Project+One+-+Video


 * Project One:**


 * Final:**

The concept of this project comes out of a study of anarcho-primitivism, anti-civilization movements and early romantic naturalist literature. I wanted to express ideas about the relationship of man and nature, using re-contextualized typography and image in an abstract way. The result is a metaphor - a dialogue between ephemeral popular culture and man's effect on the natural world. By looking at where civilization has allocated resources and importance, the work aims to question its benefit and competence. It is meant to expose the fruits of technology as something wasteful, not something that benefits our quality of life but rather abstracts it. Western philosophy has been regarded as the height of social progress, but to what end? And on what terms?

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The piece forces the viewer to perceive nature as fleeting, when placed in the context of the song names of popular music icons, whose careers were either a joke to begin with, or have fallen downhill drastically in the last decade. How does "Lets Get Retarded", "Hit me baby one more time" and (my favourite) "Human Sacrifice" gain new significance in relation to primitivist idealism? Masked video creates forms, or often, exposes the negative space around forms. The idea of collaging a 'hidden' message comes from nature's consistent hints at our failure to sustain - things that civilization has ignored or redirected to new forms of exploitation. The statements that are exposed only make sense in how they can be compared with each other. Does the "western spirit" necessitate that the wilderness "get retarded"? In many ways, it has, yes. The spirit of man, or the conquest of civilization is to rise above our planet not to live in accordance with it, its laws and limitations, but to defeat it. Song names may not signal the oppression in society that is birthed from civilized culture, but rather points directly to Western consumerism and culture's wasteful, careless ideology. If this is all we have done with mankind, then perhaps it becomes obvious why one might want to abolish it.

Audio, barely audible above the noise is read from a Primitivst essay, not to sum up the idea behind the project, but to give it a more direct link to anti-civilization themes, since the visual language of the project is quite abstract. It is to help connections become drawn, and set a context within which to read. Additionally, the opening quote (taken from optimist Buckminster Fuller) "Nature is trying..." looks at humans not as an evolutionary end, but simply a part of a life-system. And more importantly, a life-system that our species does not seem to respect, or care to co-exist with.

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 * Challenges:**

A video presentation that lasts a whole minute and a half, at the pace of mine requires a lot of things to be moving, changing and creating visual interest. Especially in an abstract approach the result is creating a lot of compositions, and working with a lot of short cuts. The most frustrating part was trucking through to create a final project that was long enough to fit the criteria. I was concerned that the visual effect might wear out after 45seconds, because I had accomplished essentially as much as I cared to at this point. Creating compositions that weren't too static was a challenge, but I was pleased to come out with a large number of screen caps that I was pleased with. Generally working with print-based design, it was nice to be able to transfer this visual language to motion.

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 * Process Work:**

Initial brainstorming, mainly expressing interest in creating three dimensional letterforms that could be filmed in an interesting way. I enjoyed creating type in the first exercise, and wanted to revisit that. Notable ideas included a geometric approach to typography, simplifying shapes to their original geometric forms (ie: easier to construct). The two conflicts of this approach were 1) attaching a function and concept to the visual idea and 2) putting the type into motion, effectively (this is maybe the most consistently puzzling, im always thinking of typography as being stationary). Once physical letterforms were constructed, how would they move and interact in an effective way?

As well, because of my mainly tactile approach to Exercise 3 (drawing the type) I wanted to work more directly with After Effects to see what I could generate, with more technical/computerized methods. The new concept needed to be based around an idea, and visually express that idea using a juxtaposition of (moving) typography and image.



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John Zerzan Interview:
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Dead Society - Part One
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Dead Society - Part Two
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