Final Project thoughts

After having some time to reflect on our final projects and what the projectors did for them, i would say that they were all very successful. I think that we all used the projectors in a way that worked perfectly for our project, even if projection wasn't the way we pictured the project going. Personally I would continue to use projection in future works, however most likely not the mobile ones. For what we were doing in Siena, I think the mobile projectors worked well, but there were so many things that we were all fighting with them. Personally, I had problems with the lack of color brightness when projecting. Despite these downfalls, I really enjoyed using the projectors and had a great time in Siena working on art and would like to say a big thank you to everyone that made it happen.

The Venice Biennale

These images are the ones that stick out in my mind. More explaination to come later.

Venice Biennale

An artist I enjoyed at the Biennale was Pavel Pepperstein and his work depicting images of the future. I particularly liked his work because all his pieces seemed to have a strange but fun story behind them. His images had a beautiful subtle color and to me it almost felt like i was reading a very strange, apocalyptic childrens book. His imagination of the future made me wonder if his view of it was optimistic or pessimistic. There were clouds talking to each other which seemed very endearing and yet there were images of old houses shooting lasers at skyscrapers-- is that a good or bad thing?

His work displayed at the main Biennale and Russian pavilion were completely opposite, but not at all in a negative way. In the main pavilion his pieces were on the white wall, but in the Russian pavilion the pieces were shrouded in the dark, lit by black lights and surrounded by pounding techno music proclaiming that Russia was going to take over the world. A very interesting contrast in display and honestly just plain fun. It went well with the "Victory Over the Future" title for the Russian pavilion.

What helped me enjoy Pepperstein's work is also the fact that all the text in his work is in English. It made me wonder if I would still have been more intrigued by his work if I didn't understand what the clouds were saying to each other. It's something I'm still curious about actually...

RPS

After dinner last night I went through and gave RPS a proper trial. It worked BEAUTIFULLY! I'm actually a bit let down that I didn't start doing this earlier in the trip, because I saw areas of town I'd never seen before, and it was amazing.

A little modification to the rules stated last time for doing RPS with a standard ipod. Loading only 3 images (one of each arrow) will actually just repeat in the same random order every time. So instead of loading 3, load 10-15 copies of each image. This seems to work.

Thoughts on the Biennale

The work that I really liked at the Venice Biennale was the video piece at the Icelandic pavilion by Ragnar Kjartansson. I felt like the piece was a great example of what we are trying to do here in Siena with our projectors. The different videos playing but all adding to the musical experience was great. I liked how when you got closer to each video the instrument in that video was more pronounced.

            Another piece I really enjoyed was the outdoor interactive part of the Arsenale. The fact that the artist wanted you to play on and with the pieces made viewing and experiencing the pieces a lot of fun. It seems like most art today is something that you aren’t supposed to touch and experience had on, and I really enjoyed the fact that those pieces were. 

People Of The Palio

Some of the people that make the Palio the event that it is.

A Happy Accident

Palio Stopmotion from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.