hong kong max

if i wake early enough, i can hear the birds. i open the window a sliver, and let in the cold morning air. before the city rises, the din of traffic drowning out those delicate sounds, i hear…the morning birds. singing, as if, in the forest. as if…

oh, that woman, such energy! such life. so, taken, we sat a lovely nighttime cafe, and cake hot chocolate tea, and talked about importnt things. then, i walked with her, across the park with tiny lights shining, stars beneath our feet. i left her at her fiance’s bank building…he is probably rich and handsomer…happy valentine’s day, she said.

the dancing, quite lovely, it told a story, of sorts. at times, too direct, i thought, at times perhaps too dark, the light not enough to capture content, as i was supposed to document it all. with one camera angle, we cant expect much anyway, but…a romantic story, man and woman and man and and, so nice to see kam dance. i think, actually he is a dancer, and moonlights as computer scientist, not the other way around, like he says…

click to play video

of course i went to her, as she sat alone before the show, dancer helper, so suprising, we had a funny conversation. we talked about the audience, the arts, hong kong and a ‘chinese’ woman expressin gherself, with ‘western’ dance, how, why, what was that…we talked, i gave her a zhuan, a card, as i am always looking for performers, to develop project ideas. she offered me her number, but probably only to be polite…

so tonight i have tickets, two, for the performance again. i should like to go, but am sure, to feel lonely, couldnt find a date. i am sure to feel foolish, wishing to see that other woman, or at least the one who’s busy backstage. i should actually like to work the video camera again, as a task would keep me there, and keep my mind off the main thought on valentine’s day…even i have no woman to romance, today we celebrate romance itself…just because, and skipping class because of it

after, tomorrow, back to the regular days, school, teaching, learning, planning, and work on my thesis, my jobs, to scratch together the tuition money, due date looming near, a shadow above me…yet warmth in heart, i’ll make it through, and maybe catch a dancer, or two, in the frame, my camera’s eye, if not in arms, my singule dreams of beautiful, creative woman

its early, yet, the birds, i can still just hear them, alighting concrete rooftops. and today, valentine’s day, will be a happy one. the future, the now, is what we make of it

what is procedural? this is a broad term meaning generally, accomplishing something through a series of processes, steps, or prodecures. in terms of motion graphics and animation, procedural often signifies a moving-away-from-keyframe approach. however, often i am combining hardcoded animations and graphics with processes, to create more dynamic movements and transformations. flash is an excellent tool for doing procedural techniqes, and i often create masks and plates for video work with flash, exporting png sequences or quicktime video from a flash movie which is runnin actionscript ‘procedures’.

in this example, i am working on a simple max/msp application, and need to create some fan masks to splice with video. instead of creating many different files as mjepg, i want to make one swf file, which generates random patterns of spinning objects (my video is of industrial and restraunt fans). so i start with this, one radioactive fan, and using array() and random() and setTimeout i have created this basic frame…update later when it gets more interesting…i want to give each fan a random position, size and life, and perhaps an endoflife animation too.

the animation above is a flash swf, but for my msp graphics, i have exported from the .fla a quicktime movie (mjpeg), recording the processes for 2 minutes. why not use the swf directly in msp? well, msp is loading the swf through quicktime, and qt only understands very basic actionscript. i am using as2, and studying as3, so for now, i will stick with the ‘export movie’ quicktime function.

ha, that might be a title of an autobiographical work, but its not. indeed, the more i work on this project, the more lucky and wealthy i feel, although i have been poor, and am a poor student by some standards, the people in this story are really struggling.

the film, a project from S. Louisa Wei, blue queen cultural communication , is about a number of students in mainland china, who are from the villages and need real support to go to university. i am editing footage taken by two exchange students as well by louisa herself: interviews, follow-ups, background, ambient and personal takes on the main characters, a brother and sister, their friends and mother. depicted as well is the hierarchy of officials trying to help, from the women’s association, at provincial, county, town and village level.

so, the kids are poor, thats clear, and they get some support from different foundations, one called red phoenix project. but, there’s something else, a catch, which makes the scene so extreme. their mother, has gone mad. now, in normal situation, an elderly or infirm mother might be a further difficulty to contend with, but one perhaps which the community and extended family might be able to deal with. however, add madness to the mix, and it gets hard for everyone.

the mother of the mad woman, doesn’t want to care for her, she is perhaps busy caring for her son’s children. the children, are off at university, taking the chance of the lifetime, to move forward, rather than struggle always at village level. so, the decision is made, to send mum to the elderly home. not so easy, but eventually done.

a difficult moment, when after much discussion, they finally drag mum to the waiting car, to take her to the old folks’ home

catch number two: there is only enough money, for one year of medicine and care for mum. after one year, she is out, back in the village, and not on her medication.

catch number three: the daughter, finished with school, has not paid her fees in full, thus has no diploma. she studied chinese medicine, and likely cannot find a job, to support herself and her mother, without that diploma.

so i am editing, trying to piece together a story with louisa, that shares the compassion, the hard work of the women’s association, the complications of buerocracy, the development of the kids at university and of course, the wild-card that is madness. the footage is pretty shaky, so i am assembling a collection of edits, little moments cut together which roughly equate the flow of events over time. another student, april wei, is in charge of interpreting the speech bits. she speaks or at least understands the local dialect these folks speak. i can get the direction of conversations and when something important is being said, but my chinese is still beginner level.

as usual, tooling about in final cut, edit is great fun, although it makes me dream of the day, someone hands me 60 tapes of beautiful, smooth camera-work. this is not quite that, but i long for material where the camera lingers on useful scenes, characters are not spot-on in the center of the picture, footage in which colors are exposed indoors and out, where audio quality is good and the interviewers are not a constant presence. yes, its a task to chop through this material, but its interesting, and will ultimately be a useful story to tell.

i’ll keep posting on the work, it will be a cool thing in the end.

contrary to popular belief at university, i think there IS indeed a space, for art, just because.

last semester i did an audio-visual work that got labelled pornographic. i made this work, on inspiration, and it began as a sound recording, a project for sound art theory class, to which i later added images. my professor at once said, its pornographic, and if a chinese girl gave him the work, he would think…hmmmm, interesting. yet, because i am a white guy, and the voice of the girl in the track is asian there are all these other issues of exploitation and context involved, [we] cannot just take it as an artwork.

i concede, there are other issues involved, but i feel these are much more in the eye (and ear) of the beholder, rather than in my making of it. some people dont like the cliche of ocean waves, the representation of ‘waves of pleasure’ is too direct; some dont like the bird, which seems out of place, even mocking; others find the absence of a male voice disturbing. but i just made it, not thinking much about it, just because, and i didnt pay much attention till after.

for all the discussion, some people seem to want to comment more on max, for making this work. as if the artist is more important that the work? i dont think so, and i suspect people with the most to say are those, who daren’t watch the work, have some issue with eroticism or their own complexes of sexuality. i wonder does an artist really need to deal with that? perhaps in a university context, yes, but in art, i think not.

when the work was initially labelled pornographic, i took offense. i thought, no, it is not porn, it is innocent, a portrayal of a loving act. then i discussed with some of my professors…’yes, it might be porn, but so what?’…’porn? yeah, thats cool!’…’well, if it is porn, its pretty soft’…i began to warm to the label, and i went on a bit of a research into audio in pornography. i found, from analytical perspective, that porn is something that strives for realism. not satisfied with an abstract representation of sexual activity, and when not constrained by regulations of media, a pornographer seems to strive to depict lovemaking, raw and direct, graphic, with nothing left to the imagination. yet, the porn soundtrack is often dubbed, exagerated. excessive moans and groans and ‘fuck me baby! harder!…’ dont play out in many people’s sex lives, but they tell us that on-screen that these people are enjoying themselves.

my work is much different, the fact that it depicts quiet lovers, captured sensuality, inspired for an artwork, differentiates this piece from the genre of pornography. visuals were in fact, added later in the production, reverse the standard practice of sound-follows-image. the pictures i used, macro still photos which show everything intimate, but in closeup, abstracted, play against the search for realism in pornographic media. i think it is a sweet portrayal of some loving act, and using close-mic’ed recording and hardcore still images brings that sensuality closeup, even as the mix obscures our perception of the scene.

whether or not this is pornography, is for me unclear. i am glad for the chance to look deeper at my own motives, or lack thereof, in making such a work. however light the content, for some it is sensational. eventually i decide, for me, it isnt necessary to label it porn, or defend that it is not. much attention has been given to why i made the work, more than given to the work itself or why i made it like i did, which i find unfortunate.

some viewers laughed hollow, when in presentation, i said that their interpretation of the work is more important than my own ideas. however, i believe this to be true with any artwork; no matter what one says, their, and your reaction to the work, intellectual or visceral or emotional, will form opinions of it more strongly than reading the artist statement.

is it pornography? i dont know, but i like it. the actors i made it with like it. my professor gave me an A-. anything else said is kind of irrelevant. judge me for making it? go ahead, thats not important either. in the end its just an artwork, made by an artist, just because. artistry is often a sensual, sexual, expressive individual act, and this work, in my mind, reflects that. what more is there to discuss?

if you are curious about it, you can find the work on my website maxwillis.net

today in class, i screened the first half of eraserhead, david lynch’s freaky nightmare film. spooky, strange, all of us in class got grossed out, tense and anxious…although nothing really happened.

the darkness, as important as the light, making such a wierd mood

the sounds, in the radiator, the incessant trains, freakybaby’s cries…more tension

the perspectives, the actions half completed, the scarcity of dialogues…this is cinematography, playing with heartstrings and ripping them from the organ itself. its just a family, a couple, a baby…but nothing is right, there, and we know it

why show eraserhead? well, to look against the formulaic grain of hollywood film, and examine david lynch’s superb twisted imagination, in black and white film…set, setting, mise en scene, lighting…its horrific, for all the reasons that cinema moves us, in a traditional sense. the mood is implied, crafted with light and film and camera and downright strangeness, without all the special effects and blood and gore which new films seem to rely on.

that’s film art. spookey, wierd, rather unpleasant film art, but art of moving image nonetheless.

coming up…

-a dance performance, i will help some on the video…kam’s troupe, a three chanel video mixer, three live cameras, docu crew…before and on valentine’s day

-my thesis project: a synthesis of poetry, drawing and animation

-an editing work with s. loiusa wei: red phoenix, poor students struggling in mainland china.

-more animations, lu ling this time

-some procedural animations, learning houdini (again)

-and a few suprises out of linda lai’s class on media archaeology =)

so stay tuned to hkmax, there’s more to come

writing near to the chinese new year, 2008, i have some things to let out, to keep in, to look forward to, and more. bear with me, for from here on out, things change

talk talk, have had enough. enough teenage gossip, enough behind the back highschool blabber, enough enough of little girls and little boys. my mother told me many years ago, ‘you’re not at school to play games, you’re there to learn.’ now at university, more than ever, she is right.

its true, i am here, to learn, to teach, to grow. i connect more with the professors, the material, than other students at university. that should come as no suprise, as back in the day, i was a geek with few friends, bound in hardcore punk and the art of my way. i excelled then, and i do now, without real need of the society of bullshit perpetuated by my school and my classmates.

i realize now, i am, after so many years on the outside, drawn back in to trivial worlds, teenage boy girl talk talk, expectations which cannot meet, and shallow entities called classmates, not even called friends. well, i dont want to play personal anymore, i just want to continue an artist. perhaps we can work together, dream and wonder and share eachother’s creativity together, but if not, lets just pass in silence.

so this blog, as of the year of the rat 2008, becomes one of doing, of media and art and painting and poetry. anyone who is interested to join me, can come with, on this journey into creative asia and farther. but lets cut the talk talk, i’m no good at that anyway.

one thing, more to say, to any of you so clever to talk about or write about, someone you hardly know…come and say it to their face. if you cant do that, then its not important what you have to say.

a leaf,
tanned in autumn sunshine,
i float on air.

gone is the branch
so long my home.

wind,
carry me swiftly
to the river.

i would see her once
before winter.