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Thursday, August 10, 2006
A Little Experimental Film
A short film by Ahree Lee has gotten close to 3K diggs. Lee says that “Starting in November of 2001, I have been taking a picture of myself every day and I haven’t stopped yet.” Me consists of those pictures, played one after the other, in order, one picture per frame. YouTube version below the fold.
Note (8.12.2006): When I originally made this post on 8/10/2006, the YouTube video had been posted by a third party, not by the artist. That version has been removed for copyright violation and been replaced by one from the artist herself. The number of views listed below are for that first version, not this one.
Comments
There’s serious interest in this film at YouTube. The film was posted to YouTube on 8 August and has less than a million views yesterday when I posted it here. I think it was something like 600K when I posted it, but I don’t remember precisely. It’s now got a bit over 1.4M views. Will it top 2M tomorrow?
It’s mesmerizing. I knew a guy who went to art college in London (can’t remember which one) and his big project one year was to shave his head, take a Polaroid of himself every day for a year as his hair grew in, uncombed, and fix them on the walls of the college, up and down the stairs, in chronological order.
No hypnotic sound track, though. These were the olden days.
Yes, it’s mesmerizing. It’s interesting, and dishartening, to read the comments —almost 9000 of them at this point—it has attracted at YouTube. Many people are fascinated and many don’t get it at all. Among those there are some who can’t resist making really offensive comments.
And, yes, the sound track is certainly part of the experience.
Somewhat interesting, yes: a sort of tense, sublimated porn. One could read into it--personal identity thing, maybe, and I wager youtube-heads are calling for the proverbial money shot, etc. Rock videos and animators have been doing this sort of morph for years.
More on the experimental tip, historical division: John Cage and Roland Kirk explore musical sound.
I’ve posted this to YouTube:
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I’ve also asked Ahree Lee to allow this to be shown as a response to her video. Don’t know whether she’ll go for. At the moment there are no video responses to her video. My guess is that means that she’s turned down all responses. Why do I think that?
1. Because that option is available to someone who uploads a video. They can allow all responses or they can insist that they have approval on responses.
2. It is common for people looking for “action” to post their video as a response to a video that is very popular. How do I know this? Because I’ve seen video responses that are totally unrelated to the video they’re ostensibly responding too. Beyond that, it’s an obvious tactic. It’s certainly on my mind.
art, schmart
‘Trane & Miles
also see dolphy/trane for more proof on the pointlessness of pop, potboilers, or poesy, ahht, etc.
I know it well, can play it in my sleep. And its direct descendent, “Impressions.” And then there’s Lester Bowie’s “No Shit.”
I listen to a bit of Dolphy or Ornette, but not such a fan of “free”; prefer the ‘Trane of the KOB era and Giant Steps, or Rollins of Sax. Collosus--really quite artistic and rather surreal playing.
In some sense Kind of Blue a type of musical benchmark which more or less deconstructed jazz--melodically and harmonically, past and future, if not music. But Cage & Co. doesn’t sit well; I’d rather dig up some Igor, Debussy or Satie. Miles after KOB is not so appealing, nor is much jazz. Bill Evans of course had a lot to do with the KOB sound. There do seem to be some decent youtube clips from around that ‘58-60 period.
On the free thing, I can get off on playing the music, but listening to recordings of others playing it is not so interesting.
And then there’s this little piece, that’s older than the Rahsaan:
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tho I admit to surfin’ a few of the youtube clips of SD:
Somewhere above the usual Salinger story, plus mondo jassphunk
...and whatever moebius happens to be on there
YouTube"s got all kinds of strange and marvelous stuff. And lots of not-so-strange and not-so-marvelous too. It’s a swamp, a garbage dump, a breeding ground.
I was gonna’ ask “How long before Cornel West shows up there?” But then figured I’d better check first. Sure enough, here he is. And here and here—he’s nearer the end than the beginning in both those clips. Now none of those show Bro West rockin’ his latest hip hop jam, but can that be far off?