LASERS!

For my final, I set out to crowd source what would hopefully be deemed The BEST Music Video Ever to be created.

I set out with nothing but a blog and ambition, much like I had a few years ago when starting the This Dance is a Cliché project. With TDIAC, I simply had an idea, set up a blog, and started emailing people. It took a while to really take off, but within a few months I had received emails from people in other countries, who weren’t even connected to anyone I had met. I had been written about on random blogs. The link had changed hands hundreds of times and was far removed from its original source.

I wanted to use this same model, prompting people to send in just a few seconds a piece of their quintessential video moments (for me, inspired by Jeffery Osborne’s “Stay With Me Tonight” video, which I think is the epitome of 80s videos all in one package: the lead singer lip syncing down a crowded street, active outdoor scenes, a live concert scene, sychronized jazz choreography with dancers in shiny bodysuits …).

I set up a Tumblr blog with instructions for people to create short videos, upload them to Youtube or Vimeo, then send me the links. I emphasized that the quality of the video was unimportant and that the content was key. I later set up a Facebook page for the project, allowing even a lower barrier to entry because it is possible to record video directly into Facebook.

I was to take on the role as director, and with this role came a few self-imposed rules:
-All submissions must be crowdsourced. No clipping pre-existing material was allowed.
-All solicitations for submissions must happen online. Shoving a camera in someone’s face does not count.
-All submissions received must be used.

I emailed dance friends, friends who had contributed to TDIAC, the ITP student list, used Facebook and Twitter and tried to get the word out as much a possible without being utterly annoying (even though I think I probably was).

After 2.5 weeks, I was left with only 7 submissions, or roughly one submission every other day. But most of them were really good. A couple were filmed with high quality cameras and came to me edited with music already, leaving me with pretty great content to cut.

As an experiment to attempt to get more submissions, I also tried to crowdsource via Mechanical Turk, offering $1 per HIT. After 24 hours, I only received two results, and they did not meet my criteria. This was sort of a control to test my instruction set and made me realize that creative interpretation is key to this process. It can’t really be broken down in a set of steps like a recipe.

My original plan, since this was a music video, was to allow for kind of a “glitch effect” with the audio. Each clip was expected to have different audio, and I was going to just let the audio in each clip clash. I asked for the submissions to be set to music, but of course not everyone followed the rules. After compiling my submissions, I really only had 3 that had audio at all, and I was also seeing an emerging club theme happening, so I decided to just use one audio source, which came along with Rick Wray’s submission. I also padded the visuals with a couple iPhone videos of my own.

I plan to keep the project going and will post new iterations of the video (or maybe start from scratch with the next round of submissions).

Since submissions came through Facebook and email, I haven’t yet posted all of them on the blog, but all of the pieces will soon be dissected and posted. It would also be wise to have a simple FTP upload process for submissions as this project moves forward, since I did have a couple of people tell me they tried to email me movie files directly, and they were obviously too big. Reducing the steps involved in the submission process may further lower the barrier to entry, allowing for more spontaneous submissions.

So, without further delay, here is my version of THE BEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER:

Downloadable here: How Close is Too Close_sarahdahnke

I wrote about this in great detail in my journal, but essentially I continued playing with this idea of a permeable membrane, cutting holes into the Lycra to allow actual visible penetration. This also gave the dancers an authentic physical task: use your upper body to push through this fabric. (In the second video, they were to use their lower bodies.) While this process may seem tangentially related to my initial thesis proposal, to me it is very much along the same lines. It provides a very tangible way to visualize tension. It also visualizes the idea of the permeable membrane, where some pieces of ourselves are allowed through, while others are not … an idea that easily translates to more abstract ideas, such as that of personal identity. It also creates a universal form between the dancers, where they no longer have human-like characteristics that are easily identifiable or categorized. They become amorphous blobs, formless, faceless and without ethnicity.

Rehearsal 11.17.10 from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

Rehearsal 11.17.10 from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

For this assignment, I decided to explore with the content from my self-portrait, utilizing the physical frames from the video shoot as the found object(s). The narrative already existed, abstractly improvising with the idea of frames, the way people are put into frames based on others’ perception, the way we are forced into frames when we have to define our own identities, and this struggle that exists trying to fit.

I built it out, first as an installation on the wall, mapping each video to the size of the frame. Some of the frames contain a reedited video loop from the full-length video, while others directly reference the frame they are in. (For example, the white frame contains only video of me with the white frame.)

Then I built it out into a more three-dimensional space, by mapping three more video panels into frames on a table. I intended on this being a nice looking bedside table, reminiscent of my grandma’s house that always had tons of photo frames on the tables, but I needed the table to be at a height that would hit the projector’s beam. I wanted to avoid having a second projector and/or computer in this scenario to streamline the equipment side of things.

The full picture involves the wall and table installations together. The wall installation’s video loops flash on and off at points, allowing the viewer to sometimes only see a portion of the footage. I think this helps not be overwhelmed with the amount of videos playing simultaneously.

untitled 2 from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

How Close is Too Close?
A Project Proposal by Sarah Dahnke

Introduction to concept:
In the summer of 2010, a controversy erupted in the media regarding a proposed multi-faith Islamic cultural center and mosque and its proximity to the former site of the World Trade Center. Many of the opposition parties opposed such an institution being established on “hallowed ground.” While the World Trade Center attacks that occurred on September 11 were horrific and devastating to Americans all over, does this attack make the former site of a commercial office building hallowed, a word that by definition means holy, consecrated or sacred. Can a space that is deemed special become hallowed ground to an individual? What does hallowed ground look like to the average New Yorker?
After crowdsourcing some ideas, I determined many New Yorkers consider spaces of peace and tranquility to be hallowed. With this in mind, I propose a series of capsule experiences that will attempt to bring this state of mind to public spaces, amidst the chaos of downtown Manhattan. Each capsule will be treated both as if it is a set for a performance and also as a piece of public art.

Capsules:
Each capsule will exist inside of a geodesic dome, often called a “zen dome.” This allows for some isolation from the outside world. Each dome will be approximately 10 feet in diameter and 7-8 feet tall.

I began some really rough mock ups of what the architecture might look like in the various spaces along One Liberty Plaza:

Obviously I need to go further with my mock-ups, actually inserting proposed imagery/performance ideas. This is my next step, as well as continuing to refine my concept.

Miranda July:
Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know(2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, (Scribner, 2007) won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. In 2002 July created the participatory website, learningtoloveyoumore, with artist Harrell Fletcher, and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel). Eleven Heavy Things, an interactive sculpture garden she designed for the 2009 Venice Biennale, is on view in Union Square in New York for the summer of 2010. Raised in Berkeley, California, she currently lives in Los Angeles where she is making her second feature film, The Future.
Ed note: This is technically just her bio, which she also uses as an artist statement.

Ralph Lemon:
My creative process entails a vigorous collision of creative cultures and inspired conversations that dictate how the work is constructed, and how it will be shared with public audiences. I am always asking how can an intensive artistic research and immediate art-making process translate to the staged realm of a theater or gallery? This ongoing struggle between process and production creates a tension that is a vital element in all of my artistic work.
Ed note: I love this one.

Sophie Calle:
Since the late 1970s, Sophie Calle has made work that investigates provocative and often controversial methods for confronting her emotional and psychological life. She is well-known for her sleuth-like explorations of human relationships, which led her to follow a stranger in the streets of Venice and document his every move, or to find work as a hotel chambermaid in order to photograph the belongings of the hotel’s guests. Calle’s work has been shown in international venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museum Boymans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), among others.

I rewrote my artist statement, as the one I’ve been using for the past couple of years doesn’t really reflect my work anymore. It’s still a rough draft, but here it is for now:
I make performances and objects for performance that involve connections between people—abstract, emotional connections as well as physical connections. This often involves tying people together. I’ve created performances for traditional stages, gallery spaces, warehouses and the internet, often times drawing from my experience with interactive technology to expand the capabilities of the body or the audience’s perception of the body. I’m simultaneously interested in creating universal experiences for all humans as well as creating experiences that highlight the alienation that occurs when people are forced to categorize themselves within especially restrictive boundaries.

I’m investigating narrative perception as it relates to the appearance of one’s face. What does one perceive when they view a face? How do these views vary from person to person? What’s lost in this transmission from the “real” to the perceived? What misconceptions and biases do we as humans carry and immediately apply, often subconsciously?
I want to carry this investigation through the making of a series of art objects, installations and performances created by myself and in collaboration with a diverse group of people who are in many ways, not like me: young people, old people, blind people, Canadian people … anyone I may be able to consider an “other.” I want to look at this experience side by side with my life’s experience growing up in a predominantly white, conservative small town in the Bible Belt, adopted as a Middle Eastern child of ambiguous nationality to a white family with equally ambiguous roots.
I’m interested in the use of technology in this process as a transitional object between myself and others (the me and not me).

Plans before spring:

-Do some serious reading/research/investigation to clarify some definitions for myself. What is the important part of this project? Identity? Perception? Translation? What do each of these things mean? Where are they referenced elsewhere in artworks, readings, science experiments, etc.?

-Continue with some of the experiments that involve sending and/or receiving simple pieces of information (a sentence, a photograph, a simple movement gesture).

-Create a list of questions I want to answer, and make each piece an investigation of that question.

Plans for spring:

-MAKE MAKE MAKE: objects, movement, participatory experiences. Make as much as possible. Throw out what doesn’t work. Don’t decide it doesn’t work until I try. Some preliminary ideas from my notebook:
-Create a portrait of someone based on other people’s descriptions.
-Interview blind people, and have them describe their faces/have them describe their skin tone. Do the same with non-blind people.
-A live video feed where your own face is distorted when you look into the camera, but everyone else’s face looks “normal.”
-Take my video piece “check: other,” which involves a solo movement improvisation of myself trying to fit into and through various sizes of picture frames, and direct a group of children to reinterpret it. Do the same with a group of old people. Find other groups of people to do this same action with.

I took the movement scores I derived in my last series of experiments into the studio, first going through each of the three movement scores individually as improvisations, then breaking them up and taking one or two lines at a time. I also brought in this large piece of Lycra, to use as kind of a way of representing binding and also this idea of a permeable membrane, where some things get through while others do not.

The scores, in text, are as follows:

Pondering, tilt your head
Rest it carefully on your thumb
Focus
Concentrate
Birth the answer
————–
Unlock it
Band together, lying quietly on the table
Randomly arranged, horizontally
Red, yellow, blue
————–
cuffs off
blinding flash
left with nothing
wet
liberated
————–

The videos are in long form and uncut, so they’re probably best enjoyed with some fast forwarding (one more video to come, whenever Vimeo decides it’s kosher):

Round Tuit Dance Project rehearsal 11.10 from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

Round Tuit Dance Project rehearsal 11.10 from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

This week I have some more focused movement experiments to try, mainly with the lycra and different ways to actually get your body or parts of your body through it.

I’ve been keeping an ongoing list of artists and readings people mention to me in reference to my project:

Readings:
Jonathan Crary’s writings on perception
Yvonne Rainer’s “No Manifesto”
Ralph Lemon “Geography” (added by me because it has influenced me greatly)
Roselee Goldberg “Performance Art”
KA Cerulo’s “Identity Construction: New Issues, New Directions”
Timothy Powell’s “Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identities”
“Interrogating Identity”
Elizabeth Fine’s “Performance, Culture, Identity”
Hannah Wilke’s “Feminism and Art”
Alan Kaprow’s “Notes on Elimination of Audience”

Artists:
Dan Graham (Performer/Audience/Mirror)
Adrian Piper
Cindy Sherman
David Rokeby (The Giver of Names)
Ralph Lemon (Geography Trilogy)
Sophie Calle
Stephan Koplowitz
Miranda July (always )

Keywords/key phrases
Reinterpretation
Misinterpretation
Sense of self vs. Sense of belonging
Other
Altering Perception
Abstracting
Truth
Real
Appropriation
Lens
Same
Different
Permeable membranes (thanks, Arturo!)
What you know
What you’ve been taught
Dismissed
What is real?
Uncomfortable
Me/not me
Transitional object
Identity
Perception