2nd GENERATION VIDEO ARTISTS AND CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ARTISTS

Important and influential 2nd GENERATION VIDEO ARTISTS AND CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ARTISTS:


Marina Abramovic : Starting out as a painter, Abramović subsequently shifted her focus to conceptual work, sound installations and mainly performances. She started in 1973 performing several works such as"Rhythm", in which she intended to stretch the limits of her body and mind. This theme appears in all her work, especially in her collaborative work with Ulay.


Dara Birnbaum : appropriates the television images and works with them in a subversive way, but her explicit intention is to show its superficiality and to unmask its manipulative methods.


John Cage : The American composer John Cage, to whom every kind of sound was considered to be music music, is probably best known for breaking the boundaries between music, performance, noise and sound.


Sophie Calle : Consciously conceals the borders between art and life, fiction and reality, and between the private and public. Transforms her daily life with a series of performances, usually executed as a combination of texts and photographs.


Gary Hill : began working with video, text and sound in 1973 and has produced a major body of single-channel videotapes and video installations that includes some of the most significant works in the field of video art. 


Pierre Huyghe : Much of Huyghe's work examines the structural properties of film and its problematic relationship to reality. His work frequently mixes fact with fiction.


Paul McCarthy : performance work in the 70s; in late 80s video/performance installations.


Pipilotti Rist : aesthetic language quite close to music videos through the combination of music, performance and electronic manipulation. 


Matthew Barney : He is best known as the producer and creator of the CREMASTER films, a series of five visually extravagant works created out of sequence (CREMASTER 4 began the cycle, followed by CREMASTER 1, etc.). The films generally feature Barney in myriad roles, including characters as diverse as a satyr, a magician, a ram, Harry Houdini, and even the infamous murderer Gary Gilmore. 


Shirin Neshat : one of a growing number of contemporary international artists whose work crosses boundaries of nationality, culture, and artistic medium. Using photography and video, she has produced a body of work that investigates the cultural conflicts resulting from the collision of tradition and modernity in the East and West. Neshat turned to the media of photography and video in an attempt to investigate the role of women and feminism in Islamic society as well as her own status as a self-imposed artist in exile.


Soda_Jerk :  remix artists who work across the media of video, photo-collage and installation. By atomising and reassembling recorded culture they aim to manufacture counter-mythologies of the past that open new possibilities for thinking the present. 


Bill Viola : "My work? - says Bill Viola - is focused on a process of self-discovery and self-realization. Video is part of my body. It is intuitive and subconscious." 




Contemporary video art, whilst still including single channel or multi channel works (video works played on the one or multiple screens), has extended into another newish art form; installation. This is where the videos are shown, either projected or on a monitor, amongst an environment incorporating sculptural elements, objects, or intervened space. The video may be projected onto everyday objects, such as in Pipilotti Rist's Himalaya Sisters Living Room, or onto effigies, such as Tony Oursler's many contemporary works.

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle is a pivotal contemporary work, in that it has the aura of a big budget Hollywood feature film/s, yet at it's centre it is conceptual and experimental.

Homework - Video Art

Search the VideoArtWorld website using the categories check boxes for video work which is related to your topic or project. Link it on your blog. Write a short 50-100 words on how this video made you feel.

(don't stop at one... if you find more, keep watching and researching!)

Compressing HD video

If you shot your video in High Definition then you will need to compress it using Compressor prior to importing into FCP. It is very easy to do, but time consuming.

TERMS USED BY COMPRESSOR

There are a few terms used by Compressor that you should feel comfortable with 

before you begin using it. 

A batch is the heart of the transcode process. It contains one or more source media 

files, which are the files you want to convert, or transcode, to another format. Each 

source media file creates its own job. This means that a batch can contain multiple jobs, 

with each job based on its own source media file. 

Each job also has at least one target. The targets define what sort of output file should be 

created by the transcoding process. You can have multiple targets assigned to a job, 

which means that you can easily create multiple output files, each with a different format. 

Each target has three parts: 

1. The setting:  The setting part of a target defines the encoder format that is used, as well 

as a number of other aspects, including a variety of filters and geometry attributes. 

2. The destination:  The destination part of a target defines where the output file is saved. 

It also defines the rules that are used to create the output filename. Compressor 

includes a preference setting that allows you to specify a default destination.

3. The output filename:  You can edit the output filename part of the target if for some 

reason you do not want to use the name generated based on the destination. 

Note:  You can transcode a job only after it has at least one setting assigned to it. 

QUICK AND EASY COMPRESSOR WORKFLOW

If you experience trouble you may need to drag and drop one by one. Sometimes the computer cannot handle such a big load and will crash.

Click on the Apple folder > Formats > Quicktime > Apple Prores 422

I would avoid the select all jobs as outlined about, instead I would drag and drop this into each clip. It is time consuming but it prevents your computer from crashing.

You may like to create a specific folder just for your compressed files so that they are easier to find when you are ready to import them into FCP.

• In the Destinations Tab > Custom. Click on the + button top right of the window > Local > your external hard drive and specific folder. 
• Do this individually again to prevent your computer from crashing.

Alternatively you can follow the instructions below as outlined in the manual.

Once you can see your jobs have been completed in the Batch Monitor you can close it and then close Compressor. You can save it as you quit the program if you wish, but it is not absolutely necessary if it has been done correctly. You can then import the Prores files into FCP following the instructions already outline in a previous tutorial.

Final Cut Interface

Early Video Art

I thought you guys might like to check out some early video artists who's work is YouTube...
Nam June Paik
Vito Acconci
Bruce Nauman
Dennis Oppenheim
VALIE EXPORT

A documentary on early experimentations in video art, titled The New Wave.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6


You might notice that early video art was used a lot for documenting performance art and body art and to comment critically on the media and television culture. Early video artists, such as Nam June Paik in Magnet TV 1965, and Peter Campus, also explored the technical boundaries of the medium.

Fluxus, an avant garde art group in the early to mid 1960s, included early video artists, performance artists and experimental film artists such as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell.

The library has some fantastic resources including 'Video Art' (Michael Rush, 2003) and 'Video Art, a guided tour' (Catherine Elwes, 2005), as well as some actually video art recordings.

Final Cut Pro - Getting started and online resources

Final Cut Pro can be daunting when you first use it. We will do our best to guide you through, but a very very good resource which you should also use is the Final Cut Pro manual which is available online. I have been using this program for years and I still refer to the manual as my bible!!

Video Format Basics - In Australia we use the PAL standard, at 25 frames per second. The aspect ratio of a video frame is width with respect to height, so Standard Definition video has an aspect ration of 4:3, while High Definition is 16:9.

INITIAL SET UP

When you open Final Cut Pro you will need to choose you initial settings (Final Cut Pro will prompt you to set this up upon opening if it is the first time you are using the program.)

You can read the full manual entry here, but below is a guide to easy setup:

Open Final Cut Pro. Menu bar > Final Cut Pro > Easy Set Up.

Now, the settings you chose will depend on the type of video you took, or the settings on your camera. Did you take a High Definition video? How many frames per second did you shoot your video in?

Change the format and the rate according to the camera's settings.

If you shot in High Definition, chose HD. Choose the frame rate matching that of your camera settings. Use HDV - 1080p 25.

Otherwise, choose PAL, rate should be 25 and use DV-PAL.

It is sometimes difficult to understand which settings to use. If you have chosen a setting that doesn't match the footage you end up importing, FCP will change it once you have started to work with the footage in the sequence.

The next thing you need to do is set your scratch disk. This is the where FCP will save your work, and it should be where you keep you clips. Ideally this will be your external hard drive. A USB stick does not work the same way as an exHD in this case.

Menu bar > Final Cut Pro > System Settings.

Click SET and locate your Hard Drive, you can even create a new folder to save all of your FCP documents in.

Click CLEAR on Mac HD (the computer's hard drive), so that it only saves to your hard drive.

Click OK.

EXPLORING THE FCP WORKSPACE

Each of the windows can be opened or closed individually. If you accidentally close the browser for example, you can reopen it by menu bar > window > browser. If you want to hide all of the windows: menu bar > final cut pro > hide final cut pro (the short cut is command H).






IMPORTING CLIPS
Make sure you have your video clips, still images and sound/music saved onto your hard drive.
File > Import > Files.
Locate your clips. You can select more than one by holding down the shift key.
Your files (clips, images or sounds) will appear in the bin in the browser window.




 If you double click on a clip/image/sound it will open in the Viewer window, where you can watch/listen. 

 
EDITING CLIPS
You can mark in where you want your clip to begin and out where you want it to end, then click and drag the clip from the viewer down to the timeline.


You can also drag and drop clips straight from your bin into the timeline.


The beauty of FCP is that it is a non-linear editing program, which means you can work on multiple scenes/sequences at once, then arrange them in order later. To open another sequence File > New > Sequence.


TIMELINE

You can have layers of clips, like in photoshop, just drag and drop the second clip above the first (not directly on top, but just above to create a v2 (video 2) in the timeline. The top clip will be the only one visible until you change the composite mode or resize or cut the clip (which we will cover soon).



You can drag the clips to any position within the timeline. If you have linked selection on the audio will move with the video (and vice versa), if it is off, you can separate the video from the audio (including deleting it from the timeline).

Having snapping on means when you move clips around it will snap to the edit, marker or playhead it is closest to.




TOOLS
The 2 most common tools you will use are the selection tool and the razor blade tool.

The selection tool has the same function as in all of the other programs we have been using thus far.
The razor blade tool is used to cut your clips for editing. It allows you to cut unwanted footage from your timeline. 
You can cut a clip anywhere in your timeline. Make 2 cuts and delete in between (select section to be deleted with the selection tool and hit delete on the keyboard). You can then simply drag the clip to meet up with the previous edit.

 

Razor Blade All: Cuts all clip items on all tracks at the point where you click in the Timeline.

If you delete too much of a clip, you can simply click on the edge of the clip and drag it to where you want the clip to end. The beauty of non-destructive editing!! As you move your arrow over a clip it changes from an arrow (around the center of the clip) to a Resize pointer (at either the beginning or the end of the clip).

Another interesting and easy effect.

In the bottom left hand corner of the window you will see this little tool.

If you click on it a white line will appear in your timeline.

Then select the pen tool.

You can then add keyframes to the white line with the pen tool.

If you drag a keyframe down to the bottom of the timeline, it reduces the opacity of the video.

This is really useful to fade in and out, and also to lay one video over another.

Stop Motion Animation

Taking your photos
You have a couple of options here, depending on your subject matter.

i. Most digital cameras have a "shutter burst" or multi-shot function, where by holding down the shutter button it takes a burst of photos in rapid succession. This is a good option if you are using an animated object (for example a person or a moving object like a car).

ii. Your other option is to set your camera up on a tripod in front of your inanimate object. Take a photo, move your object slightly, take another photo, move your object slightly... repeat.

Remember, that a moving image is generally 25 frames per second. That's 100 pictures for 4 seconds. Or 1500 for 1 minute! For stop motion, we don't have to adhere to this too closely, as it is the stop part which gives it its character. So you might like to opt for half that, so 12 frames per second, for example, is perfect for Stop Motion.

Editing your images
You can edit your photos in photoshop if you want to, but remember you will need to be consistent, it may look odd if you only edit a couple and not the rest. Save as jpgs.

Putting it altogether
Open Final Cut Pro. First things first, click on Final Cut Pro in the menu bar > User preferences > Editing tab > Still/freeze duration. Change the time for how long you want your individual photos to play for. It is in the format of hh:mm:ss:ff so you will change the frames. If you are working to 12 frames per second for example, it would be 00:00:00:02 (as there are 24 or 25 frames per second).




Import all of your photos. File > import > Files. You can select more than one by holding down the shift key. It is a good idea to have them in order already, so that when you start putting them together in your timeline you won't have to search, and you can just simply select them all and drag and drop into your timeline.

You can add effects, the easiest way to do this is to export your animation as a Quicktime, then import it back into Final Cut, then add the effect to the whole clip. Export again as a Quicktime when complete.

You may also like to have music, if it is an mp3 or wav you can simply drag and drop the music file into your timeline.