Project 3: INTERVENTION

Think of a desire you would like to see realized, something you want to see in the world.

Materialize that desire in the form of a 4-minute video using only found video and found sound.

Use a minimum of 10 sources (sound and image together).

Catch: Somewhere in your video will be dropped a subtle clue as to its fictional nature.

Upload your video to YouTube, paying particular attention to the metadata: the title, tags, and any contextual and descriptive bits of information that will serve to link your video to others. (The relations between videos is as if not more important than the videos are themselves.)

Possible strategies you can use in making your fiction (among many others):

Removals: removing part of the image or sound to un-do the structure of the video, and shift the emphasis onto other details (cf. Martha Rosler’s If it’s too bad to be true, it could be DISINFORMATION, made with a malfunctioning VCR. Also, see “laugh track removals”).

Super-cuts (multiples): cutting together similar details from different contexts gives these details another kind of importance (cf. Cory Arcangel’s Paganini Caprice No. 5, Christian Marclay’s Telephones)

Re-edit: switching around scenes and shots, changing soundtracks, can have the effect of changing the emotional tenor of a video, revealing hidden layers (cf. “trailer re-edits”, and Martin Arnold’s Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy)

Mash-up: heterogeneous sources are brought together in order to redefine their meaning, create other image and sound affinities, and tell another kind of story, often a hidden one (see Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message; The Message is Death; Arthur Lipsett Fluxes (week 9 folder); Pierre Huyghe The Third Memory)

Sound and image play: removing the original soundtrack of an image sequence and replacing it with new soundtracks. (We see the soundtrack that is missing, while hearing a new one in our ears.)

WRITE-UP (1000 words): Due April 18.

Your write-up should address all of the following:

the premise (the desire)

the choice of footage (how you went about finding it)

how the discovery of video materials changed the initial idea

the methods you used to alter the footage, and how you chose them

(it’s a feedback process: the idea tells you what materials to look for, the materials you actually find change the initial idea, while at the same time the way you edit and alter these materials according to your idea changes the nature of the materials themselves…. repeat!)

the way you positioned your video in relation to existing YouTube videos (through the title, the content you’re using, tags, and other metadata)

(knowing that your video will eventually end up connecting to existing videos on YouTube will change how you make your video and think about its effects)

comments your video has received and other aspects of its “circulation” (its social effect)

comments your video received from your classmates at critique

This is an intervention into the fabric of reality, dropping a video fiction into the YouTube stream, which contributes to our daily reality, modulates our brain functions.