Moving image and Media

In media, we were given a brief introduction to the subject, and shown some examples of different kinds of work that can be made in the media pathway, both professional and made by students. Some of the pieces we looked at included the work of Len Lye, and experimental film artist who worked in the 1900s, and example of his film art is below.

The above piece is from 'Rainbow Dance', made by drawing on 35mm film in 1935 - a technique we would look at later called scratch film.

We were also shown some of the early work from Mitchell and Kenyon from 1900-1906, a duo of producers from Blackburn who turned to travelling to broadcast their work, some of which I have included.

The short, silent films were of people walking, in schools, mills, streets etc. Although the pieces appear simple, filming was a revolutionary idea that hadn't been seen by most people before, so it was a fantastic experience for everyone involved. It was hard to imagine being in that kind of situation; we've grown up in a world where the majority of people have access to film and photography, so it seems like a regular part of life, whereas the people involved in this must have been amazed by the whole process.


Another example of work we looked into was cave paintings from prehistoric times.

Cave paintings are one of the earliest art forms, dating back millions of years. The paintings were used to tell stories, a lot of which included stories of hunting bison for meat and fur. The markings were made from 'pigments' of different colours. The cave paintings were relevant, because it showed how far back art actually goes; although media, photography etc. was developed as technology evolved, paintings and drawings have been around millions of years.

After in depth discussions about media, we started to work with scratch film; massive amounts of inspiration were taken from Len Lye, it was really clear throughout the whole of the final product. The group had 16mm film (post development to avoid fogging and exposure) spread out, with seven seconds of film each. With the seven seconds, we drew on the film with markers to create moving images. It was really interesting to see every have such different outcomes, despite all working with the same materials.