Michael Lyons: Soft Pong Inari
Artist(s):
Collaborators:
Title:
- Soft Pong Inari
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2014
Medium:
- Video
Size:
- 2:02 min.
Category:
Artist Statement:
A visual experiment in crowd-sourcing. Soft Pong Inari was made entirely from pre-existing photographs of Fushimi Inari Shrine, available for modified re-use in the creative commons. The film explores how a multi-subjective viewpoint can express a sense of place. The soundtrack is a study by Swedish composer Palle Dahlstedt. The inspiration for this work came from an offhand remark by a friend a year or two ago, to the effect that it was no longer worth photographing ones travels because interesting and high quality images are already available online. While this may be an exaggeration, it is certainly true that huge databases of high quality digital images are now easily available and searchable. The flood of images invites efforts at sampling and remixing since to create a work using such material is to collaborate with many other creators. What becomes important is to effectively wield tools of digital search and post-production fluidly enough to open a meaningful dialogue with the sampled materials, allowing the artist-as-curator to bring personal sensibilities to the subject at hand. The current work is an experiment and step towards a method of working with the rich image contents already available in the creative commons. This source of images will continue to grow at an increasing rate and future techniques for combining and manipulating images will allow for the creation of new collaborative expressive forms.
Technical Information:
Software: Google image search, FFmpeg, Audacity, Final Cut Pro X / Bugbrand analog modular synthesizer, Macbook Pro.
