www.TheOriginOfWaking.com

The Hunt

The Hunt is the last image in this series. The story begins during a calm winter’s night. A small town gathers in celebration of another year past when a man bursts into the room raving about a rabid beast stealing his child. They all head into opposite directions, some more prepared than others, in search for the beast. The celebration ends and the hunt begins, but who’s hunting who?

This is the most elaborate and certainly most detailed shot in the series. I went searching for something that might resemble a snow packed plain when I came across a slab of Styrofoam. With the slightest pressure, one can make impressions in the foam. It was perfect and it sparkled in the light.

The fence is made out of cardboard and tape. To anchor it to the Styrofoam, I used hidden nails behind the fence. The large grass in the background is comprised solely of uncooked spaghetti. Angel hair, I believe.

To light the photograph, I placed one blue gelled strobe light to the left to spread moonlight across the landscape. A flashlight with an orange gel was used as lantern light.

Mr. Dallon Weekes plays the character in this photograph. To emulate the light, a yellow gelled strobe was placed in front of Dallon. The glow of the lantern was taken from a different shot.

For the song, I wanted it to start out fairly light and happy. French horns, sleigh bells and light tubular bells keep the mood light until the midpoint of the song. When the hunt begins, electronic instruments start to make an appearance. The tubular bells return, but now their angry. A big drum beat and choir enter, but only one will leave.

Anyway.

The Persistence of Fire

Fire.

A small, uninvited fire breaks out at a gentleman’s home. In an attempt to be a gracious host, the gentleman sparks up a conversation. The discussion is one sided but heated. Not wanting to anger his scorching guest, He grabs a bucket and heads outside. It is two minute jog to the well. A short distance for a sip, but a journey to quench a fire. The fire accepts the generous drink but desires more.  The man returns to the well again and again. The fire, a poor house guest indeed, continues to devour and makes himself at home, destroys himself a home.

The house in this photograph is made from cardboard. The smoke is cotton and the flames are parts of a binder. A light with an orange gel was placed behind the facade to illuminate the the smoke.

To create the background, I poured a small bottle of red pepper flakes onto a panel of glass. Once the flakes were gathered into tree-like shapes, I laid down toothpicks to act as tree branches. The moon is a small piece of paper. The background was lit from behind by a blue light to give the sky a bit of illumination.

Michael Gross plays the gentleman in the photograph. He was photographed in my garage in the middle of the night. Every time the lights flashed, the neighbors dog would bark. It was a delight.

The song for this photograph was inspired by the low-end brassy soundtrack to Inception as well as the the Mars Attacks theme (my favorite Danny Elfman song).

Prisoner’s Cinema

Prisoner’s Cinema is a man trapped in prison spending years filing away at the mortar until light seeps through and the walls crumble.

Prisoner’s Cinema is a visual hallucination of light caused by prolonged exposure to darkness.

The music in this photograph starts with large drums as the prisoner formulates his escape plan. As the song reaches it’s halfway point, he breaks through. The second half of the sound is a victorious fanfare as he steps out of the darkness and into the burning sunlight.

The prison cell is comprised entirely of paper (and a lot of Elmers glue). The brick walls are cardboard sliced into a pattern and covered with construction paper. The grass is an old towel. The water is a sleeping bag and the mountains and sky are old sheets. Laundry played a pivotal part in the making of this photograph.

Fellow photographer Ian Booth, his giant beard and a pair of pants from Egypt play the role of the prisoner in the photograph. He was photographed in similar lighting on my back porch.

A short behind-the-scenes video of the making of this photograph from start to finish can be seen below.

With the help of my keyboard and a lot of Mellotron, I spent most of this weekend doing a remix of the Dentist Song from Little Shop of Horrors.  The only thing I used from the original was the vocals. It gets pretty epic.

In this weeks installment of “Art I’m Digging,” I’d like to point out a few things that inspired my recent art and music series The Origin of Waking.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a beautiful often cheesey film by Terry Gilliam. It’s a great example of the magical and quirky visual style that can be achieved with miniatures and other practical effects.

A scene from "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" compared to my Origin of Waking photograph it inspired.

The stage play that takes place at the beginning of the film was a big influence on the visual style of my photographs. The use of flat planes create an illusion of depth in the sky and the hand cranked waves of water show how imperfect representations of reality can often times be more engaging than perfect ones.

Dark Night of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul is an album by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse. It features guest vocals from many well known indie singer/songwriters.

When originally conceived, the album was going to come with a book of images by David Lynch (who sings two songs on the album). Due to some label disputes, the album couldn’t be released and David Lynch’s book of photographs instead came with a blank CD. A year or so has passed and the album will finally be released this July. If you’d like, you can stream the whole album on NPR’s website.

*this song sounds much better in full quality*

Though I’ve only seen a few photographs from David Lynch’s book, the idea of mixing photographs and music together really got me thinking, and I wanted to try it. With the aid of the mood and changes of the music, the viewer can imagine and construct the time-line surrounding the frozen moment in the photograph.

Phrazes For The Young

Phrazes For The Young is the debut solo album from The Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas. Before the album was released, a short promo video directed by Warren Fu was uploaded to youtube. The music is full of synthesizers and has the epic feel of an 80s fantasy movie. It’s a style of music that reminds me of my childhood and the weird movies I always came across on TV on thw weekends.

The song featured in the video is an instrumental version of a song called “Glass”. The instrumentation is great. Unfortunetly, on the real song, the vocals overpower the music.

Last weekend, I was experimenting with a DAW called Reaper and my Korg x50 keyboard, and this song was born. It’s a campy, sci-fi, adventure, techno song. I convinced my sister to do the voice of Dr. Willoughby’s computer. Take a listen.

Spurious Cultist

This photograph is from a recent series of mine titled “Spurious Cultist.” It was taken 9+ months ago at the Blue Plate Diner in Salt Lake City. This one frame was to be part of a larger story involving photographs, videos, diary entries and more. Unfortunately, since I began working on The Origin of Waking, this series took a back seat. In this photograph is fellow photographer Phil Fisher and the great Dani Jae. The shoot went very smoothly, we had a lot of fun and a lot of great food. Here’s a short behind-the-scenes look.

Yeasayer

Recently, I attended a concert featuring the band Yeasayer at In The Venue in Salt Lake City.  I’m a big fan of their new album Odd Blood and was excited to see them perform it live. Despite a few mixing and volume issues the band was great. I brought my camera a long with me and took a few photographs. The show was quite packed. I couldn’t move around so the angle doesn’t change much.

Click on the image below to see the entire set of photographs.

Boilerplate – History’s Mechanical Marvel
by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett

Boilerplate is the name of a life sized robot soldier built by Archibald Campion in the late 1800s. Throughout his known lifetime, Boilerplate fought in many wars and visited most of the world. The book recalls every known event in the Boilerplate saga. All this information is supplemented with archival photographs, period illustrations, maps and more.

It’s an amazing history and it’s all fiction.

In reality, Boilerplate is only a decade old. To create his Boilerplate imagery, Paul Guinan photographed and photoshopped a figurine of the robot into vintage images. This book is an amazing work of art. The amount of thought, research and creativity that went into it is inspiring.  I’ve always enjoyed artists whose work goes deeper than just an image on a wall (Kahn and Selesnick). Boilerplate takes this idea to a whole new level.

Here is a trailer for the book.

Teun Hocks

Teun Hocks is a Dutch photographer and painter. In his photographs, he plays the quiet everyman whose surroundings reflect the eccentricities of his imagination.The locations in his photographs are large-scale painted backdrops which he poses in front of.

Teun Hocks’ work can easily be compared to that of Robert Parkeharrison. They both star in their own photographs and both interact with strange, imaginative, artificial locations. That’s where the similarities end. Hocks’ work is more lighthearted and comedic. His character seems a bit like a victim of his quirky surroundings while Parkeharrison’s character adapts to his surroundings with more ease. One is not superior to the other in this regard. It’s just an interesting comparison.

Hocks infuses his images with whit and humor, and uses his painting skills to create a fantastic world for his situations to take place. The resulting images are funny and beautiful.

El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone)

The Devil’s Backbone takes place during the Spanish Civil War as a comic book reading child name Carlos arrives at an orphanage. During Carlos’ time there, he comes across strange fetus-based elixirs, hidden gold, the ghost of a murdered child, and the centerpiece: a defused bomb in the courtyard.

In The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo Del Toro has crafted a very precise, poetic film. Most of the second half of the film is foreshadowed very subtly in the first half. These parallel scenes are like rhymes in a poem. They compliment each other quite nicely. Along with the well structured story, the film features beautiful cinematography and some decent acting.

This is one of my favorite films. It’s beautiful,dark and has a great balance of reality and fantasy. Have a look at the trailer.

Sånger Från Andra Våningen (Songs from the Second Floor)

I saw this film a few months ago for the first time. I had no idea what to expect but was mesmerized by the trailer. Each scene in the movie unfolds with one static camera shot, with the exception of one scene in the middle of the movie.  In some of these scenes, the actors appear confused and stare into the camera as though they are expecting us to tell them when to begin. This may sound strange and off-putting, but it just adds to the atmosphere of the movie.

Each scene seems to be filled with metaphors including one where people are slowly racing toward the check-in desks at an airport with their luggage piled high. In the context of the film, this odd scene seems to comment on the baggage we carry through life as we slowly race toward death. It also seems to be an interesting critique on the human desire to obtain as many possessions as possible throughout life.

In the begining, there is no clear narrative just a large collection of vignettes. As the film progresses, the moral of the film begins to become clear. In a very basic sense, It is about death how people spend their lives. It is very funny and quite sad at the same time.

One of the most important moments in any movie is the ending. A bad ending can ruin everything that preceded it. The final moments of Songs From The Second  Floor took my breath away. I was so entranced by the strange film that the finale managed to spook me and calm me at the same time.

Warning: This trailer contains some nudity.

The Cranbrook Academy of Art was founded in 1932 and is part of the Cranbrook Educational Community, a national historic landmark. Each year, only approximately 7-10 students are accepted into each program (photograph, 2d design, 3d design, etc). It is the #4 fine art grad school according to USNews’ 2008 Graduate School ranking.

From what I’ve read and been told, Cranbrook is very focused on interaction, critique and, most importantly, making art. There are no classes. Instead, learning is done through individual meetings, group critiques, reading groups and field trips. The rest of the time is spent in studio working on art. I’ve always been pretty self-motivated as an artist type person.  Cranbrook’s big sellers for me were the focus on studio time and their non-traditional grad school structure.

For more information, visit their website here.