Abstraction

 My favorite video out of all of the ones watched was the Pipilotti Rist Interview. I think I enjoyed this video the most because when Rist talked about her art you could tell that she had a clear idea of what she was trying to accomplish with her work and how she wanted it to be experienced. I also found myself agreeing a lot with her views on artists and found her abstract concepts to be really fascinating. She seems to have always had this surrealistic view on life and to her, that's entirely normal. One of the things that she said that stuck out to me about artists was this "artists have different tasks but one for sure is to have a detached view on social constructions on political situations and try to bring in other alternatives so that we don't get stuck and frozen in given rules", and this is something that is true and can be seen so clearly when you look at her work and the way she brings to life her abstract concepts. The way Rist also views video and camera technology itself was interesting to hear; she sees the camera like a human being in a way since it was created by them, and because of this when the camera malfunctions she doesn't see it as the camera messing up but rather as a reflection of humans themselves and the mistakes we make. Another thing that I liked about her work was that she likes to change people's perceptions by creating these visual obstacles for our minds to overcome and try to understand. She also doesn't want us to forget that what we're seeing isn't real but that we the viewers are and what we are seeing is only visual representations of concepts and emotions that are not usually dwelled upon but that we all share, they make us realize the reality behind the illusions. What I enjoyed the most about her work was the ways she sets up her installations so that viewers become participants that are fully emersed within the work and have no choice really but to be apart of it, she also creates different ways of experiencing it whether it's walking over a video projection or lying down on a bed and experiencing it while looking up at the ceiling. Rist finds ways to create these spaces where people feel connected to the work and to each other. 

Another video that I enjoyed was Frames and Containers. It's funny to think that I had never really considered or thought about the frames in movies and how they can alter the overall feel of the film. I think think that in the back of our minds we realize this but never really deeply ponder it because the films we see usually all follow the same framework. It was nice to see a video that directly addressed this and showed examples of how framing can create these different emotions and how filmmakers in the modern-day work around it of it to fit the audiences need/wants. I definitely feel that after watching that video my ideas on cinema have been changed and broader a bit. I don't think it's bad that movies and filmmakers still use the "normal" containers and frames for films but after watching this video it definitely makes me want to see directors try these different framing methods, especially with the new technology we have today the possibilities have become more freeing.

I also enjoyed Eisenstein's Methods Of Montage Explained video because I first hadn't heard of this person and second I didn't realize there were so many forms of montage. I found the light tonality for driving edits and the aural tonality to be the most interesting forms of montage from the video. I like the idea of using light that's reflecting off a surface to make a transition into the next scene that also has a surface with light coming off of it. The idea of also using sound as a way to transition was so abstract and I love it.