Philthy Conversations with Artists

In my secret life, I run a tiny publishing company called Inconundrum Press. Last year I was struggling to find innovative ways to our only book: 4×1, a book of poems by Ranier Maria Rilke, Tristan Tzara, Jean-Pierre Duprey and Habib Tengour. While hanging out on Youtube way more than was healthy, I was finally struck with an idea.

Two of my dear friends, Rick Wright and Anders Hansen, are a photographer and a painter respectively. And my friend Gregory Paul makes beautiful, ambient music that I knew he wouldn’t mind sharing with me.

So, I used the very rudimentary video creation tool Windows Movie Maker (which I believe comes with every computer with Windows). I took this lovely poem “A Robe of White Roses” by Jean-Pierre Duprey from the book and set it to images created by my artist friends (a couple photos at the beginning are even mine). I overlayed it with Gregory Paul’s haunting melody “Dustbowl Couple” and viola, I had a piece of multi-media art.

And, as you may notice, there is no video in it. I had wanted to make videos but my camera had called it quits, so I was forced to be ingenuitive, making a slide show that would hopefully be as dynamic as moving pictures.

Once it was out there in the world, I believe that it served not just 1, but 3 functions:

1. To advertise the book 4×1.
2. To display art by two artist-friends
3. To share Gregory Paul’s music with more people

I posted the video at youtube and then at 3 of my blogs. I made sure to add credits as well as website links in the video as well as with the postings.

Your Video Project

Although it is a bit of a jump for those of you who are new online, I mention this video now because Artspan has introduced a great way to embed video in your Artspan webpages. This is the perfect time to start thinking about your own Web 2.0 projects. It’s fall: a time of transitions, “back-to-school” and new projects. Why not make a video of your work? The possibilities are many, but here are just a couple suggestions:

1. A how-to video, showing a method or style you are working it and how to achieve it
2. A video collage/slide-show of your work set to music (make sure you have permissions for the music. There are ways to find free music online, which I will share soon.)
3. Video clips from your life: openings, discussions, salons, anything that will bring your art life into 3D for the viewer.

Interested? See Friday’s post for some ways to get started.

In the meantime: Visit my Artspan website page ‘One-minute Poems’ to learn more about the video possibilities.