Viz Lab Summer Grant 2004

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Digital Music Editing

Justin Rubin Music

My work entailed becoming familiar with the process of creating multi-media works involving extensive effects. I began working with Final Cut Pro over the course of last year, but only had a chance to learn how to edit material and overdub. This grant gave me the opportunity to learn how to greatly enhance the visual aspects of live footage and develop a personal, perhaps idiosyncratic, use of an almost painterly approach to color and layering that in turn allowed the final films to evolve a sense of poetry.

Building on a series of projects I was involved with over the past school year, I finished the following films:

Eve Blossom(5´09"): This short subject came out of my work with the Tweed Museum Fluxus performances with students in the Fall of 2003. It inspired me to delve further into the artists that influenced Fluxus, such as Kurt Schwitters. I created a visual interpretation of his poem An Anna Blume(here translated into English) which draws on irrational imagery of color and movement to describe the speakers love. I used my knowledge of Pro Tools (from last summer´s grant) to record a soundtrack of organ music juxtaposed with my reading of the poem.

Stone Mandala(5´47"): I had taken footage last winter in Lester Park and Leif Erikson Park. Influenced by the Cinema Verité work of Jean Rouch, I made the story following the footage. To create an apocalyptic vision of the empty, cold images, I extensively employed visual effects to make a short subject. The music, similarly to Eve Blossom, I recorded and inter-cut with a text of my own creation in the style of silent cinema.

Weigh-ges(2´51"): A short subject that I was inspired to make based on the troubling idea of tips as wages used layering throughout as a means of superimposing clashing images of money and drinking vessels.

The Numbers of Genocide: Comprehending the Magnitude of Mass Murder(9´45"): This work was the result of a number of years work and planning. Last summer, my VDIL Research Grant allowed me to learn how to use Pro Tools to create original musical compositions using pre-recorded matter, similar to the process involved in making Musique Concrete. I used this skill to make a soundtrack for my installation based on genocide. Although the idea of creating an artistic space in which to use this music fell through, I was able to present a series of lessons in the late spring at Superior Middle School using the concept behind the project. By filming the students involving themselves with the project, I found a way of creating a documentary realization. I learned this summer how to superimpose images and alter their timing and tweaking their lighting as such to make the impact of the project palpable to the viewer and using the soundtrack created last year as the `environment´ for this otherwise silent documentary.

An autobiographical film based on my various artistic endeavors has begun using a combination of still and moving images but will take longer than this summer to complete.

In addition to these films, I worked on other projects for educational purposes, both here at the University and outside. I worked on developing new interactive music tests for the National Federation of Music Clubs (a voluntary body to help first through twelfth graders learn more about music theory). Also, I have started to create a project to introduce my Fine Arts class (Spring 2005) to the work of Henry Darger by incorporating and juxtaposing images from his drafts with their final realization.