Gordon douglas - Through a looking glass.

Douglas Gordon is very interested in cinema and film.

I saw this piece at Tate Liverpool. It takes a well known scene from the film Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle played by Robert De Niro asks "You talkin' to me ?" Whilst looking into a mirror holding a gun.

This is projected onto dual screens which are placed opposite each other so it appears mirrored. The piece starts synchronised then slowly becomes out of sync so becomes a dialogue between the two screens.

" The two facing images, which begin in sync, progressively fall out of step, echoing the characters loss of control and his mental breakdown. These concordant projected images seem to respond to one another, thus trapping the viewer in cross fire in its almost dizzying play of dualities, through a looking glass perfectly articulates the dialectal inversions, doublings and repetitions that are the central concerns of Gordon's work."

This piece relates to my work due to the use of appropriation and the effects the installation induce on the viewer.
Also I having been thinking a great deal into how to show my work and how this can affect it greatly. I like the use of the 2 screens.

"Déjà-vu uses footage from D.O.A. 1949-50, a Hollywood thriller directed by Rudolph Mateé. The film has been transferred to video and is projected simultaneously on three parallel screens at normal speed as well as slightly faster and slightly slower - 25, 24 and 23 frames per second (left to right). This has the effect of making the three identical narratives diverge increasingly over time, and inducing in the viewer an experience similar to déjà-vu."

This installation reminds me of my use of overlapping and repetitive layers of sound which adds an un nerving element to it. 

The light show - Hayward gallery

Quite a few weeks ago before I did the off-sight exhibition I went the Light Show at the Hayward gallery. It was one of the best exhibitions I have been to in a long time. It was such a great visual experience with such a varying use of light.

This piece is by Olafur Eliasson the camera doesn't capture the strobing very well but gives you an idea. It contains streams of running water and a strobe light, it was such an intense experience and of pitch blackness and shots of bright light revealing these beautiful water features. 

'and his art often gives rise to optically disorientating phenomena, such as flashing stroboscopic lamps, which have the effect of appearing to reverse or immobilise  movement (...) the strobe effect produces an ever-changing landscape of apparently icy festoons and crystal garlands.' 

This installation along with the 'ray gun virus' installation I have talked about previously inspired me to use the flashing elements in my recent video to help create this 'optically disorientating phenomena' 

This piece is by Conrad Shawcross and is in its own self contained room. Their work explores interests to do with sciences, maths, philosophy and cosmology however what really struck me when I experienced this piece what how disorientating it was as it played with your perception as sometimes is seemed like walls were moving, getting closer .etc. It gave me a sort of sea sick feeling.

This piece is by Antony McCall, I spent such a long time in this room not only was the light beautiful with the mist patterns made on the sheets of light and the pattern on the wall but watching people interact with it was fascinating.

My video for exhibition

This is the video playing on 3 screens in the space. I decided on the three screens as it created a bigger impact especially with the flashing and it created a better visual balance for the piece. Also the video playing on the smaller tv started slightly off sync which wasn't that noticeable at the start but as time went on it got further out of sync. This actually worked really well as it was like adding extra layers to the original video, adding to the sensory overload and being bombarded by multiple things at once, the fast pace of the video, the confusion and the the slightly overwhelming relentlessness.  Here you don't quite get how impacting the flashing is but for the exhibition I had to put a warning on the entrance to it about flashing lights. 

This is the video that was played on the screens. Once it gets to the close up of the deep fat frier it plays that on repeat for about 3 minutes or so. I put this bit in for the exhibition as I felt like the video should have breathing space between the intensity and also so my piece in the exhibition didn't dominate everything and take over. I wanted people to be able to enjoy or experience other works without my video blaring out all the time impacting on others work. I originally was going to put tv static in between as I was displaying the video on tvs however I found this bit in the documentary and thought it went well with the theme of the rest of the video and was a nice interlude as it even though it is boiling fat it was quite nice to watch in a slightly mesmerising way and it just has a repeating quiet bubbling noise with it. When we had a the crit a someone in my group thought that, that was just the video as he came when this bit was playing and it was interesting to hear him say how much he liked just that bit playing with the setting I created. This space that I created in-between made the main video part more impacting as the frier is so subdued in comparision. 

The video like previous videos is taken from the documentary , "child anorexic" filmed in rhodes farm where my sister was in hospital for quite a few months. Again like I have said I want to create something that shows/highlights their inner turmoil, confusion, overwhelmingness of the illness and repetitive negative thoughts that creates something disconcerting, attacking of the senses, confrontational and all consuming for the audience to experience. I tried to achieve this through repetition of phrases and clips and flashing.

Something different I tried in this experience was to create a more of an installation as before I have just shown my videos on a screen here. The setting of the bar helped a lot with this as they had the big tv screen and chairs and tables. It would normally be a place where people would sit down and socialise maybe having a drink and something to eat potentially with something on the tv in the background maybe showing a sporting event or music video. So I played on this aspect and used a table and chairs round the screens and served sweets and crisps and nibbles which people were allowed to eat. People sat down with friends eating the food with there drinks or stood up with their drinks eating and then my awful video would come on with the subject on anorexia, I wanted to see how people reacted and I liked the slightly ironic aspect of this. This also mad my work on some level interactive which is something I have never done or thought about really. I liked the engagement people had with my piece as some weren't sure if was with my piece , whether they were allowed to eat the food or if it was just food provided as part of the private view. 

This exhibition has made me think about how I show my work more and thinking about creating more installation pieces instead of just showing a video on a screen. I think the installation aspect creates more of an experience for the work which hlps the concept behind it. 

This is a video of the video playing on two screens which I was experimenting with at home and discovered it worked better than on just one screen. This then lead me to using three screens in the exhibition. 

This is a draft version of the video which I then changed. I tried to blur the girl out a bit more and tweaked some aspects.

Videos are best watched full screen with sound turned up high

These are all the screens shots of my editing.