Man Ray

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7PQvkYYikU

As a painter who is interested in abstraction and surrealism, I wanted to find some specific video artist who dealt with the same things. After talking to Silva, he gave me a few to look up. Man Ray, an American artist, who spent majority of his time in France, created an array of short films possessing a dreamlike quality. This video in specific, the link I've posted above, is "L'Etoile de Mer."
I love the ambiguity of some of shapes and the "blurry-glass like" filter on the camera lense. The very beginning of the video has a painterly quality thatI can definitely appreciate. I watched the video with both music and no music. I preferred watching it with no music, only because the music tended to give it a more creepy feel. I appreciated the imagery more without the sound.
The blowing paper and the starfish clips were absolutely amazing!!! I truly enjoyed the mechanical like clip of the different moving jars with star fishes and glass. The way the video was tied up at the end reminded me of Maya Deren film; each element gets tied into the story line at the very end. So although things seemed choppy or unrelated, they all make sense at the end of the story.

I plan on watching more videos by Man Ray and a few other surreal artist and sharing. He has a whole bunch of videos on youtube.

Sade