Thursday, November 10, 2011

Robert Savid

As an artist, are there ideas presented by Professor Robert Savid which can be used in a time-based work (such as a film or theater piece).

Some of the ideas:

• time as malleable, changeable
• aging as relative (theory of relativity)
• time travel

• simultaneity
• time dilation
• length contraction

Describe how you might use one of these theories in an artwork.

19 comments:

  1. Robert Savid presented many ideas of time. It's interesting to start thinking how his ideas could be used in a tim-based works such as film. One film that comes to my mind is Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. In this film, the events are presented non linearly and it is never realized if the even has happened, is going to happen or is even real. This represents Savid's ideas of time dilation, length contraction and it's relativity. I think it's be really cool to use the theory of time dilation in an artwork, I'm not sure what would be the best way to go about doing this as I am not an expert on the theory, I would imagine a video, installation or performance piece wold compliment it best.

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  2. The ideas presented by Professor Robert Savid can definitely be used in time based work. A perfect example of this would be in the movie Inception where time is, in a sense, malleable and changeable. This movie starred leonardo decaprio and was focused on how one can plant ideas/ live in one's own dreams or in other's dreams. Time is malleable here because years spent in a dream can equate to a number of minutes/ hours in real life.

    In my own personal artwork I may use any of the above methods if appropriate to the concept. I would probably only use the various techniques however in time based media.

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  3. The idea of time being malleable and changeable is really interesting to me. The way we perceive time is very variable. We often confront the feeling that time is speeding by too fast, but also that feeling of time seeming to move extremely slowly. I think it would be interesting to explore this idea through two juxtaposed art pieces. I am not sure how this would be conveyed, maybe through one very mundane and slow moving piece, and one very fast paced and exciting piece. I think it is also interesting to explore these concepts through a non-time based media, though i'm not sure how I would actively convey time through a stagnant media.

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  4. the relativity of time can be used by an artist to deceive the audiences sense of time when viewing a piece as they do not have a fram of reference outside the piece. For example, scenes without dialogue tend to feel longer because they may be less exciting. A musical interlude could be used to convey a long passage of time in the eyes of the viewer.

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  5. Aging as relative is a theory often used and explored in films. What does it mean to age? What does it mean to grow up, or 'come of age'? For example, in the movie 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' there are two main characters, played by Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt's character ages 'backwards', in that he was born looking old, and as he ages, he actually gets physically younger, but his mind is older. These two characters age in their respective ways, but it isn't until the two are 'mature' enough that they are finally able to be together. Thus the fact that Brad Pitt's character 'looks' old and aged has nothing to do with his maturity. Then there is the common 'coming of age' story used in books, movies and tv shows around the world. One such example is in the anime FLCL. The main character, Naota, is a 12 year old boy trying to act more mature than he really is. It isn't until he has a zany experience that he finally realizes he should stop acting mature beyond his years and allow himself to be the child he is and allowing maturity to occur at its own pace. Just because you act mature and wise beyond your years doesn't necessarily mean you are.

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  6. After hearing Robert Savid's lecture about the aspect of time, i have thought more in depth about how time truly affects us. He asked the question if we think we would age more on earth or in space. I personally thought earth, which is true. He then explained how you can also age differently from state to state. In movies and art work, time is always present. Whether the time frame be one day, or even years, it's something an artist has to consider. When thinking of time in movies, I dont know why, but the movie, The Notebook comes to mind. This being that the artist, or the writer, had to differentiate what was real and what was merely a memory. There was back and forth scenes from the past and present, which captured the audience into the story.While watching the audience learned about who they were, and who they used to be. I hadn't realized before this lecture how much time really influences one's piece, nor did I realize how much one needs to think about time before producing one. His lecture was stimulating and was different than past ones, being that this felt more like a science class. However, I think it was necessary as artists to learn about time.

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  7. The idea of simultaneity explains that two events that seem to happen at exactly the same moment can be seem as events that happen one right after the other depending on your frame of reference. I think this idea can be used to further the divide in perspectives in artwork and although a piece might not directly reference the technical side of this theory, the idea that perspectives can change an art work is one that should be explored. In a 2-D or 3-D work, one could do this through the display they choose for their work or the distance they have viewers look at the work. In film, one could play with this idea by presenting a story from two view points, slowing down certain parts of the work or speeding them up. Because the theory is about two events taking place, it would probably be best implemented into performance art or film-making.

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  8. The idea that time is malleable or changeable is particularly relevant to work with film for me. When using video, the original clips are recorded in real time, however through editing, the viewer's perception of time can be manipulated or changed. The actual occurrence of time can so easily be morphed to represent what the artist desires. I personally believe this is where videography truly becomes art, instead of simply being a record of time in that place. This ability to manipulate gives the artists freedom from real life, just as animation gives the artist freedom from literal portrayal of real movements, like video can be.

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  9. Professor Robert Savid talked about a lot of interesting things yesterday. One that really grabbed my attention was the theory about the twins. One twin went into space while the other one stayed on earth. When the twin in space came back to earth, he was younger than the twin that stayed home. I still dont really understand how that works but it reminded me of the movie Inception. Not that they went into space or anything, just that while they were in "inception" time seemed to go by slower. They would wake up and only minutes would have gone by in "real life". I think that the theories that Savid talked about could really influence films in the future.

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  10. In the movie, In Time, which i recently saw in theater this past week, the entire movie was based on time as money. For example, society was separated into time zones and in each time zone, there were different types of people who had different amounts of time (or money). One time zone was the ghetto where people only had about 1 day on their clock so their life was a constant struggle to make more time (or money) to stay alive. As you passed through time zones where you had to pay a "time fee" (money fee) to cross the border, the time zones were resembling places that had lots of time (money) and their clocks would read something like 100,000 years. These people were immortal because they had so much "free time" or "extra money" in their possession.
    It was extremely interesting to see time used in a changeable or malleable way in which it was a struggle for people to keep time on their clock. When people think of money, they think of material items and sometimes the struggle to stay alive. In this film, the producers made you think about time as a fight to stay alive and the fight to keep time on your clock. As you ran out of time, it was more and more of a struggle to stay alive, but is that the same as when you run out of money? The film was truly a "mind stumper" and using time was the perfect idea to display greed in the world and so many other factors.

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  11. Truthfully I don't prefer to think about ideas like it or many of the others listed - for me, they express fear. That's how I would use (or avoid like the plague) any of these, but particularly the idea of time dilation or aging as relative. It's too big for me. It's terrifying to think that something we see as so constant (our age or how long we should expect to live, barring major accidents) isn't in actuality and that we have absolutely no control over whether or not it stays put. I love science but I really can't handle physics. It's not the math, it's the thinking. If I wanted to make a time-based piece that would give me an existential panic attack I'd go back to this list.

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  12. Rober Savid purposes various ideas based on time. Recently I have seen the movie "In time" as well. It's about a story where everyone stops aging when they reach 25, and from then, time becomes a source of money. For example, people will have to buy coffee with time- poor people will therefore, lose their life span very quickly, while rich people could live forever by buying time over and over again. I thought it was interesting to have time be a source of money as it really makes people realize the importance of time and how society use it. The idea of time being changeable seems to become an idea in a film such as "In time" as every person perceives time differently. I might use several theories when I work my project based on an installation or a film depending on the concept.

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  13. In Robert Savid's lecture, he talked about time as being malleable or changeable. It is really interesting to think about. Time is such an abstract element, but we all rely on it everyday. In the movie "Memento", the writer decided that if he/she created a screenplay where the movie was played backwards, he would be able to get the point across even though time was distorted. Because all people understand time to an extent, the order of time seems to not confuse us.

    Many film critics have stated that if "Memento" had been played in chronological order, it wouldn't be nearly as great of a movie. The way the writer changed time for a movie made it a really amazing movie.

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  14. Professor Savid spoke of time dilation yesterday in lecture. From what I understand this occurs if two people have an analog clock each, one is on a moving train and the other in stand watching it go by on a platform. According to him, the two people will see time go by differently and the two clocks will move at different speeds.
    In my work I would enjoy recording this in a different way. I imagine having two people with clocks, one in a car and one stand outside the car. The car drives by at a high speed. I stand behind the person outside the car and try to still(stop with a photograph) the two people showing their clocks. I would be interested in aligning the two people in one shot and being able to read the clocks to prove the dilation of time.

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  15. Time dilation happens when there are two or more observers traveling in their own reference frame, each observing a phenomenon in the other reference frame that is different (for example, the clock in the other reference frame is slower) than the reality in their own reference frame. In a classic model that explains time dilation in a physics textbook, there is usually a third stationary observer or ourselves that see time dilation happening. This could be used in a piece where the two traveling observers gain more insights about the other's life, as their lives progress on relative to each other, and one observer is able to see the other's life unfold in a speed slower than his.

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  16. Time can be used as a manipulation by any artist. Aside from deceiving the viewers presence of time by capturing their attention into their piece already relocates them to a different space. But at the same time, especially in time based media, the artist puts a ton of hours of work into a piece which only shows or depicts a certain amount of time.

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  17. After listening to Professor Savid, I realized that a lot of art, especially performance and film based art, revolves around the idea and the perception of time. I feel like time is constantly being used in movies and film based pieces for example, the move inception makes time more malleable and changeable in reference to a dream. In the movie the deeper you got into a dream, the slower time was. And, if you got deep enough, you could be trapped in this limbo of time. Which I thought was very interesting. Another idea that appears a lot in films in time travel, which is shown in movies like Back to the Future or Deja Vu (featuring Denzel Washington). In back to the future, the time machine is more concrete, where they can control time and move time back and forth. But, what they did in one instant of time could affect the future and the past. As for Deja Vu, the main character was a victim to the changing of time. He had to adapt to the time changes in order to save the people around him.

    Two concepts that I thought would be very interesting to delve in would be a time dilation and length contraction. I think the movie Benjamin Button touched on the idea of aging, but I think a movie that involved two people aging at the same time at different speeds in different places would be very interesting. It would make people think about where they lived and why they live there. As well as encourage people to expand their lifestyle.

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  18. Professor Robert Savid introduced time based work in the lecture. In the film, time is malleable and changeable freely through editor's choice. The progress of film moving from one frame to the next frame is a way we can picture in our mind our motion in time from the past into the future. I can depict my 24 hours of day in ten minute in the film. On the country, time dilation in the film allows to move clocks run slow. They can show all the details in a hour that happened in a second.
    In the film, not only time ages as relative but also travels freely. They can depict both future and past as a present moment. Theory of relative was really interesting.
    In an artwork, I will use these theories as the methods of storytelling. For example, I will not be bound by a time. I will manipulation cut out boring and unnecessary part of the real life and show only a part that I want to present to the viewer through film editing technique.

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  19. The idea of Time Dilation has always perplexed me. I actually have a hard time believing it, it seems so far-fetched that time can actually be stretched. I've never thought of it as something concrete that can be altered. It would be interesting to use video to prove that time dilation actually exists.

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