Red

Red is a very captivating color. It is known to be the most attractive to the eye and it is a fact that your eyes always jump to something red first. The color red in the film we watched was used so much it was almost disorienting. It came in different shades and forms, but the almost constant presence of the color made my imagination wander. The film had a way of giving me many different thoughts of what was actually happening. At some points I almost believed that it might have been shot on another planet. I feel that using this eye-catching color helped create much contrast for anything else that might be in the frame. It is a good way to make the viewer think about where they might be, but also what the contrasting object in the frame is. Smithson does like to work with content that lends the viewer to multiple thoughts and red is a good way to do it. Seeing as how most of the terrain was some shade of red, it made disorientation very easy. I'm not sure if it works for everyone, but I know it did for me. I found myself wondering most of the time of where I might be if I was there and it made my mind wander on what else I would be seeing in this unknown territory.

Artist Statement: Demonstration on Disappointment

When I first thought to do my performance, I wanted to make it more of a sound based presentation, than a visual one. In one of my other classes I had read an article by Robert Bresson on how isolating sound or image is important because if you overdo both at the same time, then the viewer will not get the most out of each one. Originally, I just wanted to have the sound of the glass breaking the entire time, and just use empty glass bottles to do this while either covering up the lens, or doing everything off camera. However, as I thought more about my idea, I wanted to get a greater emotional response from anyone who might view it. This is when I decided to include paint in my performance. I also decided to leave the lens covered the entire time except for 1 or 2 seconds at the end of the piece. The response I wanted to get out of this was disappointment. I wanted the viewer to feel like they were really missing something in only getting a glimpse of the finished product. The response that I got personally from the viewers is what I think is most important about this performance.

Now that I have performed this, I realized that there were a few things that worked extraordinarily well and a few performance issues on my part. Two things that I found worked very well were the result of the actual work itself, as it turned out looking better than I had imagined, and the response that I got from the people in the room after I was done performing. After I was done, my TA Heidi came up to me and told me how much she wanted the cover over the camera to not have been there. I know that she didn't understand the feeling that I was going for with this because it was kind of last minute and I didn't discuss with her the idea I was going for, but it turned out perfectly when she told me how I should have used something see through or nothing in front of the camera all together. I could tell that she was very disappointed that no one would be able to see everything that happened in front of the camera. When it comes to how my performance could have been better; I think it could have been a bit more professional. I didn't have the money to practice this before executing it for real, but I still shouldn't have opened my mouth and said something, even if I got paint in it. Also, I am not sure how well the bag I used covered all the action as I think it was partially see through. I had planned to use the lens cap, which was last second too, but instead the bag had to do. I also wish I would be been a little better with time, but that comes with practice.

If I could do this again, I definitely be a bit more organized and crisp in my own performance. I would keep the image completely dark until the last 2 seconds or so. I learned that this piece works very well as a live performance as I did get the exact response I wanted from the people in the room with me, but perhaps not so much no tape, viewed later in time. I suppose I will find out when we view it in class.