070613 Meeting

Despite the Skype sound problems, I thought that last night's meeting was productive. As I understand it, we each left with a task or set of tasks to work on for next time:

I will continue to experiment with flash to find new ways to combine our media and to use them in interesting ways, while at the same time keeping it simple minimal in large part. I will also begin processing combinations of text and images, as well as ideas for effects and animation, as they come in from you guys.

Nathan says he will plow ahead creating sounds and sound combination. He will also begin preparing to film all of us for the back wall.

David wants to continue working on the filmstrip idea and will flesh out his current ideas about Track 8 of Nathan's sound and also ponder ways to caption images.

Mindy promised to go through images as best she can and come up with pairs or tryptichs that create interesting juxtapositions.

Am I mistaking or leaving anything out? If so, post corrections below as comments.

As you saw, I sent Steve an email about changing the opening date, and I also sent All Souls an email about using their pews. I'll let you know what I hear. Finally, I email Chuck Tomlins about meeting with Nathan and me. He might have some input to offer as we solidify what we are doing.

Speaking of which, I'm starting to like the churchy idea more and more. The set up has so many possibilities. The placement of lighted videos on all sides evokes traditional stain glass, as well as the modern reliance of churches on media to promote their messages. The "altar" provides a natural focal point for our viewers used to such a seating/political configuration that allows us to play with it. The three forward screens (from the perspective of the viewer) also evoke so many relevant triplets: the triptych of medieval religious painting, the trinity of course, and our media of text, image, and sound (in fact, I would like to evoke that trio at some point in the installation).

Below are some ideas I've jotted down in my notebook about using flash, and I want to record them here not only for posterity but for your perusal:

• Embed short film clips within projected text or images, in a YouTube type of frame. We could use not only the movies we've taken ourselves but also found films--from the Tulsa Films documentary (there are 2 or 3 clips that are must have's for me), Oklahoma, Tulsa, oil industry promotional films, televangelists from TV, etc.
• One movement could have only films juxtaposed in a series of jumpcuts. We'd just have to make sure the resolution of these films can handle wall-sized projection. Most of them are too small.
  
• I'd like to do a sequence like the one in Fight Club where text pops out of the shot, labeling the furniture in the narrator's apartment like an IKEA catalog. We could do this with our photos of refineries or churches using lines from our texts. This will be easy to do and will resemble the animation in the fourth poem of Tulsita.
• Run text down side or margin of photos as if it were being typed, pipelined, or transmitted. Again, this draws off effects I mastered in the first animation of Tulsita.
• I also want to do more with the effects we used in Tulsita in the interludes attempting to combine text and image (eg and image turning to text, text arranged to form and image, etc).
  
• Since we are doing a church set-up, why not have some of our texts in a bulletin order of service type thing?