Week 7 - Experimentation
1:12 PM
Experimentation, or Modernism, is the act of trying out new things. Modern artists and filmmakers try to leave conventions behind and explore the new. Often this results in abstract works. Children are the perfect audience for experimental media, because children are experimenters themselves. Children don't have expectations of what they think something should be. They have no understanding of the "rules," and therefore will not reject a piece of experimental media.
One main characteristic of Modernism is the exploration of the medium. Mark Rothko made several paintings that just consisted of flat planes of color. He was exploring things that are specific to painting, like the flatness of canvas. He wasn't interested in trying to create something that looks like it occupies a 3D space, because a canvas is 2D.
Rothko
This use of aspects that are specific to the medium was, and is, popular in more than just painting. We watched "Begone Dull Care" in class, which explored the possibilities with the medium of film. It explored the passage of time, the ability to join picture with sound, and the actual use of the film itself. Experimental music, films, and the like demonstrate this interest in leaving behind traditional conventions and thinking out of the box.
Additionally, experimental media often is conscious of itself. We read the book "The Stinky Cheese Man" which completely left the rules of traditional fairytales and children's books behind. This book acknowledged itself as a book. There were instances when characters were talking to the narrator, and the table of contents came crashing down on the characters which ended the story. We also watched "Duck Amuck" which was self-reflective. The cartoon is about the fact that it is a cartoon, and that an illustrator is creating the work. I think this self-reflective principle can serve as a way to break away from the mainstream, and also to be funny. I consider the tv show 30 Rock to be an experimental show. This was one of the first sitcoms I ever saw that acknowledged itself as a show. 30 Rock is a tv show about the making of a tv show, which is experimental in itself. Also, the characters are often breaking the fourth wall, they interact with traditional tv graphics, etc. They use the medium of television to their advantage in getting laughs.
We watched Sherlock Jr., a film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton was important in the history of films, because he did things that no one else had tried to do before in film. In the film, Buster is running the projector at a movie theatre. He falls asleep, and as he dreams he is able to enter the actual movie that is playing and interact. He was aware that special effects are possible in a film, and he wasn't afraid to try them out. The scene where he is on the movie screen and the background is constantly changing was really fun to watch, and it is an example of the fact that he knew what film was capable of. Buster Keaton was really great at stunts as well. The film is mostly made up of daring and wacky stunts he was able to pull off. I feel that this was experimental, because it was a breakaway from earlier films that weren't as daring.
I think it should be acknowledged that many films these days will only experiment if there is a place for it in the story. In Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton was dreaming, which made it possible for experiments to occur. Likewise, in the Pink Elephants clip from Dumbo, the characters are in a drunken stupor, which presented an opportunity to animate an experimental sequence that would seem like hallucinations. I recently watched Hitchcock's Vertigo, which has an experimental scene in it to portray the character's bad dream, but the rest of the film was all realistic.
Vertigo dream sequence
It seems that experimental media has taken a bit of a backseat in the past few years. I think that "A Chairy Tale" is absolutely wonderful, but was made mainly because it was funded by the Film Board of Canada, and the maker wasn't interested in trying to make a profit. Commercial films aren't usually experimental, because that just isn't what the mainstream audience is looking for. I think this is a little unfortunate, because E=experimentation is a celebration of media, and it also can have great meaning. Other criticisms of experimentation say that maybe it doesn't actually count as art because anyone could do it, even children. I think that is part of the beauty of it. Everything children do is experimental, and everything they see is experimental in their eyes. It is up to the audience to decide what the art means to them, and they can choose to leave it, or take it and benefit from it.
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