Sources Assignment

From mediaartiststudio

Later in the quarter (Weeks 8 and 9) you and a small team will be responsible for a lecture/screening about an artist or a group of media artists. This assignment is called SOURCES because often the work of others inspires and transforms our own creative work. For example when I was just starting to make films, I ran across the work of Chick Strand (an experimental filmmaker who also worked in the area of visual anthropology). I had never met her, had only seen one of her films but I wanted to see more. I arranged to rent some from Canyon Cinema; some were great and some were not so great. Eventually, she (through her films) became a teacher of mine. When I met her years later, she was surprised that I had learned so much from her by watching and studying her work even though we had never spoken to each other.

So letting our work and personal interests lead us to helpful and potentially transformative sources is part of our work this quarter. You will be identifying some of your themes, stylistic interests, and passions in the next week or two. You will announce these on our listserv. By Week 4 you will be affiliating with a small group (3 or 4) with which you will conduct some preliminary research to identify a SOURCE that may be helpful to you as an artist. With this team you will do additional research, track down films or videos by the artist(s), arrange for these to be available for your presentation (rentals, purchases, Evergreen collection), and prepare a lecture. You also will be editing a WIKI page on your SOURCE.

Requirements:

1. The work you present to us cannot be work you screened in Mediaworks.

2. The work you screen for us cannot be streaming media. We want full resolution projection. If your artist is a filmmaker, let’s rent a 16mm print so we can see it as she/he intended.

3. You and your team will prepare a short annotated bibliography for your WIKI.

This must have at least 3 articles (not on line), an artist website if available, book sources if available, and links other web sources.

4. Your WIKI page must include:

a. A short biography (if relevant) or an abstract of your ideas/thesis.

b. the annotated bibliography

c. a “filmography” if appropriate

d. visuals

e. anything else you devise.

The presentations are two hours in length and should include ample time for lecture, screening and discussion. And yes, some of the films/tapes might not be wonderful because you haven’t seen them before. No matter, we learn from everything we watch and study. All of the team members should be part of the presentation