Final Week of 4D Foundations!

Nearly done! I wanted to make sure to post all the information we would need for our last week of the quarter. As always, if you have any other questions, please let me know!

• ATTENDANCE

• This week, students have one more work day (Tuesday), two lectures (Tuesday and Thursday), and a final critique day (Thursday). Attendance is required for lectures and Thursday's final crit (think of this as your final exam!)

• On Friday, we have Open Studios in Baskin Arts from 12-4pm. Your TAs will be setting up all video work for display that day. If your final project requires anything outside of a computer monitor, you must let us know soon! Attendance at Open Studios is required unless prior arrangements have been made.

• This class does not meet again after Open Studios (6/8).

• FINAL PROJECTS

• During Thursday's section, we will be critiquing your final projects as a class to finish up the quarter. You must have your projects completed and uploaded to your blogs before section to be considered 'On Time'. The final project is your course final and worth 20% of your grade.

• Final projects will be displayed during Open Studios. On Thursday, we will be making a playlist of projects from YouTube.

• Any late or missing work must be turned in by Friday to receive credit. You can always email and ask if you are missing any assignments.

• FINAL GRADES

• During finals week, I will be grading your final projects for the course. You will receive email feedback on your project as well as a final grade for the course during that week.

Don't sweat it! I have faith in all of you and can't wait to see your final pieces!

Animation Tips!

Hello, all!

Just wanted to share some tips and useful links that I've been researching for student final projects:

• This inspirational TEDxEd article on stop motion animation
• Another TEDxEd article on visual storytelling and animation
• This Apple forum discussion on 'tweening' or smoothing transitions between frames in iMovie

This Week's Assignment

Hello, all:
For this week's assignment, we will be dropping files into a shared folder so that we can listen during section. Here is a link to the folder:

Field Recording Submission Folder

On Thursday morning, I'll download everything in this folder so that we can listen to each one. You will only need to submit one file, 15 seconds to 1 minute long. To make sure we don't create a chaotic mess, please name your audio files like this: lastname_firstname_4D. For example, my file would be: jennings_colleen_4D.mp3

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Arboretum Field Trip

Hello, all:
Instead of attending lab tomorrow, I have decided that we should attend a sound piece on campus. This piece is at the UCSC Arboretum between the base and upper campus. The piece, Forest (for a Thousand Years...), is an audio installation created by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller that was featured at dOCUMENTA 13 in Germany. As we are studying audio and soundscapes this week, it seems like a good reason to attend and also check out the other features offered by the arboretum.

The Forest opens at noon and stays open until 5PM. I will be in attendance from 11:30-2PM tomorrow. If you are not able to attend during this time because of a conflict, you can go another time this week. While there, be sure to check in with me (or take photos and email them) to get credit for attending. To be clear, we are not meeting at 9am or 11am in the Porter computer lab. If you have any questions or need additional help with this week's project, please let me know! Here are directions.

I look forward to seeing all of you there!

Week 6-7! Body Politic and Activism

Welcome all to Week 7! Because of the strikes last week, a lot of our scheduling has shifted around and we are working toward submitting our fifth project on Thursday: the text project.

The text project: Create a text and image paper animation from a recent newspaper or magazine. Use material that speaks to the conditions of your community (Due Thursday).

We spent the weekend gathering up materials for this project, including magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, etc. and cutting them up/scanning/playing with arrangements in class today.

For inspiration, we had a look at work by early Dada collage artist Hannah Hoch, postmodern feminist artist Barbara Kruger, neon sculpture artist Bruce Nauman, and the LED and projected texts of Jenny Holzer.

We also looked at several examples of kinetic typography for inspiration:

We did a short tutorial on creating transparent backgrounds in Photoshop and using keyframes in iMovie (see below the cut).

Readings due by Thursday:

• What's Wrong with Cruelty to Robots? (from last week)
• Erick
• Delusions of Dialog (from last week)
• Arely
• The Virtual Barrio @ the Other Frontier
• Rebecca
• Zinesters, Ch. 6: Making the Game
• Selena
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ch. 8-14
• Naomi

Processing Sketch!

As promised, here is a zip file containing the Processing sketch that I created for us to experiment with. You should change the sketch as needed and experiment (it's also on Canvas)! I've also included the code underneath the cut!

BODY TIME - Another Extra

End of Week 5 - BODY TIME~!

It's the busiest time of the quarter! With so much going on this week, the blog post may get a little lengthy so bear with me...

Body Time - EXTRA

I just finished watching this incredible film from 1975: Organism. The film draws comparisons between macro and micro systems of organization. It seems an appropriate topic for this week's discussion of body time. Check it out!

Cool Events & Happenings

Earthlab Soil Symposium, April 26th-27th UCSC Farm & Garden

Interstices, Digital Art & New Media MFA Exhibition, 

April 27th-29th Digital Arts Research Center, UCSC

End of Weeeeek 4 and Performance/Duration Time

Andrew Eccles 

This week, we focused on performance and duration as embodied time, using our own bodies to create the art. Our current project (due by Tuesday morning) is a self-actualized performance.

In section we looked at an endurance performance artist named Cassils, whose work is centralized around the body and gender. As a non-binary artist, Cassils is focused on shaping, distorting, and performing the body to extremes (also mentioned in last week's section):

Becoming An Image, Cassils

We have a group of readings/reading presenters for next week:

• 10 Radical Women Video Artists (Found here), Presenter: Bryan
• A Brief History of Women in Video Art (Found here), Presenter: Amber
• In Defense of Performance Art (Found here), Presenter: Sunny
• Zinesters, Ch. 4: Changing the Game, Presenter: Josefina

Only one week away from MidQuarter!

Week 4 - Duration Performance!

Moving on from last week's found footage project, we concluded with a group exercise in giving feedback. The assignments looked incredible! Everyone seemed to really enjoy concentrating on intensity of sound, video, and mood. We also had reading presentations from the History of Early Cinema and Ch. 4 of Video Game Zinesters.

Yoko Ono's Cut Piece

This week's focus is Body Time. Individual bodies experience time in different ways. The goal of our next assignment is create a performance that explores time as it relates to our bodies. The length of the performance will determine the length of the video. 

In lecture and readings this week, we will be exploring performance art as a time-based medium. Performance Art began during the 1960's in an attempt to break away from conventionally accepted art forms. Whether performances were staged live, recorded, or mixed with video software, many artists focused on the body as the means to create their work. 

Cassils.Net

Readers/Readings for next week:

• 10 Radical Women Video Artists (Bryan)
• A Brief History of Women in Video Art (Amber)
• In Defense of Performance Art (Sunny)
• Zinesters, Chapter 4: Changing the Game (Josefina)

Finishing Up Week 3!

Today in section, students have been gathering materials for Assignment #3 - the Found Video (due 4/24 by 9am). The video must contain 3 found videos and 3 found audios with a maximum duration of 1 minute. Our theme for this assignment is INTENSITY.

Most students will be making their work in iMovie, so here are some tutorials in case you need assistance:

• iMovie Full Tutorial for Beginners
• Exporting your iMovie Library
• Upload A Video to YouTube

Once you have finished your assignment, be sure to post a link to your blogs so that I can find it and give you feedback!

Next week's readings and reading presenters are:

• The History of Early Cinema (Found Here)
• Presenter: Loey
• Rise of The Video Game Zinesters, Chpt 3: What is it Good For?
• Presenter: Palmer

Remember to post reading responses each week to your blogs before section! Good luck on your found videos!

First Assignment Due! Beginning of Week 3~

We are wrapping up our Week 2 Assignment on Time & Motion with a short in-class critique! We will form small crit groups. Each group will discuss everyone's assignment, then select a representative juror to walk around the room and select an artwork. Selected artworks are discussed by the entire section.

Featured Artworks:

• Jake's Animation of My Day
• Lisa's Daily Routine
• Rebecca's Daily Routine
• Naomi's Daily Routine/Ritual
  

Then, we have reading presentations from students on last week's readings: Busting the Tube; A Brief History of Video Art by Kate Horsfield and Chapter 2 of Rise of the Video Game Zinesters with Anna Anthropy.

As a group, we discussed the important of Marshall McLuhan's thoughts on media as extension of the body and mind, the history of video art, and the effects of widespread access to information and media. Our response to Chapter 2 of Rise of the Video Game Zinesters was a discussion of the history of games. Although not all of us have a history with video games, we are interested in games that give us different experiences and representations than we are used to.

Just as a reminder: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters is required reading for this course and you will have to purchase or rent the book for the remainder of the readings!

The theme of Week 3 is Narrative/Non-Narrative Time

Assignment: Using found material from Archive.org create a short video on a theme developed in section. Use the theme as a search term for the archive.

As a group, we have discussed and decided our theme for this assignment: opposites. We wrote several words that expressed our actions (with daily actions and longer actions): Eating/Drinking, Working, Searching, Walking, and Writing.
And emotions: Blissful, Flabbergasted/Overwhelmed, Curious, Ambitious, Relaxed

We decided that our actions are divided into two groups--daily rituals and long term actions--and our two emotional states--blissful/relaxed and overwhelmed/anxious. 

Using this theme, we will begin working on Assignment #2 (DUE April 24th @ 9AM)

Readings: 

• The History of Early Cinema (Found Here)
• Presenter: Loey
• Rise of The Video Game Zinesters, Chpt 3: What is it Good For?
• Presenter: Palmer

End of Week 2!

Welcome to the end of week 2! In today's sections, we will be working on Assignment 1:

• Part 1: Take a series of photos from your daily routine. DO NOT show images of yourself…just what you do. Create animation (Photoshop, iMovie). 
• Part 2: Using the materials from the video of your day re-edit them so that the narrative becomes non-linear. 

The theme for this assignment is open! I want all of you to consider rituals you may perform in your daily life or methods of changing your mood and what they are. (You may also be interested in the meaning of a dérive and the situationists). The assignment does not have to be an entire day, but can be one small part.

To submit your assignment, you must post either the video or a link to the video in your blog. The limit size for files on your blog is 100MB, so you will likely have to upload a video to YouTube (or another platform). You can follow a tutorial here to upload video. You can choose whether you want your video to be public or unlisted but if the video is private, I won't be able to see it.

The assignment should be posted to your blog by this Tuesday (4/17) by 9AM.

Next week's readings and reading presenters are:

• Busting the Tube; A Brief History of Video Art.pdf
• Presenter: Aiden Durkin 
• Rise of The Video Game Zinesters: Chpt 2: The History of Magic
• Presenter: Lisa Ho 

Reading presenters should prepare a short description of the text for class and ask at least 1-2 questions or make observations for their peers that are related to the reading. These questions can be something that interested you in the text, parts you did not quite understand, or ideas that you were inspired by. All students are still responsible for posting reading responses to their personal blog.

The response should be posted to your blog by this Tuesday (4/17) by 9AM.

Here is a link to a tutorial you may need: Move Your iMovie Library

As always, if you have any questions feel free to email me!

Today's Tutorial: iMovie & Reaction Gif

In today's section, we responded last week's readings about time, memory, media, and representation. As a group, we are thinking about the details that make up our daily lives, how we see our experiences represented, and limitations on those experiences through media we are exposed to. 

In our work, we made a short film using iMovie and created a reaction gif from the video using Photoshop. Here are some tutorials if you missed it!

Using iMovie

Importing Video Frames to Layers in Photoshop

Additionally, we are thinking about Assignment #1 (due next Tuesday @9am): making a timeline of our routines and what rituals and daily practices we participate in. What are the important details in our daily lives that are part of who we are?

Week 1 - Introduction to Time Readings

Content

• Plato’s Cave
• PLATO - Allegory of the Cave Animated)
• The Perception of Time
• https://www.kanopy.com/product/perception-time
• Keeping Time
• https://www.kanopy.com/product/keeping-time
• A Brief History of Time
• https://www.kanopy.com/product/brief-history-time

Reading

• Funes, the Memorious (Funes el memorioso) by Jorges Luis Borges
• 10-Point Plan for Video by Vito Acconci
• Rise of the Videogame Zinesters - Chpt 1: The Problem with Video Games

Themes: Time, perception, accuracy, memory, creativity/artistry, representation

First Section Day

Hello, my name is Colleen Jennings!

My preferred pronouns are she, her.
I am the TA for 4D Foundations at UCSC and my favorite movie is the Sound of Music.