Isidore Isou you disturb me a bit!

Week 4

There is definitely no better idea than to start to watch Venom and Eternity from Isidore Isou on a Friday night at midnight. Yes, that's exactly what I did this week. In the beginning I hardly could stay awake and find everything a bit odd that I saw. I was also irritated by the French language (which I haven't spoken for a while and forgotten a lot) and the hardly readable subtitles in English. The story of the second part with his girlfriends then got me and the third part finally convinced me that I actually liked what I have just watched. Everything made a bit more sense than in the beginning and I understood that he was actually showing new and revolutionary forms of making cinema. I also had to laugh at a lot of points, especially when he performed the "letterisme". I'm not sure if it was his fault though that I woke up the next morning from very strange dreams!

What happens when you turn on the light?

Week 3

Concerning my third project idea of the word campaign I have some additional ideas to fill the concept with life. The name of the project "what happens when you turn on the light" describes the dark figure of sexual assaults and rapes in the "civilized" western societies. Especially because of the happenings that took place in Germany on New Years Eve 2016 and even more afterwards - also made-up ones - there is a big discussion about "foreigners" or refugees that come to rape women just because they're not used to our "open" culture. But there has never been a big discussion about that rape, sexual assault or domestic abuse against women is taking place everyday - often trough friends, partners or family members - and that those men who now scream "keep your hands off our women" are partly the first who would grope someone in a club or worse. Often women are too afraid to report their abusers or simply just want to forget about it. That is why the awareness of these things taking place is quite low. The picture where the light has been turned on could for example show this situation in a club, or a situation at a home etc.

About revolution

Week 3

"In the end, this is a story about three crimes. It is also a story about the promiscuity of the Internet, the usefulness of images, and the ways in which they inform, inflect, and hijack how we understand suffering in faraway places."

When I read the article of Negar Azimi "Iran in Pictures - Social Suffering and Three Sets of Images" I was really taken in it. First of all, I haven't heard of all three cases that have been discussed there: the hanging of two gay teenagers called Asgari and Mahoni, the death sentenced Batebi who took part in a student protest and at least Neda Agha-Soltan who got shot during a street demonstration, everything taking place in Iran. All three became figures for the human rights movement in Iran through modern techniques like photo and video and the distribution over social networks. Apart from that I really liked the questioning viewpoint from that reading, that threw up questions like: what about the rape allegation towards the two gay teenagers, that apparently should have raped a 13 year-old boy? Or what if Neda didn't actually attend the demonstration, but was just driving through with her car? Nobody has really mentioned that in their distributed media. But the message at the end is clear: It doesn't really matter if they can change something to the good and if it is just raising awareness.

In this coherence I also really liked to watch the film about Gene Sharp "How to Start a Revolution" by Ruaridh Arrow. The ideas of Gene Sharp really makes one to hope and believe in a better future, the film itself is made up like a promotion and questionable with really dramatic music and a partial view. The trailer can be seen here:

Using Muse and After Effects

Week 3

For the first time in my life I used Adobe Muse and I was really excited to do so! Before that I always planted my designs in Adobe Photoshop and translated those into HTML and CSS with the help of Adobe Dreamweaver or other programming software. This is a bit inconvenient and also requires programming knowledge. Not so in Muse. Being already familiar with the Adobe products, the operating with the software was quite intuitive and easy for me. You don't need to have any programming skills, you can just start to make your design as you wish it should look like. Muse is doing the rest and "translates" everything in the background, so you have an immediate interactive site after the principle "what you see is what you get". It gets a bit more difficult when you want to customize certain "modules" that are pre-designed by the software. But after engaging with it for a while I found everything I wanted to find and adapted it to my conception. To not just have an experiment or "test site", I already implemented space to present my project ideas there. Here are two screenshots of my result - from the home site and a sub site, representing the description of my ideas:

After having experimented with that we took a look at Adobe After Effects, that I - until that moment - was also unfamiliar with. By using it I noticed a strong similarity to Adobe Premiere, which I had worked with before to make some short films with animations. This also was quite nice to use therefore and I immediately decided to use it for the Valentine's garbage bag project I made before. At the moment I'm thinking about implementing this in one of my ideas I've already mentioned. I will write about that more specifically in another post. Here is a screenshot from my first work with After Effects:

How I spent my Valentine's Day

Week 2

In week two we had to perform a gesture in a space, which is accessible in our daily lives and keep a record of it. I chose to take a filled garbage bag out to a nice day to the Brighton Marina – conveniently it was Valentine’s Day! A friend of mine was visiting for a week and consented to help me with the project. So we started our trip, pretending to not know each other.

Firstly, we went to the bus stop on Elm Grove to catch a bus to the Marina. She always walked past me with a little distance, secretly taking photos of me whilst pretending to stare at her phone. We went on the bus and got out at the Marina, strolling along the ships. My friend was always behind me. We even got into a café, then finally took the bus back and got rid of the garbage bin.

Whilst walking around we made several observations. In general, people didn’t react a lot. If any we got some stares. Still noticeable was something in the eyes of passengers, like if they noticed but didn’t want to take a closer look. Those glances and stares got more numerous at the bus stop and in the bus, but we definitely got the most in the café: People were obviously irritated of a garbage bag in that location. Some people laughed, as can be seen on some of the photos we took, others were irritated by the person following me and “staring at her phone”. Some of them probably understood that she actually photographed or filmed me, some maybe just noticed something odd in the whole situation. This is also visible on some of our photos, as the passengers stare directly into the camera. My friend told me later that it was hard for her to act non-involved. Still we had a lot of fun that day but were also happy to finally throw the garbage bag into where it belongs to – the garbage bin.

The whole story can be seen in the following pictures:

My head is sparkling!

Week 1

In week one we were asked to develop some ideas for a possible project, as I also mentioned in my last post. Here I proudly present the results:

Idea 1: Illustrated / animated movie

Inspired by a video about the current refugee crisis on YouTube I’d love to build my project on a movie-based idea, which is implemented through illustrations and/or animations. What I like most about this approach is that a difficult issue can be depicted in a simple and “entertaining” way – if you do it right of course – which makes it accessible resp. understandable for a wider public. This, in addition, is possible through an open distribution way: Social media. Although here applies the way of doing it right as well, namely getting a lot of views. I worked with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Premiere Pro before and I really liked the software, but I didn’t have the change to deepen my knowledge and experience with it. Therefore, a project including these programmes would be a great opportunity.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOnXh3NN9w

Idea 2: Creation of a meme 

As a huge fan of memes I would also like to do a project considering these in an activist sense. The inspiration for this in particular I also got through a video on YouTube, but I’ve also worked on a meme project last term, albeit in different circumstances. I have got some experiences with Adobe Photoshop and I really like to work and experience more with it. One approach could be to generate the “raw” material for a meme myself (through photography or filming), another one could be to search online for material concerning a certain topic.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU9HqfNBdIk

Idea 3: Word campaign

The inspiration for this idea came out of the reading from Michel de Certeau “General introduction to the practice of everyday life” on page 71 where he states: “It is a sort of epic of the eye and of the impulse to read”. Therefore a wording / sentence campaign could be established, supplemented by adequate photo material. A picture that immediately came to my mind was a stonewall in an empty dark room with illuminated letters on it, for example neon tubes. The letters build a sentence, which carry a message, depending on the subject. Hereby I could take the photos myself and edit them with Adobe Photoshop. They could be designed for real poster print outs (e.g. for placing them in public spaces) or just to be uploaded in an online gallery.

Source: de Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, pp. xi – xxiv)

The introduction was spacetastic!

Week 1

Back to uni in 2016 and immediately having a new module: Activist Media Practice. What sounded promising according to its description turned out to be really interesting already in the first meeting. I was literally glowing by inspiration when talking through the course plan, especially the prospect of working a lot with film, sound and photo software, whereby everybody is asked to use their creativity in a way that works best for each.

After the introduction we built groups and looked at some parts of the reading "General introduction to the practice of everyday life" from Michel de Certeau. My group and I had to distinguish the terms "place" and "space", which can be summarized by his own words "place is a practiced space". Afterwards I took a walk around uni with Hongfei in order to find some interesting spaces that we can record and analyze. We found a lot, like illustrated or worded street signs, paths, sitting areas and various colored recycle bins - our favorite however was a bike shelter, which became a particular space due to its construction and the functions coming with it.

Here are pictures from our findings:



Inspired by some video material on YouTube I am trying to think of three ideas at the moment which I could work out for a project. In particular I really liked an animated video about the European refugee crisis at the moment, which can be seen here. I'd love to experiment with illustrations, but also with real film material, maybe put them together as well. Afterwards, I will have a closer look at the Certeau reading and hopefully work out a third idea from it.