the mind of kristin larsen

goals

2008-12-03T20:05:00.001-08:00

i want this to be short and sweet because i think goals should be kept that way.

in 5 years i want to be more confident in my own style and have had a major art show of my own.

in 10 years i want to be a published illustrator and possibly have my own art book.

in 20 years i want to teach.

.... and in other life goals: in the very near future i would like to have a successful business of my own and be comfortable enough to travel regularly.

i will do these things.

copyright infringement

2008-12-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

So I was standing in Walmart waiting for my boyfriend to come out of the restrooms. I happen to be right next to a tall stand with keychains and magnets so I spun it around a couple of times to entertain myself. And there it was... a small keychain with a white spotted puppy on it. I thought it looked really familiar and then it ocurred to me......... "THAT'S MY DRAWING!!!!!" Yeah, so I took a pic with my camera that I keep on my at all times for these very reasons. A couple of days later I get the time to get the pic of my camera and do a side-by-side comparison on my computer. "HOLY SHIT... I WAS RIPPED OFF!!!" So, what the hell do I do now? I was kind of at a loss for words and yet I wanted to tell everyone that I knew. It was a little flattering but that was quickly overshadowed by confusion, anger, and greed. Why should this company in Canada be making money off of me. Fuck them!

Its probably not a good idea to give too much info right now, but I am currently in contact with a lawyer and my hopes are high.

Joshua's Challenge

2008-12-03T19:44:00.001-08:00

I feel like a failure. I was challenged to endure something that I hate for 20 minutes and then write about it. The first layer of that challenge was to think of something that I hate. I don't really consider myself a hateful person and I rarely banish things from my life as something that I dislike enough to never ever do. In fact, I think if there was something that I may hate, I have probably never done it. And then I wouldn't really be able to say that I hated it for having never tried it.

So Josh, what am I to do? I thought of the things that I might hate to endure. I probably wouldn't like to sit in a church meeting with some crazy evangelicals. I also wouldn't like to watch a puppy be beaten for 20 minutes, but there is no way I am going to find a place to watch that. And I am not really aware of any open doors to cock fights or other illegal and horrendous activities. Other options were sitting in a dying children's cancer ward or something else as depressing. But then I thought, how dare I hate something that cannot be helped?! I don't hate it, I am only saddened by it.

Oh Josh, you have made this difficult. But I see your point. I see the need to make yourself do things against your own will. We should want to make ourselves grow out of the bounds we set for ourselves. We should wish to be better humans with less hate.

Even without completing the challenge, I feel the end result. I feel like a bigger person for having pondered as long as I have over that which I do hate..... and found that there is very little.

Potter-Belmar Labs Performance at Southwest School

2008-12-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

On October 30th Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens, better known as Potter-Belmar Labs, had a VJ gig at an art opening for Travis Townsend and Holly Hanessian. I have to admit that this was all pretty new to me. I had never been to a real VJ gig before and I had also never been to a gallery opening at the Southwest School. I was, however, pleasantly surprised on arrival. On entering I was forced into the gallery space for Townsend's work. I can only describe him and his work as that of Dr Seuss's carpentry student. So after walking through the space I enter a smaller space where there is a food table to my left and a large video projection on a screen to my right. There were about 5 rows of seats in front of the screen that hid the two VJs and their equipment. It was actually a bit strange to know that there were video puppeteers on the other side but I had no way of seeing them. I think it allowed for people in the room to assume that they were watching a recording, and having no idea that it was all live and unscripted. As I sat and watched the video art unfold, I began to be inspired for future projects of my own. The video seemed to fluid and symbolic. It was rhythmic in tone and random in imagery. I enjoyed the time very much and I found it wanting me to let my mind wander.

assignment

2008-10-30T00:28:00.000-07:00

I challenge everyone to write a blog post about your artistic goals 5, 10, and 20 years from now. Where do you see yourself in your career? Will you be a fine artist or a commercial artist? Will you stay locally or live abroad? What do you want your artistic statement to reflect?

The purpose of this blog assignment is to allow you to think about your career as an artist in the long run. Although creativity is often spontaneous, your goals should be planned out and sought after. It is sometimes difficult to imagine yourself in the future, but you should at least have an idea of who you would like to be professionally. And more so, who you would like other people to see you as.

Good luck!

Ann Arbor Film Festival

2008-10-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

On Friday night Taro and I went to the Ann Arbor Film Festival at the UTSA downtown campus. We walked in to the small theater and took two seats to the left. The first film, one of my favorites, was Chel White's “A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process”. I like it so much the first time I saw it that I ordered a copy of his DVD for my own collection.

Another favorite film of the night was “Spontaneous Generation” by Andrew Cahill. It was stop-motion style with play-doh and cardboard. I love his description: SPONTANEOUS GENERATION is a film about things that grow and collapse. It's about clay and cardboard. It's about sex. I definitely understand the sexual nature of the video. The organic shapes would stretch and melt and swirl into each other, mixing their colors and leaving traces on the floor as they passed. It was dirty and romantic. The stiff cardboard environment was a great backdrop to these soft creatures. Taro even pointed out the soundtrack of PopRocks. How clever.

One film that was very mesmerizing was “A Hundred Feet Universe” by Naoko Tasaka. Everything was bluish-green and black, like an x-ray. It had cross fades and brightness changes between slide-like images of cells and organisms. It all seemed very small on a large scale. They audio was calming and the images were rhythmic. It felt like watching a tide or a star flicker in the night sky. It was random and purposed, and it felt like being lost. I would like to take these techniques and apply them to my own work. I enjoyed the feeling of calm that the video created and it is something that I strive for in my pieces.

I can't say that there were any that I hated, but some did take some patience to watch. Without getting too critical, I felt like “My Croation Nose ” by Richard Dinter was a bit long. It seemed like he was trying to say something but had a difficult time really getting to it. The images were also sort of mismatched and randomly pieced together, like he really wanted to use a certain photo and was determined to stick it in their somewhere. Also, Kelly Sears' “The Drift ” was interesting and well thought out. I enjoyed the story, but it too seemed to drag. The concept was interesting and I appreciated the attempt at making still photos appear to be video, but it just went on a bit too long. It is always possible that my attention span for these things is short.

animation troubles

2008-10-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

For some reason I am struggling with my animation idea. It seems like every idea that comes into my creative mind if struck down by reasoning in my rational mind. "You don't have time for such a task." "There is no way THAT can actually be asthetically pleasing." "Its been done a million times." "What makes you think that will even work?" ............

So I sit here watching YouTube videos for inspiration. And I found it! Watch this: its really awesome. I love that the animation is not limited by space. The characters and movement are all of the city, inside and out, concrete and dirt, light and dark. And the best part are the marks left behind. I love this video!

Check it out: MUTO by BLU

Back to my own issues.... I am going to try to embrace this concept of moving around without limiting myself by space or surface. Spoiler: bugs, paper bags, in and out.

visual experiments

2008-09-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

I found the coolest site today. This guy uses different code, like action scripts, to "experiment" with images online. It's really quite beautiful and mesmerizing. I suggest taking some time to browse his site:
mrdoob.com

I am really captivated by this one. You can move through the space but it has no beginning or end. And when the light shifts you sort of get lost in the rhythm. This is an interesting take on new media. More interesting is whether or not this guy even meant to make "new media" when he started these experiments.

Its really nice to be able to treat art like a science and play with patterns and movement to see what happens. When I create a piece of art I sort of begin with a hypothesis of how it may turn out and then test myself in the process. I almost never end up with what I plan for, but I am often pleasantly surprised in the end.

brainstorms and other natural phenomenon

2008-09-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

I have spent much of the weekend trying to come up with concrete ideas for my upcoming new media projects. Its important to me that I keep my ideas loose and try to find work that is new, creative, and most importantly, possible to accomplish within the given time frame.

It seems that I find inspiration in the oddest places. While walking through Borders on Friday night, I saw a greeting card that gave me the idea of working with shadows and texture, without directly filming the subject. This is still a posibility, but I may want to stay away from something so abstract right now.

My mind seems to be staying in the black and white arena for now. I think there is something timeless and simple in a monochromatic frame. Maybe its in the absence of distraction that you really get to enjoy the lines of a doorframe or the hot white of a candel's flame.

(must write this down... get very clean shots of candels burning. in a space, put vintage "looking" wallpaper up and the backdrop, and display old monitors with the candel footage on them. Also, surround the space with melted, or burning candels. safety reasons may force some sort of glass votive/cover. i am thinking red or blue wallpaper with a floral print.)

See what happens... its totally uncontrollable!

Anyway, my main theme is fairy tales in imagery. I think I want to veer away from the obvious storyline and keep everything as a bit more of an impression. All of this still seems so unorganized. I am sure I will lose more sleep.

First Friday, FutureWorkerGirl, and no Kettle Korn

2008-09-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

I recently went to First Friday at Blue Star to see what was new this month. My New Media professor, Leslie Raymond had an opening there as well. Taro and I went through the Satellite Space first to see what had replaced our work from the previous month. It was some interesting photography by two different artists. Both styles were similar in many ways with the use of large scale and distorted figures. However, one of them grabbed my attention much more than the other. The work was dark and eerie. The images were like photographs of bad dreams -- the ones that you always forget as soon as you try to remember them, but you know they are real because the dark feeling still lingers.

Then we went over to Blue Star. Leslie and Jason were outside talking with people as we walked in. The main space was filled with photography and art from local Japanese artists. Some of it was great, and some of it made me question photography as an art form. Seriously, can you just make a print of anything, even nothing, and call it art?

At least Leslie's work was refreshing. There was a sense of calm in each screen. I remember snow and leaves and reflections. I remember sky and landscapes, earth and concrete. And there was a rhythm to it all. There was something slow about this world and yet I could feel time passing. Her work was exactly what I needed to see. It was different from her previous work that I had seen, and more calming than I expected from her work.

We walked around some more galleries, only to leave because we had seen it all before, or it was too hot to breathe. So the only other logical thing to do, was to walk down South Alamo in search of the kettle korn stand that we saw last month. It wasn't there. All that walking and sweating and walking for nothing! I just wanted some good art and some kettle korn. Is that too much to ask?

sweet....

2008-05-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

lynchian

2008-05-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

The term "Lynchian" isn't really about being like David Lynch. It's more about creating something unexpected, unexplainable, and undefinable. Lynchian is the word you would use in place of the word you can't seem to find. That's because there is no word to describe something that is beautiful and logical but seemingly grotesque and nonsensical all at once. There really isn't a word for the kind of weird that Lynch is, or rather, that Lynch creates. Lynchian is when your art has reached the edge and then stepped over it, blindfolded. Lynchian is when your eyes and your ears have ceased to agree with each other, and its wonderful that they don't. Lynchian is something an artist would strive to be, but will never become it until they have given up trying. Lynchian is a completely planned accidental collision of visual and audible worlds. Lynchian is...... so Lynchian.

the long shot

2008-04-22T21:17:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a long day. I helped Taro shoot his final project. Things started off a bit unexpected and became absolutely perfect by the end. We began at 1:00 in the first location with 4 people, and ended at 12:00 midnight in a park with 9 people. That isn't including the other 4 that came and left throughout the day. It was great. I took some photos of the process.

Fable :: in progress

2008-04-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

I am still in the midst of gathering found footage for my final video. I am thankful for tools like vixy.net, that allows me to gather all sorts of videos off of youtube so that I am not limited to my own personal library or databases like Prelinger. After hours of collecting video, I am still not content that I have everything I need. My concept is pretty solid in my mind, so at least there is some certainty there.

The reason that I chose to use found footage for my project is that I was eager for the challenge. I really wanted something that I could change and mold into something new. I wanted to focus more on the alteration process and less on the actual construction of the video. There is something really gratifying about finding a piece that you know would look amazing in a new light. I feel that I am sort of rummaging through random videos and finding the ones that never knew their potential.

I feel it is very important to note that I am extremely appreciative of those that did the "dirty work" of actually filming these things. I didn't have to find a location or adjust lighting. Instead, I am giving these videos a new purpose, in hopes that they will become what I need them to be.

I have chosen to work on the cutting first, then layering, then filters/color correction, and finally audio -- in that order. It suits my creative process the best and helps me build from the ground up, so to speak.

So far, my fable is a wolf, a child, and a chase. More to come....

the future of video

2008-04-18T14:08:00.001-07:00

People of the Web: Gadgets and Gadflies

I found this article today and was pretty fascinated by the direction that technology is going. It doesn't seem like there is anything new, but instead just better versions of the old. The video industry is working on things like Ultra-HD, micro bead green screen, and the ultimate 3D viewing experience. The good thing about technological advancements like these is that they will eventually trickle down to the consumer level and give film makers even more tools to create with. Every new gadget means a new spin on an old genre. Technology is new artists media.

soundscape

2008-04-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Just listen.

This project was a challenge to say the least. I kept asking myself, "what kind of environment do I want to create?"... But it wasn't about that. It was about finding a sound and letting it take you where it wanted to go. You layer two sounds together and they either fit or they don't. You may put some audio together that sounds too much like an empty kitchen, and you don't want to be in an empty kitchen, so you take out the metallic sound and add a drone. Now your sound is in a cold laboratory, and adding the sound of a drill makes it a dentist's office. This is what you wanted. This will get the reaction you desire. Yeah... its something like that.

File Swap

2008-04-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last week we had a little pirate party in class. I was really excited to trade files and get new stuff from people... hopefully things that I didn't even know existed. Unfortunately, people were not so prepared. I kind of felt like a few people were eager to receive, but didn't have so much to offer. Ah well, such is life.

What I did find to be most interesting, however, was the information exchanged verbally. I had a nice conversation with Martin about graphic design resource sites and was able to make a small list of places that I need to check out. He also gave me some fonts, brushes, and music.

Another really cool thing was that a few people asked for my videos. That felt really good to be asked to have a copy of my work. It implied a true interest and maybe even the idea that the videos may get watched again, or shown to others. I got to thinking, maybe I will make my digital work available in high res on my website so that anyone can download it and make a print for their own collection. I myself cannot afford a lot of the prints that I desire to own, so I just view the thumbnails online every so often. It would be great if those artists were willing to share their work with everyone. Besides, I create art to be seen, so people should have the ability to really see it. At least that's my thoughts on the issue................then again, a little financial support is a very good thing.

In print

2008-03-16T07:49:00.001-07:00

I was awoken this morning by an excited phone call. My mother just couldn't wait to tell me that my name was in the Sunday paper.

First Luminaria attracts thousands, illuminates downtown
San Antonio Express News - March 16, 2008

"Sound and light shows continued inside some of the art spaces. University of Texas at San Antonio's New Media students filled the middle gallery of the Houston Street Galleries with an array of projects. "Synesthesia" by Taro Honrahan and Kris Larsen, who collaborate as domestic zombie, had a colorful, abstract video that looked like smoke, while other parts looked like pigment spilled into water. One young viewer was so entranced by the flowing, pulsating forms his mother couldn't get him to leave."

-Deborah Martin

Full article at MySanAntonio.com

....................

UTSA New Media Program: Stellar new media works
Houston Street Galleries
San Antonio Current - March 12, 2008

"...and the work of Taro Hanrahan and Kristin Larsen, who produced “Synesthesia” as the partnership Domestic Zombie. Hanrahan allowed that it deals “with liquid and light in motion.” Certainly art’s been made of less."

- Elaine Wolff

Full article at SACurrent.com

Luminaria :: Synesthesia

2008-03-16T00:09:00.001-07:00

synesthesia: a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

I am completely exhausted and it was all worth it. The show was a success and I am very happy with the responses that people had. Of course, there were a few that could care less to even be there, but I guess that's to be expected in a crowd that size. I don't know how many people were there, but I would say almost 2000 eyes saw our piece.

Taro and I started with an idea of filming different liquids and somehow collaging them together to make a cohesive video. After much trial and some error, we settled on just using water with dyes to keep it simple. I am so glad we did. So, you want to know how we did it? Take 1 small fish tank, fill with water, drop in food coloring..... then edit your ass off. Our edits focused mostly on color and motion. We wanted the liquid to have a bit of the unexpected, so we altered the speed in various places to keep the eye moving. We also inverted the original and added color correcting to make a vibrant cocktail of color and light. Then, just for some added "lumination", we placed blue led lights into small plexi cubes and arranged them on the floor below the suspended panel with rear projection.

We received nice feedback from few people. My favorite of the viewers were the children that sat on the floor and watched in awe, the two dogs that dropped by with their owners, and an apparent fan who came four times with a different friend each time.

some animation favorites....

2008-02-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

Prelude to Eden - Michel Gagne
[my personal favorite]

music video for a song by Subtle

and for anyone that remembers The Maxx

the documentary

2008-02-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

In the past week I have watched 2 very different styles of documentary. Since I hadn't seen it before, and I had some free time, I watched Bowling For Columbine by Michael Moore. His style of film is more of an "underdog trying to defeat the man" sort of style. Michael Moore does all of the narration, the research, the editing, and who knows what else. He is always on the front lines, so to speak. I like the straight to the point nature of his films, but he lives little room for personal opinion.

The other documentary that i saw was Southern Comfort by Kate Davis. It is a well shot film about a transgendered man and the struggles of dealing with gender issues in the rural US. In a different style than Moore, Kate Davis lets the subjects teel their own story. She shoots quite moments between partners, gatherings of friends, and testimonies of loved ones. There is much to be learned from the individuals in her film. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in seeing through the eyes of the transgendered. It is far from easy.

Documentaries are useful tools in sending a message to a mass audience. I wonder though... do we sometimes give too much credit to the truthfulness of the information we receive? Sometimes I think that if a medis message is classified a documentary, then we often assume its validity and truth. Film and image are very powerful things, and they can manipulate a viewer like playdough. I guess I just wonder if maybe I am giving these documentary film makers a little too much credit, before I do any research on my own.

Chel White

2008-01-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

This man is brilliant to say the least. Last semester I watched a couple of his short films from Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares and found endless inspiration within each shot. The first film that I saw was "A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process: in less than 60 seconds". It was a video collage with a fast narration and colorful sampling of images. Seeing the film made me want more. So I borrowed his film collection from the college library and watched a couple more. The next short I watched was "Choreography for Copy Machine: " (see a portion of it below) Then I watched "Magda", which is my favorite. It is a stop motion film telling a sad love story using wooden drawing models for actors and paper cut-outs for sets and extras. His film collection is definitely worth viewing, or even better... owning!

Chinatown

2008-01-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

I watched Chinatown last night for the first time ever. I liked it. Its always nice to be dragged through 100 plot twists just to be dumped on your ass in the end. Jack Nicholson's acting was good, and I appreciated being able to see him in his younger years. I was told that he directed the sequel to Chinatown, also known as The Two Jakes. Maybe I will see it, maybe I won't.

video class

2008-01-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

I created this blog in hopes of keeping a record of my thoughts on film, my creative process, and the works of other artists...in addition to having started this blog to meet a class requirement.

Quick update on my recent film viewing:
(all viewed within the past few weeks)
There Will Be Blood
Cloverfield
Gangs of New York
The Orphanage
Juno (in Seattle)
Manhunter
Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl