Reading Response 3 – Chenlan Yao (Ellen)

The film I would like to talk about is Rhythm in Light by Mary Ellen Bute. It is Bute’s first film which introduces a modern artist’s impressions of what goes on in the mind while listening to Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite”. Bute made this film as she used to study stage lighting at Yale, before which she showed great interesting in playing around with lights, and she found herself the ability to create “color organ” which means to paint with light. As the first film she had ever made, Rhythm in Light reflected the achievement Bute had gained after learning and the area that she was interested in (the light), which is her motivation for making this film.

The film is made with a contradiction between abstraction and reality, as well as a combination of science and art. The combination of science and art is a typical characteristic of Bute’s works, as Lewis Jacob commented on Bute’s works,  they always compose “upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment”.  By adding mathematical ideas into film making, Rhythm in Light becomes a contradiction between abstraction and reality as art is usually accepted as abstract and hard to tell the reason behind, while mathematics is logical and scientific. The logic behind Bute’s film makes it more reasonable and interesting. By the same token, Bute creates a contrast between black and white, dark and light with something for real: models of paper and cardboard, cellophane, ping-pong balls, egg beaters, bracelets and sparkless … With the help of real objects, the film has some connection with the real world. What is more, the contradiction between solid shapes and blurry shades follows the tone and speed of the background music, which is created by filming with mirrors and a cut-glass ashtray to get multiple parallel reflection of the shape and by creating “out of focus” to conceal the origin of the abstract apparition. 

RAPS Assignment 3 – Beads – Chenlan Yao

Link to my Gist: https://gist.github.com/Ellen25/1f5f041302df086b572c43dcafc88e5a

I am a fan of cyberpunk style, especially some new-school Trap music with electronic and technology elements inside, which is why I decided to create this audio clip. The accidentally found and use of SMOOTH DELAY really inspires me as it can create a digital feeling, just like the delay when the computer is operating and dealing with the algorithm. 

Reading Response 2 – Sitting In A Room – Chenlan Yao

I am not deliberately making my self a sickish people, but I was indeed suffering tinnitus while experiencing the artwork I am Sitting in a Room. The subtlely humming tune in my right ear tingling and buzzed my brain. As the progress bar processed, the sound in the artwork went muddled, while creating a strange but interesting audio experience as it seemed to be moving and wandering around inside my brain, passing from the left sound channel to the right one and creating a resonance that almost exploded my head. This is my direct and first impression of Lucier’s work, not cool, aggravated my uncomfortableness, but unique, I assumed.

I believe that both my direct feeling and the meaning of creating this artwork show some relationship with the concept “synesthesia”. From my perspective, it is at first an audio project but finally makes my mind unwell. I can feel some geometric shapes moving randomly when I listen to it. On the other hand, Lucier is trying to catch the voice of a room through first making the voice of a man. From the man voice to the frequency of the room, it is also somehow a kind of synesthesia between the voice and feeling of different objects. 

Sound is intangible, thus it is necessary to have an intermedium to exaggerate it and make it “tangible”. Everything can have sound, even including a room. However, the way to make the voice of a room come into being is actually what Lucier did, and the theory of art contains.

RAPS Assignment 2 Vizzie – Chenlan Yao

Link to the GitHub Gist:

https://gist.github.com/Ellen25/93eb5d08074c782c69782a54ec1ad813

Link to my screen grab video clip:

VizzieAssignment-ChenlanYao

The resources given are all colorful pixel (a bit like Pac-man) with some dark background, so I began to thought about making something brighter. By the same time, I want to make the big smiley face fade in and out softly so that to make a great contrast between the sizes of the characters in two videos. In general, I want to create a kind of psychedelic feelings which shows something quite crazy and may make one feel dizzy, but also something moves smoothly, softly and slowly. As a person can easily get allergy from alcohol, this is what I might feel when I find small itchy pimples on my arms, which is also what I want to create through a visual way. 

I added the XFADR to make the smiley face fade in and out and created a HUSALIR to adjust the brightness. By adding TWIDDLR to both of them, the adjustment became easier. The ROTATR is also added in order to make the frame looks dizzier. 

Reading Response 1 Synesthesia – Chenlan Yao (Ellen)

Perceived as a kind of disease formerly, synesthesia is a magical feeling. Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese visual and sound artist, always combining visual arts with audio sounds in a “raw” state, that is, a way which is easy for viewers to understand and feel. Although he is not an artist famous for synesthesia, his personal mindset and his artworks do show the complex feeling among different senses. On the basis of the combination of visual arts with great contrast in color and shapes and audios like sine tones and noise, which is no doubt a kind of genuine synesthesia, his concept of “raw” state offers his viewers a direct emotional impact which will not be easy to forget.

As is written in the article, volume and pitch are frequently connected with size and brightness (Emrich, Neufeld & Sinke, p. 417). Ryoji’s artworks are great illustrations for this idea,  and he then brings these connections between sounds and visual art up to something that can affect one’s emotion and memories,  which is both the significance and also my personal view of this artifact. Because from Ryoji’s artworks, I think senses are divided into different levels, from simply connecting visual sense with auditory sense to affecting the emotion by these connections made before, which is a kind of magical feeling, as well as “a genuine neurophysiological phenomenon that can provide science with unique insights into human perception” (Emrich, Neufeld & Sinke, p. 420). 

References

Emrich, Hinderk M., Janina Neufeld & Christopher Sinke. Synesthesia, a

Neurological Phenomenon. 415-423