Opus Oops

Opus One was a learning experience, to say the least. I was stuck on this one for a long time. Figures I would try to go as traditional-art as possible on this, my first ever artistic venture in a video medium, but I did try to come up with a legitimate concept that was at least tangentially related to the prompt. 

The line from our textbook that informed my process the most was "our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old." (McLuhan 94) This idea of "misusing" the tools we've invented is the basics of what I tried to convey. In my brainstorming stage, I also came across a quote from a reading in one of my other classes (Queer and Feminist Pop Music) which I immediately knew I wanted to use, because to me it echoes McLuhan's point exquisitely. But then I got stuck for quite some time, until I turned to the idea of speedpaints - videos of art in the process of being made. I like to watch them because they help me learn and feel inspired. They also strike me as exactly what McLuhan is talking about - someone with access to digital recording technology, the new time-based media, using it to portray a visual-based form. It's a little ironic, but I also wonder if this hybrid of new and old doesn't breathe some new life into both forms. In any case, I tried to incorporate this irony into my project, as well as a reference to one of the short films we watched in class and a reference to my own blog post. The Stuart Hall quote forms the soundtrack to this video, but unfortunately I cannot link to the whole article. Thanks for checking it out.