August 2009 Archives

Does making ideas visual mean making them dumb? That's a common complaint, but I don't buy it. Neither does Jonathon Corbière, who, with his partner Suzanna Brusikiewicz, recently created ThoughtBubble, an organization dedicated to creating graphics-based videos about important issues and social justice. "The process that might be called dumbing down is actually refinement," argues Corbière, who graduated from York University in Ontario with a degree in design (where he regrets that the majority of his classes focused on corporate design and crafting a commercial career). The motion graphics pieces Corbière likes are short, quick overviews that explain complex topics. He calls them "learning tools," and notes these key characteristics: they're four or five minutes long, and therefore appeal to the fast-paced attention spans of the YouTube generation. "We also think you need to take your audience seriously," Corbière says. "When you do this right, there's a kind of magic when someone understands a complex idea quickly." He also advocates using "typographic landmarks" to keep viewers cued to key ideas, and attention to the right music and overall style. Overall, though, the goal of ThoughtBubble is to encourage people to watch visually stimulating material that's also smart, instructive and dedicated to social justice. Thinking about these issues, says Corbière, leads to talking about these issues, which leads to change. So how will such an organization survive? "Basically, we'll provide commercial services that will subsidize our nonprofit work," Corbière says. Sounds good. Sure, motion graphics about social issues can be terrible. But done right, they might also foster understanding and discussion. ThoughtBubble is still in the development stage, with plans for a formal launch next spring. Good luck to them!

Here are five favorite sites for finding short visual pleasure:

1) Motionographer, run by editor Justin Cone, is a terrific compendium of current short-form motion graphics and animation. The site features notes on recently crafted ads that are particularly inventive, news about filmmakers and designers, and longer pieces, including interviews and profiles. Check out the nice interview with Shynola's Chris Harding about the video for Coldplay's "Strawberry Swing," put together by contributors Lillian Darmono and James Wignall.

2) Ubuweb Film and Video offers unprecedented access to avant-garde moving image art. Yes, it's problematic that films shot on film are not projected, but as a reference for works that are incredibly difficult to see projected, Ubuweb is unbeatable. I just watched Hollis Frampton's 1971 wonder, nostalgia. Incredible.

3) Artforum Video is Artforum magazine's impressive collection of videos, including video art, documentation, interviews and overviews. You'll find classics, such as Richard Serra's 1973 Television Delivers People, as well as an eclectic mix of other treats.

4) The Submarine Channel features frequently updated pointers to interesting shorts and motion graphics, and includes the wonderful collection of more than 100 film title design examples (under "Forget the Film, Watch the Titles"). There is also a compilation of interviews with assorted artists under "Pretty Cool People Interviews," including Tommy Pallotta and Miranda July.

5) Short of the Week, edited by Andrew S. Allen and Jason Sondhi, chronicles the rich world of shorts, with - appropriately - short descriptions and notes. I found Cameraman here; it's an episode from This American Life illustrated with a short animation by graphic novelist Chris Ware. Check back frequently...

Image: Artforum Video interface.

"The pull-out and the push-in fit Don Draper like his two best Brooks Brothers suits," argues Jefferson Robbins in his masterful video essay analyzing the cinematography of Mad Men on The Film Freak Central Blog. The six-minute short brings together a series of shots from the hit TV show with Robbins' voice-over commentary, showing and telling how these two moves, when the camera dollies in on a character, or when it rolls back, often framing people, especially Draper, within the boxy constraints of doorways or windows.

More

"The urban environment no longer represents the citizens, it represents capital," says media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in a 2005 interview with

José Luis Barrios. This quote resurfaced for me last week as I prepared for a discussion titled "Mobilities" with six USC Annenberg Fellows around ideas of mobile media, social and political infrastructures and art practices. Lozano-Hemmer's work, which includes many large-scale projects that incorporate projection, interactivity and public space, is all about the relationship between people, the city and power. Who is empowered in the various public spaces of Los Angeles? With the interactive video installation Under Scan from 2005, Lozano-Hemmer frames that question by tracking people as they move through an open plaza; their shadows activated video portraits, offering an encounter among citizens within the space of the city. The portraits only appear for as long as someone is present, creating a connection between people.

Speaking about his work generally, Lozano-Hemmer says he's interested in encouraging an "eccentric reading of the environment," adding, "I don't want to develop site-specific installations but rather focus on the new temporal relationships that emerge from the artificial situation, what I call 'relationship-specific' art." He goes on to explain that "relational architecture" centers on having us reimagine the city and create stories that differ from those imposed by the city and its regulations and history. Relational architecture exposes power and privilege, and engages people in questioning our role. It's always a pleasure to revisit Lozano-Hemmer's work, even if only by looking at the terrific documentation of the work online. Luckily, though, Lozano-Hemmer will be in LA next spring to give a talk about his work.

Image: from Under Scan, 2005; photo by Antimodular Research.

Chronic alcoholism and experimental filmmaking - how do they go together?

The answer is fascinating: about 10 years ago, Florian Thalhofer was finishing his Master's thesis at the University of the Arts in Berlin. He was working on a project that references alcohol and the Korsakow Syndrome, a condition in which people lose their short-term memory, sometimes due to chronic alcoholism. He found that folks suffering from the syndrome interesting because they tend to re-tell the world repeatedly through stories, and in a manner that's nonlinear. He decided to create his thesis in a similar, nonlinear way, and began work on a software application that would make the most of repetitions and digressions. With support from the Amsterdam-based arts organization Mediamatic, he created the Korsakow System, a free application to help others make similar projects.

More

What is arts journalism reimagined through new media forms? That's the question we've been mulling over at USC's Institute for Multimedia, which I cheerfully direct. We're collaborating with USC's Annenberg School for Communication and the Arts Journalism program on The National Summit on Arts Journalism, which will showcase projects that are "cool, relevant and functional, make good sense, and above all, have real promise to provide an alternative to diminishing arts coverage in the traditional news media." If you have an idea, submit it! Deadline? August 17.

Specifically, though, the IML is creating a series of video presentations on the selected projects. We wanted to tackle this kind of assignment because we're interested in methods for conveying information through images, sound and text, and we wanted to create videos that point to these new modes. What are new rhetorical forms appropriate for our culture right now?

In researching the topic, I came across Jonathan Jarvis' newest project, The New Mediators, which he defines as "a design practice that clarifies complicated situations." The practitioners working within this paradigm will pull from design, journalism and narrative analysis, and they're seeking "designed transparency." To some extent, The New Mediators echo the design advocacy of Charles and Ray Eames, the masters of taking complex ideas and, through design, rendering clarity. But Jarvis, a recent Art Center grad, goes father in that he's aware of the implications of pervasive computing and its impact on communication. As objects communicate all around us, how do our own forms of communication shift? How do we sort, curate, collect and process huge amounts of information? And how might "designed writing" help? Anyway, take a look at Jarvis' explanatory video for a glimpse of one possible option for the future of journalism, and check back later - I hope to talk with Jarvis about this provocative direction.