Importance of the artist statement
Remix Project
While doing weekly assignments, think about the technique, process or concept that suits you. Continue to work with it throughout the semester. You may choose to work in the mediums that we are covering (audio/video/powerpoint/text), you may work in another medium if you are competent enough to work in it independently (photoshop, web design, animation), or you may combine multiple media in a single coherent piece or a set of interrelated smaller pieces.
The number of works, amount of pages, or running time your pieces is not as important as is the overall conceptual coherence of your project. Because there’s no way to standardize “how much should I do?” from medium to medium, from project to project, if you are worried about issues of adequate run-time or length or weight for a final project, you must consult me on a case by case basis. A two minute audio piece with multiple layering, effects and samples is quite different qualitatively than a five minute piece with a few cuts, however either one may be acceptable depending on the project. The bottom line is the final piece and its artist statement should reflect a well-considered response to the class and should have the depth and complexity of a project developed over the course of the quarter.
For an audience/listener/reader, a good rule of thumb is that it should take somewhere between 3 and 7 minutes to understand, unfold, experience; this limit is again subject to variations on a case by case basis, but it’s a good yardstick in the context of the limitations of time available for final critiques and presentation, as well as how much I can give my attention to while grading all your projects. And again, if you are doing still projects, text projects, any project that doesn’t have a strict timeline, or a video project with much editing of both sound and video, then you should take the time to consult with me. (note that consulting with me entails a sit down discussion: quickly asking me if something is “OK” without taking time to sit down with me and work through your ideas and materials is not enough. Please take advantage of office hours early and often, as well as the multiple feedback opportunities, such as crits, in class.)
You will include an artist statement of 500-750 words with this project. As with the other artists statements, this final one should describe the conceptual reasons for your work. You must place the work in context of other similar work, address arguments about the value of such work, and make references to the in-class readings to support your ideas. You must present the work as if you are a professional artist, and not as if you are doing an assignment for a class.
Importance of the artist statement as a reflection upon your engagement
I can’t impress upon you strongly enough how important it is to have an artist statement that clearly defines your own trajectory within a scholarly/writerly mode. Artist statements should NOT be a narrative of class foibles, processes and triumphs (“I started not knowing ProTools, now I know it very well,” “I took the file I was using and put a reverb on it to give it a fatter sound,” “I really don’t like flarf poetry,” etc.) but rather something that shows
how you have realized the ideas of your work in relation to the works in class that you’ve read/seen/listened to
how you’ve realized your ideas in relation to works/readings outside the class (think of this statement as a mini-research paperwhere you look for outside confirmation of the direction you are taking. Throughout, you should be following up your interests with web searches, treating this syllabus as a portal to a network of associations, and an invitation to explore rather than a requirement to be rotely fulfilled. The remix universe, as made available by the web, is infinite.)
what you think of as the aesthetic, political, and legal issues your work raises.
An excerpt from a good statement might look something like this:
“In the spirit of Judith Goldman’s more politically-charged appropriation poetry, I thought about the ways I could take material from legal transcripts related to police brutality and use them to subtitle historical footage
of police brutality such as the Rodney King video. There are many poets who utilize legal material in this way: for example Vanessa Place and, most importantly, Charles Resnikov, who was engaging in this practice well before ‘conceptual poetry,’ ‘appropriation art,’ and ‘sampling’ were common terms. I think the clash between the rage of the video event and the cool cynicism of the legal proceeding might provide some interesting forms of cognitive dissonance, and make viewers think about the ways in which we process these events.”
tip:
I will send my midterm project later, this how my professor critic of statement :
think you kind of break up the mood you started with after the title with the change of the music. It seems the music also is somewhat redundant with the image. Can you use sound to create a contrast that will change the original meaning to make it more your own? As with the audio, some of the transitions are too abrupt and the segments from the original a little too long . . . focus on finding small samples and build your composition up from there. I couldn’t comment in detail on your statements, because they were uploaded correctly and so weren’t part of the folder I downloaded originally. However, it does not exactly seem what I was asking for: in many ways both more and less; as well, I’m not seeing a clear division between the two I was asking for. However, it seems like, while the discussion of “Spin” is a good one, I was asking you to talk about other’s work specifically in relation to a project you handed in. Also, I would say that the project proposal here for your final seems much too ambitious, and I’m not sure why you would want to go to media outlets to get never before seen footage. The fact is that there is plenty of material available on the internet for just such a project. Also, despite the fact that there are a lot of details which you’ve included, I’m still having a hard time getting a sense of what your final project will actually be. Think about specific source material that may be of interest to you first, then go from there. Is there a specific type/era/aesthetic that interests you?
