Recording Renaissance Revisited - Day 13

Contextual References

Recording Renaissance Revisited - Day 12

Ikon Gallery Visit - Tadasu Takamine: Too Far to See

This exhibition from Japanese Tadasu Takamine was the most interesting and memorable from my recent visit to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, as he presented a number of imaginative films.

My favourite of his pieces was 'Water Level and Organ Sound', which had images of swimming figures projected through a tank of water. It was unlike anything I have ever seen, and the shapes and movement of figures looked so beautiful through the delicate water.

The most memorable of his films was 'Kimura-san', which involved the sexual needs of his disabled friend, who can hardly move his body, but is of sound mind. It has raised a lot of controversy throughout, but to be honest, it wasn't as uncomfortable as I imagined it would be. The camerawork was very disorientating, and sometimes it was quite hard to work out what was being shown, but that was probably the artist's intention.

The piece that was most useful to me was his film, 'God Bless America', which contained stop motion footage of Takamine and his girlfriend creating and moulding a giant clay head over the span of 18 days. Even though my stop motion film is completely different, the editing, framing and manipulation of clay helped me in my own work.

Recording Renaissance Revisited - Day 11

Recording Renaissance Revisited - Day 10

Foley Sounds

To enhance the film, I thought it would be interesting to add my own foley sounds, so the film is not silent in places. I used objects around me, as professional foley artists do.

 I rubbed sandpaper and a paper towel together to create the sound of the character scratching his back with a pencil

I actually filmed the sounds of a pencil being sharpened to the image of a sharpened pencil

When the character pulls the pencil from the pencil holder, I thought it would be interesting to add the sound of a sword being unsheathed. I made this sound by scraping a paint spreader on a saw.