In my second year video art classes, we begin exploring more advanced software such as After Effects, Blender, and Cinema 4D, while continuing to develop skills in Premiere and Final Cut Pro X. The course is assignment based, with a defined tool of exploration and an artistic genre.
Project One: Digital Disintegration and Appropriation
The students are introduced to an After Effects workflow and given the tools of Luma and Color Keying and Time Displacement to digitally disintegrate their video. They engage with the artistic genre of appropriation by using found footage to digitally alter for their artistic expression. We look at Arthur Jafa’s Love is the message, the message is death for inspiration.
Project Two: Temporal Collaging
The students learn how to use the Rotobrush tool and create a temporal collage from footage they have filmed. We look at Lucas Blalock’s Photoshop practice as an aesthetic and creative practice inspiration.
Project Three: Diptych, narrative, and non-narrative experience
The students have more artistic freedom in this project with the one limitation of creating a two-channel video work. The emphasis is forging a strife within the artwork, both the content but also the visual relationship between the two videos. We look at Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls for inspiration.