I used to be a performing arts geek. I loved being on the stage for band, choir and the annual high school musicals - but when I broke up with my boyfriend my senior year (who was involved with most of these things and, thus, had lots of friends in the same classes as me) I had a really hard time losing myself in these interests with his and his kind involved at equally intimate levels.
Luckily, I had tricked my parents into signing a form that emancipated me in the eyes of the public school system! I spent a lot of time ditching those classes for "dentist appointments" and "family issues." Then, one day, I found an unassuming, unencumbered, and secretly compassionate teacher in detached classroom on a part of the campus I had never, ever visited. As it turns out, our high school had a video production program, and he was the king of it! I don't know if I started to go to the classroom after I was asked to perform in one of his students' videos or after I realized my choir period was his prep period and he didn't care if ditched in the video studio - but in case it was love at first sight.
WITH VIDEO!!
(Uuugghh, did you think I was talking about a student-teacher affair!? Gross. Not cool. Shame on you.)
Anyway, at the end of the fall semester I switched into one of the video classes and played catch up with more zeal than I had ever known myself to have. I plotted and practiced and story-boarded and shot and re-shot until I was satisfied with this - the very first video I ever ever ever wrote or shot or edited or produced:
Petra is almost 3 months old. The collection of pictures meant to hang on her wall is almost 5 months old... I've been procrastinating putting them up because 1) I'm not very good at arranging things, and 2) I'm very good at procrastinating.
Matt's recent appendectomy made him a perfect candidate (as the resident-artist-with-more-than-a-few-spare-moments) to help me get the images on the wall. When I laid them out, I kept finding myself naturally putting them into a grid, which ruined the effect I was going for: I wanted the images to look crowded on the wall giving the room a fuller feel. I was also trying to pay homage to my dad's similar nautical theme the den he had in the house I grew up in - the crowded, global nicknacks leant to an air of travel that I wanted.
1) I measured the area on the wall I wanted to fill.
2) Then I laid out that area on the floor and arranged the pictures in it over and over until I got a configuration that pleased me.
Matt laid out an initial pattern for the images that gave each pictures an inch or two of breathing room. The arrangement looked nice, but again, I wanted to have a crowded feeling. After some rearranging and the addition of a few blank frames, we came up with this - "french gallery" he called it - layout; there is a diagonal sweep and the sizes are deliberately varied in their positions.
3) Next I flipped all the frames over exactly where they were laying.
4) I laid tissued paper over the frames and marked where the hanging holes were.
5) Then, I taped the tissue paper to the wall* and proceeded to place the nails, in the marked places.
6) After getting all the nails in place, I hung the pictures up to make sure the translation from floor wall worked.
(*I ended up moving two of the images around after the tissue paper draft on the wall. Even after putting the nails in the new configuration, I left an image off until after I put up all the pictures of the wall paper. Then, I redrew in darker marker where I thought the new placement of the picture should go, approved, and added the nail. Glad I double checked before adding unnecessary holes!)
7) Finally I removed the images, tore down the tissue paper - leaving the nails behind -and hung up all the images.
Viola!
---------------------------------------------
Who says you need to buy toys for baby?!
Petra had a grand time playing with the tissue paper, kicking and crumbling it awkwardly in her new grip; it was the first time I saw her stimulate herself without a cooing parent over her!
While most of my fun and not-so-moody videos can be seen here, on my minorheroine Vimeo account, pieces - like the one below - that I spend some time editing or conceiving can be viewed on my grown-up, professional Vimeo here, searchable under Danica Complex.
This is one of those pieces that serendipitously came together from the hodge-podge, thoughtless snippets of video I collected over the course a Christmas visitation to my parents who were on a vicarage in Kansas in 2008.
This first video was the product of listening to the piece Gymnopédie No.1 (featured in the piece). Whether or not I ever heard the music before didn't make it any less nostalgic and it conjured up images from my most recent adventure: a train ride across the country. On thinking on trains I remembered my habit of running out to watch the trains pass behind the school from my job as a clerk in college. One of the cinema professors caught me during one of my escapes and stopped to stare with me at the beast chugging by. Before trotting off he turned to me and said, "Wow... let's make a movie about trains!"
I think I am particularly fond of the "time" theme that accidentally presented itself throughout the film. We see young faces and old hands, old-fashioned words in the cards and new ones being scribbled down - all the while the train moves forward through landscapes, days, and nights.
I meant to create three video pieces to mirror a tradition style of composition that is the sum of three movements usually with a pattern of brisk, ballad, and ending long & lively. I just didn't have enough video to fulfill this pattern, so I satisfied myself with two contrasting paces in the different videos using the same piece of music. In addressing this limitation, other interesting contrasts arose - I found that the first piece which utilized the ballad was more tightly themed, but very loose in structure. This second piece has a distinct narrative that seems to follow the imagination of a protagonist into a whimsical world separated by images of fire. We also see a train again, tying it back to the first film.
Only but an hour ago my friend and I were enjoying the garlic knots of Mama's Brick Oven Pizza when a strange sight we beheld on the unassuming streets of Fair Oaks, South Pasadena... In the dark outside the pizzeria, it seemed that the regular pace of flashing headlights and break lights had ceased; instead, something large, looming and a little bit frilly was eeking past our restaurants front doors. "Are those floats?" our friend Peggy said. Her soon-to-be-husband, Josh, had just been explaining that he would be walking tomorrow, New Year's Day, with the FTD float. "I think it is," said Wendy, rather nonplussed (I think this was her way of staving off hunger... we'd been waiting in a very busy Mama's for our pizza for a while). For a few seconds no one said anything - it simply was not possible! There were no crowds to greet them... no cheering onlookers to block our view... and no sunlight to confirm our bewilderment. "Should we go outside?" asked Peggy, she stood immediately and than sat back down looking waiting for a fellow diner to give her a cue, "YES!" I cried and we all hoped out of our seats with more energy than we knew our weakening, pizza-lacking frames had left in them. We bounded out the doors and stopped short, realizing the curb was only two feet from Mama's entry way. This is so surreal! I thought to myself, we simply couldn't have fought the throngs on Colorado for better seats! How serendipitous! "I'm twittering this!" I told Wendy, "Dang it, you beat me. Should I get my camera?" We all nodded grasping for our own camera phones to commemorate in pixel mediocrity the moment. For moment, we looked through time portal at coming year; we saw a glimpse of what the street-sleeping celebrants on Colorado would wake to the very first morning of 2009. It sneaked through South Pasadena while the rest of sister cities threw tortillas and shaving cream at the cars daring to travel the floats' future route. But only 3 hours before the crowds would erupt in chaos to bring in the New Year, we saw future!
I did my best with my little LG phone, but here is a sneak peak at some of the floats in the Tournament of Roses:
Matt & I went to Disneyland to celebrate my birthday. I always want to go to Innovations and Matt never wants to. This time, I insisted (birthday card!) and it was so worth it! We got to see ASIMO! And I got to be super freaked out by the super-human like qualities of this innovative and long-awaited walking, talking, stair-treading robot. (PS did you know that "robot" wasn't even coined until 1920?)
Below are bits of video from the fifteen minute demonstration of ASIMO at Disney's Innoventions. It ends with my reaction immediately following the demonstration- which is mostly just wonder and bewilderment. There was just something terribly daunting about the little 4'3", 120 lb humanoid robot... it was just so... graceful! Such human qualities in the fluidity of its movements. I couldn't help but imagine it silently creeping up my stairs in the middle of the night to inform me that I left the front door unlocked and all of its friends were coming in.
ASIMO stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. It took the developers of ASIMO over 20 yrs to get robotic walking right. It's something we, as upright beings, really take for granted. I remember when I was in 3rd grade I watched a video on how humans develop; and while a shot played of a toddler being walked down a beach with a parent holding each hand, the narrator said,
"Mankind is on the brink of collapse with each well-balanced step we take,"
and then proceeded to explain the delicate process of the human ability to walk. The clips in the ASIMO Disney show exemplified the incredible difficulty of mechanically mimicking this. Original biped robots tended to weigh a lot and for a long time could only walk in straight line. Even that did not bode well as any slight disruption or misstep would send the heavy legs & torso careening over. As robotics progressed, walking features improved, but they still seemed to serve little purpose for the help or advancement of humankind. But ASIMO is capable of moving in curves, walking forward and backwards, side-stepping, and even running; it is specifically designed as a helper with fully functioning five-digit hands and motion sensor cameras capable of maintaining "eye contact" when addressed and commanded.
(I can't help but chuckle at the expression on my face... it's of genuine shocked and rather wide-eyed) Check out the video below:
