Yesterday I interviewed Kamron Sockolov. UCSB graduate in engineering. Philosophically-inclined Rock Crab Consumer. NOT your typical average consumer in the grocery store. In short, it was a very experimental interview, and it went very well. THOUGH, we didn't finish. And it's my fault for making the interview too long. He put up with A LOT. Plus he just came home from a full day's of work. Thankfully Kamron and all his housemates are perhaps the most adventurous and flexible of characters I have met during my rock crab filming last summer of 2007. "You never know where the rock crab is going to take you!" is a great summary to represent our little adventure of Rock Crab Fiesta, Fireworks, and Police Bust. In all honesty, I can't wait to finish interviewing these guys because their place (grad student house + funky artist house, even cooler than the diagnostics of a typical "grad student house") is just totally cool to chill and relax and shoot the shxt about all things philosophical and about life in general. I was keeping my distance merely to objectify the interviews. If I get to know the people too well, then the interviews don't become the same.
Besides, during this time, I was self-isolating because of my traumas with graduate school transferring.
I will just say I entered the household on the "right" baseline: girl holding film camera. And that is our relationship. We have already established comfort zones of this technologically-mediated relationship, so you can really build up to do interesting things!
I will elaborate the interview with Kamron further in another blog.
The purpose of this blog here is to document a Pre-Meditation for a Short Educational and Promotional Art Video for Scott Chatenever.
Pre-meditation rough draft is above. I already made changes and added things to it.
Scott's art is just simply DRUGS TO MY MIND. Like good hallucinatory or TRANCE ones. I am wondering whether he is left-handed. He has an engineering side and a freaky art side. It's like there's this entire community of culture "rejects" or "independents" simply because they think holistically. They have a systematic linear left brain and a super-creative right brain, and they simply desire to exercise holistic behavior, but society just only has opportunities for overspecialized hamburger flipping.
Scott's art? Oh ya. It's SCULPTURE. Organic. Fractal. Evolution. Ecology. Fossils. Rooted to the non-human environment. You couldn't tell whether it was the real fossil or real organism or whether it was actually just Scott's art. Scary, huh?
There are computer software programs that generate fractals, but this guy basically does it with his own hands and materials for sculpture.
I wrote Scott an email a long time ago, telling him that his artwork was like he was playing God or something... designing evolution through his art. I mean... it's sick shxt. I sound like I'm stoned or something. I think any artist is playing God to some degree. Even more so than some scientists, I think. Because not only artists Create Reality, but they also warp and twist human emotions. Scientists don't do that. They only STUDY it. Lam-o. Some environmental scientists in particular I consider being Intellectual Spectators. Artists are Intellectual Interactors. They CHANGE things... in multi-layered experimental ways. Mind-altering, man.
Doing this video with Scott will satiate two intellectual hungers of mine: (1) artistic representations of the Environment, interactions between artists and the environment, and (2) patterns, fractals, universal scaling laws in biology, ecology, and evolution.
It took me 9 months to come around to committing to doing this promotional video, but I realized that making such a video is far beyond Scott's work. This can easily go on Current TV and to the Santa Barbara Ocean Film Festival. Lots of promo. I also like the project because it's SHORT. My rock crab film is daunting and long. I need to have short + long so I won't go insane.
I decided I am not going to ask any money for this gig. As long as Scott lets me use the footage for a longer Godfrey Reggio-like video on scaling laws in non-human and human societies.... One favor I will ask him is that he hooks me up with a solo musician or small band (guitar) and this guy or lady in exchange for a promo video can help me do some music collaboration.
Hmmm. The next short video I might do is maybe for a local musician guitar player. Because maybe then with a barter, he or she can team up and do a couple of music pieces together. Aha. He he he. I'm thinking intelligently now.... for once!
Though I don't have a production crew--the dreadedness of being SOLO--it turns out my production crew becomes the interviewers, the people I am filming. They start providing advice, while I start asking for it. They start helping with film equipment. They start asking questions and we go through dialogues about visual-acoustic design of film. I think not having a production crew is genius in some ways (though a trade-off in others) because then you become more involved with the people you are filming rather than have this stand-offish relationship.
In the end, intimacy makes better films.
I added a few lines to the poem / song (just to make it a two-way street type of reasoning): If it ain't manufactured / by human revolution / I guess it was manufactured / by the likes of me // but if it ain't manufactured / by my own volition / I guess it was manufactured / evolutionarily) ... "with his clever human technology...." an alien creation... maybe...
