Artistic techniques and their applications

Artistic 'Techniques'

Art becomes reality. This is my desire, this is my purpose. So this is my creation, my child. The visions of primitive cave paintings dance in my vision as I put the last touches on the backdrop of this set. This abandoned Victorian house which is now home to leaves and spiders and forest creatures and my child, my masterpiece... we have carried generators and lights and cameras the many miles to this isolated place so that it can take form. Oral traditions of stories and mythologies have existed since before history was ever written, perhaps before man himself as the wolves and mystical creatures of the world before humans howled to each other the secrets of the universe. Simple pictographs and hieroglyphs illustrating the sacred and the profane and the good and the bad of existence emerged from the stories, and these pictures became written language. Language advanced science, science evolved into new artistic techniques: animation, photography, film... The painted picture is an interpretation of reality using pigments and canvas; the photograph is an interpretation of light within the mechanical lens of a camera. The film within my camera will take thousands of photographs, one after another, quick like a supernatural pulsing back beat, and the movement of world shall be captured on the film. The history of art and science collide as I give birth to this. I have painted the tarps -- red, red, red, and black, the colors of his psyche. The Polaroid snapshots of his psychotic visions and nightmares and victories have been tacked and taped to the wall in a collage of madness. The boy -- his costume a simple one of jeans and combat boots -- has been prepared for his capture. Hair mussed, makeup slightly too dark to go unnoticed even under the bright lights, he is the physical incarnation of this character which has haunted me forever. Now he will haunt others too.

The script was written in a series of coffee shop all-nighters, caffeine and sugar and sleep depravation becoming language as I dictated the screenplay to another. Like the oral myths of singing bards and holy shamans, the story came to life as I spoke it to another, and became all at once concrete and fluid as he put it down on the page, his own interpretation of what I had said adding to the energy of it. Each photograph used n the film carefully taken using shadows and obscure angles to cause of a sense of unrest and unavoidability as they sit upon the back wall of the room which represents the boy's mind. The painting -- ah, a masterpiece in itself -- the oil tarps found deep in the woods wrapped around bones and furs of long abandoned and forgotten hunting trophies, stained with the "Warning: Toxic" paints of landfills and garbage piles and the maddening lead-filled house paint found in a storage cellar miles from civilization. Red, red, red, black. Night falls, the generators cough into compliance to our demand for electricity, and the lights glare into his eyes as my own words flow through his lips. Between frames of film later drawings of ancient rites and back alley longings will be interspersed. Perhaps the audience will be deft enough to catch it, or perhaps the drawings of India Ink and sweat will only seep into their subconscious as they watch. This is my body, the paints and film canisters and darkrooms of a thousand sleepless nights waiting for this moment when my art would become reality. Drink of it.