—->BANNER ASSIGNMENT<—-
Diversity Matters, in collaboration with Ana : )
For this first assignment, Ana approached me with the idea of working together to create a banner that addresses the lack of diversity, especially among the faculty, here at the university. We started by visiting the OPIRG office on campus to find resources we could use to include in our banner. We ended up finding a census from 2015/16 that includes statistics about the overall representation at the school. After reading through the census, we picked out lines that we thought could be interesting to use for our banner, some of which include:
- “ It is our intention to include all”
- “Prefer not to answer”
- “Of the 2,520 eligible employees, 1.0% answered yes to being an Aboriginal Person.”
After some thought, we thought the title of the census itself was quite ironic, considering when you look through the results, there is not much diversity at all. We chose the phrase “Diversity Matters” and I had the idea to place our banner over the plaque in the Zavitz lobby where the names of the faculty in SOFAM are displayed. We played with some other ideas as well, and decided to add “no” with a checklist next to the plaque to reference the original census. After our critique, we ended up removing that part and just left the “Diversity Matters” banner at the top.
Original Diversity Matters Census:
<—— First Draft
While creating the banner, I thought of different ways I could call back to the census. I tried my absolute best and took way too long copying the font of the title in the census document. I also wanted to include the colours associated with the university (red, black, white, gold) without it being too much.
Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death
Summary:
POST INTERNET VIDEO ART
Research and Discussion
Video Essays/Commentary Youtube:
(below is only one example. the video is likely not going to be specifically about plastic surgery.)
- although there is variance in the quality of content and perspective on this topic we have criticisms about the oversaturation of similar rhetoric and the effectiveness of commentary versus “real world action” i.e. does this content inspire action or further performance?
- through the lens of our perspective on meta in the current political landscape we will reframe this
- “the revolution will not be televised” meets video artists. what is our role. how can we “activateeee” video protest. what is the role of social media in this reframing.
TORONTO TRIP
During our trip to the AGO, one of my first stops was the exhibition titled “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century.” There was so many beautiful and unique works to explore, but one in particular caught my eye.
The work is by Indigenous artist Nicholas Galanin, titled “Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan 1 & 2.” It is a two-part video featuring breakdancer David Elsewhere and Tlingit dancer Dan Littlefield.
In the first part, David Elsewhere performs a contemporary dance consisting of both fluid and sharp movements while a traditional Tlingit song plays in the background. The title of the song is the same as the title of the work, which translates to “We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care.” In the second video, Dan Littlefield performs a Raven Dance while wearing traditional regalia. In contrast to this traditional dance and attire, he dances to a heavy electronic beat. This artwork
Some additional pictures from The Power Plant and the Harbourfront Centre!! ^^
POST INTERNET VIDEO ART
work in progress:
While in the process of creating our video, the final vision would warp and change as we moved along. Originally, we were going to make a bunch of video clips featuring a wide range of people saying the same line that we repeat in the final video. However, after filming our clips, we decided that that was enough, and we would instead record the voices of others to dub on top of our clips. We did stick to the minimalist aesthetic in the clips we shot by wearing white with no makeup and our hair tied back. In contrast, the editing of the video is quite overwhelming and certainly not “minimalist.” We experimented a lot during the editing process which led to a strange, almost ethereal final product.
final video:
Statement provided by Ana:
If you were to make a list of all your friends and how you’ve met them, I would wager that the places you met them were largely either work related or school related. If not one or the other statistically speaking, and especially if you are or were a teenager in the last 10 years you would also say the internet.(1) In sociology, the concept of a “third space” refers to spaces that a community can meet and mingle outside of your job or a class.(2) Historically these spaces where you could meet individuals with similar interests would be cafes, gyms, parks, libraries ,etc. these environments although categorized as similar spaces historically differed in a degree of severity. In other words a bookclub in Mississauga would be distinguished in perspective comparative to one in Missouri. As Andrew Postman puts it in his forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death “Comunities have been replaced by demographics. Screen-Time also means hours spent in front of the computer, cell phone and hand held. Silence has been replaced by background noise.”
In the contemporary landscape of our western society, we would argue that much of these third spaces have been/will be co-opted by internet spaces. Whether it be gaming, crafts, humour etc. the fear we address in this video is that when algorithms lump together people of similar tastes and interests on mass pockets of diverse culture and perspective are lost. This is especially troubling when applied to social Justice and political movements.
The oversaturation of regurgitated rhetoric amongst social media users leads to relatively uneducated and surface level takes on important issues. Even in the case of activists who devote their lives to causes and commit their time to creating content that breathes life into an issue in an eloquent and informed way the message is often over time misinterpreted, watered down and then regurgitated by influencers. This often goes on I would argue until it means almost nothing and serves little to no use beyond virtue signalling.
In this piece, we have taken the simple and potent message that subscribers of social media accounts should delete their profiles. A la Gil Scott Herons “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” we truly believe that real change cannot be made on apps owned and surveilled by fascist billionaires but we also aim to lean into the irony of proliferating that statement via the medium of social media itself, Video! Throughout the video the sentiment is layered, changed and shared by different voices and superimposed angles of our faces until the message is so diluted and disorienting that one might struggle to interpret its meaning. Much like the ghostly and minimal aesthetics of our video the message dies and leaves nothing but its ghost when duplicated so excessively . We hope that viewers are called to consider the capabilities of social media through a revolutionary lens.
☆☆ PARENTS VIDEO ☆☆
Message From the Ether, 2025.
My video for this assignment is titled “Messages from the Ether” and features me standing still with my mother’s face edited onto mine. While I stand there, robotic voices read out the last messages that my mother sent to my family. Since my mother and my family are estranged, I wanted to portray that relationship in a strange and uncomfortable way, which is how I typically feel about the situation.
I chose to use space as the background and the AI voices to demonstrate how my relationship with my mother feels distant, as if she were a stranger sending messages from a place I do not know. The memories I have with my mother are sparse and many are not very positive, but she will always be a part of me, hence the combining of her face with mine. I also chose to use a more robotic sounding voice to read the messages due to the interesting way that my mom writes. She has a distinct style that almost sounds like it was written by AI. Below, I have attached the picture and the software that I used to create the video for this assignment. Although the processing took 4 hours, I’m happy with the results.
