knocking myself out

documentation of shoot with iPhone using TiltShiftApp by Toni Matlock ©2012

We have all said it, right?  

Knock yourself out.

It’s meant as a phrase of encouragement but mostly casually and without much pressure. Right?

still frame from "capturing velocity" by Toni Matlock ©2012

Well this past spring, I said it to myself and accidentally did a doozy, literally.  It happened in the midst of a studio project.  I have been working on a series of art works that contemplate wind.  The series began when I received an artist’s residency at Jentel in Wyoming in 2011.  (Click here for my posts on the Jentel residency.)  Each work in the series is a study of wind and the human relationship with it.

In the spring of 2012, I set out to document the wind activity in the Missoula valley.  I packed a video camera and a portable windsock and hiked up a ridge where I was confident I would collect good wind activity and have a visually strong shot of the windsock.  I wanted to collect a visual representation of wind.  I wanted to study its patterns and habits through the lens of a camera.  I set out to do so roughly every day.  

still frame from "capturing velocity" by Toni Matlock ©2012

In the first few days I explored the perimeters for the collection.  What would be the boundaries for the piece? Would the location always be the same? How long would I shoot each day?  Which way would I point the camera?  Would it be the same every time?  First, I decided that the camera must always point to the West.  Simply, I preferred the aesthetic of the shot when pointing west.  The windsock looked most alive to me in this direction.  And I always shot in the afternoon, between noon and five o’clock.  Then, in an effort for economy, at first I only shot for 30 seconds, but it felt incomplete, like I was interrupting the shot – interrupting the wind.  In the middle of a gust of wind, with the windsock popping around chattering about the speed and shifting directions, I looked at the time and after 30 seconds were up, I clicked off the record button.  It felt like I was being rude.  The windsock continued bobbing around but I wasn’t capturing it.  I had gone out there for more than this, so I changed my own rule and decided that each day I needed to record a complete thought - the wind’s complete thought.  (Or my perception of it.) I would watch and listen and feel whatever I concluded that would be.  I let the wind be as expressive or quiet as it appeared it wanted to be each day.  I shot up to 10 minutes in a day as long as I recorded a single ‘complete thought’ from the wind.  I did it for 30 days.

still frame from "capturing velocity" by Toni Matlock ©2012

So there I went, each day in a routine of charging camera batteries, loading the camera and its supporting parts into my pack, strapping a tripod to the back of it, heaving the entire bundle onto my back and carrying the 2-piece metal portable windsock in my arms like a baby.  I never hiked very far, but I always went uphill.  Each day, after placing the windsock, setting up the camera and selecting the frame of the shot, I sat with the wind.  On beautiful clear days, when the wind was low or still, I wished for it.  I longed for the slightest breeze. I made note of the different birds that I met.  I paused to enjoy their chatter.  I peered across the valley and measured the clarity of the air from one day to the next.  On cold, rainy, tumultuous days, I hid under raincoats and fought the wind to cover my camera and protect it and simultaneously rejoiced the dynamic performance of the windsock.  I also wondered, repeatedly on cold or wet days, who the hell’s idea is this?  Why am I sitting out here with a storm rolling over?  Oh, right.  I decided to do this.  Steady on. 

On one particularly crappy day, I hastily packed my gear.  The tripod dangled a little too high off the pack.  When I reached the location where I wanted to shoot and started to take off the pack, I forgot to unclip one clasp low on my waist, so the load fell back and all its weight pulled hard at my waist.  Instinctively I shifted forward and launched the load up on my back again.  In doing so, the dangling tripod went too far and cracked me in the back of the head.  I went black and dropped to my knees.  One knee landed hard on a pointy rock.  Without thinking, I quickly stood and unleashed myself from the pack and let it drop to the ground as if it were a bomb from which I needed to distance myself.  I sat down again on thorny weeds and rocks. Everything slowed down.  The chirping of birds distorted like I was under water. When I heard the train huffing along below me in the valley, I laughed out loud.  I just knocked myself out.  I looked around but no one was there to see what a silly thing I had done.  I felt like a cartoon without an audience.

still frame from "capturing velocity" by Toni Matlock ©2012

Eventually, I forced myself up and continued with my shoot.  On that wet, cold, and windy day I wondered more than most other days what brought me to this place - this place of working out conflict and connection with a camera. When I finally hiked off the mountain, I felt my questions answered and yet persisting more than they had been before. 

I’m sharing this story partly because I think it’s funny.  It’s funny in that it reveals how confusion and mistakes can give way to clarity and humility right when you need it.  At least it reveals that to me.   

still frame from "capturing velocity" by Toni Matlock ©2012

The culminating video, a compilation of the 30 days of shooting, is four and a half hours in length and titled “capturing velocity”.  I present the video as a projection into a white porcelain-enameled cast iron sink filled with salt.  You look down into the sink, to watch the video on the grains of salt.  It is on view at the Missoula Art Museum as part of the 2012 Montana Triennial exhibition until August 26th.  To find it, enter the Museum, go up the stairs, turn left, go left again and up more stairs.  The piece is in the far corner.  MAM is open every day this summer. 

I’ll also be giving a brief talk about the piece and my process at MAM during First Friday on Friday, around 7pm August 3^rd.  Please come on by if you are in town. 

A sample of video from "capturing velocity":

the making of a fairytale part 1

At salty snack studios we make movies and iPhone apps.  Last spring, Cassi James, a local Media Arts student at the University of Montana, came to us as an intern.  It's been outstanding working with her. 

Cassi put together a script for a short movie with one of our apps (Love's Book of Answers™) at the center of the story.  This summer we helped her make that movie. In an earlier post, I showed some video clips when we were scouting locations. 

We had clear sunny days, a Rock Star cast and crew, plus great luck on the timing of trains.  

The movie is in the final stages of post-production and will release this winter. Here are some behind-the-scenes photos.

Zach Smith, Bruce, Cassi, Jessica Mostad

The joys of a jib.

I find shooting a video camera can be a very sculptural process, even more so when the camera is moving - not sitting static on a tripod.  Bringing together a wide range of possible angles with movement is putting the camera on a jib arm on wheels.  Basically, sticking the camera on the end of a long arm, moving levers to tilt the camera, swinging the arm from the tripod support and then rolling the whole bit on a set of wheels collectively, gives a bigger range of motion than on a tripod or handheld.  It's elaborate but worth it.
   

camera at the end of a jib arm

After we release the movie, I'll explain (or you'll see) why for this shot we pulled the tripod and wheels off of the tracks that normally help smooth out a shot.  (The nut of it: we needed bumpy instead of smooth when rolling.)     

It's a combined effort, like an awkward dance, shooting this way.  I love it.

Bruce and I playing back clips in the camera and watching them through the tiny viewfinder.

The same week as the shoot, Clementine came from Jersey to be the first and only member of our unofficial salty snack studios' Boot Camp.  Clementine pitched in as a key member of the crew.  She's funny, smart and has a keen eye which was a big asset.  She also took many of the photos documenting the production.      

Clementine tightening bolts on the jib arm

Cassi's script required a few tricky scenes that were fun to problem solve.  Like, how do we show the Prince sword-fighting with a Dragon?

Without explaining the shot, since you don't know the script yet and haven't seen the movie yet either, simply observe how odd it can look when you are making a movie.  Notice Bruce has the camera on the bottom rung of the ladder.  I'm bracing the ladder-to-nowhere and Zach, as the Prince, is about to jump onto it.  Cassi is directing the scene.
 

Ready?  Action!

Zach Smith, Bruce, Toni, Cassi James

This was just day one of the shoot.  I'll post more photos from other days soon!

Photos © Clementine "Devo" and Toni Matlock

a letter from Sol redux

                                                                            VXSP3PS3YT6H

Remember my post "a letter from Sol"?  Well, apparently Sol's letter is trending a bit.  That video was made in 2004 (according to its credits) and uploaded in 2007 by Joao Leonardo.  Here (below) is another video made by someone else inspired by the famed letter to Eva Hesse.  I found it via my friend and photographer, Doug Ness, who posted it on facebook and apparently picked it up from Jane Fulton Alt.  

Sheesh, the art world can be so... incestuously small and repetitive sometimes, eh?  Even so, I still maintain that every artist could use hearing this advice and repeatedly.  

Plus, I appreciate the different tone of this video.  Joao's is more minimalist and post-modern, in keeping with Sol Lewitt and Eva Hesse's sensibilities. This newer one (2011) by animator Levni Yilmaz is a refreshing departure; it is arranged differently, less intense in its energy, and incorporates hand-drawn imagery.  And the message feels more youthful and human because of it. 

To read the letter which begins "Dear Eva, It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though)" in its supposed original content and order, go to this blog.

If you find more interpretations of Sol's letter out there, let me know. Perhaps I'll make my own video version of the letter.  Who knows?

keep the Princess rolling

Today I broke out my bike, zipped over to a gas station and pumped my tires full of air, then rode downtown.  Within four blocks my front tire was almost flat.  Uh-oh.  I'm a fair weather bike rider, I'll admit it.  And I'm impatient with small hassles that mess with my plan for a day.   Oh, and forget about me fixing the tire myself.  I'll get my hands dirty with plenty of things, but this really isn't one of them.  At least not at this point in my life.  I guess it's a Princess point for me.  

Anyway, the weather was nice, so I figured I could walk my bike around.  I made it to Biga Pizza for my lunch date then went on to finish my errands.  I stopped in and saw my pal H-bomb at The Red Rooster, who reminded me that conveniently, Missoula has bike shops all around town and one is literally in the middle of downtown.  So, I pushed over to Hellgate Cyclery for a tire repair.  They had my bike ready and rolling again in thirty minutes.  Zippety-do!  Now, that's living like a Princess!

  

happy winter 2010

happy winter 2010 from salty snack studios on Vimeo.

video of my video on a window

At The Brink Gallery first friday opening reception of my show fix yourself, I watched a person taking a video of my video, learn more to earn more, on the window with their point-and-shoot camera.  It might have been the most perfect moment of the show for me.  

First, you can only see this video at night.  The projector hangs inside the gallery and points out an exterior window, so during the day the light of the projector doesn't compete with daylight.  

learn more to earn more, video, lectern, encyclopedia minus core cut out, moss, window, silver leaf

In daytime, you can see just inside the gallery stands a lectern with an encyclopedia and moss growing inside it.   On the window's surface, silver-leaf layers form a circle at eye-level, over the book on the lectern.

learn more to earn more, view from outside during the day

When dusk rolled in on the later side of opening night, it was after most gallery walkers were heading to dinner with friends.  I was about to leave for the night too.  I stood in the middle of the gallery, when I saw a person outside the gallery stop to watch the video emerging in the circle on the window.  learn more to earn more was the last piece that we had installed for the show only a few hours before, so I had not even seen it on the window yet myself.  The person outside was probably the first to see this video as it was intended - on this window of this gallery, framing the objects inside.  

learn more to earn more, demo (with gallery staff member, Marlo,) of a person looking through the window

As I stood inside, twenty paces away and watching, their face, blurred by the filmy substance inside the circle that 'catches' the projecting image, they were perfectly framed in the silver-leaf halo.  I thought, "fini." But then they lifted their pocket camera, framed  a shot of the video and held steady.  Their lens pointing into the window, framed by the photographer's fuzzy face, framed in a halo of silver-leaf framed by a window of darkness.  This was more than I had hoped for.  The woman next to me saw what I did, and without a hint of irony said, "Toni, you gotta get a picture of that!"

A companion piece to learn more to earn more, titled swell, hangs on a nearby way in the gallery.

swell, core of encyclopedia, rope

learn more to earn more, detail at night

You can't really see the video at this angle, but you can see the layout of the elements at night.  The light from the video is 'captured' inside the circle of silver leaf, and also reflects off of it, back onto the encyclopedia.  

The video with learn more to earn more ran for the last time last Friday night.

solo show at The Brink Gallery

For the month of October, I have a show of new work titled fix yourself at The Brink Gallery in Missoula.

fix yourself features some of my efforts to pare down and seek clarity of knowledge - a moment that you look and hear and feel something that you’ve seen, heard and felt before but now you are convinced it’s a part of you.

integrating thoughts, LED lights, wire, ink and acrylic on butter papers

installing integrating thoughts

integrating thoughts, detail

the exhibition includes objects, pictures and video works.  see more samples of my work here in the future and at my new blog for my artwork here.

getting nowhere robot

Our friend, Peter C., made this great little car robot which he runs with an app that he wrote for his Android.  Bruce shot and edited a fun demo video of both in action.  Many thanks to Peter's friend, Frank Lewis, for providing music, too.  I ran it around Peter's backyard for a bit, too.  It's really fun.  Go Peter!

Oh, and be sure to notice the tracking shots. Oh yeah, baby, we got some new gear and it's my favorite kind: wheels.  

get the message?

Supporting the reduce, reuse, recycle agenda is one good thing. Making the point effectively is another. 


This new piece from GOOD magazine hits the message home the way I like it most - strong and straight from the hip.

look again, what's in your hand?

We don't have television or cable, so I'm late to discover the Old Spice advert campaign, but I've long been an admirer of the firm, Wieden and Kennedy, who produced it.  Totally brill.  And not computer generated.  Just straight up creativity.

To hear how they made the movies, visit this link to Tech Burrito's thorough coverage, including two videos. The first video show's G4's Attack of the Show interviewing the scrumptious talented actor, Isaiah Mustafa, and the second video by TWiT Netcast walks through bit-by-bit the "I'm on a Horse" piece with the creatives, Craig Allen and Eric Kallman. 

It's so refreshing and inspiring to see work produced with so much commitment to creativity.  


Well done W&K!

And go Isaiah!