Spiral Jetty

One element of the film by Smithson that seemed to stick out most to me, to catch my attention was the focus on crystals and their relation to the shape of the jetty. Had the artist simply decided out of the blue with no reason to make the jetty in that shape, it still would have been impressive. However, his relating the grand sculpture to the tiny shapes that are found all around it helped me to explore new avenues of thought during and after viewing the film. It's fascinating to me that this spiral shape is found everywhere in nature, all appearing to adhere to the golden ratio, the Fibonacci Sequence. Something that is so simple being found everywhere, from the small salt crystals to mollusk shells is incredibly thought provoking. Smithson's land sculpture is a celebration of this pervasive natural design, in my eyes and mind.

Jeezy Creezy Visits the Dinosaurs

It's not that I was aiming to be blasphemous, I just like Dinosaurs and Jesus cutouts. I was inspired by a stand-up bit by Eddie Izzard where he talks about Jesus visiting the Dinosaurs and them biting his head off. The reason I chose to do the style I did was that I thought it would be amusing to use recycled products and have a sort of D.I.Y. air to the project. Scavenging materials from the rubbish bin ended up giving an interesting visual style, I thought. However, it would have been good to take it a few steps further, use yarn and natural items such as branches or dried weeds. I was also inspired by the music video by Cat Solen for the Bright Eyes song A Bowl of Oranges, which can be seen here. Video.

The intention of the video was to be humorous and intentionally "low-fi". A tabletop video is the place for experimentation, absolutely, but it is also an extremely limiting venue for a performance. You have to get creative, and I thought that the strength of my piece was perhaps no in the performance, but in the props that were used.