Artist Review ONE: Rachel Maclean.

Rachel Maclean:

Type: Digital Video

Art title: Tae Think Again

Length: 10 minutes

Year: 2008

This is the video was playing in the corner of the gallery and the sound drew me toward watching this film.

Its a very bizarre and flamboyant film. To be honest it made little to no sense to me at all and so i choose it as one of the pieces i would look into and research on.

Her work reminds me of 'The Might Boosh'. I see their work as being similar in the sense that they are confidently colourful, queer and they both posses a lot of teen humor . They dress up in their videos in crazy clothes that most people wouldn't dream of doing and i love this. I find it quite inspiring in an kind of odd way.

Here is an example clip of The Mighty Boosh:-

^ A still from The Mighty Boosh.

^A still from Rachel Maclean.

Anyway. It turns out that 'Tae Think Again' is one of many that Rachel Maclean has produced and stared in. As you can see from the clip her image has been manipulated, cropped and fiddled with to create a unique style of short film. She mimes words and songs from well known stars and uses computer techniques to graphically clone herself. I think its clever her doing this because it means she doesn't need to relie on actors to turn up, plus i think it would allow her to put across her Art exactly as she would want it to be.

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Interesting info links:

• http://www.theskinny.co.uk/article/44929-the-skinny-showcase-rachel-maclean
• http://www.rachelmaclean.com

Arts Challenge task.

For the first section of my Silver Arts Award i needed to select an Art event to review.

On top floor of the Cornerhouse there are many interesting pieces of art. There are so many to choose from but i have finally selected three major artists that stuck me; Rachel Maclean, Christopher Thomas + Kristel Raesaar and Freya Wright.

TouchScreen

I never realised making a touchscreen could be so easy..

^This is the complex version, the one we made was a million times lot simpler.

Aside the camera and computer we literally just needed bits lying around: A cardboard box, transparent sheet and sellotape.

Steps:

STEP -1-

We gathered all the pieces we needed together.

STEP -2-

We pierced a tiny whole into the cardboard box, making sure that there were no other wholes.

STEP -3-

We placed the camera inside the box, centered, with its lense facing up.

STEP -4-

We fed the camera wire through the whole and plugged it into a PC.

STEP -5-

We sealed the box with the camera inside using the transparent sheet as the box lid and sealed it down to the box using sellotape.

STEP -6-

We installed 'Community Call Vision Version 1.2'

.....

The day of the ROBOT

The 25Th was the day we as a group put together a robot. It was slightly more complicated then just sitting down and following instructions though. The group was divided into two groups, in two locations. The first group had theinstructions on how the robot is built and the second group had the robot's pieces. We communicated through Skype.

The task was for the first group to direct and guide the second group into completing the robot without having any visual or text instructions to follow by, instead we had to listen to each other and work together to get it done.

This task was awesome.

^_^

I didn't personally know anyone in the group, yet alone their names but by the end of this group task i felt i got to know everyone and their role in the group fairly well. Some were better at following instructions for example rather then giving them. I got to know those who choose to work quieter, those who like to talk things through, those that prefer to work independently and those like me that like to do a bit of everything. It was an interesting session and i loved it even though we ran out of time and couldn't finish it that day.

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Music Video.

There were a few short films that a few people from Livewire had made. There was one in particular (Shown below) that we took, edited and were able to turn into something quite different.

As you can see the original video was of a man walking into white-walled empty house and scattering random colors of paint, covering the walls. The background music was unusual and the mans face was never clearly shown. The group and myself watched the video and then we began to edit it.

For example, one person made the video funny by constantly showing a flash of a doll throughout the entire film and changing the music into a more of an upbeat tune.

I wasnt able to finish my video, hopefully i can work on it again today though :)