Stories

Story History:

The earliest signs of story-telling were cave drawings, cavemen could have been superstitious and believed that by drawing these animals, they would come to them and the cavemen would get food, or they could have been recording them to show other cavemen what they look like and tell them about the animals so that the other cavemen know what is dangerous etc.

The first ever book was called the, 'gilgamesh.' It is a poem which was one of the earliest surviving works of literature. The poem is about a friendship between two kings and it was written on 12 tablets. Only a few fragments of it survived.

 The Berlin Book Burning is an example of people trying to get their story told. They wanted to control the power of other books so that Hitler's book, 'Mein kamf' would be the only one giving knowledge to people. Hitler is a good story teller, which is how he got that many people to follow him, but he used this power for bad.

 A lot of stories have been recycled and made into a film, these change our perception of the original story, for example the titanic, it was a horrible tragedy, but the film popularises and glamorises the event. 



My Projects:
For my photography, I got given a big book and I was told to do some experiments with it. My first experiment was a technical one. I experimented with shutter speed and light to get blurred and sharp photos. I tried flicking the pages with different shutter speeds and experimenting with different light conditions, shutter speed and aperature. The 3 photos below all used a 30 second shutter speed but different apertures.

 This photo was taken with a low aperture. A lot of the book can be seenbecuase the low aperture lets in a lot of light.

This was with a medium aperture.

This photo was taken with a high aperture. A lot less of the book can be seen becuase the high aperture doesn't let in a s much light.

I took these photos with a long shutter speed, a lot of light and a high exposure. If I didn't have enough light, this photo would be very darka nd wouldn't have turned out well.

Another technical task that I did was to flick the pages of the book and use different shutterspeeds to capture the pages moving in motion. 

I then had a creative task to do, I had the idea to turn the book into a mouth using only parts of the book. I ripped out pages to make the teeth, and the eyes, and then I got the first page which had a kind of cardboard/paper quality which I used to make the toungue.

Film Work

My Work:
The main theme of the work is 'Stories' and so I had to get to work on ideas which involved this theme. At the time, someone in my family was celebrating something and so there was a lot of congratulation things about the house. This gave me the starting point for my film work. So I decided to create a film where a man walks into each scene and destroys one of the props. Here is my drawn storyboard:

The lines at the bottom of each photo show which way the person in the film should go.

The lines show which direction the person enters the scene and which direction they leave in. The props that I will use are:

• A balloon
• A card
• A banner
• Flowers
• Champagne
• Cake

The clothes that the person will be wearing are suit type clothes.
Constants in the film will be:

• Suit
• A plain background
• No face
• Stiff body language
• Celebration music until object destroyed
• Person enters and exits in opposite direction to the last scene
• Transitions between scenes is the person walking out of and into camera shots.

When I was deciding on a song, I thought that 'celebrate good times' would be a good choice. I then thought that I could play the music when the person goes into each scene and then stop the music when the person destroyed the congratulations thing.

Here are my storyboards in photos:
 Banner Storyboard:

 Cake Storyboard:

 Card Storyboard:

 Flower Storyboard:

I had originally planned to include the person's face in the film however, when I started filming, the camera position meant that the person's head was cut off. I thought that this was a good idea becuase it doestn't show the reader the person's emotions which can give away a story behind the person's meaning for destroying the congratulations stuff.
I think that this film is good becuase there is no face and a plain background so it doesn't suggest any motives of why the person is destroying the congratulation stuff and so it leaves the viewer to come up with the reasons why the person is acting the way he is. I think there is a lot of possible reasons to why the person could be acting like this and so it is whatever the viewer wants it to be, it is their interpretation that is important.
My film does relate to the film's of John Wood and Paul Harrison becuase they both have some themes which are the same, such as the plain backgrounds and the actions of a person. The difference is that my film doesn't use geometrical shapes etc but instead has a meaning behind the story.
My idea was to have this film as a final piece, however, the quality of the video wasn't very good so I had to come up with something dramatic. Instead of trying to do the film again, I decided to use it but in a different way...

At the time I was doing a gallery board in which I would show my work for this project. Becuase of this, I had to take some photos to support the film, here they are:

These photos then gave me an idea for my final piece. I got to work on ideas that would create my final piece when I thought that I could involve these photos in it with the film. I thought that becuase the film was blurry, it looked like somebody's thoughts so I decided this as the basis of my final film.

Feild Work Study

For my fieldwork study, I chose the story of Hurricane Sandy. I saw it on the news and there was a full moon that night so it got me thinking about the connection between the moon and the tide which could make such a destructive force.
Since the Earth spins on its own axis, water is kept balanced on all sides of the planet through centrifugal force. The Moon's gravitational forces are strong enough to disrupt this balance by accelerating the water towards the Moon. This causes the water to 'bulge.' The Earth's rotation causes a sympathetic bulge on the opposite side of the planet as well. The areas of the Earth where the bulging occurs experience high tide, and the others are subject to a low tide. However, the Moon's movement around the Earth means that the effects of its forces are in motion as well, and as it encircles our planet, this bulge moves with it.
Here are my photos:

I took this photo of the moon with a very long shutter speed so that it let in a lot of light and then it made the sky look a nice dark blue colour. Also the clouds around the moon look like parts of the waves, the wispy clouds look like the start of the waves and the group of clouds look like the whitewash of the wave. The tree is supposed to represent seaweed.

Tryptich

A triptych is a panel of 3 photos which are supposed to be appreciated as one piece. They are connected in some way, such as a narrative starting from left going to right.

Research:
Bill viola is a video artist who uses electronic, sound and image technology in new media. His work focuses on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences, such as birth and death. Here are some of his triptychs:

The three panels of Viola's triptych show video footage of birth (on the left), death (on the right) and a metaphorical journey between the two represented by a body floating in water (in the centre). The footage used was not originally shot for this particular project. The birth was inspired by the birth of Viola's first son in 1988 (although it does not depict his son's birth) and was filmed at a natural childbirth clinic in California. The artist has used this footage in several works. The floating body in the central panel was filmed in a swimming pool for an earlier work, The Passing (1987-88). Viola filmed his mother as she lay dying in a coma in 1991 as a means of confronting her death artistically. The three passages are accompanied by a sound-track of crying, water movement and breathing in a 30-minute loop. In this compacted space birth and death eclipse the dreamy suspension which represents, in the central panel, the thinking, active human life. Here it is not life's journey which is important, but its beginning and end.

Adde Adesokan did a series of images called, 'triptychs of strangers.' Here are some of them:



I think these photos are interesting because my interpretation is that we judge what the rest of the person is going to be like when we see one photo of the person, no matter what part of the body, feet, hands or their head. Also because these photos have a strong sense of the person's personality which really comes through in these photos, if we concentrate on the main parts of their body, we can tell what they are like.

Francis Bacon:
Francis Bacon made triptychs with distorted faces by using exaggerated strokes and weaker strokes of the brush. This shows moods and feelings in his work, such as aggressiveness. Here is an example of his work, this is a self portrait.

Here is a photo of what he really looks like.

Here is his interpretation of what he looks like.



We can do this in photography by using shutter speed to blur parts of the body while the subject keeps the rest of their body still, however, it is impossible to blur parts of the face so only so I could only blur parts of the body such as the arm. Here are my experiments inspired by Francis Bacon:

 

John Wood and Paul Harrison
These photographers use performative actions where either one of them does something or they both do something using architectural shapes based on the human form with a geometrical significance. They try very hard not to repeat themselves and they take a lot of care on planning what they are going to do by drawing the things they will film. They have a deadpan sense to them as their faces are emotionless when making the film and they normally involve a plain background, a person and an object. There work called 26 drawings and falling things is a great representation of their work.

Tasks:

The first of my photography tasks, I got given this photo and was told to take a two more photos and make a triptych from it.

My interpretation of this photo is that the boat is covered up, out of place and there is also a great texture in this picture. These are the photos that I took in relation to the one above:

This is a weird ice formation on a patch of grass, the idea is that the ice is out of place because it shouldn't be on the grass, the grass is covered up by the ice and there is a great texture in the photo.

In this photo, the old Christmas tree is clearly not supposed to be here, the tree isn't covered but it does blend in with the ground, also there is good texture from the tree and the tyre marks.

My next task was to Create some triptychs of my own:
I first tried triptychs that didn't have a story behind them but were still connected by what is in them. These photos are all connected because they are all to do with the beach which is why they will work in a triptych.

With this triptych, people can read it from left to right or from right to left. I tried to make it look like the beach huts were in between the two groans. I used the groynes as portraits so that it looked like they were being viewed from the beach huts, I used the beach huts as landscape because it makes the triptych look continuous so that all the photos work together.

Another triptych which I did in the same context as the one above was this:

I like  this triptych because all the butterflies have the same background so that they look like they could be grouped together on the same plant.

My next triptych was a story line of a race in the paralympic games.