The Screen is an Arbitrary Surface: THE MOVIE!!!

A quick time compressed version/ of an on going investigation/ that is happening in my brain.

table-top retroactive thoughts.

I did not reflect on my table-top performance immediately afterward except for the thought that it was a mistake not to have the second image focused. I did a double projection performance that was quite spontaneous due to my bringing of mine own projector to class, when the classroom already had a 16mm projector on hand. And who am I not to take advantage of an opportunity like that. So I quick spliced together another role of film and grabbed different colored advertisements. And I was ready for my performance, aptly and promptly named "The screen is an arbitrary surface." A notion that I have been wrestling with for a long time, and have worked with the idea in an earlier video for a different class. The performance went pretty good, about half way through I hit my stride and had a nice moment of seeing myself on film upside down. And upon further reflection the unfocused image and my representation of myself focused workd pretty well, was it an unintended metaphor??

spiral jetty observations

The connection in the film to prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs brings up the thought of technology and how, even though the spiral jetty was in some part built with bull dozer's and such, the end result feels like an early human structure, not unlike Stonehenge or the giant head sculptures of Easter Island. Some of the ending sound track eludes to this; dare I say primitive technology when the narrator spells out the ingredients of the structure; something to the effect of rock, salt, dirt and water . . .
This is at least for me pounded in my head with the images of the dinosaur bones and red filtered image, although I can not connect the red with anything I am talking about. The editing table was also striking and maybe this is just a stretch but in showing the construction of the jetty, I think smithson also was entitled to show the construction of the film. As told in lecture he thaught that the jetty lived in three places, the actual structure, the film, and ???. So when thinking that this art does live in the film than it's only right to connect the making of the filmic representation of that art, for film is an artful construct in itself. In this case it is done in a self-reflexive way in showing the tools, machines (technology) that filmic art is put together.