Flanders, LI and the people who live there:

ARS 402 Major Project Research Journal

Critical Response Essay:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9jlZh4OqryuqV90Qqz5UULDCmG98KGaEmB4d9MNl94/edit?usp=sharing

For this project I have chosen to focus my research and artist energy on a topic that is physically and emotionally near and dear to my heart. Community and family to me are a key part of my identity, so for this assignment I will be compiling research and collecting and recording media to ultimately produce a piece of art that will display the perspective of a member of my community through a multigenerational lens. To accomplish this, I will employ the use of recorded interviews, narrowing the focus on one family that is my own. By collecting the viewpoints of those from multiple generations, I hope to show the viewer not only their varying viewpoints but also to inform the viewer on how this specific area has changed physically, culturally, and politically, over the course of over 50 years, from the mid 20th century to the present day.

I have chosen to use a combination of recorded audio, video, and photography for this project to produce a short film. I have chosen video as my medium for this project because many of my previous works have involved photography and film. I have taken a number of classes based around the uses of cameras be it still photography digital and black and white film, but for the majority of my training it has been in the recording and editing of digital film, since high school I have been enjoyed editing and producing videos specifically for my YouTube channel (which I have long since neglected). This desire to make and edit video not only comes from my long enjoyment of content produced on YouTube, but also my lifelong love for watching films. I have always loved watching movies, and I credit this to the fact that my father and mother kept a large amount of physical films in the house, because of this one of my main forms of entertainment as a child was watching movies, especially older and foreign films. One of the constants of my early childhood was watching movies with my family, my father was a very early subscriber of Netflix and he made sure to use his account to the fullest making us watch at least one movie together a week. Because Netflix, especially in those early days, had a lot of foreign films making up the bulk of its content, I watched a huge number of movies from over sea’s, making my views on film varied and nuanced. This love of cinema has carried on to my adulthood and when I started my higher education, I chose to focus on the study of film for my associate degree at Suffolk County Community college, getting my associates in liberal arts with a focus on cinema studies in 2022.

Interview one:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DX5bj9zjy_CbSDsrkTeQR6d2LKbFt1Tb/view?usp=drive_link

For my project I am going to combine audio and video from interviews, b-roll footage of my community, and historical photographs and archival footage to produce a short documentary film that will hopefully allow the viewer to have a basic understanding of the history and current status of my community, which is the area surrounding the mouth of the Peconic river specifically the town of Riverhead NY and the hamlet of Flanders NY in Southampton town. Many of the audience will have a knowledge of the famous Hamptons but very few actually have any idea about the lives of the members of the working class who are employed by those rich Hamptonites. My documentary will be based around three interviews that I will conduct with three separate remember of my community these three members will by comprised from the three living generations of my family my Father, his father my grandfather, and my sister, I’ve chosen these three people specifically because firstly they all currently live in Flanders, but also because all three especially my grandfather and father have spent a considerable amount living in this community and will have a uniquely personal connection to the area.

Full artists statement:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J1t7zh-JBVEyOlPzCHh1nWRqZ9orNFRN8w2DEu2BSbQ/edit?usp=sharing

DISCURSIVE PROMPT

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rBMAyrH4VhDgn3LgQETu9zV5ZegR7ZaBs7H9rAXlZwg/edit?usp=sharing

Photography and all the accompanying technologies that originate from it such as video, computer graphic imaging, x-ray technology among other technologies, are today crucial to the functioning of our current society, to the point that looking back it’s very difficult to imagine a world without these technologies. Take simple print photography for instance though now its relevance has fallen into decline a bit, without print photography actually conveying to someone what something looks like would be very difficult. One you would need to have seen the thing yourself and secondly you would either have to be an amazing storyteller or a halfway decent artist. No wonder so many animals in medieval manuscripts look so far from their real-life counterparts. With photography I don’t need to have seen an elephant in real life to know what one looks like, now all I need to do is find a photo of one, on the internet or in a book or a magazine. Photography allows people to have a shared image of the world and without it and the subsequent technology derived from it most things on the planet would be visually in accessible to the average person.