Back in front of a camera

Well, I'm still sick and I'm sick of being sick. So, I decided to make a video whether I felt like it or not, just to give myself a boost and help win a little moral victory over this damn cold. The results are slightly better than I thought they'd turn out. In any case, I don't have to look at that "time since last" counter on my YouTube channel continually adding up as I kept waiting to get well enough to sit in front of a camera or record a voiceover. If I want that YouTube partnership, I have to stick to my promise of a consistent output, even if the format changes slightly. I like doing the reviews, but I don't want to get stuck doing them. DeviantART and Flickr Video will still be my main jumping-off point for my more artistic pieces, whereas YouTube will always be a little more candid and personal, with video-logs and opinion pieces.

A Skinned Mole's Elaborate Remains

I learned what an Exquisite Corpse is in one of my video art classes. Apparently, it's a very well-known type of collaborative art project. However, when I put "exquisite corpse" in a search on DeviantART, I think I only got one result that was an actual Exquisite Corpse, and it wasn't even finished, only the start. That's very disappointing.

Something I said about collage once (from DevART)

tinkwig
A recent discovery. It's no secret that one of my favorite artists is David Mack (creator of Echo and Kabuki) in no small part for his psychedelic collage work. I actually have very mixed feelings about collage; I won't vocalize my negative sentiments about it, suffice it to say I find it really difficult to find compelling and interesting works in the style. Luckily, my search led me to his page, making the journey there all the more worthwhile. He is a poet of both prose and the mental photography that is collage. His works are snapshots into the depths of the mind, the part that synthesizes and collates and catalogs all the disparate images we absorb that eventually generates the abstractions that become inspiration and genius. It's like watching a chef take handfuls of different and inconsequential ingredients and turn them into a five-star dish that at once disguises its components and embraces them. Akira Kurosawa once said that “man is a genius when he is dreaming.” Well, that's completely true, and this guy's got the "photos" to prove it.

Hmmm...

Okay, so I've had an idea shot down by technical logistics, and I'm feeling let down by it. 

Anyway, the idea was to post little multimedia artworks via MMS to various weblogs, including Evernote. The idea was that the MMS would consist of a photo or illustration (maybe even a video), a snippet of text, and possibly an accompanying sound effect or musical piece. It would basically be a sort of piecemeal, episodic approach to making short films, one segment or shot at a time. 

Sadly, this was not to be, at least not in the way it was planned. For starters, when I sent a short video I shot to Evernote as an MMS directed to my upload e-mail, not only did the video not play, but the whole entry had a huge T-Mobile banner at the bottom of it, kindly (if loudly) reminding the reader that this message was sent by way of a T-Mobile handset. This probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if the video played, or at least if T-Mobile had slightly more fashionable colors than white and pink. It may have been passable on Evernote, but on Blogger, it would stand out like a sore thumb against my minimalist aesthetic sensibility. What's wrong with white text on a black background? It's far easier on the eyes than black on white. I'll admit I do like the earth-tone backgrounds a lot of people seem to be choosing for backgrounds, it gives the impression of parchment or papyrus, a nice homey and handcrafted feel. 

So, anyway, with Evernote a failure, I tried again, this time with an image and posting it to Blogger. It was a public domain image, an Arthur Rackham illustration for Wagner's Ring Cycle (God, I love Valkyries). The only thing that showed up this time was the snippet of text below the image, even the ugly T-Mobile banner wouldn't load. It all sort of makes me think people have missed the point of Multimedia Messaging Services. They'll send to other phones and e-mail accounts just fine, but somehow posting it to a web page creates a whole new set of problems no one has anticipated. 

What's really funny is that earlier today, I was helping a friend upload some pictures she'd taken with her camera-phone to her Flickr account. She's an Alltell customer, and not only did Alltell post each picture she sent twice, but it also included a third image consisting of the Alltell logo as a separate image. So, she sent three images, and got nine photos posted, three of which are just the same logo. Welcome to the internet, folks, where crap rolls downhill. Almost makes me wish Ragnarok would get here soon....