Conversation with an Artist Piece - Hattie Mallot

https://vimeo.com/147784731

http://www.tehchinghsieh.com

My piece was based on Tehching Hsieh's one year piece where he spent a year outside. I chose to respond with a simulation of a person spending a week outside. However in my version, since it was a simulation, I chose to take one item from the person each day at 8 am and see how they adjusted. I did this in order to make it interesting. After two days, he had become unbearably lonely. Although there were people who came and went by the area he was staying in, he never chose to interact with them. After a day without a bath or any way to clean himself, he became filthy. With a lake and a garden of fruit and vegetables at his disposal, he never made use of them. I chose to not interfere in any way besides taking items away from him, as I didn't want him to survive simply because I made him. The simulation was supposed to last a week, however the person in the simulation died in a grill fire after four days. 

Convo with Famous Work - Hattie Mallot

I'm thinking about having a conversation with Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance from 1981-1982, where he spent an entire year outside without entering any buildings or kinds of shelters. I think it would be interesting to see how different our experiences would be. I would have to do it for a shorter amount of time though, say a 24-hour period, instead of a year.

I was also thinking about doing a recreation of a piece done by a student that I once saw in a magazine, where the student made a suit of flowers and walked around in order to break up the monotony of a commute to work and bring a breath of fresh air to the urban landscape. If I were to do it, which I don't think I would due to the logistics of creating a suit of flowers, I would give the flowers away until there was only one left, as though I were giving parts of myself away. I could possibly do this for Project 4 instead...

Project 3 Draft

https://soundcloud.com/paintedxdark/sick-day-draft

In-Class Listening Exercise - Hattie Mallot

The Seven Heads of Gog Magog by EF Bausor
https://soundcloud.com/emma-florence-bausor/sets/the-seven-heads-of-gog-magog

Project 3 Soundboard Reflection - Hattie Mallot

I still think I want my project to be about the distortion of time. I'm thinking I will do that through the addition and subtraction of sounds at different intervals. I'm thinking about having some dialogue at the end where the person's roommate comes in and they have a short conversation. Or maybe I'll have some kind of tone that plays while the person sleeps or something. I still need to think about the arc/timeline of my sounds, but I like my idea...

Instructions - Hattie Mallot

Instructions :

1.     On the TV Tropes home page (link here), click the “Random Trope” button. It is next to the page's search bar at the top of the page, designated by a pair of dice and the word "trope".

2.     Once you’ve done that, record yourself reading the first paragraph on whatever page it sends you to in Audacity.

3.     Next, go to the Prelinger Archives (link here) and enter the first word from the title of the article you just read into the search bar in the Music, Arts & Culture section of the Audio Archives.

4.     Find the first result and download it onto the desktop.

5.     Insert it into Audacity, and edit it so that it plays along with your reading. Try to make it so that if your music has words in it, your reading is louder. Hint: if your reading is too short, you can intersperse the music so that it plays quietly in the background, and have it resurface in breaks during your reading.

Here is an example by me:

https://soundcloud.com/paintedxdark/chance-sounds

Project 3 Brainstorming - Hattie Mallot

I really don't know what I want my project to be yet...I think it would be cool to have a narrative made entirely with sound, without dialogue. I don't know what I would want that to be, but right now I think I would want to get my sounds from where someone works. The two sounds I have recorded right now are the sounds of myself typing, and the sound of an elevator moving.

Typing: https://soundcloud.com/paintedxdark/typing

Elevator: https://soundcloud.com/paintedxdark/elevator

Audio File - Hattie Mallot

https://soundcloud.com/paintedxdark/dirge-without-music-excerpt

In-Class Assignment - Hattie Mallot

I listened to "Pulse Demon"by Mertz Bow. It sounds like the entire piece is sound rather than what would be considered music, since there is no melody. However, I would argue that the piece has a sense of suspense similar to music. It also has repetition and rhythm that makes the listener ok with continuing to listen. It really sounds like TV static and other electronic distress signals. At other times it sounds like there are car engines running or people running with wet shoes.This piece is actually pretty distressing to listen to...it makes my ears hurt, and I want to stop listening to it. It feels really fast paced. I would characterize this as art, because I think it's meant to make the listener feel a certain way, to evoke a certain reaction.

Project 2 Reflection - Hattie Mallot

I'm glad people liked my project despite the issues with focus and direction. I thought the feedback I got was really useful, and I would definitely take advantage of it if I were to revise this project. I would add more footage of my roommates for sure, and make sure that my footage got full images of peoples instead of obscuring them. When I was filming, I often forgot that I could treat my living room as a set, so I didn't really experiment to the full extent I could have.

6'x6' Project Artist Statement - Hattie Mallot

          “Home is…”

Project 2 Artist’s Statement

Hattie Mallot

https://vimeo.com/142544014

Originally, I'd wanted to do a piece about the amount of space in a living room throughout the day, where the living room is empty in the day, but as the residents come home, gradually gets fuller until they go to sleep, when it is empty once again. However, as I was filming, I realized that the emptiness or fullness of a home depends on the perception of the resident. Even if everyone who lives there is home, the house can still feel empty. For anyone who's hosted their friends at their house, it's the feeling you get once your guests leave after having a good time. In this film, rather than a progression throughout the day, as I’d originally intended, we have the dichotomy of day and night.

In this film, time passes quickly as the residents are home watching TV together. The lighting is washed out. Once the residents invite friends over, the lighting is warm, and time seems to slow down. The shots that once swept across the living room lazily are now closer and more friendly. We see the way people fidget, lost in a conversation with their friends. As the evening draws to a close, the residents and their guests get sleepy, and time seems to stop. The night becomes dark after everyone leaves, leaving one person asleep on the couch. Time passes rapidly, and suddenly reality comes back in a hurry, along with the daylight.

Rough Draft - Hattie Mallot

The file was too big for vimeo, so I put it up on youtube.

https://youtu.be/iakT2p2uQ7k

I'm not satisfied, and I'm also not done shooting. I may reshoot some footage based on feedback from today.

Project 2 Storyboards - Hattie Mallot

My first storyboard shows a room slowly filling up with items. A person interacts with the items in various ways. After a while, the items slowly begin to disappear again. The concept is "if your brain/memories was a physical place.

My second idea was much less cool, I think. It would basically just be showing the usage of a living room throughout the day, meaning that it would be empty most of the time, then suddenly full, then practically empty again.

Comics Reading Response - Hattie Mallot

1. Does each frame represent a single moment in time in a comic? Why or why not? What about in video?
It depends on if there's accompanying sound. It also depends on how long it takes for the eye to gather all the information from the panel. In video, a still frame usually does represent one moment in time.

2. In comics, time and space are “one and the same.” How so? Contrast these strategies with how artists represent space and time in film and video. 
Because it takes time for the eye to move across the page, and because all moments of time are visible at once in a comic. In a video, only the present is visible at any given time.

3. How do artists represent space in moving image? How do we know the space is larger? How does an artist elicit claustrophobia on film or video? Provide 2 examples from film or video of how large or small spaces are communicated to the audience. 
In a moving image, space is usually represented by movement around an area. The longer it takes to cover an area, the more space we know is there. Claustrophobia is usually elicited through framing. Many establishing shots are wide shots, using scale to give us a sense of space. Similarly, close-ups and extreme close-ups may give us a sense of claustrophobia.

Finders Keepers - Hattie Mallot & Dana Hatchett

https://vimeo.com/140868030

Chapter 14 Reading Response - Hattie Mallot

     1. What is causality? 
- Causality is a chain of events, with one event causing another, and then that event causing another and so on.

      2. Define narrative compression and give an example of a tv or online commercial that uses this technique.
- Narrative Compression describes the various ways to make a narrative make an impression on an audience within a limited amount of time. Usually relates to commercials. I think my favorite ad is a public service announcement against sexual harassment that was made by an Alumnus (Ketan Rana) of Whistling Woods International Institute of Film, Fashion, and Media. The title of his video is "Dekh Le". The ad shows several instances of women being predatorily stared at by men, whether they are aware of it or not. As these men stare at the women, reflective surfaces begin to block their views, showing them what their own gaze looks like. Despite the fact that there are no english words until the end of the ad, the message is still very clear.

       3. Briefly describe and give examples (not from the book) of two non-narrative approaches you have seen in film or literature.
- Uh...let's see...non-narrative...uh, any commercial that just gives you information counts. So, commercials for children's toys, like Floam, or for medicine, like Head-On! Apply directly to the forehead!

Critique 1 Reflection - Hattie Mallot

My piece was more well received than I thought it would be. And I was surprised that people got pretty close to what my piece was talking about. I would have thought the pacing of my video would be critiqued, but I guess it wasnt really of note. I also thought that my shots might bother people since there were times when the picture I was drawing wasn't visible, but people seemed to like my over-the-shoulder shot as it added a human touch. If I were to do this project again, I would take into mind the style of the drawing itself, the amount of space taken up on the paper, the rest of the body of the drawing, and the realism of the process portrayed in the video.

Project 1 - Hattie Mallot

Link to Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/140077329

Artist’s Statement: Self Portrait

My piece, entitled “Self Portrait”, shows a girl drawing herself. The first picture she draws is a glamourized version of her, the way she would like to present herself to others. Deciding that this is not an accurate portrayal of herself, she erases the picture and starts over. This time, she includes her flaws in the picture, such as her messy hair and the bags under her eyes. This picture is more accurate, but is not a picture she wants to show others. She doesn’t want people to scrutinize her flaws! She scribbles out the face in her picture, marring the face she doesn’t like, and goes to erase again. When she does, her eraser tears holes in the paper, destroying not only the face she was drawing, but also the surface on which she was drawing. Frustrated, she crumples up the paper and throws it away. This piece is about self-representation and the way we present ourselves to others. There is a disconnect between how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. In an ideal world, the glamourized versions of ourselves that we show to other people would be our true selves, and there would be no disconnect. My movie aims to show the elusiveness of self-representation that shows our best selves and still feels true who we are. As the protagonist struggles to find a representation of herself that she can be content with, the violence with which she treats her materials destroys her representation entirely. In the end, the protagonist gives up instead of trying again, though that’s not to say that she can’t come back to it later. After all, the sketchbook is still lying on the table.

Storyboards Reflection - Hattie Mallot

I already knew going into the critique (or whatever you want to call it) that my first storyboard wasn't really strong, because while it was something I wanted to do, it was something I have a reason to do. My second storyboard had a stronger concept, but I lacked interest in it. However, while we were watching the examples, I got a third idea that I like better than either of the first two. I want animate a battle between myself and my hair in the morning. I think that has more meaning to me and would be more fun to watch.

Storyboard #2 - Hattie Mallot

These storyboards depict a person drawing, erasing, trying to draw again, and erasing a hole in the paper. The concept is about inspiration or "getting it right".