Hello, Internets! Sorry I’ve been a bit absent lately. This September I’m starting graphic design courses, and lately I’ve been practising my skills. My most recent project was to design a concert poster for The Printing Press for their show on August 22. I have to admit that I often have trouble pulling random ideas out of the air, so I went with a motif that was close to my heart: cameras! I actually don’t own a Diana camera myself, but I like the way they look and the weird, dreamy, crappy-but-cool images that they tend to produce.
Since I was to create a concert poster and not a camera show advertisement, I put a little something, also known as a (bass) guitar, in the camera lens. I also had fun with the halftone look of the camera. I’m really interested in learning more about screenprinting, and I’ve always liked the aesthetics of something that’s been printed in overt, visible halftone. I plan on experimenting with that more in the future, hopefully culminating in learning how to screenprint for reals. In the meantime, I print my own stuff (t-shirts mostly) by stencilling, and I’ll write more about those projects in an upcoming post.
Sometimes, there’s something to be said for imperfection.
Although I get (usually) crisp, clean images out of my digital cameras (except in low lighting situations where I stubbornly refuse to use the flash), there is something to be said for the grain and noise and imperfection of pictures that come out of a film SLR. Now, these images are more speckled and worn-looking because they were developed at home and I’m not exactly the most skilled film developer, having never taken photography in school. My brother and I use a bathroom with no windows to develop our rolls of film, and block off the light coming through the door with a blanket, hoping it keeps light tight. It’s a lot of fun in the end, though it’s a bit time consuming and frustrating when you’re trying to open film canisters and load film onto spools in the dark! After we’ve developed and washed our film, we scan it and then deal with the images on the computer. Somewhere along the way, a bit of dust and scratching made their way into the final product, but I think it adds something to the old look of the photos. These photos look like they could have been taken decades ago, instead of within the year. I love film for totally different reasons than I love digital cameras, in the same way that I enjoy vinyl but mostly listen to MP3s in reality.
Speaking of film, I’m quite sad that Polaroid is stopping production of its film sometime this year… it’s time to stock up! :( I hope that another company will keep producing the film so that I can freely use my Polaroid camera (a $6 Value Village find!) without wondering if the shot I’m taking will be my last.
I finished this painting a couple of days ago. Acrylic paint + pink ink pen on canvas.
Don’t worry, our protagonist is not dead (despite her greenish look), but only sleeping!
She appears to be dreaming about something quite intense. Maybe about shiny pink lightning bolts.
(Also, another way that I intended the painting was for the woman in it to blend into the landscape, her body appearing as a sort of mountain range – but you can read it as you please.)
Today I went with my brother David to the Bloor Cinema to see Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie (1962), starring Anna Karina (who, by the way, must be one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen on screen – and she was also Godard’s wife at the time the movie was being made!). I’m writing about it here because it caught my attention on many levels and left me thinking about it long after the screen went black and the words “La Fin” told me I was free to go.
First of all, the film was really interesting on a purely visual level. Godard and his fellow New Wave filmmakers were part of a movement that was deliberately taking moviemaking beyond the rigid, realism-based style of Classical Hollywood. In other words, you can tell that this film is a film, and it’s not aspiring to look like you’re viewing an uninterrupted slice of real life. You get scenes with obvious jump cuts, sequences where you view two characters talking without ever seeing their faces (!), and music that abruptly starts and stops for no reason. I find it refreshing when both you and the director can admit that you’re viewing a piece of artifice.
For all the artificiality and flourishes, however, Godard probably deals with more social issues in his movies than your average Hollywood director. Vivre Sa Vie tells the story of Nana, a struggling actress who turns to prostitution to make money. You can be sure that Godard was pointing the finger at problems in contemporary French society, and that Nana’s downward spiral wasn’t really her fault. Do I agree with his leftist political commentary and his tendency to blame big social forces over an individual’s choices? I can’t say he represents my point of view, but I find it interesting to read a film on a sociological and political level.
You also find a good smattering of existentialism and random philosophy that seemed to be fashionable in the mid-20th century. To be honest, most philosophical texts are way too dense for me to enjoy, so seeing bits and pieces of it in films makes it easier to digest! One of my favourite sequences in the movie (which was divided up into 12 parts) is in a café, where Nana and a random stranger discuss the meaning of words and truth. You can watch it below, and if you find the dialogue too pretentious (which it probably is), you can enjoy watching Anna Karina.
Speaking of which, even when I don’t really like a French New Wave film, I always enjoy it on an aesthetic level. The clothes, the makeup, the hair, the surroundings, the now-retro feel. I liked how Anna Karina’s look seemed to be a reference to Louise Brooks, another fashion inspiration to many people.
Hi there, friends and strangers, and welcome to the new and improved front page of openedeyes.net. Instead of having my website up online with static (read: unchanging) content, I’ve installed WordPress so that I can keep my site updated much more often with photos, art, design, and all things aesthetically pleasing! Feel free to leave comments or get in touch with me whenever it strikes your fancy!
