We Feel Fine

Mission

We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles' properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. The particles careen wildly around the screen until asked to self-organize along any number of axes, expressing various pictures of human emotion. We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life.

- Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar
May 2006

WEBSITE -WE FEEL FINE

Jess Wheelock

WEBSITE


TRANSMISSIONS TO THE UNIVERSE is an archive of video logs created by fourteen wandering cosmicnauts. These transmissions are collected for the universe to make of them what it will.
This video piece shows people randomly floating about space in astronaut suits speaking what doesn't seem to have any relevence to anything. It is up to the viewer to make sense of what they will. I really like this idea and enjoyed the video pieces. There is not much written about the project or the artist so it is difficult to research her work. But I think it stems from the idea of the video blogs on youtube. She used 14 different peoples portraits and placed them all into space suits.



The Wonder Rooms
This is a website by jess wheelok that deals with the supernatural. I love the idea of the website being the actual art piece, and how you can access different parts of it.
Again, I do no know much about the work, due to lack of written material about the artist.

WEBSITE

Spencer Finch

Let me introduce you to Spencer Finch...
I came across his work on Rhizome homepage. And I was amazed by what I saw :)

Spencer Finch's installations take form in a variety of different mediums, but he is probably best known for his work with fluorescent lights. In some works, Mr. Finch attempts to recreate the exact color and intensity of light the existed at a specific place and time. For example, Moonlight (Luna County, New Mexico, July 13, 2003), 2003 replicates the exact light of the full moon that shone over the desert of Luna County, NM on the evening of July 13, 2003. source

Excerpts from reviews:
Sensing that our observations must be tied to experience if we are to get at
the truth of something, Finch is compelled continually to expand the scope of
his projects, returning to the same sites at all hours to look again and
again. He traveled to Rouen to visit the cathedral painted by Claude Monet but found
the building closed for renovation. Undeterred, Finch decided to make a series
of paintings depicting the colors of various objects in his hotel room. By
the time he had completed the arduous task of matching 55 colors, the changing
light had altered every one. Thus the work grew into a triptych, a wry blend of
Conceptual and Impressionist methodologies, representing the same set of
colors in the morning, afternoon, and evening. As Finch is fascinated with the
interaction of the physiological and the psychological aspects of perception, the
way our inner world casts a veil over the outer, it makes sense that he would
travel thousands of miles to make a work that explored the tiniest details
of his hotel room. For him vision is an act of projection as much as of
apprehension. . . . Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science.
These dichotomies arise in Finch’s work only to have their usefulness and
validity interrogated. Their too-easy formulas and their promise of an absolute
veracity are not to be trusted. His work for the past decade had consciously
distilled these issues and has grown richer, more potent. Resisting conclusion,
Finch nevertheless aspires to a greater appreciation of the problem. . .
excerpt from Charles LaBelle, Frieze pp. 66-69, May 2003

This means that Finch’s understanding of color theory, in the end, doesn’t
amount to an alternative to formalism or Conceptualism. He is unafraid to
inhabit the paradox that art exists in the play between language and perception.
What many artists and theorists find unbearable, literally, the ‘speaking
against itself’ implied in para-doxa, is for Finch less something to escape than the
very condition necessary for his art practice. That is why his work
demonstrates a Proustian interest in the difficulties and disappointments of
recollection. He knows that color lies at the boundary of what we see and what we
remember. Despite the thick red line of humor that runs through his work, Finch’s
projects are always laced with the acute pathos of someone disappointed by both
perception and language and by their mutual exclusivity and incompatibility.
"There is always a paradox inherent in vision, an impossible desire to see
yourself seeing. A lot of my work probes this tension; to want to see, but not
being able to,” Finch says in a catalogue for a 1997 show at the Wadsworth
Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Color is less a trope of indeterminacy than a way to
re-create an almost visceral experience of our impossible desire to name our
perceptions.
excerpt from Saul Anton, Artforum, pp. 124-127, April 2001

This was a breakthrough exhibition for conceptually minded Spencer Finch,
whose quirky works incorporate science-related themes. Finch’s drawings,
paintings and sculptures were grouped around the theme of ‘up’-- work involving skies,
stars, and jet streams, for instance, but also studies of the water stains on
the artist’s ceiling and an attempt to capture the smell inside a flying
Airbus 340. . . . If Finch’s eyes are on the heavens, his feet are squarely on the
cultural ground in an America of Astroturf, rhinestones, UFO obsessions and
synthetic breakfast drinks. An orange drawing of the Milky Way was composed
entirely of Tang on paper . . .
excerpt from Gregory Volk, Art in America, September 2001

Alas, that all this energy and commitment should result in work that is
virtually viewerproof.
excerpt from Grace Glueck, The New York Observer, October 5, 1992

SOURCE

It was hard to find pictures of what I wanted to put on my blog. But here are some examples of his work.

General Research

Hans Richter - Dreams that Money can Buy -
Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.

Collaborators included Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger. The film won the Award for the Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography at the 1947 Venice Film Festival.The basic plotline of the film consists of front man Joe/Narcissus (Jack Bittner) who is an ordinary man who has recently signed a complicated lease on a room. As he wonders how to pay the rent, he discovers that he can see the contents of his mind unfolding whilst looking into his eyes in the mirror. Clients then come into the room for an appointment with him and he gives them dreams, insights into their own minds, with a series of surreal like fantasies.

For my project I think it is relevent in the context of different ways of seeing, distorting what's really going on..




Pervert's Guide to Cinema (vol 1,2,3) Slavoj Žižek

It explores a number of films from a psychoanalytic theoretical perspective. Slavoj gives examples of different movies and psychoanalysis them. For me I guess it doesn't exactly directly relate to my project?? I'm not sure. I guess like because I'm trying to manipulate what the viewer sees, distorting what is the normal for them, it could relate in the sense of how other directors have influenced the audience as to what they see on screen?
An idea I found particularly engaging what Slavoj's analogy of the toilet bowl and the cinema screen. He claims that when we flush something down a toilet, we don't think to where it actually goes, it goes to some sort of other realm. When we look at a cinema screen, it is as if something is coming out at us from another realm (like if something came back from the toilet!).

My experiments

In this shot I put a magnifying glass over the lens to distort the image that appears on the screen. I handheld it so I could move the filter to distort the scene in different ways. The car journey was bumpy however so it is not exactly the most still movie scene, but I shall take it again.



This is an experimental reel in which I have experimented with different sorts of filters such as bubblewrap, lids, netting, and magnifying glasses.

I experimented wih other filters as well, such as tights, window curtains, creams, but I did not like the effect it had. The ones in the reek are the ones which I want to work with.

I want to continue filming with more different types of filters, as well as the ones I have already used. I would like to retake some of the shots.

Another aspect I'm interested in is the 'pulsing' of the focus on the camera lens. When it constantly goes in and out of focus it seems as tho it cannot grasp what the object is, it reminds me of how a blind person might see perhaps!?

Evolvement of ideas

So I've tried out filming through different filters etc, I still am not happy with what I have filmed so far. I do not think I'm achieving what I have hoped to achieve. I just did a few experiments really and there may be one or two things I'm happy with. I've recently become interested in the idea of blindness, it relates to what I'm doing in my project because I'm trying to distort images, what I imagine someone blind would see, or someone that was blind, seeing for the first time.?? I think that for the viewer, abstract images is not enough to keep attention. I think an aspect of the work which I hope to encorporate will make the work more interesting, give it more depth. I'm still going to keep to the same method of filming, using filters and such, but instead, or maybe, as well as having a natural soundtrack to what is being shown (to help identify it) I am going to have a person narrating what they see, and maybe even a blind person. I want 3 narratives told to the same story, this will show that people can see and make stories out of different images, even tho they are the same.

So I'm going to keep filming different kinds of subjects, while using filters to distort the image, and over this I want some natural soundtrack and a person telling a story. I am hoping to use flash to create the interface of the dvd, it will have 3 buttons, and each button will play the same images, but the story that is being told is different.

What do blind people see?

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or psychological factors.

Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define "blindness"[1]. Total blindness is the complete lack of form and light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP", an abbreviation for "no light perception"[1]. "Blindness" is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. In order to determine which people may need special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governmental jurisdictions have formulated more complex definitions referred to as legal blindess[2]. In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet from an object to see it with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet. In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind. Approximately ten percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, are fully sightless. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Those who are not legally blind, but nonetheless have serious visual impairments, possess low vision. source

So for alot of blind people they cannot see things that would be far away but as they come closer it becomes clearer to them...

Visual Perception (youtube vids)

I typed in visual perception into youtube and here are some videos I found interesting in relation to my project!

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly trailer

Anticipation of the night

Arguably the central film in the Brakhage canon, Anticipation of the Night (1958) inaugurated a radical change in experimental filmmaking techniques and aesthetics. Prior to this film, American experimental cinema employed either a "Trance" (or "Psychodrama") model, as established by Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon), Kenneth Anger (Fireworks), and Sidney Peterson and James Broughton (The Potted Psalm), or a "Graphic" model, as established (in different forms) by Mary Ellen Bute (Tarantella), Harry Smith (Early Abstractions), and Len Lye (Colour Box). The Trance/Psychodrama approach emphasized surreal, dream narratives of psychological revelation in which the filmmaker typically performed as an on-screen protagonist. This protagonist experienced a literal and metaphorical journey of self-exploration built upon representational imagery that alternated between objective and subjective perspectives. The Graphic approach featured animated, abstract images often hand-applied directly onto the film. The film itself functioned as a scroll which could be "unwound" at different projector speeds or by hand.

In Anticipation of the Night, Stan Brakhage abandoned both models (or perhaps more accurately combined both models) and rejected aesthetic norms for an intensely personal and extremely subjective expression of self that emphasized the various "visions" of the filmmaker. This "Lyrical" approach teasingly appeared in earlier Brakhage films (such as Reflections on Black, The Way to Shadow Garden, and Wonder Ring) and would reach full expression in his 1960s films (such as Thigh Line Lyre Triangular, Window Water Baby Moving, and Dog Star Man), but Anticipation of the Night stands as the first fully realized Lyrical film and a paradigm of the model. Working as a "diary" in which Brakhage recorded the events of his life and his feelings about them, Anticipation of the Night ushered in a new experimental model which synthesized a Romantic mythopoesis and the reflexive Modernism of Abstract Expressionism.

P. Adams Sitney, one of the central figures of experimental film criticism and author of the seminal text Visionary Film, explains that Lyrical cinema:

. . . postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are what he sees, filmed in such a way that we never forget his presence and we know how he is reacting to his vision. In the lyrical form there is no longer a hero; instead the screen is filled with movement, and that movement, both of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a man looking. As viewers we see this man's intense experience of seeing.

This boldly original technique of expressing the impression of sight via an abstracted, first-person point of view resulted in a very poor reception when Anticipation of the Night was first shown (reportedly causing a riot at the 1959 Brussels World Fair). Yet according to Sitney, the great achievement of Anticipation of the Night is exactly this emphasis; its distillation of "an intense and complex interior crisis into an orchestration of sights and associations which cohere in a new formal rhetoric of camera movement and montage."

In Anticipation of the Night, Brakhage created a film of self-exploration and psychological revelation that did not depend on a journey metaphor, a linear narrative structure, or an on-screen protagonist (although vestiges of these Trance conventions are noticeable). Brakhage strove to communicate a "totality of vision" (what he saw, perceived, felt, imagined, and dreamt) through a complete identification between himself and a "liberated camera." Using a constantly moving hand-held camera, unfocused images, under- and over-exposure, random compositions, distorting lenses and filters, flash frames, varying camera speeds, fragmented time and space, "plastic cutting," and in later films, the scratching, bleaching, and painting of the film stock, Brakhage equated the process of filmmaking and the abstraction of reality with the expression of his emotions and imagination (much like the "action painting" of Abstract Expressionism). James Peterson refers to these techniques as a type of "personification strategy" where the film's manipulation represents the filmmaker's consciousness. Anticipation of the Night "personifies" Brakhage's mental state in terms of a purely visual, subjective cinema.

A "difficult" and ambiguous film, Anticipation of the Night does not readily lend itself to an adequate description that can do justice to its poetry; its abstractions and ideas need to be experienced and pondered. Notwithstanding, Brakhage offers an excellent summary that manages to capture the emotions and themes of the film. Writing in Filmwise (1961) he says:

The daylight shadow of a man in movement evokes lights in the night. A rose bowl, held in hand, reflects both sun and moon-like illumination. The opening of a doorway onto trees anticipates the twilight into the night. A child is born on the lawn, born of water, with promissory rainbow, and the wild rose. It becomes the moon and the source of all night light. Lights of the night become young children playing a circular game. The moon moves over a pillared temple to which all lights return. There is seen the sleep of innocents and their animal dreams, becoming their amusement, their circular game, becoming the morning. The trees change color and lose their leaves for the morn, becomes the complexity of branches on which the shadow man hangs himself.

Yet even Brakhage's description fails to convey the play of textures and light, the excitement of motion, the endearing innocence of children and nature, the giddiness of a carnival, and the nonnarrative simultaneity caused by his fragmented "hyper-editing."

In Metaphors on Vision (which Brakhage began writing while developing the Lyrical mode), Brakhage discusses the psychological and artistic context of Anticipation of the Night. He explains how the film was to be his last about "fulfilling the myth of myself;" that it would function as a way out from the style and themes of the Psychodrama. The journey and suicide of the filmmaker/protagonist marks an end of Brakhage's early cinema and the start of a new artistic approach (much like Godard's "end of film/end of cinema" at the close of Weekend). More personally, Brakhage admits to a type of depression which colored the film (and provided its title): "pit seemed as if there was nothing but night out there, and I then thought of all my life as being in anticipation of that night. That night could only cast one shadow for me, could only form itself into one black shape, and that was the hanged man." Brakhage tells the story of how he accidentally hung himself while shooting the final sequence and what this revealed to him. "I was sure that I had intended for months to finish the editing of Anticipation of the Night up to that point, go out in the yard, climb up on a chair camera in hand, jump off the chair, and while hanging run out as much film as I could, leaving a note saying 'Attach this to the end of Anticipation of the Night'."

Sitney's acclamation that Anticipation of the Night was the "first American film about and structured by the nature of the seeing experience; how one encounters a sight, how it is recalled, how it affects later vision, and where it leads the visionary" may deny the influence of Mary Ellen Bute, Jim Davis, and Marie Menken, but it does stress the importance of light and "untutored" or "innocent" vision in Brakhage's subsequent work. Brakhage explains this importance in the often quoted opening to Metaphors on Vision:

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each objected encountered in life through an adventure of perception. . . . Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color.

Anticipation of the Night began the examination of this world of intense personal visions and subjective filmic expression.

—Greg S. Faller

Colydascope

http://www.blogtvpg.com/Shows/245858/ZmXvY2VDae3tbm3GbH&pos=anc

Blog internet colydascope

Gelatin Filters

http://home.howstuffworks.com/easy-indoor-crafts9.htm

How to make your own.

So what did I learn about filters?

Filters transform data.
Filters sorts or makes order of pattern.
Filters transform images in an unusual way.
Filters manipulate data.
In Telle-communication filters selectively sort signals
Filters are used to surpress noise or they separate signals
Filters give a particular effect used to apply to image.
Gelatin filters are used over the lens of a camera to absorb specific wavelengths of light.

What is a fliter? some definitions from the web

A program that accepts a certain type of data as input, transforms it in some manner, and then outputs the transformed data. For example, a program that sorts names is a filter because it accepts the names in unsorted order, sorts them, and then outputs the sorted names.Utilities that allow you to import or export data are also sometimes called filters.
A pattern through which data is passed. Only data that matches the pattern is allowed to pass through the filter.
In paint programs and image editors, a filter is an effect that can be applied to a bit map. Some filters mimic conventional photographic filters, but many transform images in unusual ways. A pointillism filter, for example, can make a digitized photograph look like a pointillistic painting.
Filters are applied to the information coming into your account, to manipulate the final data in order to provide accurate reports. These filters can be set up to exclude visits from particular IP addresses, to report only on a subdomain or directory, or to take dynamic page URLs and convert them into readable text strings.
In telecommunications, a filter is a device that selectively sorts signals and passes through a desired range of signals while suppressing the others. This kind of filter is used to suppress noise or to separate signals into bandwidth channels.
In Photoshop and other graphic applications, a filter is a particular effect that can be applied to an image or part of an image. Filters can be fairly simple effects used to mimic traditional photographic filters (which are pieces of colored glass or gelatine placed over the lens to absorb specific wavelengths of light) or they can be complex programs used to create painterly effects.

A Conversation between Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage

http://www.logosjournal.com/brakhage_mekas.htm

This is an interview I was reading between the two avant-garde film-makers, Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage.
A few things I found interesting about their conversation that they said 'sometimes you just have to go back to the essence of things, what really is cinema, painting, poetry...'
Another interesting thing Stan Brakhage said was that (and although this was obvious, I just thought it was a nice description) 'There are no two people on Earth who are alike. All their cells are unique as snowflakes.'

Jonas Mekas says 'The shape of my films emerges from the accumulation of the material itself. I am a filmer. I film real life'..... I found this interesting and relative to my own work because I would like to think that has been the case in some of my earlier photography work. I took photos of everyday life and people etc etc etc they may not mean much alone, but the accumulation of all the photos together gives them meaning, a shape of sorts.

Partially sighted

What would/does the world look like to someone that is partially sighted/blind?
I think this idea ties into my project very well and would definitely be a good idea to further investigate.

Recommendations

I have been reccommended some of these films to research for my project.

Perverts guide to cinema (vol 1-3)
'Personna' by Ingmar Burgman
'Dreams that money can buy' by Hans Richter
'Solaris' and 'Mirrors' by Tarkovsky.
The driving bell and the butterfly' by Julian Schnabel and Jean Dominique Bauby
'Playtime' by Jacques Tati

Also research more on Brakhage and others.

Ways of Achieving my ideas

A way of obscuring the image which I am interested in is using filters on the camera lens.
I would shoot film footage of all kinds while experimenting with different filters to see what effects I get and how this distorts the image.
I was also thinking that for the viewer, in order for them to interpret the image I would have to have some sort of natural soundtrack to help them determine the imagery.
I need to create and look out for all different types of filters, natural, man made, etc

My Ideas and what I hope to achieve.

I want to distort the image in some way so as to make it 'new' again, indistinguishable.
I want to create abstract and aesthetically interesting images, to make objects or scenes difficult to interpret straight away.
I want to create a new sense of unknowing and new vision.
I want to obscure the visual perception.
I want to reduce objects to the minimal criteria for identification.

Stan Brakhage

I found Stan Brakhage to be really interesting. I loved his idea of the 'unruling eye'.

Metaphores on Vision '64
What is the nature of the moving world and how can it be represented?
Distorted visual reality and questioning of the screen.
What we see as reality. Our 'ruling' eye. He transforms images, leaves us guessing what it is we are looking at.
'Act of seeing the world'
Brakhage intended to film not the world itself but the act of seeing the world. Brakhage's films were themselves expressions of a single, great metaphor: visual perception.

This quote from his essay Metaphores on Vision is definately something I hope to look into for this project.
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, and eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word.'

Some points to start working from

Not paying attention to what we are looking at. We seem like robots while watching the screen
The screen has many functions
It provides info we consume more or less passively.
It is a mediator.
Representation meets reality.
Representation of space and our relationship to it.
Different ways of representing reality. Using the screen. What do we automatically assume when we watch tv?

New Project -Interrupting the Screen

Today we can hardly even imagine a day without computer, television or other screens
surrounding us. Nevertheless, we hardly pay any attention to the screens themselves,
but use them as if they had always existed. We use screens for many functions, they
may entertain and display information; some are used interactively, others provide
information that we consume more or less passively. Screens also have many different
sizes and shapes and different technologies are used to implement the necessary
functions.
…(the) screen does not have an immutable identity, but has its own history, influenced by cultural, social, technological and ideological factors. Screen is not a goal in and for itself, but its purpose is to represent information, communication, figures, faces and virtual realms. It is a mediator.

Jarmo Hiipakka, Art and Science in Historical and Cultural Context

Think about the quotation above and about how we relate to the physical, temporal, spatial and/or cultural nature of the screen and/or its use in art, communications, science,entertainment or any other field that interests you. Research and analyse the work of video artists and other screen based artworks that deal with the nature of televisual experience. Address this theme in video, video installation or photographic format. Interpret it as you will,considering its relevance to your own artistic development. Identify and address how your work will be presented to an audience.