For my portfolio I am striving to avoid digital methods. Focusing on thinking in terms of interaction, manipulation, and reaction. In spite of issues with accessibility, replicating the practices of artists who inspire my work seems to boast the importance of the modern difficulty accessing and attempting analog practices. I like the struggle, and as my work focuses on exploration rather than realization I believe that barriers are important in leading to greater discovery. Abstraction is a key theme for the start of the two projects for my portfolio submission. I am focusing on Dadaism as the reference point, focusing on the anti in creation and early works from Viking Eggeling and Hans Ritcher.

My film piece for this portfolio module will emphasize the exploration of perception in environment. The analogy I am following through this project is the positive and negative experience at the beach. I recently had a conversation with a friend about a trip around South East Asia, and the issue of negative travel companions came up. She had experienced reactions from a friend that would negate any positive experience she had, most notable being the negative reaction after recapping a day trip to a lovely beach on the coast in Sri Lanka. While her perception of the environment was fulfilling, peaceful, and positive his experience was entirely negative because of slight inconveniences, especially a wet towel. This triggered ideas surrounding how individual perception drives our interpretation and abstraction of natural environments. I am planning on expressing this thought through the abstraction of film. Shooting an environment on 8mm or 16mm film stock (rather than 35mm because its more cost effective) and then abstracting the footage by carving my own drawings and animations frame by frame will allow me to illustrate this sort of dadaist and eccentric reaction to landscape. Imperfection and personality will hopefully overlap the captured footage.

This practice coincides with early abstract film works from the 1920s including Hans Richter’s Filmstudie and Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale. However, most notably, the practice of using sharp objects to etch figures onto film is most notably comparable to Len Lye’s work Free Radicals from 1958. Light and dark, the two basic principles of working with film, presented through white figures after scrapping off the exposable material on film stock. The work conveys rhythm and movement in a very primitive manner, and that approach appeals to me in being able to convey personal reaction and abstraction to the material itself, overlapping with the environment in the finished project.

Attempting to use film stock is a dedication to the work of early visual music artists and experimental film makers that have inspired my artwork in the past. There is a quality in analog work that is a byproduct of linking the artist and the material physically that appeals to how artworks resonate with me. I am researching and looking into using either 16mm or preferably 8mm film because of accessibility, however, there are still a lot of costs involved.

Following precedence set by Len Lye, I am also designing a tool to use when etching into the film stock at a very small scale. While he was known to have used arrowheads in his work Free Radicals, I will utilize a fine needle, so that I can also set up a magnifying glass to ensure access to detail when animating over the exposed film stock. I am also working on designing stencils to use over certain frames. Inspired by works from Ed Ruscha, I am drawn to the perfection set by stencils, especially ones that are designed alongside an artwork. However, I am aware that in designing and cutting stencils using a laser cutter, I will stray away from the analog approach inspired by the above mentioned works.

‘Art creates change, but it should not be in the hands of the person who experiences it, not at the command of another, whether artist or funder.’ (François Matarasso, 2019) .

The goal from this exercise in reflection is to find what power lies in what change my practice strives cause. This is either forced or by reaction. I don’t feel as if my work is an attempt to cause change. I think it is only an exploration, whether of my self, emotions, experiences, or location. However, recently I have been experimenting with visual music and animation alongside audio works and it reflecting on past work and rewatching works that I have ‘completed’ I have discovered new experiences through them, separate from the processes I encountered during the process of creating them. In finding meditation, emptiness, and wandering in my own work, I have been able to realize the transition that occurs once something is released from the clutches of my desk or Logic session. Despite not attempting to incite change, I believe that change can be a byproduct of honest art. Is forced change even possible? Or does it have to be a byproduct of a genuine attempt to discover or convey something that isn’t otherwise understood. I believe that art can create change; change is a byproduct through genuine expression, truth, dedication, and exploration.