Showing posts with label public domain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public domain. Show all posts

Internet Archive has a makeover...


I cannot emphasize enough the impact and influence the Internet Archive has had on my art, and the direction it has taken since mid way through 2012 when I started getting interested in video and came across the Archive when searching for some public domain footage to experiment with. Since then it has become something of a second home on the Web, one where I resource much of my 'found footage', the repository of my video collection, the definitive 'home' of public domain and the concept of the 'free web', as well as the vast collections of text, audio, books, Netlables, images, music, film, the Gutenberg Collection, the Wayback Machine...the list just goes on and on and on. And all for FREE!

The Archive has just released a Beta version of their new look and feel, and now my video collection is presented in the above format rather than just a list of text titles. I think it's pretty cool (as is everything the Archive is, does and stands for). You can now even 'like' my videos! Check it out here...

I would also encourage you to join and support the Archive. Very easy to sign up and get your e-library card and become part of the electronic frontier...

I forget you



You can download the files from the Internet Archive here...

The soundscape is by Hyaena Fierling from her album super flumina Babylonis, available on Bandcamp here...

You can visit her website here...

The woman is Brigitte Schiller, from Lutz Mommartz's Die Schiller.

With thanks to all those who work in the Creative Commons...

Telegraph - What Is Your Name



As an artist racked by self doubt and perfection paralysis where every production is akin to the breech birth of an antiquarian mutant it is delightfully refreshing when one comes across an ascribed artwork that I have no recollection of ever making! Well, it's that sort of world now, especially in the creative commons...

I have no idea who Telegraph are. The only blurb I can find is from their release 'Cookies': "And another, and another... And another one big and really strong release by our super-residents Telegraph duo! Meet six underground minimalistic deep-house tunes by excellent music-makers from Minsk!"

It's not the sort of music I would normally listen to, but it's not unpleasant. The video footage originally came from my experiment mixing up Marcel Duchamp with Candy Earle called la mariée mise à nu (the bride stripped bare) although in my film the tones are red rather than blue. Thanks to Telegraph for the credit...and for the same on another of their videos called Next Room which is heavily filtered and for the life of me I cannot work out what the source was, but who cares, transmutation is the new paradigm!

Collections of Ottoman Libraries in Bulgaria

Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Aqsara'i al-Tabrizi (d. ca 743/1342)
Commentory to al-Qazwini's (d. 739/1338) work in the field of Rhetorics

Since beginning work earlier this year on a project with contemporary dancer and photographer Deniza Dikova I have become interested in all things Bulgarian. Whether it being watching a documentary on the Theory of Cogitality on Bulgarian National TV, taking a virtual tour of the streets near the Cathedral Saint Alexandar Nevski in Sofia or watching a video of my colleagues improvisation performance in the summer hills, a country that was previously a mystery to me is starting to come to life.

I came across this publication while visiting the Internet Archive and thought it fascinating, not only historically but aesthetically... 

The Illusion of Freedom



Arguably my most ambitious project to date I return to my surrealist roots homaging Joseph Cornell and Luis Bunuel. Eroticism, religion, sex and death interspersed with industrial decay and wastelands combine in a mashup that underpins the futility of decadent desire, religious ecstasy and the conflict with the reality of our mundane lives.

I am (again) indebted (and indeed honoured) to be working with the soundscape Ayesha (She Who Must Be Obeyed) (the muse perhaps?) from the album Rosa de lobo by Hyaena Fierling Reich (aka Ana Cordeiro Reis). Her website can be found here...

The album Rosa de lobo can be downloaded from Bandcamp here...

The video files can be downloaded from the Internet Archive here..

Return to Reason



This mashup (like the title suggests) is a return to some of my favourite themes, and working again with the soundscapes of one of my favourite musicians (emptywhale), who I blame entirely for the development of my cinematic 'style'. The themes of eroticism, passion, death, decay, disintegration, decline and disorder combine in a (humble) homage to Man Ray...

The delightfully dulcet soundscape is From A Clear Sky taken from emptywhale's third album Some Hollow Lullabies. You can download it here...

The HD MPEG movie file on the Internet Archive can be downloaded here...

You can see all of my videos here...

Across a troubled world

In February of this year I began a collaboration with Griet Menschaert and Denitsa Dicova. Griet is a Belgian born fine artist, linguist, writer and performer who resides in the Netherlands and Denitsa is a contemporary dancer and photographer from Bulgaria. The story begins back in 2012 when I first started blogging and looked around at other people who shared similar interests. I came across Griet's work, liked what she did, followed her progress and did the odd blog post promoting her efforts.

Late in 2013 we exchanged a few emails mentioning possible collaboration. It all got caught up in the end of year madness, and early in 2014 Griet wrote asking for a 'starting point'. I did not have a specific project in mind but wrote back with some general thoughts about the direction I was heading in. From there she mentioned that she had just embarked on a project with Denitsa and would I be interested in joining in on a possible video component.

The project was loosely defined around the words "A performance in which (mother) language, the body, manipulation, time, organic / rational, concentration, aesthetics, purity and exchange are central." The idea, or at least my part in it, was to incorporate some kind of video element into a future performance in their respective homelands. We decided fairly early on in the piece that three way communication across the continents could be difficult, and for this project to work I would take on the role of a 'silent' partner rather than an active participant.

Griet and Denitsa began by sending me some footage they had shot of themselves, a series of short clips with a strong, hands, feet and graphics theme. And so began a series of five video experiments. This was the first time I had worked with 'supplied' footage as opposed to stuff I have selected myself, and that in itself was quite a challenge in terms of process. There were also technical issues to resolve with file transfers and types as well as video resolution differences.

Kitimas Akys, video still, 2014

The first experiment was Kitimas Akys (named after the soundtrack) and was a merge of Griet drawing on a window with Denitsa's hands 'dancing' in the background. I used some short footage of my own of storm clouds at the beginning and end and a slightly ominous public domain soundscape by Jaras Ramunas which gives the clip quite a melancholy mood.

Broken, video still, 2014

The second clip Broken was a bit of a throwaway experiment where I was trying some technical trickery using a grid of Denitsa's hand merged with footage of a woman 'riding' a man/woman? and having an orgasm. I was curious to see how my colleagues would react to an element of eroticism. The soundtrack was by VJ Memes and called 'I am Broken' and sourced from ccMixter.

 Cogitality, video still, 2014

In Cogitality I returned to a more 'pure' approach with merging the original footage on three levels, which gave the clip a more monotone look, with varying focal points occurring (I will admit somewhat randomly!). The soundtrack was my own mix of Brazilian jazz with spoken word from a Bulgarian National TV documentary.  

Across a troubled world, Griet's hands blue, video still, 2014

Across a troubled world, Denitsa's hands orange, video still, 2014

In Across a troubled world I reverted to the original footage, edited into short snippets, giving each individual alternating clip (first Denitsa, then Griet and so on) a strong contrasting colour. I was thinking about projection in a performance sense and how this approach might complement theatrical lighting. The soundtrack was 'Juno' by Harold Budd from his Pavilion of Dreams album and sourced through UbuWeb.

 Hands, feet, breath, video still, 2014

In the fifth experiment I used a soundscape built around a recording that Griet had sent me of her making 'noises'. I played around with a few effects and duplicated the track, reversed it and mixed the two together. The video was another 'random' merge but has some nice passages in it that warrant further exploration.

Thoughts on the process: Collaboration implies a certain suppression of one's ego. It is not just about me, and while musicians, actors, dancers etc. are used to working together as a matter of course it is not so common among visual artists. I find that collaboration takes me places creatively that I would not have considered going (or perhaps been courageous enough!) to if I just stayed working alone in the ivory tower of my mind living here in one of the most isolated parts of the planet.

Embracing different cultures, disciplines, language, experiences, personalities has (and continues to be) a great learning experience. However life can get in the way of the best laid plans and I have found that to maintain enthusiasm, momentum, continuity let alone concentration over a long period of time challenging. Reaching agreement/approval on output is also an interesting point. We could NOT agree on (my) choice of music for the clips, and it was only in the fifth experiment with Griet's manipulated 'noise' that we found common ground.

This project has also taken place over a time in the world of great conflict. Griet has worked in the Ukraine and has friends and colleagues there. Bulgaria sits at the opposite side of the Black Sea. It has been impossible to divorce oneself from the politics of the situation and our underlying concerns for humanity...hence the title of this post. And I have made friends out of two artists that I have a great deal of respect for.

Where this project goes from here is unknown. Whether it reaches a final performance or continues as an experiment, or not at all, is not the point. What is relevant is that it becomes a point of departure for future activities, and one that stretches the boundaries of countries as well as the imagination...

Griet Menschaert can be found here...

Denitsa Dicova here...

The Lake

These images are all freely downloadable at CD size 640x640 pixels (12x12 cm)...
Simply click on the image to see it actual size then right click and Save Image As...
If you would like a hand with some elegant typography get in touch...

All images available under the Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.



Why is this happening?



This video is a result of my concerns over what is happening in the world in places like Ukraine and the plight of asylum seekers in Australia. It seems that 50+ years after the youth rebellion of the 60's that nothing much has changed. The fight for freedom of speech and expression goes on...

I am indebted to Hyaena Fierling Reich (aka Ana Cordeiro Reis) for the use of Dog Day Sunrise as the soundscape. This was originally released as part of the Classwar Karaoke - 0019 Survey compilation available for free download from the Free Music Archive here...

For more information about Ana go to her website here...

You can download the video from the Internet Archive here...

You can view all the videos here...

Sandflow

anonymous waves, Sandflow, 2014, Digital print

Another one at 640 x 640...

who is anonymous waves?

http://www.anonymouswaves.org/

UPDATE (March 1 2014) Since this article was first published the blog known as Bob Georgeson has been transformed into the anonymous waves website, therefore some of the ideas have been superseded and the links below may no longer work. The article has been left intact for archival reasons.

Well it's me (sort of), but that doesn't explain why. The idea started back in late 2012 after discussing aspects of collaboration with emptywhale. I had been impressed by what seemed like the growing number of creators working across different disciplines, and while musicians were often used to collaboration as a matter of course, it was largely infrequent among visual artists. With an increasing interest in audio-visual creations such as video I felt that to publish works under my name alone was a disservice to those whose work I 'appropriated'. The idea 'gelled' rapidly with the discovery of UbuWeb and the Internet Archive and the Creative Commons licensing principle, which enabled me to work with 'found' footage and sounds. A logical progression from my previous work in photomontage, and where my love of music could now come to the fore. The name anonymous waves comes from a line of the Francis Picabia poem 'Anecdote', pulished in 1918:

Anecdote

You see, I am crazy to imagine it
I am a man with nimble fingers
Who wants to cut the threads of old pains
False folds in my anxious brain
History in arabesques memories
I am only happy on the open sea
Where one goes further
On anonymous waves

Francis Picabia, from Poèmes et dessins de la Fille née sans mère 1918

The first cut of the website came into existence as a 'visual poem' loosely based around the poem, and used a variety of images, both my own and public domain. It also assumed a level of web browser knowledge of the user and content was there to be 'discovered' rather than 'fed'. While I liked the site it seemed that very few others shared my enthusiasm! During 2013 I also started a Netlabel housed on the Internet Archive, the idea to have a repository for all my collaborative work. I had been unhappy with the template restrictions of this blog in the way that my videos were embedded and displayed, so decided to rebuild the anonymous waves (a/w) site as a 'front end' for the Archive repository. Getting a .org domain name was easy, mapping it to the site less so (are you listening Google?).

And so the build began. I had envisaged that as a/w developed that this present blog (and Bob Georgeson) would be subordinated and fade off into the blogosphere, but ah, the best laid plans! Just as soon as I planned this I started getting a lot more cross postings and traffic. Popularity is very hard to ignore let alone dismiss. The outcome of all this? There is a role for both sites. This blog continues much as it has over the past two years (24,000 plus page views in that time) while the a/w site is the front end for future creative pursuits, and I hope further and future collaboration with some of the extraordinary artists and musicians I have met in that time.

http://www.anonymouswaves.org/

The anonymous waves website is simple in structure with minimal text (cynical readers might breathe a sigh of relief!). The Video page is roughly sequential and makes available the films at a good presentation size (you can go to the Internet Archive by clicking on the I/A icon should you wish to download the files). The Art page comprises graphics created at 640x640 pixels (CD size) for free use and the offer of design and typography skills. The Music page is stuff I listen to, and am influenced (and inspired) by, predominantly in video format and includes such gems as Dizzy Gillespie, Marcus Miller, Marilyn Mazur, emptywhale and Hyaena Reich to name a few. The Projects page lists current ideas and their status like the anonymous waves shopfront proposal. The Writing page is poetry I like and has the 'not to be missed' sound file of e.e cummings reading his masterpiece anyone lived in a pretty how town. Contact details are there (you can also follow us, and be followed, on Twitter), and finally The Other Side, a gallery of suitably deranged influences and hero worship. Bunuel, Arp, Picabia and the patron saint of the site Ulrike Meinhof.

http://www.anonymouswaves.org/
 
In a time of a global push to the far right Ulrike's knowing look reminds us of the price of freedom...

And why do all this? Well, exposure on an international level, making art available (for free) to a wide range of people, challenging oneself, subverting the traditional power structures in the art and music worlds are a few reasons, but most of all because it's fun. Ideas for collaboration welcome... 

black red white



Realization: anonymous waves
Sound: 'Complete' by The Implicit Order

You can download the HD files here...

'Complete' by The Implicit Order is taken from the extraordinary compilation album Classwar Karaoke - 0024 Survey curated by suRRism-Phonoethics and available as a free download from the Free Music Archive here...

More The Implicit Order soundscapes are available on Bandcamp here...

kaspar is dead



You can download the (higher definition) files here: https://archive.org/details/KasparIsDead

You can view all the videos on the Internet Archive here...

The Origins of Life


Video mashup where contemporary dance meets the denizens of the deep in a visual poem about creativity and the emergence of life in the sea, and the womb...

You can download the files here...

Patently pumping

Baron Adolph de Meyer, Fashion picture, Date ?, Photograph

One of the Baron's lesser known pics. Nice shoes, nice stockings, nice length on the outfit, nice pose, nice chair, nice parquetry floor, just nice...

Violette



An audio-visual tribute to author Violette Leduc...

soundscape: Cousin Silas and emptywhale
eyescape: anonymous waves

'Mapping the Void' by Cousin Silas and emptywhale is taken from the album Silas and Friends Volume 1 released on the weareallghosts label. You can find it on the Archive here... 

For the HD downloadable video files go to its page on the Archive here...

Cindy

 

soundscape: The Implicit Order
eyescape: anonymous waves

This mashup was inspired by the track Cindy (Model Unit One) Drone Disco Remix by The Implicit Order, a prolific experimental artist hailing from the USA. I had done a review of his disturbing album 'Drifters' in an earlier post. You can check out The Implicit Order here...

For the HD downloadable files of the video go to it's page on The Internet Archive here...
For all my videos on the Archive go here...
You can follow anonymous waves on Twitter here...
If you want to collaborate email surrealdada@gmail.com

No Reason



soundscape: emptywhale
eyescape: anonymous waves

You can watch and download from the Internet Archive here (MPEG2 file and full screen recommended)...

...and the full set of videos can be found here...

Drinking from the same cup

It is inevitable in the public domain that at some point in time artists and filmmakers will draw inspiration from the same sources. So, it was without surprise that I recently stumbled on the captivating face of Candace Hilligos featured in an article on UK zine Aesthetica's blog. The article referred to a film by Sara Brannan that had been shortlisted for the prestigious Aesthetica Art Prize in 2012. The film is called Mary, after the role that Candace plays in the wonderful 1962 cult 'horror' classic Carnival of Souls. The article can be found here...the video below:
  


I too had been entranced by Candace (and the film) and had used parts of it/her in my humble effort called The Lunar Machine, published online in October 2012. As a fledgling filmmaker the film had been something of a watershed for me, opening a door that I continue to walk through in working in the public domain and collaboratively (particularly with the brilliant dark ambient creations of UK muso emptywhale). Background to The Lunar Machine can be found here...the video below:



I had originally discovered The Internet Archive more by accident than design. A growing interest in video and film had been hampered somewhat by only owning a crappy little digital camera which took crappy little videos. I was searching for footage that I could experiment with, came across the Archive and discovered that there were plenty of people out there doing the same. I also discovered (via UbuWeb) the work of Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) who had been working in the public domain as early as 1991 and who continues to be an inspiration. Vicki's archive can be found here...

But back to Sara Brannan. From Aesthetica: Sara's "work is based around the appropriation and manipulation of films in the public domain. Using them as a found object they are re-edited into short videos focusing on the female lead character. Only footage of the female alone in the frame is used; the rest of the film is removed and the images are edited together to run consecutively, following the chronological order of the original film. This re-editing interrupts the patriarchal narrative structure and makes visible the usually invisible editing that is demanded by realism. This restructuring provides the viewer with the opportunity to comprehend a new reality".

The precedent for this type of film making was set by American Surrealist Joseph Cornell back in 1936 with Rose Hobart, a film made from edits of the same named actress taken from an obscure 1931 B-movie called East of Borneo and coupled with an equally obscure soundtrack that Joseph found in a junk store. Of course Joseph edited by cutting and splicing real celluloid together, not enjoying the 'relative' ease of today's digital manipulation. The film is also famed for the story of its premiere where Salvador Dali reacted half way through screaming "bastard!' and overturning the projector, allegedly complaining later that Cornell had stolen the idea from his subconscious. A concept I am sure would be familiar to many artists! You can watch the film here...

Of course, working in the public domain one is always conscious of copyright issues, and public domain can mean different things in different countries. I note that the Creative Commons people are still working on definitive licensing, but still have the underlying principle of the freedom to share non-commercially. This raises all sorts of issues about not only appropriation but appropriate use of material. Like Sara Brannan (to a degree) I believe that in montage whether it be moving images or still, that the aim is to create a new reality through transformation of the original sources. As Max Ernst said, in talking about the very beginnings of photomontage in the Dada days, "It is something like the alchemy of the visual image. The miracle of total transfiguration of beings and objects with or without modification of their physical or anatomical appearance".

And the question of commercial or critical gain through working with and in the public domain?  Well, today the movement to work collaboratively, for free, in the spirit of a non-commercial Web and making art accessible to as many people as possible is growing globally. Perhaps the last word should be left to Candace, being interviewed about an atrocious sequel to Carnival of Souls, "The only thing that scared me was the fact that these people who made this movie thought that this would sell!"

Maybe a little parable for us all?

Sara Brannan's website can be found here...
Carnival of Souls can be found on the Internet Archive here...
My videos on the Internet Archive are here...
emptywhale can be listened to and downloaded here...