Web Cinema

After watching/reading/experiencing Boulevard by Peter Horvath, I wondered how it was much different than a movie trailer. Then I thought, how many movie trailers have I seen that have three screens and poetry? Probably zero, but the piece does have a trailer like feeling which turned me off at first because I wanted to see cinema done in way I had never seen it done before. As I experienced more and more of his work, each piece seemed to enrich and build upon the previous ones; therefore Horvath’s work seems to work better for me when analyzed in context as a group as opposed to individually.

Although Horvath’s work is very visually driven, I was interested in his use of sounds in his projects. The mood is quickly set, if not dictated by music in pieces like Boulevard, Tenderly Yours and Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects. In Boulevard and Tenderly Yours the music and voice overs are slow, sad and reflective whereas the music in Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects is first triumphant then eerie. By itself, the music in Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects would almost be happy and upbeat, but grouped with the images of war and destruction, the tone moves quickly from happy to frightening and sad. The soundtrack of Boulevard and Tenderly Yours on the other hand, fit perfectly with the images of isolated, confused and sad individuals lost in an isolated, confused and sad world. The text and voice over in these two pieces appear in incredibly strategic moments to not only assist in telling the story but to be apart of the story as well. For example, in Tenderly Yours the womans's voice disappears when the woman disappears.

Text in Triptych: Motion Stillness Resistance appears in the title while also acting as labels for the different looping video panels. Unless text appears in one of the semi-randomly generated videos, this is the only text that appears in the piece. It is enough however, to draw attention to how similar motion, stillness and resistance are to each other. In motion there is stillness, in stillness there is motion and in resistance there is stillness and motion, usually in conflict. This piece also uses video and text to expose the arbitrary nature of labels. Had he chosen something like: Nature, Culture and Society, I probably could have made an argument about how these made sense as well. At first I did not see the point in the random and endless looping of the video, but now I see it as relating to this idea of arbitrary labeling in relation to understanding the world.

As far as the other artists go, I had seen the work of YHChang before so I didn’t want to spend too much time talking about it. Unfortunately, the more I see of her work, the less I enjoy it. Mostly because much of the pleasure of Chang's work is derived from the element of surprise. The first time I saw Dakota, I thought the pacing and strange way not every word could not be quite read, was exciting and interesting. Also exciting and interesting were the words themselves, as they are often racy and as unexpected as the motion of the work. Then after seeing the same technique over and over in every piece, it gets less and less interesting. So in a way I see Chang’s collective works to function in the opposite way as Horvath’s collective works.

I will continue my search for additional web cinema this week and post them here as I find them.