My latest video is a continuation of what I've been doing this year in all my media studies classes, trying to string together images to make a new kind of whole. I wanted the video to be loosely held together by different types of transitions and associations rather than a story or plot, like more of a video montage. I wanted to play with how different videos can fit together and what kind of space and dimension it can create.

Divisions 2 from Miharu Kato on Vimeo.

Untitled from Miharu Kato on Vimeo.

a little preview video.

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/

I've always been interested in the unknown. A mysterious picture leaves more to the imagination than something concrete. That is something that always puzzled me about photography until recently, how to control the viewers imagination. Too many pictures are reality based. Illustrators and painters have it good, they can create anything they see in their mind, however real or fantasy based it may be. Photographers have to find ways to trick the viewers into believing what they are seeing is straight from my mind. The photo shoot happens in reality, but as a photographer my goal is to make them forget that.
Previously, I have used light as the element to create the atmosphere of the unknown. The series builds up through the repetition of images, an anonymous body moving toward the one source of light. I'm using a brief moment in time to convey an important change or realization in the man's life. Though he is only walking forward, he has accepted whatever is to happen to him after this event.

My music genre is Afrobeat. The whole of Afrobeat was founded by a man named Fela Kuti, and still continues to this day by his two sons and plenty of other bands that have been inspired by him.

When Fela performed live, he would often paint his face in an African tribal style to bring him closer to his ancestors. This inspired me to go find some African prints, and create a type of musical collage. My intent was to create something simple, but at the same time very visually stimulating. I wanted to transform these prints into something a bit trippier and modernized, to bring his music to a more current style.