DADA

The next topic to research and respond to was the DADA art movement. DADA is artwork which lacks meaning and is marked by it's nonsense.

Research

So, what is DADA?

Well it was a movement created in the 1916 and is still around today, although its not as prominent as it was back during World War One. It is a literary and artistic movement born in Europe as a result of artists not wanting to be involved in the violence so many grouped together and gained refuge in Switzerland. They gained a public forum to metaphorically spit on nationalism, rationalism and materialism, much like with symbolism as symbolic artists rose up against the realism artists to create a new type of artwork. One of the most influential artists of the Dada movement was Marcel Duchamp however there were many other Dada artists.

The word Dada itself has multiple meanings, some say it's used to highlight the hypocritcal nature of the movement, others say its a hobby horse (A favourite topic that one frequently refers to or dwells on; a fixation.) or just repeatedly saying yes. It's made of utter nonsense and was developed in Switzerland specifically in the Cabaret Voltaire.

Dada is entirely made on nonsense and has little meaning to it, however the concept of Dada was made as a way to go against society at the time to the outburst of the war. Dada takes two different forms, some artists showed photographically in the form of photo montages or videos of flashing images. 

For my own Dada piece I found a video to be incredibly influential. If you click on the link --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqkIJ0odFxA this is the ABC of DADA and the opening 13 seconds show different images and movie clips being shown quickly I like the randomness of this and the fact that it evokes a response from watchers, people want to turn it off, they find it loud and slightly annoying. I want to create a response similar to this which evokes a response as well as challenging myself to create something different.

Mood Board

In order to get a fuller understanding of this topic I need to investigate different types of DADA work. Below is a mood board of images relating to the idea of DADA.

From my mood board and my research I found the main thing about DADA is that it makes absolutely no sense. However, although I like this idea I feel it may be better to produce work with some hidden meaning which may not be completely obvious to the viewer it makes sense once you look into it. I wanted this work to be something personal as I feel art should be expressive. Therefore to create a line of enquiry in order to develop an idea for my DADA response I need to brainstorm things about me which I feel would work as a DADA response.

Brainstorm

Using Prezi.com I created an interactive brainstorm of things which I have a keen interest in to do with art and photography which I could develop further. Click the start button in the middle then use the left and right arrows to navigate around it. 

Developing a Line of Enquiry

From the brainstorm above I chose to follow the line of editorial photography. I chose this as I find editorial photography interesting and have a keen interest in the journalism world and feel this will help me further develop into the world of editorial and fashion. However, I want my work to have a much deeper meaning than just pictures of models so therefore I will develop my photography based on the concept of narrative another thing I have looked at in the brainstorm above. One type of narrative which I find incredibly influential is the idea of fairy tales and how although everything may appear sweet and nice underneath it has a much darker truth. I chose this as I feel it would be interesting to photograph and experiment with this idea as there are many different ways I could take it. I now needed to do some more specific artistic research below is another mood board which displays a few image from each artist who I have mentioned in the brainstorm above to do with narrative and editorial photography:

From the mood board above I wanted to look further at the work of one particular artist; Annie Leibovitz.  Annie Leibovitz is an American photographer who has worked for magazines such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair as well as having her work exhibiting across the world. Once I started to look further into her work I discovered a series of photos she produces for a Disney campaign, I found these incredibly interesting as she made traditional fairy tales into unique and interesting photographs. Below are a selection of photographs that I found to be incredibly influential.

From these photos I will go on to further investigate Annie Leibovitz to discover how she managed to achieve these photographs to be of such a high quality so I can replicate this within my own work. The top left image combines 4 different fairytale images to display four different meanings and designs in one final photo. I picked up on the Disney campaign as I felt I could use it within my theme of my personal study due to combining a darker side to fairy tales linking to the ideas of the Grimm Brothers and how they felt the fairytales were warnings. Fairy Tales was also a theme which pervaded some of the artists in my second mood board. 

The Grimm Brothers were two brothers, born in the late 1700's who wrote German folk tales which have since been adapted to well known fairy tales. The books were written for children and the first book was published in 1812. The stories have been re-adapted many times by various filmmakers most popularly by Walt Disney but due to the cruelty and violence of the stories they have been sanitized to become well known children's stories. The Grimm Brothers original tales translated very differently to what we typical expect from fairy tales, their stories were not made to entertain but rather to scare and worn people. The stories began to grab the attention of younger readers and gradually became softer and sweeter before they were shared and translated across more than 160 languages.


Planning

I'm planning on creating my own version of a DADA piece, so I decided to start brainstorming. I'm following on from my previous idea of Disney and fairy tales as I felt this was an interesting avenue to continue working on. I like the idea of subverting fairy tales so researched the original fairy tale story to find a much darker and truer meaning. I then did a brainstorm associating fairy tales with key parts of their true original story, I brainstormed these ideas down to identify what stories are key and what parts and key.

I now needed to think about initial ideas and creating a response piece to DADA. Below is a secondary brainstorm which explores some possible ideas on where I can take this idea of DADA and brainstorms to next:

From these brainstorms I decided on the idea of taking photos of thing to do with the fairy tales, for example: I would take a photo of someone with a pill in their mouth and video someone taking a sip from bottle of alcohol but focus solely on that part of the persons body taking close up shots. I am not going to include all elements from the brainstorm and may not include all of the fairy tales however, I wanted to see what different meanings there were to these popular fairytales. I would then place this into Adobe Premier and add a backing tune of someone doing an annoying voice. So although the final piece will look very random it will have a secret meaning.

Developing Ideas

From my initial ideas brainstorm I found a few interesting ideas which I want to experiment with before creating my final response. 

Firstly I am going to experiment with the idea of merging photograph together into a random collage. Below is a contact sheet of images which I have captured in order to this. I captured the images based on the ideas from my first DADA IDEAS brainstorm.

Idea 1: Photograph random photos relating to Fairy Tales and merge into final image

For this idea I am focusing on facial expressions and have taken photographs of my model pulling different facial expressions and am going to layer it over one another. Below is a contact sheet of all the images I have captured however I won't use all of them. 

Now I need to merge my favourites together. There were many blurry photographs therefore I won't use many of them only the good quality ones. I started by using a magazine page as a base before cutting out a picture of the girl from the background and placing it on the magazine page. Then from another image I cut out an eye and from another a mouth and placed it over the other image. Finally I wrote the word DADA and overlayed it on the image before adding a stroke and bevel and emboss effect. Below is how it looked.

I feel this piece reflects the ideas of DADA and how random it is. However the quality is poor as the images which I used were taken in too bright lighting. I feel the idea works but it lacks meaning.. This does reflect DADA as it is random artwork and many pieces in my mood board produced work similar to mine. From this I learnt that producing a simple photographic manipulation is good yet not as interesting as I hoped. Also the quality is poor. Therefore I want to try to produce something more interesting which reflects my work on editorial photography and Fairy Tales.

Idea 2: Photograph models in editorial style
For this part I was experimenting more with photography and less with the idea of DADA so I knew what kind of photographs I wanted to take when producing my final DADA piece. I placed them in a small dark room and used a single spotlight only to illuminate the photo. Below is a contact sheet. There are way too many and I wont use them all.

Now I plan on picking my favourites. I have taken many images however there are only 5 different types of photographs therefore from each section I will pick a favourite. Once I picked my favourites I took them into Photoshop and used basic adjustment tools to enhance them. Firstly levels and curves then work on lighting effects accentuating the darkness. I have presented them in a scroll book format. Simply flick through the images by using the arrow keys on your pad or click the arrow keys on the magazine itself.


issuu.com/amyjoannataylor/docs/dada_experiment?e=9504701/6103128

 

I like these images a lot, I feel they reflect the dark nature of Fairy Tales well and the way they have been shot is interesting. The contrast is good and it looks effective. The location of these photographs isn't ideal as there is too much going on in the background and on the floor when the models sit down. Therefore I will need to shoot it in with a background which is a clear colour with no marks on it. I do like the concepts and will use them when capturing photographs for my response. The use of close up imagery works well with this idea as well as the dark lighting. I will use these techniques when photography pieces for my response.

Photographs

After my brainstorm I captured images based on the key things surrounding each fairy tale. I didn't include all the photos as some were difficult to capture and others didn't seem very interesting. The following three images are my three contacts strips including analysis of what the photographs mean and how I will edit them before using them in my piece. For some parts of the film I will use sequence photo shots others I will use single shots but all will flash quickly on the screen. 

Contact strip 1

Contact strip 2

Contact strip 3

Experimenting

From these images I began developing experimental photographic responses to this theme. I produced all of these in Photoshop and worked with the opacity, overlay and merge tools to combine various images in one:

                                         

Editing Process

Before inserting my photographs into Premier to create my final piece I needed to edit the images on Photoshop. I did this using two basic steps:

Levels:

I used the levels tool to darken the photo making it more dangerous. As well as this it helps clean up the lighting of the photograph which is essential to producing a good piece. The levels I used here intensified the tone and make it more defined making the image bolder. Additionally it produces a large range of colours including black, grey and red and adds more shadow too the piece.

Curves:

I edited the curves too once again add more definition to the photograph. The curves help make certain areas stand out more as well as adding more light and shadow to the image. The use of doing this helps make the photograph stand out more and mirror the dark nature of the fairy tales which the images and the final piece is based on.

I edited all my photographs using the same two tools as I felt this was all they needed due too not wanting to over edited them as I felt the photos before being edited were very strong. 

Developing

Once I edited all my photographs I placed them into Premier and began creating my final piece.

Title:

My first step was to create a title page, I did this by selecting Title, New Title, Title still. I wanted my title to be simple and easy to read. I wrote the title of my piece "Dada Response" on the front and by myself Amy Taylor. I found making it the same amount of frames as the other images (0.015 seconds originally) it wasn't very easy to read so instead I made it 0.20 seconds. 

Scale to frame size:

When I first imported all my images the photos were too big for the screen and didn't fit displaying only a small section of the image and due to being so close up it looked incredibly blurred. So I used the scale to frame size this tool worked well so I used it on all the images. It was quick and simple.





Speed/Duration:

Next I altered the speed/duration so that the images were quick. I started out with a speed of 0.015 seconds which was far too quick, you couldn't fully see all the images as they flashed upon the screen far too quickly. Then I decided to double the speed to 0.03 that way they still flashed up at a considerable speed but were not too quick to the point were they were unviewable.





Final title:

I repeated the same actions as earlier when creating my original title screen but wanted to make an ending to show a definite end to the clip. I decided on a rhetorical question saying 'nonsense?' to make the viewer re-think what they have just seen. I used this word as Dada is associated with the idea of nonsense and how Dada was created to be purely random. Although my images look random there is a deeper meaning - showing the truth of fairytales.

Sound:

I recorded two sound clips, one 13 seconds the other 6 seconds of someone making a annoying/silly noise. I recorded the different speeds so the person wouldn't have to do the noise continuously for too long and also so I had two different clips too chose from. I felt the shorter clip was more compact and had a better sound so decided to use this clip.

However, the clip was two seconds too long so using the razor tool I cut it down to be the same speed as my clip. I made sure I cut it on a point where it didn't end too suddenly so there wasn't a clear sign it had been cut.

Final Outcome

In response to the theme of DADA I created a short 4 second video displaying various pictures relating to the truth about fairytales in a fast pace way. All the photos shoot up on the screen quickly and stay on screen for 0.3 seconds. I created it on Premier but edited the photographs on Photoshop. I wanted to explore something new with video but wanted to combine photography as I feel am I better in this area than video. I added an annoying recording over the top too make it more nonsensical and confusing. However I added the question 'Nonsense?' at the end to make the viewer reflect on if there is something more to the video and further from this something more from Dada. Below is my video:

Biblography: 
http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm
http://www.artlyst.com/member-articles/dada-a-movement-of-artists-against-art
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hobby-horse.html
http://www.google.co.uk
http://www.youtube.co.uk