Video Artist: Nam Jun Paik

He's considered to be the first video artist. I did a research project on him last semester so I'm familiar with his work. He made many video installations and created TV robots. He's influential to me because he was a pioneer in the whole area of video art. His way of thinking, to always keep experimenting inspires me to not stand still, to not do what I know.

Video Artist: Bill Viola

He's another pioneer in video art. Bill Viola's work is slow moving but full of beautiful imagery. His '91 piece, The Passing is a big inspiration for my next project. He uses the camera as a tool to sharing his exact perspective. In one scene he has it strapped to his head and I think it's both hilarious and an amazing technique.

The idea:
My next piece will be a video of transitions. I want to shoot it all from a first person point of view, but I want the scenes to merge into each other. I want to make it seamless. I want one scene to roll into the next. For instance, in one scene I could be riding my bike into a dark tunnel, and once it goes completely to black another scene will start out in the dark but maybe I'll then be walking in a field at night. I want it to seem loosely based in reality, but more stream of conscious, walking through a dream type of mindset. One of the artists I'm looking at has a very slow style, he's not afraid to make the viewer sit and contemplate what exactly is going on. I'm going to attempt the same thing, but have lots of other fast shots to keep the attention.

Another aspect of photography that has always bored me is the static nature of the photo itself. There are ways around this, such as dragging the shutter to capture movement, but there are only so many times you can see pictures like these before you get bored. With the transitions project, I'd like to break the notion that photos are only stills of life. By putting two images together and flashing them back and forth, it suddenly takes on a 3rd dimension. It adds a different kind of depth you can't see in only one photo. I've always wanted to stay away from the single photo. The marriage of digital technology and photography opens doors for new kinds of experimentation. With this process, I want to give a live action element to the photo. It's a still photo, but it's constantly in flux so it's like a .2 second time frame is repeated over and over. This is another example of how such a brief moment of time can be made into a beautiful capture.

Transitions-

For this project I'd like to create a video using a technique I learned a while ago but never utilized. By offsetting the camera at small increments on the tripod, and playing the pictures back and forth in rapid succession it, (in a gif) it creates the illusion of a 3D space just inside the two pictures. I'd like to create a video putting together multiple images of this technique.

(if you want to see them more clearly, check out my other blog)
http://isawyouinmydream.blogspot.com/