Isolation Installation
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All of my friends are away from each other currently, dealing with their own problems while simultaneously trying to stay creative. This is a very hard process, as I’ve learned that my creativity often thrives when things are certain. Right now in this period of uncertainty, my friends and I are developing ways to stay together through artistic collaboration. Throughout the school year we wrote songs together, hosted concerts and parties, and developed collaborative spaces for people to share their art to others at the 5Cs. Not only is this extremely difficult when not able to meet in person, it can be very straining and tiresome to continue developing our own creativity when we are isolated. Much of the work we create comes from us being together. Collective consciousness (us being in the same room, developing concepts for songs) is what we relied on in the past to make music. With music, it’s just not the same through online communication. Having people present in a music making session is imperative to that sessions’ success. To me, collaborative music can’t be planned, it has to come out of a widespread feeling from the group which is physically present in the same space. Collaborating on Zoom is much more difficult due to technological difficulties, poor audio quality, and lack of physical intimacy. Much of this collective consciousness has disappeared, making our creative processes much more singular.
In my final project, I reflected on this isolation by bringing together footage of each of my friends being creative, my own creative processes, more about my own thoughts and emotions, and developing an original soundscape for the project. Not only do I hope this work can reflect this convoluted time, I’m also hoping to use this work to develop a commentary on technology and screens, the only things we are currently allowed to use to be social. This project is an experimental video installation, encapsulating how my friends and I have felt during this time. I had many limitations to what can be included (due to quarantine, only having access to an iPhone to record, small space where I currently live, etc.), but the emotions come from the color scheme as well as layering. I used purple, a color which represents a lot of my music. The red stands for persistence, pushing myself to create; the blue represents relaxation and strong empathy, which music helps me achieve. Music has both significantly improved my mental health and given me a career path; I highly believe in the therapeutic use of music for people struggling with mental health issues (whether that be music creation, listening, or both).
One of the most important aspects of this video project is the idea of a screen within a screen. All of the content we are consuming right now is on a screen; screens can also be used to monitor (front facing cameras, facial recognition, etc.) All of the videos showing close ups of people’s faces were filmed with front facing phone and computer cameras. The prevalence of current recording and monitoring technology is both remarkable and frightening; with an increased reliance on our technological devices this becomes even more apparent. I used an old film style (Super 8 style mixed with a high ISO film grain setting) representing the video being filtered through multiple different screen mediums.
Kevin Woods, Pitzer Second Year (‘22). I’m a Media Studies major and Spanish minor with interests in music production and photography/videography. You can find my music at https://songwhip.com/album/kevwoods/from-inside.