Julie Perini: The Blog

Video Experiments with Fact & Fiction
2010 Visual Studies Workshop Summer Institute
Rochester, NY
July 26 – 30

In this workshop students will investigate the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction. We will screen and discuss examples of fake documentaries, mockumentaries, re–enactments, diary films, and other films and videos that call truth into question. Students will collaboratively generate and shoot a short fictional script, create personal documentary videos based on their own lives, and create works that freely mix staged, fake, or fictional material with unstaged, truthful, or factual material. Students will learn basic camera operations, image composition, basic lighting techniques, incorporating appropriated material, and a number of editing strategies using Final Cut Pro software.

The Great Paul Vanouse

On Monday, July 6, University at Buffalo Art Professor Paul Vanouse visited NYSSSA and gave one of the most inspiring artist talks ever delivered to a crowd of high school students.  He is all about “emerging practices,” meaning, he works with new materials and processes not normally considered under the purview of art.  And I don’t mean to say that he uses garbage or other everyday materials; I mean he uses DNA and biological processes usually reserved for scientific inquiries.  Joan Linder, his GF, an outstanding artist who draws and paints, and another old Buffalo chum of mine, was also in town for the night, along with their kid Rafael.

That's me in the green, opening up a young mind to the creative and expressive possibilities of computer-based art.

Current location: Oswego, NY for the month of July to teach Computer Art at the New York State Summer School for the Arts.  This is my third year teaching at NYSSSA, a program for New York State high school students who show exceptional promise in the field of media art.