Movies

Movie Feedback #6 – RIP: A Remix Manifesto

Girls talk, Mashups.

Wheater or not you think the music is original is not the point, because the rules of this game do not depend on who made the song, it depends on who owns the copyright.

A war over ideas, the battleground is the internet, and the writer takes it personally.

New language - Remix.

The creative process has become more important than the product because consumers now become creators.

Intellectual property, locked up until purchase.

1. Culture always builds on the past.
2. The past always tries to control the future.
3. Our future is becoming less free.
4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past.

Everyone's favorite battle - Music.

What is the moral dilemma?

"You can't argue your creativity when it's based on other people's stuff." Why not?

"Bittersweet Symphony".

Warner/Chappell, world's largest music publisher. The song 'Happy Birthday" makes millions of dollars in licensing revenue.

Believe it or not, copyright was originally designed to encourage people to create, not stops them.

Metallica sues Napster.

Lawrence Lessig, the person who wrote the manifesto that inspired this film.

Fair use is a part of copyright law that allows for free speech. A person can use a small amount of copyright material to make an argument.

Today's remixers are stand on the should of the giant.

Culture jamming.

Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America. This is who owns and controls our culture. Their primary goal is to preserve the business model that make the corporations rich. Even it means to convince the government to halt the follow of new ideas, new technologies, or better business models.

Creative Commons (CC)

"Originality is when you mix two things that have not been mixed. That's the future of music, and the human race."

Build on the past, that's the future.


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Movie Feedback #5 – Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd and Hilla Becher took their first photo together around 1958. They began at where Bernd were born, for him it is important because it is a little bit autobiography, because nearly all Bernd's ancestors worked in mining industry. In 1965 they went to Britain for the first time, from 1972 they went to United States several times to typically industrial regions like Pennsylvania.

Heavy industry is their key subject that includes coal mining, steal, and limestone industry. Bernd and Hilla Becher focused on objects whose development followed a historical thread which can be compared, and whose emergent is not accidental.

Bernd and Hilla Becher were convinced that in a very particular way they bought witness to their time  architecturally.This architecture was related to an economy, or the thinking behind an industry economy. Then Bernd Becher came the moment realize that these object were doomed to disappear. These objects were important to work for us thinking of another age.

Bernd and Hilla Becher took a very large number of shoots first of fascination and they had to be put into order. They first define the basic forms but then as time went on they realized that these forms came in different varieties and subsidies. So they decided to put one photo beside the other, so is to create a typology as they call it. They brought out the tiny differences between each objects, in groups of nine, twelve, and fifteen, which resulted in a sort of harmony. 

In nearly all cases, Bernd and Hilla Becher photograph their object using a telephoto lens to avoid distortion. Sometimes they use a very long lens up to 600mm so they have to work with two tripod to avoid the slightly vibration. For a photo part of series of twin water towers, it was not very easy because they need to take the shot in winter so that branches would not hide the lower parts as it would do in summer. Also, they need to have the right weather condition – a foggy day so that the background would "disappear". They nearly always work on cloudy days where there is not much light, which needs a longer shutter time.

One thing is absolutely important, the horizon, which must be below three-quarter line of the object so it is not interfere with the effect. For Hilla Becher, the purpose of photography is to see in an objective way. Why should she tries to project her own sentiments or her state of mind into something which is already expressing itself. Objectivity is the opposite of subjectivity, one begins with the other leaves off. Objectivity dose not mean that the truth has been found. It meas that the object represented is allowed to speak for itself. 


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Movie Feedback #4 – Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall originally wanted to be a painter, but slowly photography became more fascinating to him. Impact of beauty in paintings somehow stayed with Jeff Wall as a background to what was going on in contemporary art. It occurred to him that photography could be larger, in color, the scale of human body but also the scale of painting.

Not imitate painting but coming to a relationship with painting that was going somewhere.

To represent something actual, and many people have questioned whether it ever shows us a truth. Jeff Wall thought at the very beginning that all his different directions would all connected by  means of working with that claim but never the same way.

Landscapes would make traditional claim that they were as truthful as any other photographs in the history of photography. 

When Jeff Wall thought he would work in color he realized that, in certain point he has been noticing illuminated pictures around airports and other places for advertising. He decided to use it that a medium that had not be really explored and understood as a athletics phenomenon and it could really go somewhere. It was also seem to be an excellent medium to work on large-scale, that was Jeff Wall's main reason for wanting to used a light box.


Most of the times, Jeff Wall's works are done in collaboration with performers, to connect back with what painters did which was to collaborate with their models. Journalists are interested in conveying the event to the viewer, the artists are interested in conveying the representation of the event to the viewer. 

"More and more I think the pictures are also about maintaining a certain invisibility for things. You might make a picture that contain both what it shows and what it excludes."

Jeff Wall knew that in 83 or 84 that digital image was coming and there were something he can do with it, and it was going to change our relation to photography in many ways that we can define. So a new door kind of opened which was the idea of photo montage.

"I think the idea that an artist expresses an point of view is maybe not entirely true."

"The moment of ugliness is always important."


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Movie Feedback #3 – Waste Land, Vik Muniz

“He is, without a doubt, one of the greatest contemporary artists alive today. And he gives life to garbage. Vik Muniz incorporates everyday objects into his photographic process to create witty, bold and often deceiving, images. Often working in series, the New York-based artist makes pictures from unlikely materials including dirt, diamonds, sugar, wire, string, chocolate syrup, peanut butter, and pigment.”

“It would not just be an experience how art could change people but also can it change people, can this be done, and what would be the effects of this.” – Vik.

“Every single lot is filled with garbage. You see people are carrying garbage, it is like a garbage land.” Jardim Gramacho – The largest landfill in the world, in terms of the volume of trash received daily. “The ground underneath the landfill is all soft, it is like a plate of Jell-O. If you keep adding to it without careful balancing, it will sink here or collapse there. It works like a stock exchange. They collect whatever the market demands at any given time, so the recycling wholesalers tell the pickers what they need, and then that’s what they collect.”

Black birds flying above and around the Waste Land, picking up any waste food that they could eat. “The pickers take out 200 tons of recyclable materials per day from the landfill. That’s equivalent to the garbage produced by a city of 400,000 people. That’s why the pickers are really important to the landfill because they help increase its capacity. 70% of Rio’s trash ends up here, and 100% of the closest suburbs.”

“Did you hear that one? That guy said ‘They’re filming for animal planet!’” said by Vik. Indeed, people work at the Waste Land surely looks not like a modern human being living in a big city. They are much like original people that help distribute and decompose garbage with a strong smell.

Association of Pickers of Jardim Gramacho – ACAMJG

“We have to think about the future because I don’t want my son to be a picker” said by Zumbi. No one likes to and wants to work in a place like the Waste Land, and people in there surely want to change their lives.

“I grew up every poor, but now I’ve reached a point where I want to give back” said by Vik. Nowadays, people want more from others but they give little.

Tiao: “When we started this association, everyone laughed at us. Everybody criticized us.

They said it wouldn’t lead anywhere, that it would never work. I believed in it. Now I believe when you put your mind to something, you can achieve it. How many people told you to give up, that it was never going to happen?”

Vik: “Yeah, starting with my father, my own father. He’d say ‘That’s bullshit. It’s not going to get you anywhere.’”

Zumbi collects books that some people just throw them away in the trash. He even made a library for the association.

“From above, you would have any of the human factors.” – Vik.

“The fight is a long comrade, but victory is certain!” – Valter dos Santos, Vice President of ACAMJG.

“It’s not bad to be poor. It’s bad to be rich at the height of fame with your morals a dirty shame” said by Valter dos Santos. Poor or rich is not determined one hundred percent by wealth, it is what inside of one’s mind.

“People sometimes say ‘But one single can?’ one single can is of great importance, because 99 is not 100, and that single one will make a difference.” – Valter dos Santos.

“99 is not 100” is the most profound quote that I have remembered deeply in mind and learned from this movie.

At first, I was thinking that Vik was just taking pictures of those pickers, and then just simply print those portraits and sell them for money. Until later, when Vik brought the pickers into his studio and made the final product with the recyclable materials they collected, then it really shows something new with brilliant ideas that Vik has gone through in his mind.

“Do you want to come to do these things: Work two weeks in this art studio, make a portrait of yourself and by the way, we may take you to a foreign country. But at the end of all of these, you will be back here collecting garbage. Would you like to come? I know that I would say yes” said by Vik. If I would face the same question, my answer would definitely be yes, too. Even though I may still come back to my original life and have little change after all of this but still, I would have the experience and experience is something that not any money can buy for yourself. It is better to have something than having nothing.

“But if you’re saying you liked it better after you understood it then maybe we just don’t like things we don’t understand.” – Vik.

“Of course, you can dislike something because you haven’t tried it.” – Tiao.

“I’d rather want everything and have nothing than having everything and want nothing. Because at least when you want something your life has a meaning, it’s worthwhile. From the moment you think you have everything, you have to search for meaning in other things.” – Vik.

Vik’s retrospective show broke all attendance records in Brazil. Over a million people went to see the show, making it second only in popularity to Picasso. Vik raised over $250,000 with more sales of prints from these “Pictures of Garbage” portraits. Thanks to these funds and Tiao’s efforts, ACAMJG has bought a truck and equipment and opened a learning center. It has been announced that Jardim Gramacho will close in 2012. ACAMJG will be working to provide education and skills training to the catadores to help with this transition.

Valter died shortly after meeting Vik. He kept working almost up until his death, from lung cancer. He is much missed and often quoted at Jardim Gramacho. The catadores say he helped everyone make good decisions, and remember him saying 99 is not 100.

With Tiao’s leadership, ACAMJG is now a leading of the national, and now international, movement of recyclable materials pickers, which held their first meeting in Sao Paulo in October 2009.


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Movie Feedback #2 – Georges Rousse

Film 1:

“In my work, the abandoned place was a first playground, then a photographic subject, and finally space, an artist studio.” He uses the abandoned places where used to be warehoused, hospitals, offices, like a studio. His photography of those places has been his memory of what had happened in those places.

Figurative painting, he was really fascinated and did well on painting and building exclusive matters, therefore recreating a special scene within the frame in the abandoned places. He uses spaces, in which through line and paint, created sculptural forms. These were forms which became part of a pillar, of which occupied a central place in the space where he was photographing, space where he worked. These forms were simply drawn. Then next, there was a long period where he used paint to create various transparent shapes, different forms. After he went in an open space and had a look around, then he would start imaging.

He has always used Polaroids to fix a place before starting work on it. To fix the final composition, and so he can follow not-on-a daily basis but quite regularly as the work evolves its progress, the elements has it fallen to place. He has always used a large format camera, with a 4 x 5 chamber, an optimal system with glass viewfinder. On the viewfinder, he traces the form that he wants to reproduce. Then he reproduces that point by point that forms in space. Going back and forth between the space and the viewfinder.

He realizes that how crucial architecture was to his work. Circular forms allow certain freedom. Two concentric circles determine a center, and it’s like a sort of metaphor of the eye of the lens, which let us see. Deformation of space, certain words allow for a second meaning parallel to the real meaning. All of Georges Rousse’s works were named after the city which the work was done with the year.

The moment Georges Rousse became an artist he immediately began to travel. He said to himself “Okay, mine is going to be kind of wandering life so, I’ll mark the spot where I am and try to create a network around the world of the places I’ve been. Meaning that, in the end, I would have appropriated the Nowhere.


Film 2: Georges Rousse Art Project in Miyagi (April 21 – 28, 2013)

I love how the correlation of the shutter sound and the film title emerging from 4 minutes 33 seconds to 37 seconds was being edited. The background music starts at 4 minutes and 48 seconds was beautiful. The transition from the first scene to the second scene was magical and attractive.

The first scene was composed with an extensional space that creates this huge depth of field effect in a star shape at the center while surrounded by the blue shaded interior of another space. Transitioning to the second scene with fading out and fading in, a new space emerged but this time only one space in this whole composition. With only a dark blue shaded area at the center of the composition.

...Holy moly! The footage showing how the angle and lining work starting at 7 minutes 6 seconds really blew my mind. Before this point, I was thinking that this scene (the first scene) was actually composed of two different spaces. But right at 7 minutes 19 seconds the “magic” showed its true face.


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Movie Feedback #1 - Cindy Sherman

The movie began with a pretty “unusual” way (regarding the camera angle) to start the introduction.

Cindy Sherman, a New York based artist, is famous for her photographs of women, in which is not only the photographer but also the model. Her works show an unsettling landscape of sultry women. Dramatic lighting and strange subject made her name. Jamie Lee Curtis, an American actress and author, gave Sherman a series of high evaluations.

“Through a photograph, you can make people believe anything. It’s not really the camera’s doing, it’s really the person behind it and figuring out ways to tell lies in a way through the camera”, said by Cindy Sherman. Personally, I found this quote very fascinating. Indeed, through a photograph, the photographer can choose what s/he wants the audience to see and, only the contents showing in the frame can be seen. Everything else outside the frame would be unknown to anyone except the photographer her/himself. Sometimes seeing is not one hundred percent believing.

“My inspiration comes from a lot of the media related influences around me.” – Cindy Sherman

The photograph showing in the movie at 21 minutes and 41 seconds, which I have happened seeing during my visit to The Art Institute of Chicago on the 8th of this January. What a special feeling finding out that, the movie I was watching has a content that I have just experienced a few days earlier. (Here is a link to the picture I took of the photograph: https://goo.gl/OmnFIF)

“I definitely incorporate a lot of ambiguity and ambivalence in the works. It’s hard to describe the way I work because I work so intuitively. I often don’t know what I’m going after until after it’s shot or after I’ve done several shots. Sometimes I don’t know about what I’ve done until I reads somebody’s written about it. So, it’s hard for me to really analyze the work in that way.” – Cindy Sherman

“I’m always the other”, said by Cindy Sherman. For a long time, especially in nowadays, where ever-increasing development and accessibility of high speed internet and, a sea of different types of social media platforms we have, completely originality of ideas and works are less and less seen. People tend to plagiarize others’ work and what even worse is, make a copy of the work then take it as his/her own good.

“Images of ‘Woman’”, Judith Williamson introduces the photography of Cindy Sherman. “I don’t think Sherman is a feminist artist or a non-feminist artist. I don’t think that’s what her work is about”, said by Judith Williamson, a feminist writer, found Cindy Sherman’s work very interesting and, she finds things in it that speaks about imagery, about popular culture.

“Just like being scared, it’s kind of creates the journal and rush that’s like being on a roller coaster ride or something is terrifying on one hand, but you feel at least you are safe because you know this ride will eventually stop and you can get off and go home.” – Cindy Sherman

“If there is any terrifying in my work I want it to be very settle, just below the surface.” – Cindy Sherman

“There were other things that made my works sort of take this road and, that was the interests in incorporating the body parts as a substitute for myself. Also, wanting to change the audience more than I felt I had been, especially when my work first started, being sold, being popular, I got very nervous about that. Wanted to make work that would be a change for somebody to want to hang about their sofa in their living room.” – Cindy Sherman

NEA (National Education Association) was censoring artists and, Sherman’s answer to that censorship were those outrages portraits of genitalia from angles that none of us will ever see them from, in sizes and scopes that will never see. Yet she was able to poke fun to NEA so strongly and made pornography out of plastic and, really answered what is pornography better than anyone did.