Laid to rest

I am retiring this blog for an indefinite amount of time. It's difficult finding time to write in here these days. Here is a link to my tumblr that I update semi-regularly. 

See you all on the other side,

Shiny Kid

Our lives in darkness

Animated GIF from Glinting Greed

When I was young I would watch cartoons and thought that when I blinked, the characters on screen were doing something else. Those fleeting hundred milliseconds taunted me. I couldn't participate in the alternate world where things were even more absurd than what was already happening on screen. The story would continue, but I felt there was another thread that I was missing during those moments of darkness.

I never really gave it much thought in my adult years until this morning. I woke up at 6:20 AM which is quite unusual for me even though I do set an alarm for 6:30 every morning--wishful thinking. I woke up because there was a pain in my leg from a rather gruesome gash that happened the day before (a story to delve into at a later time). I woke up and my room was that grayish-blue of the early morning, my clothing rack just a black lumped silhouette in front of me. I wondered whether it, along with the rest of my possessions, had remained intact and motionless throughout my six hours of slumber.

To create a whole new dimension based on what happens when we are not actively looking/being present in our surroundings is not a new habit for me. It has always been something I pushed myself to explore. Scientists say that we subconsciously time our blinks so that we don't miss visual information. At least this is the case with things like cartoons with a visual storyline that needs to be followed. [1]  What they don't talk about is what could happen during the time your eye is shut. But why would they? This dilemma is personal, a mind game that operates on another plane of existence.

Blinking is just something we humans are programmed to do. It refreshes our ocular surface, removes debris from the environment we live in (like filthy New York City) and prevents infection. [2]  Just thinking about blinking and becoming aware of each blink is such a nerve wrecking cycle. Am I doing it correctly? How many times has it been?? What is happening when my eyes are shut for those 100-400 milliseconds??? This is reminiscent of when I would become hyper aware of the breathing patterns of a person I was sleeping next to and I had to match it in order to feel at ease. Luckily, I do not feel the need to match my blinking cycle with those around me.

There would be ways to actually study what does happen during those fleeting dark moments when a person shuts their eye to blink: Having others present to take notes on what is happening around them or setting up a video camera to record the person's surroundings. However, this can create new problems like differing perspectives, human error and more blinking while studying your findings! What happens when one person has their eyes shut and the other doesn't? Or what if these people have synchronized blinks? I suppose you could also just practice not blinking for a few seconds while watching the cartoon to see if anything does actually happen. No matter how many tangible variables you study, what happens during the darkness is something you have to search for yourself.

"About six seconds of every minute are lost to blinking. That’s ten percent of a minute. In a 150-

minute long movie, we lose 15 minutes for blinking and in an average lifespan we spend two 

years in darkness while we blink." [3]

Although it has been shown that our brain does shut down and reboot itself every time we blink, our mentality varies from person to person, allowing for different interpretations of what happens during those short moments of darkness. [4]  It depends on our psyches and whether or not we agree with the idea that we exist within intersecting planes of reality. I do believe that there is more than what our eyes can see, constantly moving around us at any given time. Vibrations from light, energy and the elements are able to coexist with our understanding of the world. Things are happening when our eyes shut, but perhaps we are not meant to know what it is. We exist in a pure state of lucidity no sooner than we are shoved back into this mundane reality. Because of my experience with animation and film I understand that each frame can be manipulated and controlled. If another dimension does exist within a Flintstones or Jetsons episode, it wouldn't be found in the actual animation but rather in the residue it leaves behind.

Living in a reality that is slipping away

Yesterday I finally finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. I am embarrassed to admit that I have been reading this book on and off for the past four years. But yesterday was a Sunday and I was determined to get through the last quarter. I don't want to say that it was worth the wait but it definitely was satisfying to linger on this last sentence:

'...everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.'

Revival

Over a year ago, I took a break from this blog. I felt it was necessary to explore the present day Shiny Kid. What are her dreams, ideals, opinions, aesthetics? By distancing myself from the past, I've come to an understanding on how to move forward. I never abandoned my attraction to the glint and gleam of the Universe and I probably never will. However, I have discovered ways to examine existence through many lenses. 

Coming out of this year hiatus, I plan to use this blog for my studies, research and musings on various subjects pertaining to my own life and interest. This may have been its purpose in the past, but moving forward I am hoping to penetrate the top layers of life's trivialities and truly understand what it means to be deeply superficial.

Added to the shelf

I've been really into watching old horror films on Netflix in my free time, the ones from the 20s-70s mainly. My favorites so far have been a couple by Roger Corman who did a few films based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories, with Vincent Price playing the villain (perfecto!).

The Masque of Red Death



This movie got me on so many levels: the humongous home it took place in, the costume design (especially during the masquerade), the hooded beings wandering through the forest, the occult aspect, the set design (there is a series of rooms they walk through, each one painted and decorated in one color--red, yellow, purple, white), the transitions, the experimental editing and coloring of scenes....I can go on, but it's definitely worth discovering on your own.

The Pit and the Pendulum



What brought me to this film was the mention of a Spanish castle, torture chambers and rocky beaches. This was truly a gem in the set design and costume sense as well as the color used for flashbacks. What I loved the most were the titles and credits--the image behind them was of water with paint being added to it. I loved the effect and the colors it produced.

Obviously, the things that I admired most were purely aesthetic, but that always seems to be the first thing I notice about any film. I loved Vincent Price though, and although some of the acting from some characters is a bit hokey, I still got lost in the world of Poe.

Analog Dreams

"Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks of the contemporary artist 

is not to become swamped by the number of techno-tools 

capable of precision rendering of the visible world (photo, film, video) 

and to create with these systems the 'pure' images of the symbolic."

-Bill Viola Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House 

Here are a couple of stills from the footage I captured off my VHS camera today.

I shot it over a year ago, and while reviewing the footage it came to my attention that I need to use it more often. 

Now that I have a means of capturing, I most certainly will.

Sedmikrasky

Earlier this week, I went to BAM to see my absolute favorite movie in the entire world: Daisies.

I had never seen it projected on a big screen before, let alone on a 35mm print format so I was ecstatic to be able to experience it in that manner. (Opportunities like this remind me why I chose to move to New York City). I don't know if I will ever be able to fully articulate what I feel when I watch this film, but I think the things most dear to someone are usually hard to describe.

When I first saw this movie, I was studying at FAMU in Prague. It was towards the end of our semester there and I remember the entire 10 of us taking that film course were attentive and silent during the entire screening. At the end of it, we all went to the pub downstairs and gushed over how amazing the movie had been. We begged our professor to get Vera Chytilová (who taught at FAMU at the time, I'm not too sure if she is still on staff there) to come talk to us about the film. And she did.

This movie came out at the time when Czechoslovakia was under a Communist regime, so you can only imagine the feedback a film like this received from the government. Vera was banned from filmmaking, along with a few other of her peers, because people didn't quite understand what the film was about. Also because they felt she was wasteful with food.

She came into our class shrouded in black, sunglasses to match. She grilled every male (all 4 of them) on who they thought they were, why they thought they were important. She answered our question of whether those two girls really ate all that food. They really did. And then she told us one thing I will always remember:

'You can't make movies unless you know who you are.'

This was the moment I realized that I really wasn't sure of who I was. What did I want to express and share with the world through my future films? Up until that point, I had spent my last seven years as a 'filmmaker' not knowing how to answer the only question people knew how to ask me: What kind of movies do you want to make? 

I always said 'Weird ones.' 

***

Every time I watch Daisies, I find a new part of myself in it. This time, it made me really want to be a reckless girl with a lust for the unknown. A break from reality. To swing in a chandelier! Every frame of this movie is pure, gold magic and I could watch it a thousand times more if only the DVD I ripped from my professor at FAMU wasn't so scratched up.

HIATUS

'We cannot drop out of society. 

We can only drop out of social roles and dramas which are unloving, 

contracting and which distract us from the discovery of our atomic, cellular, 

somatic and sensory divinity.'

--The Politics of Ecstacy

I've decided to take a little break.
Check back soon,

Shiny Kid

Baroque

Been visiting realms such as this in my day dreams.

French Lone Ranger

My boyfriend surprised me with this brown leather hat a couple of nights ago.

I wore it today, feeling like I should be on a ranch in the French countryside...or something.

I haven't been updating as much for a few reasons:

My computer is slowly dying and I can't do too much with it anymore.

I'm editing all day so when I come home I don't even want to look at a computer screen.

I've been obsessed with Instagram (@shinykid)

Downton Abbey.

Inspirations and thoughts run through my mind so quickly,

I'm not sure if posting my musings is the best (and smartest) move anymore.

I will never abandon my little shiny thing, though.

See you all on the other side...

Come to think of it...

I believe I used to be much more interesting.

Or maybe I'm just getting better at hiding my secrets.

She-who-must-be-obeyed

"But her face is what caught my eye, and held me as in a vice, not this time by the force of its beauty,

but by the power of fascinated terror. The beauty was still there, indeed, but the agony, the blind passion,

and the awful vindictiveness displayed upon those quivering features,

and in the tortured look of the upturned eyes, were such as surpass my powers of description.''

For centuries I've followed

r.i.p ARAWA.FM

2012

Welcome home.

Heirlooms & Relics

Working on a new video that incorporates every single piece of jewelry I own,

with a few broken chains and some reflective bits of junk thrown in for good measure.

Erasing Dates

The future has passed

Hope to have a studio like this one day.

24th year on planet Earth

My boyfriend took me upstate for my birthday weekend.

Skeleton & Klansman

I was a princess from the future on Halloween...