Isaac Howard and Professor Gary Barton, Visual Arts
The technological shifts in digital media have empowered individuals to create quality multimedia productions on a relatively limited budget. With the help of ORCA, I have been able to take a new direction with my art using digital sound and videotechnologies. I have spent the last year trying to learn how to use the new equipment in order to produce the art I have envisioned.
I had proposed to create a video and sound installation using digital audio sampling and synthesis with digital video editing procedures to create a narrative that would focus on the obviousness of editing procedures to heighten the viewers’ awareness of how all stories involve a great deal of editing. The narrator or artist selectively choose to edit out or emphasize certain moments in their memory to recreate a story. I had decided to make a video in which the edit was the subject. I suppose I had wanted to uncover the deceptive subjectiveness of editing stories.
A project of this scope proved to be very challenging for someone trained as a painter, who had never used a camera. However, the challenge interested me. I was able to take a video editing class during summer to learn some basic procedures. During this time, I also began experimenting with digital and analog edits and transfers. I tried to find aesthetically interesting ways to edit and manipulate analog video tape before I transfered it back to the digital editing platform. These experiments have led to a collection of work that has developed into a BFA final show that is scheduled to take place at the end of November.
Although I have not been able to form a traditional narrative as I had originally intended, I have continued to use the edit as a subject of exploration. My opinions on editing as something deceptive have shifted to an understanding and almost an appreciation of the human nature involved in the distortions that our stories take on as they are retold or played back. I feel satisfied with the work I have done so far and I am still interested to see where this new direction in art will take me. ORCA has given me the allowance to experiment in a new media and develop as an artist. I express gratitude to those who have encouraged me to work on this project and ORCA for providing a way in which this project could emerge.