Final: Requiem for an Outlet

Requiem for an Outlet from Alyson Indursky on Vimeo.

Blog Post #4: MOMI

I went to the Museum of the Moving Image on April 25th with my sister while the museum was mostly empty due to special holiday hours. The top floor of exhibits was hands on (though geared towards a younger crowd), allowing visitors to create flipbook animations, make short stop motion films, experience the tedious ADR process, and experiment with foley sound. My personal favorite “hands on” experience was the zoetrope when one first enters the floor, that being the first time I had ever seen and played with one in real life rather than looking at a picture of it in a textbook. I also thoroughly enjoyed the sound dubbing station. At first we had tried to make a serious attempt at saying the lines with the actor/actress, but it was so tedious we resorted to giving Dorothy a heavy Jersey accent and changing the subject of her line to something a little less PG. I could only imagine the hours actors have to spend to dub their lines and have it match perfectly. The floor below was full of posters and portraits, masks, prosthetics, memorabilia, and scaled down sets. My personal favorite was the set for Anomalisa, a 2015 stop motion film. The museum has on display a street set they had used for one short scene, but up close the amount of detail and labor put into it astounded me – down to the puddles painted onto the street that truly made it look like real water. The prosthetics had an impact on me as well as I had never really noticed when an actor might be wearing an entirely fake nose, chin, etc, which speaks to how little the audience notices what goes into a film or TV show.

Blog Post #3: "Reflections" (2012)

I watched “Reflections” (2012) directed by Max Lamonte, a 2 and a half minute long film hosted on Youtube. This film is driven by sound, primarily a heart beating, stilting low tones, and piercing high tones. The music drives the action, the character first reacting to the sound of knives and creaking doors, but at some points reacts to the crescendo of the music as if it exists within his world. The music also seems to drive the cuts, most notably in the beginning of the film. When the music pauses, the shot ends and a new one begins with the music starting up again. This isn't universal across the length of the film – many times the music's phrasing will encompass two or three shots. In addition to driving the pacing, the music seems to get louder during the darker shots and then lightens up again with just a heart beating (similar to the beginning of the film) nearing the end when the character comes back to the lit living room. At the end, the final piercing note is heard as the knife is lifted and the camera follows, pointing towards the shadowed ceiling. The shots themselves are all similar in quality – warm tones, soft and minimal lighting. Through the suspense, the shots gradually grow dimmer and then slowly lighten up again at the end – no shot seems too lit, too dark, or out of place because we are slowly guided through the cyclical lighting structure until the end. The shots in relation to each other are highly responsive – guy on laptop, we see what he's typing, back to previous shot of him on the couch – reaction shot to knife sound. The film as a whole is traditionally structured without much risk being taken in editing.

Project # 2: Interview with Roberto

Blog Post #2: Soundwalk

For my soundwalk, I spent an hour walking around Port Jefferson, a town next to my own on Long Island. Specifically, I walked “down port,” an artsy area of the village that locals (and some tourists) go on weekends and at night to drink (and drink and drink and drink), see art exhibits, and go wine tasting. I will admit I had a tough time just being and listening for an hour, partly because my mind was occupied by an incident that happened a few days prior but also because I realized I've rarely been in tune with my environment without distractions for more than 5 minutes. This experiment forced me to confront “reality” - the non-digital present. One keynote sound I experienced was the constant, steady, and slow flow of traffic on the narrow Main Street: brakes squealing when pedestrians ran across the street (a regular occurrence), the occasional quick beep of a horn. Paired with the traffic was the noise of the people around me. Because of the time (after dark, Friday night), the volume of pedestrians was rather larger, rowdier, and drunker than most times. I found it hard not to tune into conversations – not only because listening was the exercise, but also because much of the conversation on the street was yelling. One girl in particular stuck out at me: she was yelling at her friends for something related to who I assume was the bartender inside. Her voice pierced above everything else for the few minutes I was over there because of the shrill quality; it reminded me of a cartoon mean girl. Another constant I noticed as I got further down towards the ferries was the waves of the LI sound crashing on the docks and shore. I noticed I could tune into this sound more and more and drown out the people on Main Street the closer I was to the docks. There was one boat I heard for a few minutes coming through – slow, marked by its motor and a steadier wave sound. It was pleasant to listen to the waves and I dreaded walking back up Main Street to my car after the hour was done.

Project #1: Define a Space - Escape from Thomas Hunter

Define a Space - Escape From Thomas Hunter from Alyson Indursky on Vimeo.

Blog Post #1: Artist Statement

I grew up in a practical family with a practical state of mind. I was raised by my father who chose his girlfriends based on who could watch his kids while he commuted to his practical, labor-intensive, middle class, union job. We went to the local public schools, ate fast and cheap food for every meal (leftover pizza for breakfast was common – it was quicker to nuke a slice on a paper plate than dirty a bunch of bowls and spoons), and were involved in the extracurriculars with the least commitment that occurred during normal school times. My father drilled the value of hard, honest work into our heads and, while I was on the honor roll frequently in grade school, often said “you may have book smarts, but your brother has street smarts – he'll make a good living.” Of course, my brother became fourth generation union plumber immediately after high school while I chose college to figure out my path in life.

While I never fell into a trade and won't make the money that my brother, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all made and continue to make doing “honest work,” I did start to carve my way into a path I thought I'd never relate to – the visual arts. The majority of my work is 2D, digital-based art that directly relates to tangible subjects – the political sphere, live models, landscapes – coming together as advertising oriented verses large, metaphorical statements about life. Internet culture serves as a reoccurring theme in my work, an homage to what gave way to my birth as an artist during my chaotic years as a middle schooler trying to be funny on the internet.