James+Surdam's+Page

 The piece “Reminiscence From Selected Works” by Steina and Woody Vasulka uses a scan processor to transform the surfaces and feelings evoked of a particular house. The site is a farmhouse in Moravia, apparently the place where artist Woody Vasulka grew up. As the camera pans around the small house full of memories I am reminded of a small house in Whittier, California, where I grew up. In this way the seemingly random house becomes a home full of personal memories to not only the artist but also the audience as it focuses on unique yet all too familiar pieces of furniture, unusual objects, and things running around that resemble puppies, and finally as he closes in on a personal conversation between a few women the viewer is reminded of specific people in his or her life and the memories they share over conversation. The scan processor that he uses gives everything that he focuses on a new look, becoming abstract and resembling renaissance statues that seem to mark each object as important and noteworthy. The production method he is using, while it seems simple, is actually quite revolutionary as it would lead to advancements in three dimensional and realistic graphics. In a way the act of making figures more realistic through this method also serves as a purpose for this work, he is making his memories more realistic and tangible by allowing them to pop out at you and detail their stories. A lot of time pictures are associated with memories however in this case he uses video to add a sense of time to his memories, and although it may be due to limited ability, the black and white of the overall film creates a feeling of vintage and timeless memories. Overall the images and objects seem to flow together into a seamless pulse of lines, creating an ordinary feeling to this scene, that it is not staged but naturally flowing. While the abstract pulses that generate the objects give a feeling of significance, much like looking at a timeline and how all the important dates bulge out in bold beyond the straight lines. And finally the camera closes in on my favorite part, as you see a handful of woman outside a door conversing as if it is a normal day. This scene reminds me that in a world of memories in which we literally remember the materialistic world, it is instead the memories of human contact that matter most. These women can be recognized by their human qualities, however to the person behind the camera they are recognized as so much more than just humans, they are mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, wife’s, and friends. And although this imaging method doesn’t detail them, or any other camera for that matter would, it is instead these memories of them that reveal the greatest details of their lives. Altogether I really enjoyed this piece and how otherworldly it was, however what it shows is that process really develops the merit to the work. Filmed by any other average camera of that time this would have been like any other home video, yet it is the process of taking these images and rendering some three-dimensional abstract version of them that adds to the meaning of these object, that memories cannot be defined by two dimensional images but are so much more and unique than that, they only truly make sense to the person who holds them, to everyone else they are just abstract. __Sentence Project __ media type="youtube" key="6Tq6d1RcHaE" width="425" height="350"