THE RADICAL EYE: TATE MODERN

The Radical Eye was an exhibition of photographs from the collection of Elton John on show at the Tate Modern that I visited on the 16th May and also on the 21st May 2017. To briefly give an overview of the exhibition and to quote the publicity material...

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one of the world’s greatest private collections of photography, drawn from the classic modernist period of the 1920s–50s. An incredible group of Man Ray portraits are exhibited together for the first time, having been brought together by Sir Elton John over the past twenty-five years, including portraits of Matisse, Picasso, and Breton. With over 70 artists and nearly 150 rare vintage prints on show from seminal figures including Brassai, Imogen Cunningham, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Tina Modotti, and Aleksandr Rodchenko, this is a chance to take a peek inside Elton John’s home and delight in seeing such masterpieces of photography."

There were a great assortment of images from the first half of the 20th century and the aim of the show was to celebrate the pioneers who were defining what photography, was and could be. This was in terms of creativity, purpose, ideology as a tool for artists and to record society as well as developments in technology that mage photography grow as an art form.

The exhibition was brilliantly curated and the rooms were themes into areas of photography. The pieces that most affected me however were the ones catagorised in the exhibition as Documents. here were lots of documentary style  1930's photographs by the likes of Dorothea Lange and her Oklahoma images as well as Walker Evans and his Alabama images. Both photographers had taken images of people and their photographs captured the time, place, hardship of their subjects amazingly well. I also loved the work by Helen Levitt of life in inner city New York capturing the place and people that lived there.

One of the reasons these struck a cord was the way they tackled social injustice by giving these people a voice in both of these cases during the depression. The work was called a "social document" factual information presented in a moving way in order to maximise its affect. I guess this is similar to the themes I want to address but also emphasises less can be more. The images are simple, uncluttered and represent a manufactured truth that is moving and contains both narrative and character. Much like what I am trying to achieve in my own work.

OLAFUR ELIASSON

I really enjoyed the conceptual yet physically beautiful works of Olafur Eliasson. He deals with environmental themes often on a large scale and site specific works often at time specific venues to highlight environmental causes. the scale of his work is immense and it is hard not to be moved by it but it also applies to many of the senses alongside sight, smell, touch and brings the issue to the audience. His work is markedly different to what I am working on but his aim and intentions are the same so looking at his methods, tactics and he addresses his audience have really helped formulate some ideas on how to move my work forward.

The following article by Ken Johnson in The New York Times is a great reference point it and adds detail to my own thoughts on his work and contains some excellent quotes from Eliasson himself. 

Olafur Eliasson displayed pieces of ice that broke off from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Exhibited in a refrigerated gallery space powered by solar panels, the ice “sculptures” represented 800 years of Earthly existence, putting human’s physical experience in perspective. “The obvious lesson of Mr. Eliasson’s installation, ‘Your waste of time,’ is that global warming is wreaking havoc on nature,” 

Olafur Eliasson: Your Waste of Time 2013

Olafur Eliasson displayed pieces of ice that broke off from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Exhibited in a refrigerated gallery space powered by solar panels, the ice “sculptures” represented 800 years of Earthly existence, putting human’s physical experience in perspective. “The obvious lesson of Mr. Eliasson’s installation, ‘Your waste of time,’ is that global warming is wreaking havoc on nature,” Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times last year.

The artist who is bringing Icebergs to Paris.

On a clear day with little wind, in early October, a tugboat set out from the harbor of Nuuk, in southern Greenland, in search of a dozen icebergs for an installation in Paris called “Ice Watch,” by the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and the geologist Minik Rosing. The installation, a circle of icebergs with a circumference of twenty metres, is installed at the Place du Panthéon during this week’s Climate Change Conference. The captain of the tugboat was Kuupik Kleist, the former Prime Minister of Greenland, an affable man in his late fifties who was born and raised north of Nuuk. “Ninety per cent of our country is covered by ice,” Kleist says. “It is a great part of our national identity. We follow the international discussion, of course, but to every Greenlander, just by looking out the window at home, it is obvious that something dramatic is happening.”

The idea of “Ice Watch” is twofold: the ice is arranged like a watch, or a clock face, to indicate the passing of time; and, in real time, observers will be able to watch the ice melt. Eliasson explains, “A circle is like a compass. It leaves navigation to the people who are inside it. It is a mistake to think that the work of art is the circle of ice—it is the space it invents. And it is on a street in Paris—and a street in Paris can’t be more important than it is right now. We all feel that strongly.”

In Greenland, sailing out in the Davis Strait, past Nuuk Harbor, trawling slowly, the ice Kleist was looking for wasn’t just any kind of ice but icebergs made of compressed snow—snow that has fallen for tens of thousands of years—which have broken off from the glacier, in a process called “calving.” “We can only take what nature gives us,” Eliasson says. “For Paris, the ice gave us big chunks!” The largest chunks of ice displayed in Paris are just short of ten tons, which is about the size of three New York City cabs piled on top of each other. Minik Rosing, whose work on photosynthesis in the Greenland sea beds reset the date for the beginning of life on Earth, from 2.8 billion years ago to 3.7 billion, explains, “Inside the iceberg, you see snow layers in sequence as you go back in time. Because it is compressed, the air between the snowflakes that fell thousands of years ago is trapped in tiny bubbles.”

Once Kleist and his crew lassoed the ice calves, they were dragged back into the harbor, lifted up by heavy cranes, stored in icehouses, and then transferred by container ship to Denmark before a ten-hour trip, in a truck, to Paris. (The longest trucks are the cheapest, Eliasson notes; the project was underwritten by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which also funded Eliasson’s 2008 New York waterfall project.) Ice, like glass, is both hard and fragile. Kleist laughs, “We had to be very, very careful. We didn’t want to open the container in Denmark and find a thousand ice cubes!”

Eliasson was waiting in Copenhagen. “I thought, I know what ice looks like—I’ve seen ice frequently, these days! But when I opened the truck, it was shivering and shining in the warm air of Copenhagen. The ice had gotten a shock! I put my hand to it and suddenly I drew my hand back! I said to myself, The ice is really cold! Cold ice on your hand is very different than reading about how it is melting.” He paused. “From the perspective of the ice, humans look really warm.”

Some of the questions that are preoccupying Eliasson in his work these days include: What is the relationship between data and cognition? How is data translated into doing? Thinking into feeling? Are we more likely to act on knowledge or emotion? Timothy Morton, a British philosopher whom Eliasson calls “our new Arctic friend,” has been part of the ongoing conversations Eliasson likes to have around his art installations. Morton writes an extremely popular blog, and is the author of several books, among them the forthcoming “Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Further Coexistence.” (He’s also collaborated with the Icelandic singer Björk.) Morton is a proponent of Object Oriented Ontology (O.O.O.), which suggests that, in order to realign our relationship with the planet, we must think of a plurality of perspectives. “In our contemporary ecological emergency, there’s a lot of data, but at this point we’re dumping ecological data on ourselves. It’s not helping. We don’t need to be doing that for one more minute. Olafur is putting pieces of ice there and saying, ‘Let’s try to start a conversation.’ ”

“Ice Watch” was first mounted in Copenhagen last year, outside the Town Hall, while the I.C.C.P. climate report was being written, in what Eliasson calls “a trial run.” François Zimeray, the French Ambassador to Denmark, encouraged Eliasson to bring it to Paris. There was no question, according to Zimeray, of the exhibit being cancelled after the attacks there in November. “On the contrary! The vocation of Paris is cultural life and the exchange of ideas. It is so important now to show that life is alive in the streets, in the very center of Paris!”

Eliasson and his wife, the art historian Marianne Keogh, have two young children, Zakarias and Alma, who were both adopted from an orphanage in Ethiopia. I asked how having children had changed the orientation of his work. “You know, my kids are more elaborately agile in the digital mode than I am. My generation experienced a time of innocence, but children now have never known a time without the challenge of climate change. I try to ask my children not what nature looks like; they know what everything looks like—atrocities in Paris, in Syria, everywhere. But they don’t know what it feels like. Public space in which things happen is vitally important now, and especially in Paris, where space is generated by civic consciousness.”

He asked me to hold on; he needed to wake Alma from a nap. When he returned, he said, “We are bringing ice to Paris two weeks after the attacks. The values I hold were attacked. My first thought was to respond to the authorities and be attuned to the sorrow. ‘Come,’ they said. The earth is a public space, the space is my host—I am putting ice in the palm of Paris.”

The exhibition opened last week, and will be up for two weeks. At the Place du Pantheon, if a passerby puts her ear to the ice, she will be able to hear a little moment of pop and crack. What is released is the cleanest possible air. It is fifteen thousand years old. Eliasson says, “It is a little pop that has travelled fifteen thousand years to meet you in Paris, and tell the story of climate change.” Cynthia Zarin has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1983. She teaches at Yale. Her new book, “Orbit,” is a collection of poems.

OFFSHORE EXHIBITION

The following exhibition in Humber OFFSHORE part of the UK City of Culture 2017 festival, was the first joint exhibition between the city's Ferens Art Gallery and Maritime Museum. Works include a series of poems inspired by the Humber Estuary and a film about the local fishing industry. One performance features a dancer with a latex costume which changes colour in response to data received from coral at Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The work explores the sea and examines the many contrasting ways that the sea has shaped our culture, our imaginations and our physical existence through mythical sea monsters, superstition and seaside traditions as well as trade and travel. the exhibition explored how our treatment of the sea threatens its health: climate change, coral bleaching, toxic waste and flooding are some of the issues that artists explore through their work.

China Miéville explored the ocean depths of Bermuda in a submersible to write an essay, and artist Phil Coy joined a fishing boat out of Bridlington Harbour to create a new film.

What I learnt from it most was the variety of approaches to creating environmentally inspired art. Also that subtlety can be a better way rather than hitting an audience over the head with the issue and argument as I can sometimes do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-39461175

CLIMATE CHANGE: CAN ARTISTS HAVE ANY INFLUENCE? NO?

This is my overview and analysis of the second he second half of the article in TATE ETC Magazine the summer edition 201and alternative opinion on whether artists can really make a difference. I have pulled out the main points of the argument by Alastair Smart from the Head to Head feature below.

Alastair Smart: Freelance critic and former arts editor at the Daily Telegraph.

Smart argues that artists do not have any influence over the issue of climate change. He starts by the citing environmental activist Bill McKibben's 2005 essay What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art. In this McKibben laments how few artists were tacking in his view "the single most significant issue" of our times. He offered the reason for this being that the issue was simply too big a topic for artists and that "something happening everywhere all at once, becomes the backdrop and context instead of event". It harks back to other research I have carried out and this small gradual shifts rather than a climactic event are harder to appreciate and reflect.

In the intervening years between then and now there has been cautious optimism in the Paris accord and Chinas investment into renewable energy. However Smart argues that artists have paid no real part in this change and it is still the then and now photos of glaciers.

 James Balog: Columbia Glacier in Columbia Bay, Alaska

Echoing McKibbens thoughts he argues "global warming of 0.06 degrees per annum fails to arouse passion quite like the facist bombing of a small Basque town". He does mention that artists of Picasso's calibre do not come along all that often too though! He agrees that global warming is simply not evocative enough to get pulses racing, seems to have minor impact on our comfortable lives in temperate cities and has no clear narrative, character or villain.

Another reason why he feels that artists have in his opinion not contributed to changing and influencing hearts and minds is the complexity of the science and estimations and forecasts on the world and the pace of the change. The politics is also confused and often contradictory on what to do economically, politically, legally and on a local, national and international level.

Lastly Smart argues that there is also the risk of hypocrisy being levelled at artists taking on the challenge and trying to deal with the issue. Research for and making as well as exhibition of art often "involves a carbon footprint very much at odds with any environmentalist cause being addressed."

In his opinion artists' influence on the debate has been limited so far and is highly likely to stay that way.

My Thoughts.

You can see some truth in what Smart says but Ledgard did point out some artists that have been highly influential in the field and have had an impact in creating discourse around the issue. There has not been however a superstar break through yet in the field. I do agree that the tiny incremental change in climate change is not a huge sell in a world where we need impact, an obvious force or obstacle to rally against and spectacle. There is no obvious villain (although Trump is doing his best to be one) outside of a mass of faceless global fossil fuel energy giants and politicians. Perhaps there is an opportunity here though to create a narrative, characters and villains for the issue to play itself out on. In my own practice I love working with these themes and perhaps they could be integrated into my work as a docu-drama threading fiction and non-fiction together. The Hypocrisy is a very valid point. I have been aware of ow carbon film projects and grants and perhaps this is an issue I need to apply to my own work. How can I make it the carbon footprint of my work as small as possible.

CLIMATE CHANGE: CAN ARTISTS HAVE ANY INFLUENCE? YES?

I found the following article in TATE ETC Magazine the summer edition 2017 and it was really interesting as it offered two opinions on whether artists can really make a difference. I have pulled out the main points of the arguments by J.M. Ledgard from the Head to Head feature below.

JM Ledgard: Former Foreign political and war correspondent for The Economist and novelist.

Ledgard argues yes that in the face of man made climate change, destruction of the environment and politicians in denial of science that artists can make a difference.

The first reason is that"art will have agency is that everything is in play, positive futures are possible, and many artists care passionately, almost painfully about the living world. The blog roll call of those working on climate change issues alone runs into the hundreds. Admittedly, some are vulnerable to missionary positions and green agitprop, but others strike a melancholic intensity." He cites
Rachel Sussmans photographic series documenting the world oldest living things which I will follow up on. he also adds that it is not just the artists who care but the patrons too who are becoming more inclined to spend money on ambitious installations dealing with the issue.

Rachel Sussman: Oldest Living Things in The World Book Cover

His second reason is "an alliance between art and science at a level not seen since the 18th-century foundation of the Royal Society and French Academy. By backing up the conceptual with the science art has gained heft". Ledgard uses the collaboration between artist Olafur Eliasson and specialist Greenland ice geologist Minik Rosing to illustrate this and their sculpture for the 2015 UN Paris Climate Change Conference. The ice sculpture they created allowed the audience to touch, circle and see them selves as flushed, hot and fleeting next to something so clear, cold and ancient. The sculpture was indeed beautiful but the science behind it elevate the work to the profound.

Olafur Eliasson: Ice Watch

Thirdly and a really interesting viewpoint is that Ledgard proposes that "artists are more trusted than politicians and are likely to remain so in the confused populist movement." The unguardedness and often intimacy of artists their idea and their medium of wordless light, colour, shade, form and space give it a separate authority.

The fourth reason is for betting on artists is their embracing of technology and new forms of communicating their ideas. "The near future is going to be one of visual fragments, of meta-visions, reconstituted in isolation by individuals on smart-phones and mixed reality headsets." This online, interactive, immersive, 3D world offers huge potential for artists and whole new and as of yet uninvented and therefore un-embraced technologies. These will possibly contrast the natural and the simulated highlighting the difference between the tow. He predicts that "in response to digital connectivity, art shown in public spaces will become more social and coherent, and perhaps more meaningful".

Lars Jan: Holoscenes (Garden Hose and Guitar)

Lastly Ledgard argues that many other conventional methods promoting understanding of the future are not as immediate as art can be. Economics, philosophy and neuroscientists have all demonstrated that humans struggle to project themselves into the future. He states "But art can move effortlessly outside of time and space".  Arguing that our classical ancestors were locked to the land and sky by, storms, stars, solstices and harvest. He art and as ambitious as the geometric sculptures in the Texas desert by Donald Judd, Agnes Dene's wheat fields in NY city, Peter Doig's Caribbean paintings and Tomas Saraceno's airborne sculptures can tap back into that state. That is how art will inform the debate.

Donald Judd: Texas Desert

Agnes Dean: Wheat Field

Tomas Saraceno:Solar Bell

My Thoughts.

I agree with all of Ledgard's arguments and they back up my own thinking. Art allows an examination and critique of the issue in a different forum. In my own practice which has been moving image primarily and rooted in documentary it is also backed up by facts even if it is playful with the truth. I have been exploring creating the "ecstatic truth" as Werner Herzog calls it or the "creative treatment of actuality" to quote John Grierson. I agree that in a world of spin and fake news many artists are indeed trusted more than the machinations of politics and politicians. I also find his thoughts on the embracing of technology interesting as someone who has been exploring it in my work. Pushing the boundaries of vision and audio and experimenting with audience dissemination of these is certainly something that will have huge influence in the future. Finally I agree art can transcend science, vision, perception and comprehension to help an audience emote and feel. When talking about an issue as huge as climate change if you can tap into this you are halfway there in changing perceptions and calling people to action.

TRUMP VIRALS: AND GROUP CRIT FEEDBACK

Moving on from the last piece that I screened at the group critique I have been developing the idea of the installation into some more viral based content. Presently these are just tests and I am not too sure where they will go but presently I am wanting to experiment.

From the last crit it was interesting to note that the elements that my peers liked the best and the ones that were the most memorable were those by Donald Trump being pompous and making outlandish claims. I decided to proceed with these virals as another way in my raft of ideas around the topic to get the message out there the reason for creating them was four-fold.

1: I wanted to try and create some viral content as it was something that was new to me. I had been carrying out some research into virals and techniques I could employ.

2: I wanted to develop my skill-set. Creating the virals would mean I had to develop my skill set using animation, Adobe photoshop, premiere pro and most importantly after effects. I did use after effects on my piece for the last module and it is a very powerful tool and I wanted to continue to develop and extend my skill level in different ways and forms.

3: I genuinely feel that in todays connected social media obsessed generation it could be good way to communicate the global warming message to them.

4: I wanted to move away from the installation idea for a while as I was starting to lose interest in it but thought I could repurpose the research and assets I had been collecting/reappropriating.

I started off creating the viral/title sequence below. The first task was to find some interesting audio. Picking up where I left off on the installation test I went to Trump. Research has shown that America only have 5% of the world population but emit 25% of the worlds CO2 emissions. He is a fair target his policies pledges towards the oil giants have been extremely favourable and the same for big business and they both swelled the coffers in his presidential race.

He also drops quite a few clangers in his bullish often charmless way and this is what I needed first of all a good sound bite to use for the viral. In spite of 99% plus of scientists saying that global warming does exist Trump still refutes it. This ignorance and stupidity goes against also the groundswell of opinion that it needs addressing. It was easy to find such a soundbite of him refuting global warming so this went into the timeline.

From the research that I had done I found out that some of the major causes of global warming were.

• Coal fired power plants.
• Car emissions.
• Deforestation.
• Agriculture and especially animal farming.

 Looking online I managed to through research find good examples of all of these that were either on green screen of easy to cut out in photoshop which is what I did next. I also made a plan for how these could be incorporated into the animation. I wanted to literally spell out the topic global warming over the voice over and then animate these. I made a rough pre-vis and also thought that as it is a world issue it would be good to put a spinning globe in too and that this could replace the O in Global. 

Next it was into photoshop to prepare any images and then I put all of the assets into. I wanted the images to be blatant and very obvious and hard hitting so I made them just that. I also wanted to incorporate them into the lettering so in After Effects I scaled and layered them to be integral to the piece. as you can see below the bellowing chimney stack becomes the I a tree sprouts and then is animated being cut down in the L. On top of this a car drives into shot and I added some heavy fumes to this image and a little chemical spraying farm vehicle comes in from the right.

To top it of and polish it I decided to put a knocked back symbolic US flag in the background and obviously had the spinning globe too. That finished I wanted to add more impact to the animations so found sound for the car, chainsaw for the tree and farm vehicle noises and added them all.

GLOBAL WARMNING TITLES SFX 1 from Jon Saward on Vimeo.

I am happy with a lot of the elements of the piece and learnt a huge amount doing it really extending my After Effects skills. I feel the piece has polish but it does not feel like a viral. Yes it is clever and the imagery and audio is strong BUT it does not have that wow appeal and make you want to pass it on that a viral should have. To put it against my own research and checklist of what makes a good viral. It is pretty topical and timely, as well as short and sweet and I do not feel that it is inspiring, makes the audience want to get involved, grab the audience immediately or that it is all that upbeat. It is clever rather than funny and this is perhaps where it falls down. It does not need sound which is a winner and I feel the production values on it are high compared the other virals I have seen but does it need the polish.

Taking all of this reflection on board I decided to develop another viral. This time I was going to try and be more blunt, funnier and hit some of the key elements that I feel I missed on my first experiment.

This piece was longer but it involved similar techniques and processes to the first piece namely animation, Adobe photoshop, premiere pro and most importantly after effects. I found lots of good sound clips and edited them together again, I know this meant sound for the piece but I felt that this could work as long as their were graphics on the screen so I found loads of sound bites and cut them all together to make a longer speech. It was a longer piece so the first thing I did was transcribe this dialogue so I could work out images and also time the actions to the dialogue.

This time I wanted to make more use of kinetic typography and also imagery. On top of this I wanted to lampoon Trump as I felt that this was missing on the earlier viral I wanted to make a feature of him. I did a rough storyboard for the imagery and animated action I wanted to plan it out and then started the piece.

I had been researching into cut out animation and decided that this was the way forward as this was harsh, funny, easy and quite quick to do and had the cartoony feel I feel he deserved. I cleaned up the image in photoshop made crude animation frames and then dropped it into After Effects. This was the first element I put in and I wanted him to be a constant so I stuck him to one side of the frame and then animated the mouth movements to match the speech.

As I mentioned the techniques were very similar to before just with more use of kinetic typography and animation. What I wanted to do here was try and be funnier though. I loved the juxtaposition between the rhetoric Trump makes about protecting the environment and the actual actions he has taken which do the very opposite.

This subtext I decided to make clear on the screen with harsh images depicting his actions not his words. when he talks about clean air, water safety I wanted to show the opposite which is what he is causing. When he talks about protecting the environment show that he is cancelling the powers of the EPA. When he says that people have called him an environmentalist (I never found evidence of this anywhere) I wanted to show him up for what he is agave him a Pinocchio nose growing across the screen.

GLOBAL WARMINING LONG from Jon Saward on Vimeo.

I was much happier with this piece compared to the first one as it felt much more like a viral and had more impact. It is also highly topical and timely. It is not  as short and sweet at the but I do not feel that it is a little inspiring and also make the audience want to get involved and pass it on. I do not feel it grabs the audience immediately so that could be worked on but it is upbeat and funny the way it goes beneath the Trump veneer and works contrapuntally to what is being said. It does need sound though to get the full impact and does not work anywhere near as well without it.

Again I feel the production values on it are high compared the other virals I have seen but again does it need the polish. I feel it is much cleverer and wittier then the first one and as such would have more impact. I also like the detail of the EPA logo changing and the Pinocchio nose growing

These two pieces were taken into the crit for feedback from my peers and I also got feedback from a close friend at Greenpeace. The feedback was similar to the points I have made myself. The audience definitely preferred the second one but said it lacked a little punch and I was working in a avery overcrowded field where there was almost a saturation of virals like this and that I needed to try to bring something newer to the table.

My friend at Greenpeace echoed this and added the Trump nose growing throughout would make it stronger and also to try and do a version without the audio for facebook where most people watch this content with no audio.

Moving Forward

• I may revisit the second viral to see if the changes suggested
• I am not sure that this medium is for me. I enjoy the fun of the pieces and extending my skills but I miss narrative and character.
• I screened the Amen Break in the crit too as many of the group had not seen it and tis solidified the above. They really, really liked it. It was the perfect marriage of skill, technique narrative and character with a great message behind it. I feel I need to return more to this style for the global warming piece or at least these themes.
• The piece was always and experiment and I enjoyed doing it technically BUT it did not have the heart and soul I like in my work.
• I will continue to experiment with new forms perhaps drama or even more installation work or even conceptual art to keep moving my practice forward.

SARA PROJECT: ART WALKS SHOOT

I went and shot the walk with Sara and it was as tricky as predicted lots of on the move, recording sound was an issue and there were technical issues throughout. However I got the best footage that I could. I should have tried to prepare more take a second camera-person and also find a better audi solution. I may n=be able to go back and shoot some pick-ups though.

My thoughts were right from the offset it will be very flat if I rely on just the footage from this and need to experiment to see how that can be incorporated into a different piece. This footage alongside other shoots would enliven it but I must not lose the atmosphere and feel of the walk.

The walk itself was really interesting and opened me to new ideas that I had not come across before and it was also enjoyable and informative even with a camera attached to me. The background on Jane Jacobs was really interesting and I will do some more research into her as she seems to have been fascinating character.

ALTERNATIVE REALITIES (HOAX)

To develop my raft of Global Warmning pieces further I am considering creating a fictional movement that is represented as true. It will be based on a web-site reflecting back over a movement that "existed" in the late 60's early 70's that was ignored and criticised by the establishment for predicting global warming and the catastrophies that would ensue if it went un-checked. By having them predict real life scenarios that are happening now it will give them credence and also make any predictions into the future grounded in some sort of proof.

In the style of the film the Blair Witch project I want to create an invented movement backdated to give the impression that what i am creating actually existed and was real and was not a construct. It will be a hoax but grounded in reality and this will

The aim is that as it is hard to predict and prove 100% what devastation Global Warming will have looking into the future what if you could. By going back to the late 60's early 70's and inventing a fictional but very real looking Global Warmning movement and setting it up as real what would people think of predictions that are a reality now. People love the idea of being able to predict the future and Nostradamus and Rasputin prove this as well as a good conspiracy theory.

Scarfolk and Hookland are sites site that do just this that have inspired the idea. and are good for gaining inspiration.


SCARFOLK

https://scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfolk



HOOKLAND

https://hookland.wordpress.com/

MY PRACTICE: INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

I have at times found it hard to understand exactly what may practice is. Is it documentary, fictional, narrative and character or art. If anything the MA in Arts Practice has confused this even further. I feel I am all of the above and that being pigeon holed as one is to the detriment of me and my work and I see no problem. If I had to plump for one though I guess it is the documentary form that most excites me.

I decided to collect here any quotes I really liked about the form and whilst doing so saw that the best documentaries are all of the areas I have been looking at and the very best often touch on all of them. Anyway I actually found this research quite consoling so with no more ado here are the quotes.

Nick Frazer: Editor of the BBC Storyville Strand
"I know this may sound like warmed-over existentialism, but this is the conclusion I’ve come to after sitting watching doc after doc, in an effort to write a non-academic, fan’s-notes book about the form. The docs I like are irremediably hybrid – a mixture of authorial personality, cod epistemology, appropriated or created history and whatever seems current and interesting. Sometimes they are polemical, sometimes tinged with fictional contrivance. The only rule is that they should have no rules. They should be, rather than tell. They should make the worst things comprehensible. No documentary should be without some aesthetic bliss, even if it is tamped down, minimal, barely noticeable. So yes, documentaries do matter, I think they really do."

Werner Herzog: Filmmaker
“Our entire sense of reality has been called into question. But I do not want to dwell on this fact any longer, since what moves me has never been reality, but a question that lies behind it [beyond; dahinter]: the question of truth. Sometimes facts so exceed our expectations—have such an unusual, bizarre power—that they seem unbelievable. But in the fine arts, in music, literature, and cinema, it is possible to reach a deeper stratum of truth—a poetic, ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be grasped with effort; one attains it through vision, style, and craft.”

WHAT MAKES A GOOD VIRAL?

I did some research into what makes a good viral and from looking at lots of sources complied my own top seven elements that make a good viral. I will need to make sure i apply this to my own work.

Be Short and Sweet
Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, which means you must tighten up video content. A survey published in The New York Times found more than 19 percent of people had left a video after only 10 seconds. By a minute in, the video had lost a staggering 44 percent of viewers. You are likely to lose almost half of your audience by the end of minute one, put your most interesting, fascinating, funny, or surprising information first and foremost in your video. Creating viral video content is one place where you never want to save the best for last.

Be Upbeat 
Jonah Berger, author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, found the most highly sharable content tended to evoke strong emotions in the reader or viewer. And of those emotions, the most sharable content tended to be that which had a positive or upbeat note. Using empirical research, Berger and UPenn Professor Katherine Milkman found happy emotions tended to outperform sad emotions in the realm of sharability. To be sharable, content needs to create an emotional chord in viewers. These same viewers are more likely to share upbeat content, so if you want your videos to go viral, it’s important to strive for a positive spin.

Be Timely 
If you want your videos to make the jump to virality, you need to be up to date with current events. By hooking into an existing Internet meme or popular topic, you increase the odds your content will be viewed and shared by those already interested in the topic. This can be anything from a current event in the world, to a pop culture topic dominating the news. For example, look at content attached to brands and the parodies of popular entertainment like Game of Thrones and Frozen exist on video channels. If you speak the same language as your target audience and present interest in the same topics, they’ll be more likely to share your content.

Be Involved
One of the keys to virality is engagement. Engaging with an audience can lead to loyalty and interest. After all, everyone likes to be heard. This is the approach taken by companies like Old Spice in several of advertising campaigns. At one point, the Old Spice man, played by actor Isaiah Mustafa, answered fan questions on social media in short YouTube videos. Adding an engagement portion to your videos, like answering viewer questions, can give your content a boost and make it more sharable.

Be Informative
The audience is always searching for new information and better ways to perform everyday tasks. If your video content is interesting and informative, it is also highly sharable. Everyone wants to learn something they didn’t already know, and videos can be a great tool for curating top-notch information. I need curate the best and most informative content to surprise and inform your viewers.

Does it need sound?
A huge amount of viral content is watched with the sound off on mobile devices near 50% so is it possible to make it work with or without sound? Tou could alienate huge audiences if it does not work without as well as with sound

Be Inspiring 
By now, the incredible story of Upworthy’s success is old news. The site managed more than six million unique page views per month in its first year, thanks in part to its famous (and infamous) headlines. Another reason is because the site looks to find inspiring stories to share with their large readership. To get the viral edge I need to look for stories to inspire and galvinate the audience, whether it’s a story of overcoming struggle, standing up in the face of adversity, or just finding success. Audiences love a good inspirational story, and the more inspirational it is, the more your audience will want to share it with others.