No Cat Got My Tongue : art

SEARCHING FOR AN EMOTIONAL OUTLET // A RAMBLE

I'm sat here blaring the songs that make me feel the most, trying to psych myself into writing. It has nearly been four weeks since I've sat down and tried to put my feelings into words. I don't even know if these words I am writing right now will ever be published. I am afraid that I don't have anything interesting for you to read right now. I will in a few weeks, please be patient!

My friend said something to me lately, that really made me think. She said, 'Comparison is the thief of joy.' The more I think about it, the more I believe it. I've been comparing myself to those around me all too often in the last while and it's been really taking its toll. In my own mind, I always fall short compared to my peers. I tell myself, 'Why can't you be more like them?' It's quite exhausting. It has been a very emotionally tough year. My friend Clodagh encouraged me to write. She's right, if I don't express the bad emotions, then how real am I? I have tried to avoid putting personal emotions into my blog, but I think expressing yourself is so important.

I don't mind admitting that the main reason I haven't blogged in four weeks is that I haven't had anything positive to say. I think I have tried to write a blog post over five times and in the last four weeks but nothing has come out. It's like my ability to write has completely evaporated. That frightens me a little. I have always prided myself on my writing, it is one of the few things I have going for me. I haven't had an outlet to express myself accurately in a while. Blogging hasn't been enough. I haven't wanted to express myself through words for a long time. I think if you put pressure on yourself to do something, you lose all the love for it, so I haven't made myself churn out a blog post. I wanted to write, believe me, but the words wouldn't come out. That's why I took to photography.

My camera, my pride and joy was stolen four days ago, the day before my birthday and I have to say that its loss has hit me a lot more than I expected it to. I think of all those I love who have held that camera, taken photos with me. The countries I have brought that camera to, America, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, and my beloved Ireland. That's what makes its loss all the more painful, it is those memories that that Canon camera holds that I can no longer have beside me. The world is a very cruel place, once again 2018 has taught me that. I explored the confusing feelings of love through photography, the pain of it. I expressed my desire of wanting to let go of it, yet wanting to keep it too, those feelings were precious all the same. I used imagery to explore this. Photography has been a medium through which I have explored my emotions in recent times, believe it or not, the day the camera was stolen I had began working on a brand new series, it was supposed to be a positive one, one where I attempted to celebrate myself, instead of tearing myself down.

So now I guess I am left a little bit lost. A little solitary figure watching the world speed along around her. I am desperately looking for some new emotional outlet through which I can explore these emotions of mine. A way to release them into the world so they don't harm me. Perhaps to create something beautiful out of them. Maybe for now I will live out my emotions by experiencing the art of others. I have really enjoyed attending gigs around Limerick these last few weeks. I have been finding solace in music, listening to the words, letting myself feel the emotions the sounds and lyrics evoke in me. I tell myself, it is okay to be sad. It is okay to feel lonely even when there are people around you. It is okay to miss people who are away. I live vicariously through the emotions of others too, the music of the people I know certainly helps to get through the day.

These words I've written are a lot. However, I think that if you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that visiting No Cat Got My Tongue is a journey through the mind and world of one messy twenty three year old girl, Eilís Walsh. Yes, the last time I blogged, I was twenty two. Time flies, eh? I hope you understand where I am coming from, I hope you'll stay with me on this journey of mine, god knows I need my friends right now.

Someone dear to me told me that I 'see the beauty in absolutely everything, no matter how small,' and when I heard that, it kind of took my breath away. Maybe I do. If that's true, I will try and see the beauty in my surroundings. I have written this multiple times but have you noticed how much better everything seems when the sun comes out? It does for me anyways. Maybe the next time I go to Limerick city I will explore the parts I have never been to before. I don't want to lose the part of me that still sees some positivity.

Thank you thank you thank you as always for taking the time to read my words. You'll never know just how much it means to me, but I will tell you a thousand times.

0Comments

, by No Cat Got My Tongue

In art, film

NOVEMBER / ART IN MANY FORMS

Hello, hello!

I've was very lucky to attend some really thought-provoking events last month. When I pick a film to watch or choose to listen to a song, it's because it makes me FEEL something or causes me to think about something I never have before and it is these moments I live for. I've been lucky to have spent time with many extremely creative and innovative people this semester. I went to see Dillon's film 'Movement' in the Stormy Teacup, a film I had been told to watch numerous times by people and I discovered a new medium of art by going to see Róisín and Walter's art installation, which was so interesting. Both of these pieces of art made me think about different topics such as the ongoing crisis in Syria and the lack of privacy on the internet, but also the mediums themselves, film and art installations.

Limerick has gotten extremely bad press in the past and it infuriates me to no end. I'd go so far as to say that Limerick is the most exciting place at the moment, for me it is. There is no end to the new and creative events that are taking place all over the city. Seeing these people's work makes me feel excited about the future as these people have made their separate crafts their own and that's exactly what I hope to achieve. Seeing these things leaves me excited about the future of art within my generation, whether that art is through: music, film, the written word or art in any form. The great thing about this is every single one of the people I've spoken to in this post have studied at the University of Limerick, these people are based in my current city of Limerick. I hope you'll enjoy the insight into the minds of these talented people and understand why I admire them so much!

'MOVEMENT' - DILLON REID

EILIS: Why the specific focus on Syria? Is it because it was extremely culturally relevant at the time or is it something you have a personal interest in?

DILLON: The focus was on Syria because it was an interesting topic at the time and when I was on co-op in Hamburg, Germany it was at the height of the crisis and I always saw hundreds of refugees arriving in the main station every day.

E: How did you go about gathering footage for the film? For example, did you go through news broadcasts etc?

I gathered the footage mainly from browsing the web and researching different aspects of the crisis. Some of the footage was found through friends in Germany sharing videos with me too.

E: Explain your decision to use double exposure and fragmented visuals? Why did you decide to depict the scenes the way you did?

The decision to use the double exposure effect actually came from scrolling through Instagram funnily enough. My good friend Sinead of DYAD Visuals had put up a video of a college project she was working on with a similar effect. Straight away when I saw it I sent her a message saying something like “You just gave me a great idea for my FYP”. I asked her if it would be cool if I could do something similar, and in the end, she and Alan Flynn helped me take the shots. Big shout out to DYAD Visuals for saving my life there.

The idea I had with the double exposure was to leave the subjects without a definite identity. Also because it was an interesting way of portraying the image of a family while allowing an inner dialogue to take place for the viewers surrounding the refugees' journey. The fragmented and glitch effects were an aesthetic decision to make the film feel like some kind of banned message broadcast to the world and to tie together all of the footage sampled from different sources.

E: How did you go about adapting the score to emulate the visuals on screen? Did you enjoy the process?

Actually, I made the score first. I used the idea of a refugee family's journey from Syria to Germany as a basis for the composition. The tone and timbre of the music are supposed to move from instrumentation and scales associated with Syria eg. Tribal Darbuka rhythms and Canon to technologically synced drum machine sounds and sequences that would be associated with cities in western society - acoustic strings and Middle Eastern instruments to synthesizers and noise sequences. I mean when I think of Syria I think of that kind of enchanting rhythms and traditional middle eastern music.. when I think of Germany I think of industrial techno and a more technologically harsh sound.

I definitely enjoyed the process but was stressful coming up to my deadline. It really did push my skills at music making when writing to such a huge topic. The part I enjoyed most was using UL’s Post Graduate studio to record sounds from their Doepfer A-100 modular system which is something I’ve never done before. I had no idea what I was doing at first but slowly figured it out while patching different modules in and out. Big shout out to Malachy Ronan for being my supervisor on the project, I really couldn’t have done this without his feedback throughout the project.

E: Was the 9-minute time frame deliberate? As in was it your aim to pack in as much as possible; visually, emotionally and musically for maximum impact?

I guess that was more of a constraint in terms of what I originally submitted the film for. Which was for my final year project in college. The requirement was in or around the 10-minute mark. The reason it ended up being nine minutes was that I divided the composition into three, three-minute sections to work on: Conflict (Syria), Across the Mediterranean and Arrival (in Europe and to Germany). I wrote the sections out on paper and mapped the journey from departure to arrival with subsections. Once I had mapped out the refugees' journey I began writing the music for each section whilst having imagery and emotions in mind.

E: You have obviously lived in Limerick for a number of years due to university, do you think Limerick is an artistic place or open to young people wanting to create different forms of art?

I think Limerick is an absolute playground for young artists, musicians, filmmakers and promoters to start interesting projects and events. The amount of creativity coming through this city from young people is immense. The fact that it is possible to screen something like this in a venue like The Stormy Teacup and have people actually turn up really shows the freedom that is here for doing something new. You really see a lot of interesting things happening here at the moment especially in the music scene with events such as Cabal and Prescription (Among too many others to mention) bringing something truly fresh and unique to the city. I find that the people running these huge varieties of events are all connected in some way and are usually close friends regardless of what type of event they are running. Festivals such as the Richard Harris Film Festival and Light Moves also gives some wonderful opportunities for young artists to showcase their work. The most exciting thing about Limerick at the moment for me is that it's only the beginning of a lot of amazing things yet to come.

E: What's next for you? Would you like to screen the film in other places? Could you see yourself working on similar projects in future?

At the moment I’m working on an EP with my music project Kodu and taking a break from film for a while. I can definitely see myself working on another film project down the road and have some ideas for some possible concepts. I honestly haven’t really considered doing another screening and never thought I ever would. The screening only took place because the Stormy Teacup got onto me when the film got some attention online with its nominations in film festivals. I would also love to do sound for some more video projects in the future.

'RELAPSE' - RÓISÍN BERG & WALTER NIED

Relapse (2017) from R B on Vimeo.

EILIS: Talk me through the process of making 'Relapse'?

Róisín & Walter: It started out as a project from one of our modules last semester that required us to come up with our own idea. We both wanted to do an installation based project so decided it was a good idea to team up and come up with something together. After a couple of nights of researching different artists and installations, we wanted to create an interactive real-time video art installation. Being pretty okay at Max/MSP hinted us to use jitter which is an included library that handles real-time video processing and allowed us to record small snippets through the webcam. And we worked on it from there. We first exhibited this in the University of Limerick under the same 'Self-Surveillance' as the notion of internet privacy is extremely topical.

E: What was it about the video art installation of Nam Juin Paik and Bruce Nauman that encouraged you to take on this medium?

Bruce Nauman and Nam Juin Paik are both video installation artists who have made use of 'real-time' almost as a medium in itself for their artwork. We found the way in which these artists used real-time as a tool to create a heightened sense of temporal awareness in a viewer extremely interesting, so we decided to go for a similar effect with 'Relapse'.

E: How did you go about making the installation? Did you try out different ideas before settling on the glitched webcam feed?

At first, we wanted the installation to happen on one screen with a sensor that measures distance to have the webcam feed become more glitched the closer you are it but after playing around with it for a bit, we wanted to have this 'memory' effect of contrasting past recordings of people with a present webcam feed to convey a sense of a fragmented timeline.

E: What is the intention of the art installation?

Using real-time as a tool to create a heightened sense of temporal awareness in a viewer coupled with wanting to highlight the fragility of internet privacy were the initial intentions of this piece. However, when we were invited to exhibit at the Light Moves Festival of Screendance we decided to add an aspect of screendance to give it a new context. We took prerecorded footage of contemporary dance Sorcha Hassett, using the exact same camera angle and space as the real-time video recordings and mixed this footage in. Through this, we wanted to juxtapose everyday movements with improvised contemporary dance.

E: How did you get involved with Light Moves?

Jurgen Simpson, who is one of the curators for Light Moves is the lecturer for the digital arts module for which we made the project for initially. After discussing with Jurgen how we could take our project further and suit it to the Light Moves Festival he invited us to install to the piece in The Nest of Dance Limerick.

E: Would this type of work be something you'll work on after graduating?

We would both definitely consider working on installation projects after graduating. Róisín's final year project is specifically on the durational experience of digital art installations so she'll have a new piece to exhibit come summer. With festival season approaching we plan on creating works that are more light-hearted and suited to the summer festival environment.

*******

I am really glad that I could see both of these artworks because there's nothing more I love than seeing friends succeeding. Whether it's through music, film, art installation or festivals, you'll be definitely seeing these people's names in the Limerick scene more often. And I couldn't be happier for them!

0Comments

, by No Cat Got My Tongue

In 2016, animation

5 Films To Look Out For: Ancient Legends, Words and Real Life

As most of you know, I'm off exploring the New York area on the opposite side of the Atlantic. I haven't had time to watch any new films, in fact the only thing I've managed to keep up with is Game of Thrones. This is a far cry from the girl who knew all the latest films being released. In the last month or so I've seen a few gems pop up and I've decided to show them to you in no particular order. I think these films are ones to consider watching.

Surprisingly one of my favourite trailers in this list is animated which is interesting. I don't think I usually go for animated films unless they have a quirk that catches my eye. As I've said in countless blog posts I am so fussy when it comes to liking films. But these ones caught my eye for a reason.
These are films that I am interested in so perhaps you'll have different opinions.

MOANA

Starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Maui, a demi-god and newcomer Auli'i Cravalho as Moana It's embarrassing how many times I have watched this trailer today alone. I've seen it at least eight times. I am so excited for it. I am one of the few people who didn't like Frozen, it just didn't appeal to me as much as it did to others. I've really wanted Disney to expand the amount of princesses they had and try incorporating different cultures into their films. This time we go to the Pacific Islands and I confess to not knowing much about this part of the world. Which makes the film all the more interesting. What I like is that Disney did in fact take the time to audition young girls from the Pacific Islands. What appealed to me most about this film was animation and music. Disney have improved their skill for bringing the realistic into their animation and my GOD, the score for this film, based on the music is the trailer, is absolutely gorgeous. I for one am all for using native tongues to make a film more authentic. Whether you're an adult, young adult or a child, I don't see why you wouldn't watch this film. It looks beautiful.

ANTHROPOID

Starring Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan. This film is based on true events during World War Two where Czech and Slovak soldiers devise a plan to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydricha man who is third in command after Hitler and Himmler. Heydrich was head of the Nazi forces in Czechoslovakia. The reason why this film caught my attention first was the fact that two Irish actors play lead roles within the film. Secondly was the fact that the film tells the viewer about true events of WWII. I have always loved films about the World Wars because it is an unforgettable part of our history. The trailer is fast paced, it hints at the events of the film but does not spoil it completely. I could very well research the events in the film, but I think I will only do so after I see the film.I love the locations, costume design and the visuals in this film. I would definitely consider seeing this in the cinema

THE BIRTH OF A NATION

Starring Nate Parker, who both directs and produces the film. Naturally films such as "12 Years A Slave" or "Django Unchained" come to mind when you first start watching the trailer of this film. I don't personally know any of the actors in this film which is why the film is very interesting to me. I know I keep talking about visuals in this blog post but how a film looks is so important to me. What stood out to me most in the first few seconds of the trailer was the shot of what seems to be a large cotton field. It looks beautiful and serene, yet for someone who knows all too well the blood, sweat and tears the African American people of the past suffered on those cotton fields only a century and a bit before. The film details a slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia in 1931. I do not pretend to understand the hardship of racism, abuse and slavery but I think what is most important is that we don't forget that it happened and it is part of our bloody and often sad World History.

DENIAL

Starring Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall. As it turns out, some people in this world believe that the Holocaust, which was a human tragedy where millions of Jews were slaughtered, did not actually occur. This film is based on a true story where historian Deborah E. Lipstadt was brought to court by writer David Irving as she called him a Holocaust denier. The film intrigued me because of the historial and factual elements in the film. I hope this film will stay true to the actual story because I for one am extremely interested to see how the film plays out. Not much is given away in the trailer and this catches my attention even more. To me, someone trying to deny the Holocaust is preposterous so this film will definitely appeal to History students. There are great shots in the trailer, notably London's tower bridge, The Royal Court of Justice and footage of Auschwitz itself. I have not seen Rachel Weisz in many films so I will be excited to see how she portrays Ms Lipstadt.

PIPER

I will put my hand up and say that this short film caught my eye because the little bird was one of the most adorable creatures in animation I had seen in a long time. After watching the 34 second clip I was so impressed with the high quality of animation that I had to put it in this list. The short film is actually shown at the beginning of "Finding Dory" which is interesting. I couldn't get over the detail in the bubbles of water along the sand, the shadows of the other birds and the realistic chirping of the little bird. Animation has come on in leaps and bounds since the time of Disney's classic "Snow White". After doing a little bit of research it seems that the animators studied real birds for the film and then adapted them into animation without compromising on the appearance of the birds. I think both adults and children will appreciate this as "Piper" looks adorable and celebrates the talent of animators in Pixar.

****************

So there you have my list of films. If you disagree with my choice I would be more than happy to read your opinion. If you have found other films that YOU like, don't hesitate to link them to me!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!

Twitter / Facebook / Instagram

All pictures are merely decorative and belong to their respective owners.