The Visitor (Journal article 2)

I not only read this article but I got a hold of the trailer.   This is exactly the type of movie that interests me.  Movies based of true events really get to me.  It's about a college professor who basically lives a lonely and boring life.  He goes to New York to present a paper that his collegue can't attend because of pregnancy.  Upon getting into his New York apartment he realizes that a couple had been living there for two months.  They pack their bags and leave right away, but Vale (the college professor) agrees to let them stay until they figure things out.  That's totally understandable.  Because of the fact that he's lonely, and a good person, I'm sure them staying there isn't a problem at all.  After getting to know the couple, (Tarek and Zainab,) he realizes Tarek is a musician who plays African drums.  All Vale plays is the piano, but he ends up learning the African drums by Tarek and bonds with him, going to his shows, etc.  One day in the subway Tarek gets unsuspectedly arrested and taken to a correction center.  Vale visits him and finds out that both Tarek and Zainab are both illegal immigrants from Syria.  Tarek's mother comes to Vales doorstep worried that she hasn't heard from Tarek for 5 days, and forms a bond with Vale.  Vale ends up being the messenger from Tarek's girlfriend and mother because they can't visit him themselves because they're illegal as well, until Tarek ends up getting deported back to Syria.  

More films like this need to be in contemporary media because not only are they entertaining, but they're based off of true events and stories, and some people can relate.  (Last year one of my best friends was deported and fired from my work.)  A lot of people know the struggles of what they went through in the film.

The Exiles (Journal article 1)

The Exiles by Kent Mackenzie was a film which really captured the realism of Las Angeles in the late 1950s.  It's about Native Americans living in the big city.  The idea to make the Exiles came from documentary training.  In 1956 he made a film called Bunker Hill.  It was a documentary about the area, but it ended up being a little less real than he wanted.  He wanted to show it as it was, but his idea ended up being censored by the government.  So as a result, he made the Exiles.  He has had many relationships with Native Americans as friends so he then had the idea to make a film with challenges faced by young Native Americans living in Las Angeles.  It wasn't as easy as he thought it was going to be though.  He ended up running out of money several times, ended up having to change crew members, cast members had to be switched because of problems with the law, and the shooting took over 3 years to finish.  Patience turned out to be his biggest help.  

The small cast in the movie all were played by themselves.  The movie started out meaning to be a documentary, but ended up being more of a docu-drama, because of the fact that it ends up being more of a gap that forms between men and women.  It shows the troubles married couples go through, drinking, drugs, etc.  Mackenzie's abundance of patience produced a great film that captured the lives of people living their lives together in 1950s Las Angeles.

Act/React

The two interactive art instillations that I chose to talk about on my blog are: Brian Knep's "Healing Pool," and Camille Utterback's "Moving Painting."  In Knep's piece the spectator walks over it separating the pool, which grows back together in a matter of moments.  If the spectators work together and walk or roll over a larger area of the piece, the same area disappears.  In Utterback's piece the spectator stands in front of the painting and moves and manipulates their body changing the art on the wall.  They can get closer, further away, swing their arms around, contort their bodies, etc., and the painting changes accordingly.  The reason I chose the two of these is because I think that they best describe interactive art.  

I think that both of them work with a persons entire body with interactivity.  In both works the spectator chooses their own movement to manipulate the art whatever way they want.  I think that in both works the spectator becomes the artist by becoming art itself.  Instead of art changing us, in this entire exhibit, we change art.  A good quote that I got out of the George Fifield essay is: "Visitors to a work of interactive art choose the path they take through it, the artist having given them a hand in determining their own experience."  I think that the artist and the spectator work together to make works of art in both of these acts.

Utterback's painting makes the spectator create, almost as if they were painting their own picture.  I think she wants to help the spectator become an artist themselves, by creating something beautiful on their own by moving their bodies to manipulate the painting.  I think that in Knep's piece the interaction can be with one or more person.  I think that he likes the idea that people try to make the entire lake disappear only for it to grow back in a matter of minutes.  I think that he uses the idea of group interactivity on this piece because if one person tries something to get the lake to disappear, other people with copy it and people work together to interact with it.

So all together, in works of art like this, the interactive artist and the spectator work together to create an all new experience.  A good example of an experience of mine with art in another medium compared to act/react art is a movie dvd that has the infinifilm feature on it.  You can watch the film itself, or you can choose the infinifilm option, which basically gives you an all access pass to the movie.  It lets you pick your favorite scenes, and gives you beyond the movie features.  It lets you manipulate the movie whatever way you want to.  If you're watching a musical and only want to watch specific songs, it lets you do that.  If you want to watch deleted scenes, you can do that.  It's a good way to interact with the film whichever way you want to, similar to the way that the spectator can interact with a piece of art whichever way they want to in act/react.