Art and Artist, by Otto Rank

I found a book by Otto Rank that I bought maybe 25 or 30 years ago and never read. I Googled the book to see what people had to say and found this quote...

“For the artist too is a totalist type that, unlike the average, cannot live in perpetual ‘partialization,’ but is forced to totalize every act of life. And on the artistic plane of illusion, in the act of creating – which is at once appearance and reality, a part and a whole – he finds it possible to conquer creatively this fundamental human dualism and to derive pleasure therefrom. For when he creates, the artist uses the whole of himself without being in danger of losing that self therein..."

“A deep study of neurosis has shown me that a characteristic quality of both the productive and the thwarted… is an Over-strong tendency towards totality of experience. The so-called adaptability of the average man consists in a capacity for an extensive partial experience such as is demanded by our everyday life, with its many and varied problems. The non-conforming type tends to concentrate its whole personality, its whole self, on each detail of experience, however trivial or insignificant; but as this is not only practically impossible but psychically painful (because its effect is to bring out fear), this type protects itself from a complete self-exhaustion by powerful inner restraints. Now, the neurotic stops at this point in the process, thus cutting himself of from both the world and experience, and, thus faced with the proposition ‘All or nothing,’ chooses the nothing. The artist, however, here also, in spite of many difficulties and struggles, finds a constructive, a middle way: he avoids the complete loss of himself in life, not by remaining in the negative attitude, but by living himself out entirely in creative work. This fact is so obvious that, when we intuitively admire some great work of art, we say the whole artist is in it and expresses himself in it” (Pg. 373).

I watched the Gary Shandling documentary on HBO the other day and this really speaks to his experience. His search for ways to be pure Gary was creative and neurotic and the message of the show seemed to say he maybe broke free of the neurotic part of it toward the end.

But his life and this quote is a dangerous question for the rest of us. Are we working to be our true selves or are we merely living in a "perpetual ‘partialization"? And with that if we can't "totalize every act of life" can we step up? Or merely try and eliminate that urge?

http://70000-fathoms.blogspot.com/2014/11/art-and-artist-by-otto-rank.html

A Rant About Something Stupid...then a video

This post is mainly to make note of how to mange time-lapse moving making with a Raspberry Pi and Magix Edit Pro...Mainly. Here is the video, and I know it is crude, but I think that adds to its charm.

Soooo...in years past I have noticed that at the first of spring in most years the bamboo in our back yard can grow at an astounding rate! Thinking about it this year I remembered the Raspberry Pi I played with a year or two ago but put aside because it kind of got hacked.BUT, this time I decided to be less cavalier about permission and worked through installing an OS, webcam software for my really old webcam, and for fun installed a web server (Apache) and a wiki (Dokuwiki current hosted on said RaspberryPi sitting in the second bedroom with  a USB cable snaked out the back window to the old usb webcam).

With the help of the Internet I quickly setup the webcam software and started a linux job to take a picture every 30 minutes for the duration of this project.

Then after I had to reinstall everything because I used too small of an SD Card...I was set and you can see the video above.

Unfortunately this year seems to be a particularly UN-spectacular growth-wise. So it mainly became a project for time-lapse digital photography.

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Now for my curmudgeonly take on video editing...I appreciate Adobe premiere but God damn it you have to by a monthly subscription?!? Sorry that is bullshit.

Yeah I know it is good, and in the late 2000’s I used a then old version and was pleased with it. But I  got a slightly old version for free from a sales rep who had one laying around,  and to buy it would have been may hundreds of dollars, it is was cool and I got to use it for a fee years. And now I see you can only get it with monthly subscriptions? I repeat myself..that’s Bullshit!

Anyway after using my Adobe Premier version 6.5 for a few years I discovered my version couldn’t handle HD video, and since I couldn’t actually afford Adobe Premiere, I bought Magix Edit Pro Plus for around $40 and have been using it ever since. Amazon now has it at $70 and compared to Adobe it is well worth it. I suppose if you made professional video there might be reason to use Adobe, but maybe not. I guess this is partially a gripe about following the software herd. Of course sometime there is reason to go where everybody else is going, but if you happen to be a grumpy contrarian you might look elsewhere. Not that corporate Magix could be as bad as corporate Adobe.

Another anyway..this is how you import a bunch of still pictures into Magix Movie Edit Pro and make a time lapse movie.

First, get a bunch of images

then import them all into Magix Movie Edit Pro

go to Effects

Video Effects

Speed

for this I settled on .07 second frame time

Super 8: The Movie

Super 8. I just watched it and this movie bothers me. ...Super 8...It means something...almost like saying 8mm.

JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg, who both claim to love their roots in 8mm amateur film making decided to crap all over that tradition.

First off, the only reason you use Super 8 is because you are taking your Dad's camera and doing whatever you can to make something like the “real” movies you love. You have no money, no skills, only desire. What does “Super 8” do? It starts off presenting the energy of teenagers wanting to make movies* then takes all that enthusiasm and spends a bunch of money making a multi million dollar blockbuster.

They COULD have stayed true to the super 8 ethos while making a modern movie but no, they had to pull out the checkbook and buy a whole bunch of special effects. Of course the irritating part is that it starts off pretty good but then suddenly you are in Spielberg's “War or the Worlds”

With all humility and acknowledgment that my (our) Super 8 is crude, but THAT is what Super 8 is all about.


*I REALLY had trouble getting past the part about these kids having a sound Super 8 camera, and then after the one was broken another kid's dad had a sound camera. NOBODY had sound Super 8 cameras, that was something you dreamed about. Plus you would need a really expensive editor to make something with it. Realistically, any Super 8 meant silent. I was willing to let it go that one family might have one, but two families? Now Way!

Sculpture In Motion

My niece was in town today and we went to the SMU Meadows Art Museum. Here is was was outside the building.

Sunday Sketch

Cats can sit still for hours and hours but the moment you start to draw them they get fidgety and jump away.

Doodles

Inspired by Bibliosk8.net I stopped by Asel Art Supply and bought some pens and and new drawing pad (the pens were pricey but the pad was on sale for $4)

There was some young girl, maybe high school or early college age, asking whom I assume was the manager what to buy. It was great to overhear somebody who obviously loved working in an art supply store and had opinions that somehow manage to never seemed to put anybody down. He was all about finding the right materials "for you!"

I hope to make myself just draw a few "doodles" each day. Nothing serious, just taking the time to look at something. Not so much the result but getting into the act of looking.

Starting all over all over again

I missed Monday and Tuesday Aikido because of familial commitments and there is no class today, so I will have missed a full week.

With my new hinges on my thinkpad I have a renewed affections for the thing. It feels like new.

I'm still playing with Ubuntu and while it can be frustrating you feel like you are having a little adventure. But the irritations are....well, irritating. Today I wanted to upload a ultrasimple animation I mad this morning in Synfig and I thought the error I got when trying to upload to YouTube was the Ubuntu video editing software (KdenLive), so I tried many settings. Finally I tried uploading it in FireFox instead of Opera (another experiment).

Opera seems to view videos better than FireFox but it cannot upload to YouTube but FireFox does. FireFox cannot see Videos of The Daily Show, but Opera can. This seems to reflect my Linux experience.

Poppy

I went to the Houston Museum of Fine Art. Above is a sketch... below is the real thing
here

Silent Super 8 Memories

Here is an old Super 8 I had and finally uploaded to YouTube

Old News

This is from last week when I was in Phoenix and drew the Barry Flannagan sculpture. I had hoped to find a photo of the sculpture of a elephant with a wild hare dancing on top of its head.

That night I was walking to an restaurant and saw a real life hare (or rabbit) with its really long ears. So in place of the sculpture I give you a photo of a real hare to take the place of the one that I started to draw but ran out of room.

Art and such..

I’m in Phoenix tonight and while there was no Aikido available I spent a few hours at the Phoenix Art Museum today when I had a few hours to spare between work tasks.

It’s a nice museum with a nice range of genres and artists.

The first sketch is from a bronze sculpture by Kiki Smith from 1998. From a quick web search I gather there are a number of these around and that they represent the world of feminist suffering.

The statue is a fountain and the water drips from the hands, but it so reminiscent of tears it I naturally assume it meant she was crying. Whatever the artist’s motivations it was amazing. I spent a long time trying to capture the angles but the above is all I came away with.( a pretty poor result)

While Kiki may have wanted to make a feminist stament what really struck me was the pigeon that landed on the hand. It seemed to indicat the world is not really so sad.


Then I went into the exhibit “You who are getting obliterated in the dancing Swarm of Fireflies” by Yayoi Kusama. You walk into an completely dark room alone and there are thousands of Christmas lights on black wires in a smallish room walled with mirrors. Immediately you are disoriented and the impulse is to turn around and go back to the entrance. As you step into the room the lights somehow change intensity and color as you walk around.

I later read she meant it to show her loneliness but at least for my first time it really lifted my spirits.

A Bird In the Hand (with a mouse )

During my lunch break today I pulled away the virtual spiderwebs on Anime Studio and played around a bit. I now remember why I thought it would be fun to use this application. It is still really daunting and my results are never what I envisioned, but there is enough reward (to my eye) to make me think if I really applied myself I could make something interesting.

This is not that “something”. But, one does what one can, when one can.

I know the timing is off, the motion is off. And it repeats the same motion over and over again. I suppose it is something like a parent with an ugly baby, the child is divine to the parent but to the rest of the world it is quite different. Anyway, this is my ugly animation baby bird.

I spent a few hours tonight working on it, maybe a waste of time and I may never get any better. But surely no more a waste than watching hours of cable TV movies?

Perhaps a fulfilled life is helped by low expectations?

"I Like To Watch!"

Walking from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

I guess one is still lazy if you THINK about doing something but don't actually do anything. I was thinking about doing some animation but I'm out of the habit enough (a very infrequent habit) to be scared off by the amount of work animation takes, even with the help of computer software.

The video above is the famous, in animation circles, short by Ryan Larkin called “Walking”. If he used 24 frames a second then multiply by 60 seconds and then by the 5 minutes and you know he had 7200 pictures to photograph. And even if he used tricks of the trade to make it a little easier, it is still an amazing amount of work. A lot of work for something that looks so relaxed.

Contrast this with the video below, “Salad Fingers” by David Firth from the Flash Animation world. Still a significant amount of work.

I wonder if the method guides the message? The pure drawing involved in “Walking” would be pointless to get the feeling of “Salad Fingers” across. There is warmth to “Walking” that would detract from the cold strangeness of “Salad Fingers”.



So I thought about and watched some animation even if I didn't do anything.

Waste, Want Not!

How do we know we are wasting our time? Is watching TV automatically a waste of time? Should I feel bad that after a 2 day business trip (San Antonio and Austin), and getting home after 11:00 PM I spend a few hours drinking my favorite cheap Red wine and watch tapes I VCR-ed (my version of Tivo-ed) of anime from Cartoon Network.

I should probably feel ashamed. But there you go, I'm so tired I can only watch TV and drink wine.

But who can resist a talking black cat? (from Bleach) And just as irresistible is the opening to “Cowboy Bebop”, it is such a copy of 70s American detective show theme songs.

At the end of two very long days that is all I want.

If You Can't Do Something Well, Might As Well Do It Poorly - ZM

I have a few ideas for some Aikido Posts but my other topics call to me, if only because they feel neglected. Perhaps this is just a place for me to remember that I have thought about different things, no matter how silly.

I've pondered my animation project and here is a very, very crude storyboard of the project. It won't make much sense unless the story is written, but at least it is a record that I did something, no matter how poorly.

Animation Exercise Number 6. Another Checkpoint.

Here is the last lesson of six from the on-line Anime Studio Pro class. One might think it is not much, but for the $20 and the time I put into it I think it worked out well. Even though it is still simple and nothing special, the course covered many of the fundamentals and the exercises were appropriate for someone new to the application.

My plan is to have something to show worth showing in a few months time.

Cats as Cats Can

This is niether Aikdo, nor Spanish, nor Animation, but I still managed to spend a whole lot of time working on it.

Another one of my peculiarities is that even though I intellectually know other people couldn't care a bit for my cats, I still suspect that deep down if they really knew them they would be totally charmed.

So, here they are and I'm a little ashamed to realize how proud I am.

Animation Station: Lesson 3

I was going to focus on Spanish tonight but after work, grocery shopping, general chores and dinner, I lost energy. So I worked on this week's lesson in Animation from www.eclecticacademy.com. I know the result looks pretty basic, but as far as these things go it was a good project. That 5 seconds worked in multiple ways of creating and coloring shapes while organizing at least 3 layers of images.

In case you can't tell, it is an underwater scene and the object is a cartoon submarine.

Maybe before Aikido class tommorrow I can squeze in some quality Español time in.

¿Again with the Cansado?

I just felt too wiped out ( mejor dicho, "Estoy cansado") to go to Aikido tonight. Simply not enough sleep the night before, plus a little stress of trying to squeeze too much into too little time. And with me being a lazy person by nature I sometimes just give in and go home.

A contributing factor may have been the my arm and shoulder muscles that hurt more today than they did yesterday after Saturday's Aikido gymnastics.

I tried to use the extra time to catch up some with español and to report on the first animation assignment from www.eclecticacademy.com.

I finished Unit 3 (lessons 1 – 11) of Level 1 of Rosetta Stone. So far so good I guess, although I'm still not working very hard as the beginner stuff is pretty easy. Plus I paid all that money to Rosetta Stone so it would be easy didn't I?

Here are some good Spanish words
tiene avergonzado
tiene orgulloso
está cogiendo

Plus “Son las dos pasados” which I guess means a little past two.

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The picture is from the my very first assignment with the cheap online Anime Studio beginner's class. Very simple, but I wanted to archive the result to compare to to what comes after the other 5 weeks of exercises.

I posted a question on the Anime Studio class form and got a reply today with an answer. So event though the start is pretty rudimentary I guess there is not much room to complain with a $20 Internet course. Plus so far there is a one day response form the teacher.

Here is the link to where I will post my results... www.virtual-weltanschauung.com/astudio/

Next Stop: Animation Station

I was having a few problems with the animation software and when looking for answers I found this site that offers an online course for only $20 at www.eclecticacademy.com. Here is an excerpt from their website.

Q. What is the length of the classes - How many weeks?

A. A semester runs for six (6) weeks and includes six (6) lessons. A lesson is posted every Sunday and you have the entire week to complete it.

So after a quick trip to PayPal, I signed up and it starts July 8th. Reports will follow.