The main theme of my work was to create a video collage that created a visual experience that a viewer would never have had previously, but could still relate to. I also wanted it to be a relative of my work from outside of digital studio and therefore use ideas that I am using in other bodies of artwork.
I was driven to use the imagery filmed from microscopes because at the time, that was what I was considering for my St. Mary’s Project (SMP) work. I was starting with this based off of the work I had done in the previous semester and was considering my three round prints in relation to this video. In those works I had used the shapes of the moss plant inside of my terrarium and increased their size and printed them in only one color to both abstract them and decrease the visual information. Working with video, I knew that I wanted to limit color (if not completely de-saturate my images) and that I wanted to find a way to obscure the original images from direct meaning. I knew that using video, a relative of photography, would make it difficult to abstract original content. I was relying on the techniques I had learned in our very first project of what worked to abstract images and what didn’t. For instance, using the black and white to connect my videos worked and also served as a tool of abstracting what the viewer was looking at. Cropping images also became important to remove information that became overly apparent.
As I began researching for the project, I remembered Pipilotti Rist’s artwork from over the summer and how much I was interested in her videos where she layered images, like a collage, and her mirroring of abutting projections. I considered those techniques within my own video making as ways to further abstract my video. This led me in the direction that unfolded my process.
After spending time searching for videos on YouTube that were from the microscopic source I was looking for, but also visually strong on their own, I began to narrow my choices. Within my SMP work I have been focusing on ideas of accumulation and subtraction. I feel that those two processes are inherently connected to nature and occur over both short and long periods of time. I relate myself to these two processes because I both accumulate collections of objects from nature and subtract them from their natural setting. It also greatly relates to my process of printing where I carve away plates and add layers of ink to each other. I knew that this is a main focus of my current work and I wanted to apply it to this new project. I used this as a tool when sifting through the videos I had collected from the internet. I wanted there to be a clear visual growth occurring in the videos, the accumulation that I could manipulate to also create subtraction. The three videos I decided to work with were a video of bacteria growing and reproducing, a video of crystals forming and growing, and a video of aluminum being dissolved with acid that created dendritic branch formations of copper along its surface.
I began by using the bacteria video and playing forward and then mirroring it in reverse so that the basic timeline showed the bacteria growing completely and then shrinking down to the 4 basic bacteria it began with. I knew that this wasn’t enough to show accumulation like I wanted and began to build my timeline up. I began layering clips from different moments with the longer clip, changing their size, speed, and opacity. My timeline began to look more like a mountain than an actual line. I went through several different attempts to see what looked good and what didn’t. I wanted the source video to transform from the obvious. I discovered that the more layers I had and the more they overlapped, the better the original image became abstracted. I then needed to layer my other videos in.
The other videos were not added to the first section at all, I kept that only the bacteria video. I copied that entire section of my video (all of the layers and the basic timeline that supported them) and pasted it next to it on the timeline. I then introduced the second video, the growing crystals, as layers on top of the new section. I wanted this to increase the accumulation, but also build up the original loop. After I added the new video sections, I copied and pasted this new section to the end of the timeline and added the final video on top of the previous two. In this way, my timeline was growing, but so was the complexity of the video with each new loop.
At this point, I was still working with color. The original bacteria video was a monochromatic blue and I didn’t mind those layers and hadn’t altered them yet. The crystal video was prismatic however, and I began to realize that this was adding a psychedelic quality to my video that I didn’t desire. After using the third video which was already black and white, I decided to once again de-saturate my entire video and make it black and white. That immediately changed the video to feel more unified and allowed the layers to merge more rather than just sit atop of each other. I finally added one last section of video at the end of my timeline. It was the same basic loop that reoccurred as the base of my project, the forward and backward clip of the bacteria growing. I did not add any layers to this and just kept it uncomplicated. I put it after the most layered section of video as a contrast, to work as my second connection to the idea of subtraction (the first being the reversal of the growth). I knew that I wanted the video on a continual loop and that this section would work as either a prologue to the entire loop or an epilogue. I also just wanted to give a moment of clarity to the viewer after continually obscuring what they were seeing.
The last thing I did to alter my video was to export it and open it as a new project. I then cropped it into the size of a quarter of the screen and layered and flipped it for times to have it mirrored four times. This way, the image changed completely. I then exported that and opened it as another project and cropped it again to have even edges throughout the entire video. This led to a surprise, I was left with a black frame around my video instead of it resizing. While there may have been another way to avoid this, I didn’t know it and I was stuck with the result.
I learned a lot about the idea of layering in the timeline and I realized that parts were more successful than others. I think this was a result of my changing the images to black and white and their opacity was affected by the whiteness and lower contrast of my videos. I think this led to a difference in layers in my video, some merge nicely and others still remain on top like a film that doesn’t show the layers beneath as well.
Overall, my work habits were pretty regular. I found that class time was important to me (since we had so much studio time with the professor’s absence due to illness). I also was able to go to the studio several times after another class of mine, fairly regularly so that I began to have a schedule to work. I found this to work better because I was already in the building and that when I would plan to go at night; I often didn’t make it out the door and pushed it off. Once I began to go after my other class I found that my work became more effective.
About halfway through my project I realized I wasn’t as interested in it as I was from the beginning. I think it was interesting but I wasn’t passionate about it. It helped me to develop new ideas about what I did and did not want to focus on in my SMP, which was beneficial. I find the final product to be visually interesting and has some moments that are intriguing, but I was done with it by the end. And I feel as though that is probably all other people will feel with it too. Perhaps this is just frustration, but I feel that despite all of its accumulation and subtraction, it doesn’t go anywhere. I think the building up and releasing at the end is obvious to the viewer, but I don’t know if the point of the layering would be clear in the first place. In fact, I think that the final section, where the image is just the simple video clip and the four sections for a moment appear to merge is the most successful moment of the entire video. I feel like the last layered section feels the weakest because most of those layers blocked the video instead of becoming part of it, but because of that, I think it is why the next part appears so successful. In that way, the weakest part of my video is still helping it work as a total artwork.
I learned a lot through this project, a lot of what I do and don’t want to do. However, other than the short iMovie piece, this is the first video editing I have ever done and I learned a lot about that process too. I haven’t worked with audio alongside my video yet, which is something I want to work on. I felt that silence was important for my two pieces I have made so far (and I think that was successful) but I want to be able to merge sound and video. I think effort-wise, I would deserve an A for this project because I worked hard and attempted to use the medium differently than others (when comparing timelines). The outcome I would probably grade as a B because while it has its successful moments, it also has weak moments. I think conceptually it could be more than what I actually ended up making.