My final
digital art project, which I have entitled “Motion Wills” (Wills is short for
Willoughby, who was my model for this project), was a projection piece inspired
by a desire to fool around with the projection equipment and experiment because
I had been so focused on specific projects throughout the year and wanted room
to breathe in my art this time. The basis of the idea was to record Willoughby
doing a motion and then project that recording onto her repeating that same
motion. I wanted to track the speed of her motion, any variance in doing these
motions over a period of time (i.e. is the speed of her motion consistent?),
and to see what these motions would look like when stack together in one image.
I assumed they would look the way they turned out based on the way some artists
choose to capture motion in comics- by drawing frames of the motion, layered on
top of each other.
The
challenges of this piece were that I have no skilled experience in video or
lighting. It took several times to attempt to balance the lighting enough that
the video quality was not shoddy due to lack of lighting, but also not so
bright that the projection lighting was not counterbalanced. My intention at
the beginning was to not have Willoughby’s shadow showing, but I could not get
the lighting to work, so I kept the shadows. Those ended up working really well
anyway because it looked as if there were even more arms than there would have
been without the shadows. The next challenge was in figuring out how to use the
projector in this project. The most important lesson is in knowing to take the
cap off of the projector so that it can be used effectively. Next, was the
challenge of lining things up onto Willoughby the way I wanted them. I had not
expected for the projected recording to be warped in a way that Willoughby’s
face showed up on her chin, or that the projection grew twice her size- in my
mind, the recordings would have hugged her body like a green suit, but this is
not reality. I had to accept that fact and find a way to edit the videos where
they would still be interesting and still not as dark and dingy as the videos
turned out to be.
I kept
everything very simple in the video editing my using iMovie as my editing
platform. I strung my video files together, and then put fade to black
transition slides between each one. Then, I copied the video files and put them
in reverse after each of the originals. I wanted to do this in order to make
the motion longer, but to also provide a different perspective to jar the
audience momentarily due to the slight change. I am not so sure that this
aspect was so successful; it may have just looked choppy. For the coloring, I
put a Negative filter onto the videos and then tampered with the brightness,
contrast and color gains in order to make the videos very saturated and bright
colors. I really enjoyed having Willoughby completely white because when the
images overlap, the darker and lighter shades marking where the images overlap
are very apparent. Without altering her color, this would not have shown up on
the brick, though it may have looked interesting in the video. I was sad to
have lost the interesting aesthetic of her shirt wrinkles being projected onto
her shirt, but this was lost after so many projections back onto her anyway. As
for the saturated colors, I wanted to have fun and bright colors, even after the
Coffeehouse DJ night was cancelled, to suggest an air of fun and airiness. We
were showing our projections during finals week, and during the moments where
people can take a study break, watching something in bright colors, creates an
atmosphere of liveliness that is absent in the dull, stuffy library of studying
doom.
Quite
honestly, I did not spend a lot of time on this project. I sacrificed editing
time for other things, editing time that could have been used to make the final
outcome much more interesting. I did attempt a few different things when
editing: I tried introducing each step of the projections, i.e. starting with
the initials recordings, adding one projection overlay, then the second, then
the third. So, it would have been a step-by-step process. However, this just
looked boring to me and the color balance would not have worked evenly in them
due to the different lighting situations and the fact that her facial features
would show in some videos and not others, so there would not have been a
seamless flow of adding projections. I also attempted to change timing
throughout the video. I wanted to speed up or slow down some parts of the
videos to show how the shape or flow of the motions would change with the
alteration of speed, but this too had choppy transitions, and it would have
looked awkward without any music. Without music or sound, there was nothing
that warranted the change in speed of the motion, so I kept a steady pace. If I
had had the skill and time, I would have thought about learning to code so that
the speed changes would match different parts of certain pieces of music.
In
observing the piece in terms of its formal elements, I think the piece is
successful for the most part. I cannot say that many would glean much meaning
from the piece, although when I look at it, it seems as if the motions
determine slight alterations if the motions were to be performed in different
dimensions or times where the same action is performed. This would suggest that
the outcome of the same action will not always be the same. While one could
potentially take away this message from the piece, the overall mood suggests
something much less serious. Instead, there are shapes formed by the overlay
recordings that make each individual motion more interesting and dimensional.
The half arm wave creates an amorphous shape that is calming to watch because
it is reminiscent of waves, but also a shape with a gelatin-like consistency
because it jiggles. The entire arm wave though, is reminiscent of multi-armed
Hindu gods. The other two motions (the hyperbolic dance and the shoulder
machine), are more mechanical in nature, creating squares and diamonds. Each
one has their own atmosphere, and the colors were chosen to either enhance that
atmosphere, or to counterbalance it. The half arm wave is blue to enhance the
oceanic mood, while the shoulder machine was made to be purple in order to make
it feel calmer and less sterile instead of a red or orange, which would have
made the image feel as if it were being performed in a gym. I wanted the overall
tone of the piece to be fun, and not with any serious intentions or ambitions.
I think that the bright saturated colors helped that.
I think
that I deserve a B. This piece certainly isn't my greatest work, and it is
apparent that I didn't put in all of the time that I should have. However, the
merit is that I attempted something new, and challenged myself to create a
piece of art using skills that I had not yet attained. I consider it a
successful experiment for myself, and it does create a visually interesting
aesthetic.
