Course Number: Art 467
Course Name: Video Art

Live Cinema (final project)
Due: Dec 7th - Final Exam time

Objective:

To understand, manipulate, and redefine the notions of traditional cinema through constructing an immediate cinematic experience.

Assignment:

Your final project for Video Art should be of your own concept and design, and one that is a culmination of the tools you have learned and topics that we have discussed in this class. Please remember that this course is a focus in ways that video can exist as art, as an artistic experience. You should consider the ways in which your final project expresses or is representative of a particular concept or topic that you find interesting, impassioned, or inspirational. Your project should conceptually extend beyond the confines of traditional narrative and documentary. Your work should not be a passive, entertaining experience. We have spent a great deal of time exploring time/space relationships, real vs. recorded time, and how effects have meaning - your work should represent some (if not all) of these topics.

Your work may take the form of an installation, interactive interface, or live performance.

Suggested plan of action:

1. Develop a concept for a narrative story, idea, or theme that you will explore with your own customized software for projecting video and sound. Consider the use of actors (trained or concept appropriate), props, scene, sound, musical score (collaborative or original), and text. You are encouraged to experiment with traditional narrative plot lines (characters, rising action, climax, resolution, the hero, the villain, etc.).

2. Gather footage that supports your idea. Your imagery need not fit to traditional size and shape constraints, and can be edited or composited prior to actual performance (i.e. you can shoot a scene and then transform/effect it in After Effects to desired effect.)

3. Using Max/MSP/Jitter build a "patch" that will allow you to perform (edit and affect) your piece in real-time. You will be graded on the construction and implementation of your patch as well as your visual/audio presentation of your piece. This is very important: consider not only the effect, but also the meaning of the effect - ask yourself "what does the effect (or experience of the effect) symbolically mean?" An example might be the day that Eisenstein invented the montage.

4. Some compositional elements to consider: looping, freeze-frame, image averaging, motion detection, CV (aka Machine Vision), image echos/delay, speed, direction, three-dimensional space, three-dimensional objects, audio-visual sympathetic relationships, controller input, live camera input, and perhaps most important, consider the moment.

5. Plan your presentation. Unlike traditional cinematic situations, you will be required to perform this piece. We will perform these works publicly. You should consider developing a "score" and practicing it (at least enough to know that your software won't break).

6. You will be required to document your work. Upon completion of this assignment, you will hand in your Max patch, all supporting files, scores (if any), and a statement of intention or description of the piece.

Documentation:
See #6 above.
You will be required to turn in a 200-500 word statement about your project. This statement should include a description of your process, concept, and intention.