Archive for the ‘guthrielonergan’ Category

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Acapella, one of two videos by Guthrie Lonergan with that title (the other was discussed in the previous post), opens on a stock video clip depicting a direct point-of-view shot in which the camera smoothly banks through white clouds in an otherwise sublimely blue sky.

Almost immediately after this imagery appears onscreen, an a cappella version of the Oasis song “Wonderwall” emerges on the soundtrack and, then, almost immediately after that, an identical “Wonderwall” vocal track appears, creating a harmony.

The lead vocalist of Oasis, Liam Gallagher, in harmony with himself, sings:

Today is gonna be the day

(Today is gonna be the day)

That they’re gonna throw it back to you

(That they’re gonna throw it back to you)

By now you should’ve somehow

(By now you should’ve somehow)

Realized what you gotta do

(Realized what you gotta do)

********

At about nine seconds into the video, a ray of sun peeks through the clouds and the video clip suddenly loops back to the beginning while the song continues normally.

The video clip then continues looping while the song continues playing.

There’s something blissful about it.

The shot is generic, but somehow beautiful in its simplicity and the harmony created from the a capella versions of “Wonderwall” only adds to the sense of this.

However, as one watches, one may wonder if it’s too blissful–after all, artists who work in a conceptual vein (as Lonergan does) often use aesthetic beauty ironically or to make a broader point about art.

So, one scans through the image, on the hunt for clues or a punchline.

But, there doesn’t seem to be any goofing going on here—it’s not like it’s all a big joke.

Eventually, though, the song ends and the viewer is left only with the endless silent looping of the video clip.

There’s an unsettling quality to just seeing the video clip without the song; it’s not “silent” as in a silent film, but rather “quiet” as in a person who could speak, but chooses not to.

At this point, one can either leave the work or follow it through this new phase.

Now, all that said, a strange sort of question pops up:

Is Acapella a narrative video with a beginning, a middle, and an end, or is it an infinite loop?

Is the piece done when the song finishes or does it just go on endlessly?

To put the question in practical terms, how would one show this in a gallery?

At the opening do you play it through with the song once and, then, for the duration of the exhibition just let the loop cycle through itself in silence or does the curator or gallery assistant just occasionally go over and start it up again based on either whims or an arbitrarily regulated schedule?

Perhaps that’s missing the point, though.

Maybe it only works as Web art in which the user is free to control their own personal experience of the work, viewing for as long as they choose, reloading as frequently as they choose.

Tags: a cappella, acapella, , bliss, endless, guthrie lonergan, harmony, infinite, , loop, medium, oasis, sky, stock footage, vocal track, , wonderwall
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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Guthrie Lonergan created two videos composed solely of the a cappella vocal tracks of famous pop songs mashed-up with appropriated stock footage clips.

Both of these videos are titled Acapella 

In the first video, one views, to start, stock footage with burnt-in time code depicting an hourglass spinning on a pedestal in front of a blue background, which is itself probably designed to be used as a generic “bluescreen” in video postproduction.

The blue background in the clip, though, is creased and wrinkly which would make it difficult to use for a seamless bluescreen effect.

Also, the lighting is generally harsh, casting an entire half of the blue background in darkness, again defeating the point of bluescreen as an even, unchanging field of blue which can be easily keyed out in a single gesture in post-production.

Each of these qualities give one the impression that this an amateur production, perhaps a single person hoping to sell cut-rate stock footage from their bedroom.

Following this introductory shot, the soundtrack opens with an a cappella rendering of the Police song “Message in a Bottle” as the view on the hourglass itself zooms in, focusing closer and closer on the sand dripping from the top of the hourglass to the bottom.

The viewer watches these sands of time drip away as Sting sings:

Just a castaway, an island at sea, oh

Another lonely day, with no here but me, oh

More loneliness than any man could bear

Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh

*****

It should be noted that as an a cappella version of “Message in a Bottle,” these lyrics become simultaneously more isolated and more rawly emotional than they would come across in the original song; and, furthermore, despite the seeming incongruity of the hourglass imagery and this raw vocal track, they begin to quickly make some sort of emotional sense together as they’re each sparsely produced and they each reference a certain threat of being alone in the world.

As the song continues, this hourglass imagery dissolves to a shot depicting a man (whose slicked back hairdo is visible in the bottom of the shot, incidentally) holding his hands above his head, demonstrating the idea of “growth” by placing his palms close together and, then, spreading them far apart over and over again.

At this point, the chorus of the song kicks in:

I’ll send an S.O.S. to the world

I’ll send an S.O.S. to the world

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah…

*******

When the man’s hand motions are juxtaposed with these lyrics, the viewer can, then, almost read them as themselves an “S.O.S.”—a ritualistic signal to a distant viewer, asking to be saved (or at least acknowledged).

This becomes poignant when one considers that—again–this particular stock footage is amateurish and naïve—one more drop of water in the ocean of non-professional or semi-professional user content on the Web, one more person expressing themselves in an environment of endless amounts of other personal expressions.

This is the problem of trying to express oneself in what Lonergan has termed “The Big Database” in which even what would otherwise be “amazing” content is flattened out; expressions (any expression–the videographer’s, Lonergan’s, my own)  are consumed and, then, almost instantaneously forgotten.

As such, anyone trying to get their ideas heard in Internet-land is a sort of castaway.

Related to this point, Sting sings:

Walked out this morning, don’t believe what I saw

Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore

Seems I’m not alone in being alone

*****

What work like this video by Lonergan does, though, is start from the idea that everyone working on the Web is sending out their own S.O.S. and, by self-reflexively picturing that, a different lens and set of criteria for thinking about work in The Big Database might open up.

In Lonergan’s words:

…Something very real struggling beneath a heavy and ancient structure of corporate software defaults and cultural banality…

Tags: a cappella, acapella, , big database, blue screen, bluescreen, guthrie lonergan, police, sting, stock footage, video, vocal track
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Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Dreams from google 3d warehouse by Guthrie Lonergan is both the artist’s re-contextualization of seventeen “3D” models–each of which are based on an individual dream of the Google 3D Warehouse user who initially created the model–as well as an accompanying commentary on the process of translating the memory of a dream to a 3D model provided by the dreamers/3D model-makers themselves (in conversation with Lonergan).

The work is viewed on two Web pages–each of which are hosted on Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito’s jstchillin.org website.

On the first page, one views three lines of black sans-serif text extending the horizontal-length of the page.

This text reads:

This is a Piano I dreamed that I was playing, but its actually a tattoo that I want to do somewhere on my body… You can’t really comment about it because i dreamed it and you didn’t see it… Oh well…

***********

Positioned below this text is the 2D representation of a 3D model depicting a black piano keyboard which–when clicked–opens a Web browser tab displaying the 3D model’s original Web page on the Google 3D Warehouse Web site.

On the second page of the work, one views a block of sixteen additional dream-text-and-3D-model pairings which are positioned above a block of seventeen lines of text which each (a.) list the 3D models’ file names and creator/user names, as well as (b.) link to the models’ original Web pages on the Google 3D Warehouse Web site.

The first of the dream memories-into-3D models displayed at the top of this page is prefaced by the following text:

i had the wierdest dream last night. i was walking downtown when a space ship landed in the street, naturely i dove for cover behind a bush. thank you to dj orion for the road

********

Below this text is an initial view of the 3D model described above in which one views a low medium-wide framing on:

1. A grey figure running away from a large white craft emanating blue flames, which is labeled “space ship,” and

2. A second grey figure labeled “me” lying on the ground behind a rectangular box with a green marbleized texture, which one takes to be the bush mentioned in the dream.

Below this view of the model, then, are three lines of grey text in which a question regarding the model-maker’s memory of certain details is posed.

It reads:

i’m curious if the blue flames from the jets on the spaceship were in the dream? also, there seems to be some sort of steering column inside of the spaceship, is this something that you remembered?

*******

And a reply, reading:

to answer your questions, yes there was blue flames from the spaceship, and yes, i do remember the steering column was something i remebered. i remember the aliens coming out and there was that steering column

**********

As one scrolls down the page, one encounters two more views of the 3D model—one into the cockpit of the space ship in which the steering column mentioned above is visible, the other a high wide-angle in which the steering column is—again—made visible.

Below these views are another textual question-and-response pairing regarding the translation of dream memory into 3D model.

The question reads:

do you remember anything else about the steering column, like how it functioned, or anything else about it?

**********

And the model-maker responds:

i just remember the steering stick was like a big joystick, controling the ship here and there

**********

One more view of the steering column is, then, displayed and the next dream model and commentary begins.

The remaining fifteen of these dreams involve similar science-fiction scenarios as well as relatively banal scenarios involving the architecture of, for example, factories and shopping malls.

Throughout the project, though, one theme remains constant:

As one begins to picture a dream, one begins to mutate the dream to fit the picture (until one can’t say for sure if they remember the dream at all).

Tags: 3d, , dream, dreams from google 3d warehouse, google 3d warehouse, guthrie lonergan, memory, model, space, virtual
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

2001<<<>>>2006 by Guthrie Lonergan is, to begin with, composed of one smaller YouTube player embedded on top of–and, thus, foregrounding–the center of a second, larger YouTube player.

The smaller, foreground video is composed of a rhythmic series of quick zooms into the center of still images depicting teenage boys mugging for the camera as they mess around with two default image effects.

These image effects are:

1. A “mirror” tool which vertically bisects the video, creating a series of distortions including an effect which allows the teenagers to resemble the doe-eyed, large-foreheaded cliché of the “space alien.”

2. A “swirl” tool which deforms the faces of the teenage boys into swirling spirals.

The soundtrack in this video consists of the Queen song “I Want to Break Free.”

The larger, background video is the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Dr. David Bowman “breaks free” of the laws of Cartesian space-time as it is visualized in two motifs.

Those motifs are:

1. Travelling at high-speed in-between two vertically (and sub-sequently horizontally) bisected walls of colored light.

2. Slowly approaching evanescent cloud forms resembling high-powered telescopic imagery of distant galaxies and spiraling supernovas on his way to the dawning of a new evolutionary leap.

The soundtrack in this larger, background video is the film’s original musical score, which is dominated by the heavily atmospheric, collaged strings of Requiem by the composer György Ligeti.

When one plays both videos at once, the rhythmic zooms into the bisected center of the mirrored photos in the video of the teenage boys create a counter-point to the evenly-paced movement towards the horizon of the vertically-bisected walls of light in the larger, background YouTube player.

In addition, the pounding, danceable rhythm of the Queen song creates a counter-point to the experimental sound-scapes of Requiem, and, furthermore, as one continues to view the work, the rhythmic zooms into the swirled faces of the teenage boys counter-point the spiraling inter-galactic imagery of 2001.

These counter-points of imagery and soundtrack in 2001<<<>>>2006 are either a gimmick or a creative leap forward in the way appropriated content is re-contextualized on the Internet.

Perhaps it’s both.

The disturbing thing about that baby at the end of the film is how simultaneously dumb and sublime she is.

Tags: 2001, 2006, guthrie lonergan, kubrick, mirror, ,
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Saturday, February 6th, 2010

In September 2009, as part of the AND Festival in Liverpool, Guthrie Lonergan presented an alternative version of the film Groundhog Day (1993).

Groundhog Day is a film about a man who re-lives the same day over and over and over again.

Longergan’s version is a series of eighteen short videos, each composed of still-frame slideshows that represent scenes from the film’s narrative.

These still frames are underscored by Lonergan’s own first-person summarization of the narrative from the point of view of the protagonist, played by Bill Murray.

The number of videos corresponds (approximately–it’s difficult to judge) to the number of days that Bill Murray re-lived the same day over and over and over again.

Lonergan also released these videos not all at once, but one by one, so that it became performative.

By breaking the story up into the number of days that Murray re-lived the day and presenting the videos over the course of a couple of days, the viewer gets more of a sense of this endless repetition.

The story’s eternal return theme, then, takes on a new air of uncanniness.  The idea of endlessly cycling through the same day shocks you a bit more and allows you to see what this time would mean in a deeper way.

In one of Lonergan’s poetic/philosophical asides, he captures this.

We view a still image of Bill Murray in bed at the end of his first full day of return.

As the image very slowly fades to black, Lonergan (as the protagonist) muses:

I’m pretty lost at this point.

And I’m thinking about why this, why this is happening.

And…about how I’m a, a weatherman.

And this connection between you know weather and time and predicting things using patterns.

And can weather have patterns…and maybe time, as well.

Tags: groundhog day, guthrie lonergan,
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