Abstraction

I found Stan Brakhage’s work Dog Star Man to be fascinating. I noticed certain images stood out against the constant motion and texture from scratching of the film because of their similar shapes. The shape and direction of the lines making up the subjects of the image connect and overlap allowing the brain to make connections. To explain with an example, towards the hour and ten-minute mark, motion manipulated to look like folds melts and align with the groves of a mountain. The smoothness of the transition was directly a result of the connection of the shape of the folds. Throughout the section of Dog Star Man, this technique appears and allows images to stand out against the constant motion because like those pictures that can only be seen when you quickly move the paper it is drawn on, our eyes focus on what is distinguishable by their shape. I found that Ethan Barry’s Camera, No Camera acts similarly. The video is made up of unconnected images that are connected by the motion of the rapidly moving dots. These dots, like the similar shapes in Stan Brakhage’s video, is what transitions our eyes to something new. In particular, the dots act almost like a curtain closing and opening with the stage set with something new. The viewers don’t see the objects go away rather they are covered and replaced making them feel connected by location within the frame. From Stan Brakhage and Ethan Berry, I have learned that the frames of a video can be effectively transitioned by linking the placement of objects within a composition.

In the video about Paul Pfeiffer’s work, his statement that “something is humiliating in becoming objects of admiration and in being a consumer in it” is spot on to the emotional response his videos invoked in me. While watching Fragments of a Crucifixion, one of the first things I thought was, if I was that basketball player, I would feel intensely embarrassed to be stuck repeating that action. I think I felt that way because something is humiliating about showing extreme emotions like the basketball player was experiencing. However, because the basketball player is someone who is on display publicly for his talent, he is unable to prevent the manipulation and repeated watching of his intense emotions. There is a lack of privacy that comes from being on television because you cannot control what happens with that image after it is put out into the world.

In Sabrina Ratte’s Habitat, the audio enhances the images. The images are flat and linear. Because of this, the images alone do not make the content of the video engaging. However, with the audio, the images have aliveness and character. The same could be said about Peter Crack’s videos. In his video, Sitting Waiting, the audio added enhances the environment making the hand-drawn images appear to make the sounds. Both Ratte and Crack’s images that make up their videos are man-made and look man-made. The audios are what allows the viewer to add a narrative to the images because they remind us of sounds from life. These two artists show that sounds are pertinent in human’s understanding of and willingness to connect to two-dimensional subjects.