My idea was to film myself, drawing myself. For some reason, I've been taking much delight in connecting the old with the new and seeing what kind of relationships or contrasts/complements they give each other. I swear, I'm not trying to be egotistical, I'm just always available, it seems up to this point.
So what better and absolutely bare bones thing to do than to film myself; using a cheap, almost disposable, yet technologically advanced web cam while I draw myself using -
charcoal. Charcoal, basically being carbon, which you make by burning things, like wood. It's what makes 20% of your body. Ever see an image of a (even before) paleolithic cave painting? That's at least in part, charcoal.
The most basic ingredient in making a mark on simply anything used for thousands of years, coupled with cheap technology that has come to light and easily used by the regular consumer in the last thousands of days. Consumer computer equipment is synonymous with the silicon chip - really really refined sand basically - which itself makes up about 27% of the chemical composition of the Earth's crust - the part of the Earth we live on.
That's a totally random link between similar % of carbon in a human being and the % of silicon in the Earth's crust, which brings together life and its environment, it's actor and it's setting. And since I'm an "artist", I get to make those sort of silly connections to prove... points.
I've used cheap web cams before to film myself painting a self portrait, but instead of using a separate mirror as I've done before, I wanted to use the live feed from the web cam itself being shown on my monitor as the mirror. What I was to see would be recorded at the same time.
I think I've hit on something pretty amazing. What you watch is what I'm seeing - no deviations really, except for the speed up in the middle, which is partly to save some file size, and partly because what you see is the same thing over and over again - me looking up at the screen that you'll never see, me looking down at the drawing to make a mark - repeat - and partly because it's got that whole, Warhol boring thing to it that my incredibly stereotypical short attention span just doesn't want to deal with at the moment - although it's interesting because at the end, you do see a change! The final drawing is revealed, like the person getting a haircut lighting a cigarette.
So here's the thing: the actual imagery that I'm seeing in my "mirror" can be viewed over and over! You get to relive the actual visual information that I used to make the drawing, as well as the drawing itself. Every time I Look, I get a slightly different view of myself, that's interesting to me. That means that every drawing that is drawn with more than one glance at the object is actually a montage of different, yet similar experiences - just like anything learned, like any sort of memory I think.
So now I have the Final output with the process saved! I've captured a memory in two different ways - objective and subjective. It's one step away from drawing from just a photo, as well as one step away from documenting the process of a self portrait. Just a little tiny baby step toward something really interesting that I cannot even fathom as of yet - but shit, I'm walking now, baby! I feel like I'm Marinetti emerging from The Ditch.
I filmed about 13 minutes of footage. This turned into 15 gigs of information! I wanted to film more, but didn't have any more room on my drives. I was able to compress that into less than 3 megs of information to show it in this medium.
That's amazing in itself.
The only software I used was the complementary copy of iMovie from Apple, a little app called, BTV Pro and Quicktime Pro. My computer is seriously grinding to the ground working with gigs of information. I may have to do something about that, since I find all this too exciting.
I know this is all coming out without any rhyme, but another thing that I love about the final drawing itself is it's not very precise - I was under the gun to produce a drawing in a short time while consciously knowing that I was being filmed. The drawing looks like something that Billy Childish would produce, yet the entire experiment is something he would avoid (or, avoid him). Oh I just love contrasts like this. Have you seen yet?
Randomly today, I picked up David Foster Wallace's book, "A supposively fun thing i'll never do again". I just walked down a street, realized that I was at a corner where there was a bookstore and went in, bought the book, ordered some tofu at a restaurant and began to read.
The first essay is about television and how it continues to be self referential to itself, as well as it's voyeristic qualities, although the actors themselves are entirely aware of their Audience (as well as a million other things - I haven't really hit on a thesis statement as of yet - which is in the character of the author, who wrote Infinite Jest that started with a Flash Forward of one character and ended in a Flash back of another character - who never meet each other throughout the 1000 pages in between). That to me is sort of interesting to this whole thing as well, although I can't yet figure out exactly why. I'm thinking of just turning my feeble TV around to point at the wall.
If none of this really makes you go, "huh", or, "hmm", or, "you need to get out and get laid, or at least make a new friend", I don't know what to do about you. I did the above experiment at around midnight on a Saturday night. I was so excited after it, that I went dancing at some random warehouse till about four in the morning. Here's a picture I took of my friend Courtney from that same night:
