This might be one of my favourite topics as ARTS, this concept is almost everywhere around where we live in. Looking at the most recent Sydney's Vivid Festival where it becomes one of the most engaging events, which the light projections are featured as outdoor 'gallery' all around the city. Many of the novel ideas involve its particular aesthetic values in a way of how digital media has altered our engagement with each of them. Therefore, its creative inspiration has allowed our sensory perception in respond to its uniqueness to what we see and hear. Digital media has amplified the form of arts because it's no longer only portrayed on canvas, restricted to printed version, presented in sculpture or photography forms. It opens up its limitlessness for wider audience to actually feel it, and to be affected.
Now digital story telling can be varied due to new methods and fresh creative coding approaches are adopted, such as the one we watched during the lecture, 'Leviathan'. Given that this film is more of a disorienting experience, a kind of uncomfortableness for us, the audience to feel that we are being swallowed inside the belly of a whale the whole time when we watch it. We are captured by its new way of filming because there isn't any narrators or interviews involved, instead, this film is expressed in its oddly placed camera angles such as the hidden spots that we don't normally notice. The helmets of fishermen, on the side of the boat but not inside of the boat, and the shots are plausibly playing out the right rhythms of what we are really watching. The ordinary shots in this case are meant to create the extraordinary sense of naturalness, unstaged sense of understanding. In addition, it's even more engaging with its audio experience with underwater sounds and constant rush of liquid noise for the audience to feel that as though they are exactly in that scenes. Anna Phelan also agrees Leviathan can be seen as an artistic masterpiece. During her interview with Lucien Castaing-Taylor who explains that within the film, the cameras are to create unprecedented perspective, and to focus on its visceral experience rather than any other conventional narratives. Quoted from Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 'To make something that hasn't been tried before'. And I totally understand what it means in depth when arts, is most likely an abstract entirety that we evaluate it subjectively. There is no exactly how to really define this term, the media, acts as a tool to enhance it within the practices of performing. In this case, isn't arts something that we've missed all the time? No such thing as completion, fixed ultimate goal for any forms of artwork, each and everytime we come up with something different from before?
I'd like the term 'interpretation' to fit in the context of what media has for the creation of art. We love technology because we love arts. The excitement we get from having two simultaneously is to reach that spectacular personalised experience visually, audibly and viscerally. Similarly, another example I want to show here is the Universal love-a collective life story, which is combined with pictorial representation to convey on the idea of 'collectivity', accompany by a piece of lighthearted music as well as some dialog at some certain points, to illustrate the sparkling romance of what love could be, what love could mean. Its chosen images are the most iconic ones to show the arc of a typical human lifetime in a simplistic manner, yet we don't get bored of it because different faces are arranged in such a fixed pattern. And what makes it so fascinating to watch is that the element of this piece of artwork is dependency on media and technology, the sound it makes, the music it picks, and the messages are communicated through the beautifully edited images which all come together to highlight its significance.
'Galleries' are now existed everywhere. The ones we used to attend physically are now moving into the virtual world where it provides us with an even more interactive relationship to look at arts. The online space that preceded by the ever-increasing trend of media has made aesthetics and ideologies more powerful. Mortal Engine is another example, puts more emphasis on interactivity with wider range of audience. It smartly uses media to promote its popularity as the site is quite eye-catchy. But more importantly is that the Mortal engine itself, a dance-video-laser performance is to project light beams into the audience. The elements such as shapes and music are incorporated media into the dancers' movements, which adds up the level of illusion.
The following video is a part of Mortal Engine at the 2012 Ether music festival at Southbank Centre, please enjoy :)
Similarly, the video below is Vjing, another example for the realtime visual performance, the creation of imagery produced by technological mediation synchronised to music.
Lastly, I really want to share this, one of my Youtube favourites. Daft Punk Skrillex remix by Conte, a talented guy who turns his music production into an aesthetic video. The whole process is recorded in his studio where he transforms his experience to somewhat different for the audience as we now, are also the ones watching how he produces. Interestingly, the formation of motions emerge on screens are synchronised with beats the music play, and hence, our sensation to feel the music is even richer.
References
Horton, R(2013), 'Leviathan' takes viewers on mind-bending voyage, <http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20130405/ENT/704059929>
Phelan,A(2013), Politics and poetics of Leviathan,<http://cultmontreal.com/2013/04/the-politics-and-poetics-of-leviathan/>
New cinema: The future of digital storytelling,<http://eyebeam.org/projects/new-cinema-the-future-of-digital-storytelling>
