In the end, the project taught me a number of things:

1. If you’re shooting with two cameras, make absolutely sure you’re using the same settings (or know better how to resolve those differences in Final Cut)

2. Review footage while you’re shooting to make sure you’ve gotten the takes you need. And it is often a good idea to do more than two.

3. Blocking scenes is not only important for the action between characters but for the light in which you’re shooting

4. We could’ve used some tripods

5. A bit too much footage is a lot better than too little

Some things I already knew. Like that you really need padding before and after scenes; that each minute of edited video can translate to hours on the actual editing; and that learning powerful software is both exciting and, on occasion, maddening.

Speaking of that software, I really like Final Cut. I have done video editing before, but never in Final Cut. (Most of my experience is actually on tape.) So I was pretty happy that I was able to put together a 5 minute piece with music and transitions and credits and effects.

How’d it turn out? Guess we’ll find out tonight.

Separately, I often find myself wanting to know the stories behind slightly odd behavior I observe walking around the city.

These two interests inspired my performance piece.

Essentially, I did something just a little bit strange in a variety of settings and attempted to document who paid attention and who didn’t.

The video below tells most of the story. However, I can also talk tonight about what I saw while doing it since the camera couldn’t pick up that perspective.

*Note: The video below is music-free since I don’t have rights to use the song I edited into the piece. I will bring in the version with music to class tonight.

The first tackled bicyclists.

The second, pedestrians.

Because we talk so much about the specific character of life on New York streets, I thought these would be relevant to post.

That piece, as you may recall, was a clipped newspaper article that I discovered on the sidewalk. After some research, I learned that the clip was published 12 years ago and that the author of the article has since died. I felt a sense of both history and mystery after picking it up. It also heightened my awareness of the wide variety of items blowing around on New York’s streets and sidewalks.

So, for my public art piece, I took a piece of relatively obscure Madison Square Park history, crafted a relatively odd semi-sculpture to reference that history in a mysterious way and then I put it on the ground in two different spots in the park. (The history: Some believe baseball was founded either in the park or very close to it. The sculpture: Four baseballs shaped as a diamond with the text, “Was I born near this park?” written on them.) To me, this was a fun way to get at the core themes from the original found piece.

I found mixed reactions to the baseballs. Many people walked right past. Many gave it a quick glance and a few gave it a much closer look. I would love to know what people actually thought, in addition to knowing what they did.

One note: I wanted to include a piece of music that I feel captures the ethos of this installation for me, but I don’t own the copyright to it. Therefore, I didn’t want to post it on a video sharing site. So I’ll bring in a DVD. (The song is called Little Cloud and it’s by the Incredible String Band. I first heard it in the French movie Summer Hours which, appropriately, is largely about history and memories.)

One of the reactions I had to the piece of paper was a sense of memory and loss. Obviously, someone had lost this clip that, at one time, s/he found important enough to cut from the newspaper. Beyond that, though, it just seemed of a different time. After all, who still cuts clips from a printed newspaper?

After a small amount of research, my sense of memory and loss deepened. It turns out the book review appeared in the Los Angeles Times more than 12 years ago. And the author of the piece died almost five years ago.

This sense of memory and loss reminded me a great deal of my experience after my grandfather’s death, which happened a couple of weeks ago. I traveled back to my hometown for the funeral and spent an afternoon and evening at his house. While there, I thought a lot about memories I had consciously or subconsciously discarded. I thought about things that were important once and not so important now. And, of course, I thought about death and loss.

So … for my public art installation, here’s what I plan to do. I would like to install a small number of photographs from my trip to my grandfather’s funeral in either one spot or a few spots around the city. These will be obvious tourist spots because I want to position them in a place/places where people are making their own memories and taking their own snapshots. My goal with this is to have strangers looking at my memories while making their own, perhaps become slightly confused seeing the photos and have their perspective of the city slightly altered because of the encounter. Which is to say, almost exactly the same experience I had after picking up that newspaper clipping Tuesday night.

The first is an article from the Times about a piece of public art that was vandalized and how the artists responded to it.

The second is a short series of photos from a photo blog I maintain on public art installations on Governors Island.

John Cage: My favorite art experiences are those that expand my perceptions, change my perspectives and make my senses more … sensitive. Over the past few years, these experiences for me have included Donald Judd’s sculptures in Marfa, Texas, Richard Serra’s work at Dia: Beacon and MoMA and Jeff Koons’ sculptures on the roof at the Met. And now, though experienced through a computer, I will add John Cage’s piece to the list. Though I didn’t necessarily enjoying sitting through it, I appreciate the way it compelled me to recognize the strange, low-level sounds around me. (In fact, I had to stop the video to make sure what I was hearing was coming from my surroundings/me and not the performance.)

Max Neuhaus: I find audio installations like the Neuhaus piece arresting and clever. For me, it’s the subtlety that works. By adding a sound that contributes but doesn’t overpower, you can have your aural experience enhanced and expanded without that experience becoming too artificial, which I would find self-defeating.

David Byrne: I love art that both kids and adults can enjoy and interact with on multiple levels of sophistication. Plus, the piece comes with a built-in, irresistible headline: Playing the Building.

Meredith Monk: Though I can appreciate the intricacy of the composition, I found this to be a little self-indulgent and self-conscious for my tastes.