out, and documenting the results. The idea is that the bicycle riders of Memphis will gather in the park with enthusiasm. It is the audience’s participation that becomes the result of the work. By bringing community together through transformed bikes, we can transform the roads into our canvases.
I made this music video for my painting classsssssss

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Poster for the web

ART BIKE PARADE press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEMPHIS, TN: Memphis College of Art student, Aimee Easter, is proud to present the first ever ART BIKE PARADE on Saturday, May 5th in Overton Park. Free and open to the public, the parade aims to promote bicycle awareness and provide the Memphis community with a creative bicycle outlet. Participants are encouraged to decorate their bicycles in order to transform them into art objects. Check-in is at 2:00pm and the parade will begin at 3:00pm. No need to sign up, just show up! Visitors can feel free to find a spot in Memphis College of Art’s front lawn for the best view.


Details:
Art Bike Parade
Saturday May 5, 2012
Overton Park
Parade starts at 3:00pm
Check-in at 2:00pm
Contact Aimee Easter by email: Memphisartbikes@gmail.com

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Bicycle Celebration!

For my final project, I would like to develop a celebration/parade/festival of bicycle riding. The event would take place in and around Overton Park, and would include an art-bike parade, bike safety game show (projected live feed?), art activities for all ages, live music, and possibly a scavenger hunt and other bike related activities.

My hope is that the event will make people excited about riding bikes, as well as educating about bicycle (and driver) safety.

I know this is a big project. Preparation for the event will include:
-Planning the date and time with parks department
-Promotion
---Posters
---Press release to be sent out to radio stations, newspapers, businesses, and organizations
---Bicycle and driver safety zines to be distributed at art events, bike shops, record stores, other businesses
---Maybe turn my van into a mobile gallery for Broad Ave art walk on April 13, featuring bike-related art, hand out fliers, etc
-Volunteer recruitment
-Live music people
-Games/art activities planning
-Equipment round-up




Finally, the documentation of the event will be very important. I want to film the parade, interview people about what they love about bikes, what would make this a more bike-friendly city, etc.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Inspiration over break

Harry Belafonte's Sing Your Song

Soap Factory experimental stuff:
-Gun shaped projector that only worked by heartbeat
-Kinnect game about urban planning

Walker:
-Video of inside of a subway
-Frank Gaard

House of Balls

Monday, March 19, 2012

three ideas:

1. I was thinking a lot about bikes.
How can Memphis become a more biker-friendly city?
Awareness.
So I filmed from the perspective of a biker biking in a bike-friendly city.
It would be projected outside in a public place on a very large screen in front of a slew of stationary bikes. Ideally, the man-power coming out of the stationary bikes would power the projection, but even if not, the viewers would ride the bikes and watch the film.

Here's a link about turning an exercise bike into a power generator:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-an-exercise-bike-into-an-energy-bike/

2. Project from car onto highway walls or median bikers, animals running, people running.

3. What's up with Memphis' public transit system??? a million poor people AND a million cars? how does that make sense? Even Minneapolis has more reliable, more frequent, easier to use, and more transferable buses and trains. WTFFFF!!! So I want to make something public for MATA. Maybe project from the top of the North End terminal videos of easy/made up bus-routes, no more waiting, transfers. It should be interactive because I am not personally involved in the transit system of Memphis but I have seen the way it affects people negatively. I will ask people waiting in the heat what they would change about MATA if they could. Get people dreaming.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Self-critique of frame-by-frame project

The title of my frame-by-frame project is Sounds that Prove that I'm Alive. The main idea that I started with was attempting to capture and record the real, everyday sounds that my body makes in order to prove my existence. This is something that I often think about, even since I was a child. Every now and then, I experience waves of existential crises- strong feelings that everything in my life is actually just a figment of my thoughts, in my head alone. Since I was a child, I have had the feeling that although the universe is huge, even infinite, I am only interpreting it through my senses. The piece, Sounds that Prove that I'm Alive, is about self-exploration, confusion, coming into one's being, and experiencing the uncanny. It's meant to question what is real and what exists only in the mind. Memory, emotion, sound, sight, feeling, etc.

I used a cut-paper collage for the visual aspect of the piece. It was shot one-frame-at-a-time. I recorded 4 different audio tracks of the "sounds that prove that I'm alive" and overlapped them to create the voice-over. Parts of it line up to what the animated character is doing, and parts of it don't. The reason I did this was to blur the line between what is real about the piece and what is constructed. The figure is obviously constructed yet exhibits human characterstics. The sounds might seem more real, but the outcome is a messy audio collage of everyday human noises. I want there to be friction between the real and the fake in order for the audience to question their own reality.

Initially, I want the audience to be drawn in by the aesthetics of the animation and overlapping sounds. I want them to wonder if the sounds are coming from the girl herself, from her thoughts, from an unseen character, or from themselves. I want them to be caught between what is real about the film and what is constructed. I want the audience to question the reality of the project, and ultimately question their own reality.

The main theme of the piece: It is a self-reflection upon existential crises that I've been experiencing since I was young.

Problem areas: I had some difficulty with technology. I accidentally imported the footage as "large" instead of "full size" into iMovie. I didn't catch this until I was done editing and ready to export. I plan on re-doing the whole thing in HD so that the quality of the video won't affect the content. I want the cut paper to be crispy clear.

In a post below, I included potential film festivals that my piece my fit into. As far as how it would be exhibited, I was thinking that maybe it could be rear-projected onto what looks like a mirror with a performance aspect: I would be sitting in front of that "mirror" doing the same things as the animation. Another idea is that a live-action video would be played across the room from it.

Sounds that prove that I'm alive final

Friday, February 10, 2012

Film fest ideas

Backyard Film and Music Festival:
Backyard Film and Music Fest seeks to create a welcoming space for the community; champions the immediacy of live music and of experiencing film in a communal setting; favors the independent artist; provides an outlet for new and original talent, as well as preserving unique voices of the past; believes the festival experience need not be predictable; and celebrates the ideal spirit of backyards everywhere.

NextFrame International Student Film and Video

DIY Film Festival

Bluestocking Film Series
Films made by/about women being represented in positive ways

WAMMFest

AniMazing Spotlight animation shorts festival

Thursday, February 9, 2012

New developments...

I did an experiment to try and figure out how to shoot my frame-by-frame final project. I was feeling like the character's actions were becoming too complicated and I wanted to go back to my original idea: Sounds that Prove that I'm Alive. The idea is that the girl is looking at herself in the mirror, contemplating her existence. So I decided to film my own face with this idea in mind in order to figure out my shots better. The result: A silly video of my face. But once I started doing the audio, my ideas became more developed. I recorded 4 different vocal tracks and overlaid them. When I watched them with the video on top, it looked almost as if the sounds were her thoughts coming out of her head. I still have to work out the setting and making it look more like she is examining herself in the mirror, but here's how the sound turned out:






In critique, my classmates agreed that the audio fits better with my original concept.
Something to think about:
-How is this going to be seen/projected?
One idea: The stop-motion animation is the reflection. It is rear-projected on to a screen that is set up to look like a mirror in a bathroom or bedroom. There is a performance aspect -- I, as a human (the "real" me), is looking into this "mirror" making live sounds along with the recorded sounds.

Next steps:
1. Film myself in the mirror and study footage.
2. Plan out stop-motion final based on mirror footage.
3. Finalize audio and add to video.

FINISH FOR TUESDAY!


Thursday, February 2, 2012

Sounds that prove that I'm alive


TIMELINE
------------------------------------------->
For Tuesday:

I will have 120 new frames and corresponding sounds roughly lined up.

****I'm thinking that the final animation will be longer than 120 frames. By Tuesday I should know how the sound will work and a basic idea of how to sync up the sound with the video.

****FIRST THINGS FIRST: Figuring out how to hook tape player up to garageband, export as AIFF files into video program.


Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Frame by frame

I've decided that I'm going to continue with Sounds That Prove That I'm Alive for the frame by frame project. I am going to use a digital recorder to capture everyday sounds that my body makes (see last blog entry). This will be the soundtrack. After that's complete, I will animate the sounds using cut paper/collage. Once complete, the animation will be screened on a television either facing another television with exactly the same film showing (as if the character is looking into a mirror) or it will be show on a television facing an actual mirror. This way, I hope that the viewer will begin to think about reality vs. fiction. The sound recordings will be real, the animation constructed. But since the animated figure is looking at herself in the mirror, she takes on human characteristics (self-examination). Then maybe the viewer starts to wonder which image is actually the real one, which figure do the sounds come from. Mind fuck? I HOPE SO.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sounds that prove that I'm alive

Yawning
Breathing
Sighing
Eating/chewing
Swallowing
Screaming
Singing
Crying
Moaning
Laughing
Whispering
Talking
Angry talking
Yelling
Wimpering
Burping
Farting
Sneezing
Coughing
Whistling
Chanting
Gurgling
Raspberries
Mouth farts
Tongue clucking
Animal sounds
Kissy noise
Breath of fire
Siren sounds
Mmm-hmm ("yes")
Mmm-mm ("no")
Mm-m-mm? ("I don't know")


I was thinking I could make the figure in the animation looking in the mirror at a "reflection" of herself as she's making all these sounds. They I thought I could make her looking at the camera, and show the film on 2 televisions that face each other, as if they are looking at their reflections.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

3 ideas

I'm not really sure the best way to start a blog so I guess I'll just start.
I have a lot of fragmented ideas about moving pictures and experimental films, but none of them are as developed as I'd like them to be. It's brainstorming time!

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Here's one idea: Photograph still lives made up of magical objects with different lighting. Stop motion animation, lighting won't make sense according to time of day. Objects might come alive. What do objects tell us about ourselves? Lighting should confuse time.
Examples:










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Another idea:

A collage-based stop motion animation involving a human figure who is just trying to eat some snacks while a cat is getting all up in her business. Here are some photos from my experimenting:










I will show you the rest in order on my camera because blogger is treating my bad right now.

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One more thing: I am really interested in music and sound manipulation creating moods. I want to record every sound that I can make, and photograph my face or mouth as they are happening. Maybe these sounds will surprise me. Maybe they will convince me of my existence. Maybe they will convince me that I'm just another animal. I'm not sure.
I'm also thinking about how recordings happen in at the present moment yet they transcend time because they proceed to exist in the future and in completely new contexts. They are time capsules of a sort.

Inspiration: Adrian Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971
Photographed herself to prove her existence