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Editor's Notes

• #2: iMAP Project One Rebecca Johnston
• #3: Explain Contents of Presentation.
• #4: How I Started Fergus told us in the lecture series to think of practices we enjoyed doing, like film, editing, photography and more. And then to start researching and reading a topic we enjoyed… From Fergus’ own work, Under Cover of Darkness (2012), in this he challengex us to question darkness and what our feelings our of this space. It got me to thinking how I could control feelings and emotions of my audience, to provoke emotions from them, qualities you cannot see but still give you feelings, a project that would cause a reaction. We went into more detail in the lecture series and we spoke of a theorist called Bill Viola whose work I will explain more in a minute, but all his work is slow paced or in slow motion. We talked about how slow motion video helps us see the in-between moments the human eye is not possible of seeing. So with this knowledge I came up with my question… The reactions I wish to gather will be from different types of Popular Culture, music videos, celeb news and other controversial or other related information, that i hope to gage a reaction from my participant.
• #5: In Atkinson’s online journal, Emotion perception from dynamic and static body expressions in point-light and full-light displays, I found this quote, “Dynamic portrayals of emotional expressions have greater ecological validity than static portrayals because faces and bodies move a great deal in social interactions, especially when we are emotional, whereas emotions portrayed in static images actually correspond only to identifiable peaks”. Basically identifying to us that gain much more information from watching a video of a reaction than a still image, perhaps of someone smiling, i want to capture all the in-between moments that we do not see, all down to a reaction from today’s popular culture.
• #6: Bill Viola A practitioner of this theory and that I have looked at is Bill Viola. He is a contemporary video artist, whose work focuses on the thoughts behind representation and fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness. To portray his work he uses the method of slow-motion, his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into to the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it. His expression of emotion that he shows in his videos often come with no meaning, and leave the audience not understanding his work. For example in his early work from 1976, he created a nine minute, fifty two second video titled, The Space Between The Teeth, is simply him sitting in a chair, yelling occasionally. In-between moments - human eye. It opens our vision to the complexity and subtlety of the everyday, what would be a fleeting moment, slow motion gives us the chance to really look and really read and understand. The Slow Mo Guys Are a YouTube web based series, their videos consist of many different things filmed in extreme slow motion and they have been described as the biggest channel for slow motion videos. I thought since i had research an old theorist in this subject, I would find practitioners more recent too. Through watching their videos I seen similarities, especially in one named “Epic Slow Memes”. Where during the video one of the guys lifts up and throws a table full champagne glasses with what it looks like olives in the glasses. The glasses of champagne mid air almost looks like tadpoles, which is a representation of the birth/growth of frogs.
• #7: Strongman With the expression of emotion such a key aspect in Viola’s work, for this particular project I decided to research emotion. Reading Strongman’s book titled, ‘The Psychology of Emotion’, he describes that emotions are recognised, “by the situation in which they occur”. (1973: 148) He continues giving an example of fear, and asking someone to describe it, this then person would respond with perhaps a recent situation when they felt fearful and afraid. Strongman then pursues stating, “Emotional expression anticipates action. (1973: 148) The reason to choose slow motion over still images, as well as looking at Viola’s work, when reading Strongman’s text he declared, once reviewing studies involving emotion and still images, “it is easy to forget that in real life emotional expression extends in time”. (1973: 159) You see so much more depth to the expression happening, especially in slow motion you see what may be missed. Les Levine This lead me on to think of a theorist we covered in the lecture series called, Les Levine. His audience would watch his films while also being able to watch their own reactions. This involved them responding naturally until they noticed their own reaction, and nearly change their natural reaction either to over reacting to it as they find it funny, or others looked more impassive as finding it embarrassing. Could this have been the start of early selfie culture? (Which I will come back to later) But with more animated or impassive reactions. Explore how we respond and then how we can grow. Something else to think about.
• #8: Methodology The method in which I will produce my practice can be one of three methods. Either on a FS700 camera which can produce slow motion via a button on the video camera. I can record it from a video camera and bring it into the software package, Final Cut Pro and with the use of tools manually slow it down myself, or another method is using a slow motion app on my iPhone. First of all I was deciding on this as my methodology for the fact I am interested in how how we all have become independent on a technology, immediately walking out the door we make sure we have our keys, wallets and now mobile phones. With these mini computers in our pockets, it is amazing how much we are able to do with them. Not only that, also the feeling of security of having one in our bags/pockets. Losing your mobile is like the feeling of losing a limb. Reading about Thumb Culture it stated, “Tragically, in recent times we have became most aware of how closely mobile phones are associated with presence and by shock of their sudden association with absence”. So I thought since my reactions would be played on Popular Culture, a mobile phone would be a part of this. But from carrying out this practice i did have to change my proposed methodology to using the software final cut pro, as i had complications with my phone. It ended up working in my favour as some of the video i captured i didn’t want it all in slow motion, so on final cut i was able to edit it this way.
• #9: Slow Motion Reaction Videos Niamh Quinn - Popular Culture Online Videos
• #11: What did I find out? So from taking part in this practice i found out, that my research was not wrong but left out something. In all my research i mention that slow motion will help me to capture those “in-between” moments, but not only that it captures the wee before and after moments. So conveying emotion through slow motion video conveys more reaction as Strongman claims, “it is easy to forget that in real life emotional expression extends in time”. (1973: 159) You see so much more depth to the expression happening, especially in slow motion you see what may be missed by the human eye. Strongman introduces two more theorists, Ekman and Friesen, who had a theory on the investigation of body movements, and what this brought to emotional communication. They proclaim, “bodily posture and movement contribute to the recognition of emotion, particularly its intensity… nonverbal behaviour escapes the efforts that we make at deception and in fact allows our ‘real’ feelings leak out”. (1973: 159) Comparing this to a still image, which shows you the emotion at its heightened moment, and from what i found out doing this practice the popular culture online videos i showed my participants, they leaked out other emotions than what i expected. Niamh in particular, during showing her a sad online video, she showed sadness but also awkwardness smiling and giggling. All images can do is determine the aspects of behaviour, so smiling in a photo we expect the person to be happy, but we also smile when we are awkward or sometimes even in pain, so through the slow motion and video we can see all the emotions to the reaction.
• #12: Evaluation If I had longer time to produce this project, I may have perhaps used the Sony FS700 camera just to have a better quality of video and to see more depth into the emotions of my participants. I would also include more participants, perhaps doing a contrast between male and female, and the difference in emotions to the same things shown. Just overall make my practice of higher quality. Progression From my research and practice on this Project One in this portfolio it led me on to more research but in a different direction. So in Project One, I researched slow motion from the theorist Bill Viola and more recently The Slow Mo, then the Psychology of Emotion by Ken Strongman. This led me to creating short slow motion clips of an individual watching different themes of popular culture, all to see those ‘in-between’ moments that the human eye is unable to see. From those videos and the knowledge of Les Levine, a theorist mentioned in Lecture Four series. So allowing his participants to view their reactions, so I showed the slow motion video back to my participant, and she was quite honest in saying she felt slightly embarrassed of how she came across. This allowed me to gather my thoughts and the results of this project to think of another practice. I mention before, how Les Levine’s work could have been the very beginning of ‘Selfie Culture’, which I just made as an assumption myself. What makes the perfect selfie? Lighting, filter, angle, pose? A lot of people would not upload a bad selfie of themselves. So I furthered this more into putting videos, in particular with this project slow motion, what would the perfect conditions be for this? What makes something ‘perfect’ for the internet?