Transitional spaces - Part 2

In yesterday's lecture we were told about the second part of our project. We have to view the edited transitional theme videos from each group and take from them a 'thread' to use as a theme in our individual work. It can be anything to do with transitional spaces or transitions. Beofre we start to think about the second part of the project, We were asked to answer a few questions about the first part and overall I came out with this; 

• That I found the theme for 'transitional spaces' a bit of a broad subject and found it quite confusing as to just what it meant, and so did many other students. It would have been better to have more of a guideline on the theme, however on the other hand because it was such a wide open project, each group came up with a different idea and this made the work quite varied. 
  
• The project made us more aware of our surroundings and how everyday spaces could be seen as inspiration. 
• I found it quite challenging to generate ideas & work with other peoples footage / images and produce a different idea from it - that and the fact we didnt really have much control over the piece. 
• It made us more aware that people may view our work with a different idea about it, and will interpret it in a complete different way. 

-----------------------------

We were shown some past year's work... The first one being a video from Jake Lillis & Liam Bolton, "Lonesome". The two at the time of making the video were also second year students. It was inspired by sin city and I REALLY enjoyed it , there was a lot of after effects. Sue told us basically the guys went out and took photos of Leicester city centre, then edited them in photoshop etc to make them look like a cityscape of NYC. The films characters were also very well thought out, aswell as the script, the narrative and the scenes. The video completely drew me in and I wanted to see more of the story! 

The second video we were shown was "By Richard" By Richard Murray. We were shown the video first and asked later what we thought it meant. It was a very conceptual piece, with no script, just high pitched sounds, sounds of dial tones, static and clips from various songs. The visual element of the video was shot in night vision, which instantly gives it a haunting feeling. At points in the video the subject was being bound by a type of metal corset, and peeling skin off. My initial thought was it was kind of like watching a moth escape from a cocoon... the peeling back of skin and the jittering of the body, like flickering wings trying to escape something. I thought it would have been about metamorphosis and about 'shedding your skin', possibly moving onto a new chapter in your life.

The video purpose was to show how the subject felt trapped in his own body, he wasn't comfortable in his own skin. 

The ambiguity of the video is what drew me into it, i really like pieces like this wherein you can draw your own conclusions / interpretations. I defiantly prefer more ambiguity and for things to be more subtle. Its more of a personal expression of something, either an external or internal perspective. Using the camera to express something by using symbolism. Though pieces like this are conceptual and made for the artist, they still need an audience and a response.