MONOLOG
DIALOG
POLYLOG
Category: Allgemein
(Tele-) Vision
THE DIGITAL AGE ALLOWS US TO SEE FOREIGN PLACES MOVING.
THE DIGITAL AGE CONSTRUCTS REALITY FASTER THAN EVER.
WE ARE USED TO READ IMAGES.
FOR COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, TEXTURE MEANS: Surface, which is detectable with the eye.
Zurich / cages
The promised city, dipped in an admirable countenance,
Where gold is hidden behind gracious walls,
and strangers pilger in hope to find it
Aflamed by the idea of an carefree existence,
an existence based on the shine of gold
To reach it, demands a prize so high, noone could ever know
The reward served on a golden plate
in shape of a blazing blindness,
makes us believe to have found the answer
to all our oppressive problems
Fresh bruises seem to disappear on our used up wrists
But the sharp pain stays and drifts through the sizzling surface
Team Allison & Morena
TAXI DRIVER
When you go to a new place, there is an expectation about the extraordinary. There are expectations about the new. If the new is ordinary, how are we dealing with our expectations?
The project is about the interactions between the cities, the taxi drivers and a fictional character. To decrease expectations about the new, but let the way guide us through the new. Is not about creating a new location, but giving yourself to discover a new place throught a third person. in this case, the Taxi Driver.
It aims to create a situation where destination is not anymore important in a taxi. It shows the portrait of a city through a taxi driver’s point of view, in Hong Kong and in Zurich, in which we will see the differences. We want to capture things that can be unexpected or ordinary. How different are the places they want to go? How will the process differ?
Through this project, we will explore the diversity and similarity of the cities not only through the taxi but being guided by the taxi drivers. Who are they, where they come from, what kind of stories do they tell us about the locations and about themselves.
Team – Winnie & Jo
Medial cure of souls
The global interface of culture (western and eastern world)
Since the“Gutenberg Galaxy“ (How Marshall Mc Luhan described) was yesterday, we live in a global village. A digital era, which effects every living person who is connected to electricity and the post-capitalism and -modern way of live.
So what is interesting about this global digital thing? – Networking allover the planet?
It is the way of changing/mixing ideologies and role-models in a rapid way, to create a new form of identity. A very reflected one.
Which isn’t a national matter anymore. It’s an international mixture of habits, beings and even bodies (how they are dressed, how they move, how they eat, make love etc.).
A common sense was developed which has its roots in the medial world.
Television, Cinema, streaming services (like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, iTunes, Streamcloud, Youtube), Books, comics, Video-Games and so on… they surround us.
We are able to see further than ever,
We are able to hear more than ever,
Taste, smell – even to feel more than ever.
We are getting close to each other – In our imagination.
Being able to comprehend luck and sorrow under the statement: sharing is carrying.
So, what do we want to confer between Hong Kong and Zurich?
Main-interests:
1.The medial habits- this, what is distracting us from (maybe) a stressful working place, harm, Loneliness, boredom… and how similar they are to each other (or if)
2. How it“print’s it’s textures“ in our bodies (Which imprints are left by media world), maybe we can draw conclusions about the seen film scenes later.
Thats why we film little scenes in our environment.
Every Scene has it’s topic (Question), like: This is how rush hour looks like in Zurich.
The other person reflects this Question, with a scene she is filming, and is asking a new „Question“ in the end, for the other person to answer (not in a written way, just filmic).
It should draw us conclusions about, if we can read and understand the Question in Pictures of one another .
This should last three weeks, like:
First Scene Person A : (Q= Question)Q1, First Scene Person B: (A=Answer)A1 +Q2
Second Scene Person A: A2 + Q3, Second Scene Person B: A3 + Q4… and so on.
Afterwards we will work with the collected material.
So, another main-interest I would like to add (J.) is: (next to the comparison of the medial worlds), how the dramaturgy of a little scene is build. How are the cultural influence? Are there Connections? Can we understand and read it.
For Lecturer (little note): The next step is to locate the amount of questions, and of course who wants to start.Retrospectively it should be able to watch the whole work as a little movie.Maybe this Part we could do together there in Hong Kong (optimizing the movie).
:)))
Karen and Jelena’s statement
REFLECTING LOCATIONS: Team Karen and Jelena
The topic of Karen and my work is going to be cages in our two different cities / societies. It’s going to be a collaboration, where both of us will document cages and try to combine them in a video installation work at the end. These cages can include physical and mental cages. During this process, our aim is to get to the bottom of this subject and try to crystallize the main topic out for us.
For Karen and me, the cage is an interesting symbol because it surrounds, or one could also say, imprisons somebody / something by putting boundaries in between. There is a difference between the state / reality in the cage and outside the cage.
We are both aware that this is a massive topic, but we believe that we still need time to explore, figure out and process it. We will define a different stage of progression and aims each week. The aim for the end-stage is to compare the different material and conclusions we’ve made during this process and get to a common denominator. One part of the work will also include interviews with people which we will record or write down. Our exchange of ideas and material will be over Skype. It’s very important for us to communicate as much as possible, not only about our main topic, but also to get to know each other and figure out where our ways could lead us in this project. We also want to achieve a certain kind of comprehension of how the other person understands cages.
Here an example:
THE GOLDEN CAGE
Karen’s explanation
Golden cage in my explanation means you are framed in a beautiful place and you can look outside and do a lot of things inside the place, but you can’t go outside or escape. It is because you are just caging in that place. The golden cage should be framed the rich men.
Jelena’s explanation
For me a golden cage is when a person is surrounded by materialistic things. In this materialistic point of view, he/she has everything and seems perfectly happy. So the priorities are focused on materialism, but one’s missing the real needs in life, which money can’t afford. These things are outside the cage and need a lot of emotional, mental effort to get.
Maybe someone living in a golden cage mistakes materialism, with the real needs in life and feels, for a certain moment, a kind of fulfillment, which disappears as quickly as a breeze. In my imagination, the person living in the golden cage gets a sort of awareness at some point and realizes to be kept in a golden cage by his own wish.
In the attachment you will see some of the things Karen and I already shared with each other and also how our Skype meetings look like.
Hans’s report
After my discussion with Katarina, we have finalized some main ideas of our work.
Our concept is doing ‘city similarity’ of Hong Kong and Zurich. We will shoot the footages in our own city separately. Though it is very risky but it is believe that we will find something beyond our imagination in this kind of cooperation.
The definition of ‘city similarity’ is finding the visual similarity of Hong Kong and Zurich. What we would like to discover is not only the similarity of cityscape, people’s behaviour, but also the culture, politic condition and social issue behind what we see and record. Personally it will be amazing to see the non-similarity or similarity in ‘city similarity’.
For me the video sources may not included first-handed footages only, but also the source from broadcasting media too. It is because I believe that people’s culture is strongly affected by media.
Furthermore, We thought about how to present the piece. We got a first rough idea, which is present our work as a video installation. Personally, I prefer use programming to match the footages from Hong Kong and Zurich, then present them in two separated screen. And of course, we are still thinking another way to present. we still discussing about it.
p.s. I’ll start to shoot some footage in the middle of December.
Team Up!
Dear all,
After the 3rd assignment, it is time to pair you up and start the collaboration.
Here you go:
Katarina – Hanz
Morena – Allison
Jelena – Karen
Joanna – Winnie
I believe Thomas and Birk are both open for other possibilities if you have a better idea on the team lineup, and please do let us know by this week for any suggestion or objection.
Phase 4: Finding methods and narratives
1. All of you should be able to find each others’ email address, please develop your own communication channel (Facebook, email, skype, whatsapp….) in order to ensure constant and effective discussion
2. To transform your interests into a small, personal narrative. Please try to come up a consensus with your co-artist, and
3. Based on your discussion, show your partners your research materials and methodology
4. To decide whether it will be one collaborative artwork, or individual under the same context and concept
5. To specify your topic, subject matter, methods, material……
Please submit your project documentation (research material) and a short artist statement / proposition (within 500 words) onto our blog by 30 Nov Monday.
More or less you will share similar idea/ practice with your collaborator, mentors will keep tracking your working process from time to time.
Good luck,
Chung
assignment 3
Dear all, at first im really sorry for my delay, there were long, rough days in the last weeks. Yersterday I arrıved in istanbul and found time in this busy city.
To refelect a location, it’s also needed to reflect the pictures we have. My picture of another place based on the pictures I see. So, can the Pictures talk with us? What can they tell us? How can they come together and fit to a language that we understand?
In the last weeks I began with a projekt. As starting point serves a selection of images from my own photo collection. The Question was also how interchangeable my pictures are, especially from foreign places. Using the Google images backsearch, it will reverse out a visual media from the original collection and throws it back into the flood of images Google is showing. A variety of “visually similar images” will be presented by Google. There are similar color components and the distribution of the image is measured, also outlines and forms are compared. I abuse this search system. Usually this is used to upload your own images on Google and then control who uses our pictures (maybe) illegally.
The amount is also indicative to images of certain content meaning it’s mirroring social aspects. The inklusion und exclusion from Pictures and image content shows also a lot. It’s interesting how close the Google images are thematically to my self made images, even though they show something entirley different.
I will show some examples
Left is a picture taken by my self in Paris and right a Google result.
My picture which shows a man with a shopping cart on western streets, is again split up by google. In western and third world. An ethnological and economical separation.
The image of a dark skinned man with shopping cart returned in the search results mainly as Indian with car or white guy with shopping cart. The shopping cart, a symbol of capitalism and the Western world. The shopping cart on the photo is ironically used to earn money.
Thematically the only picture matching was a man in Greece also selling Maroni. The background in the right picture shows that the city in which he lives is economically inferior to the city ın the left picture. We also know it is a fact that greece is going through a financial crisis right now. The initial position of the two men, however, seems just the opposite. One improvised with what he had found, the other grilled with pretty professional equipment. In Greece money once was available.
Near Notre Dame, under a bridge, by the river, homeless people have set up. The ” visually similar ” Google results show People climbing on a mountain, rock or doing river rafting.
It’s apparently good that the search for consensus works especially in terms of color. The color variations of the stone bridge on the river leads to images of rock and river. The indication of human presence in the output picture leads to the physical presence of humans in all searching results.
In the reference image, the tragedy is only visible to the ones who can understand the given circumstances. Google does a purely optical analysis and filters out the information of camping adventurers. Even still relatively comfortable. But we are not a search engine and see the tragedy in and behind the image.
Now I had to find the most similar of all the ” visually similar ” images .
I focused here on the color match .
Together the images develop a new language . They influence each other and create a new content. First Association ,the current refugee issue. Two stuffed boats . In a raging river. Emblematic for the difficult path in a temporary shelter in the western world.
One and the same picture? Almost. If the differences are small, they start to stick out more. Attention is paid to details , like “find the 10 differences” . So the similarity is always reflecting differences . At the same time, the similarity also involves an exclusion of differences .
Unfortunately, the metadata of the image found is not available . Thus, we don’t know when these pictures were made. It could be the same evening or years in between.
Sightseeing..
Eiffel Tower
Beach in Tenerife . Here the agreement is to see the mood of the image . The Google results do not show the beach of Tenerife .
Meglisalp in Switzerland . Again, the locations of the images found do not correspond with the original picture.
a parody of tourism..
experiences..
Based on this Project you can get an idea of my interests in this context.
I would be happy to work with someone who sends me a lot of pictures. These would be the basis and starting point of my work form, but are not mandatory visible in the final work. I want to try to see behind the pictures someway.
3 assignment from hans
A) I would like to explore the “Visual Simulation” between Hong Kong and Zurich’s space. The reason why I choose this element because I believe that there must be something similar in each society and country. And it will observe the differences of culture, livelihood and thinking between Hong Kong and Zurich in these similarity of the use of the space or the people’s movement.
I estimate the work with involved video element and sound, since it’s always a great ways to observe.
B) I would like to use the footages from TV or other broadcast media, since I do think that the media is a great way to represent the life style of the society. Also I would like to shoot some footages by myself too, in order to have more first-person experience about the spaces in Zurich and Hong Kong .
At this moment, I still can’t decide who I would like to co-operate, since it is good to have chemical reaction with any people who have different cultural background with myself. And it is sure that all the Zurich friends will inspire my work a lot, in to a more dramatic work.
C) What we see/ common sound/ Different in the simulation
