Daily Research –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Daily Research

Humans & Objects in the 3th Millennium

Daily is a video research project, focusing and documenting humans, their solitary behaviors, their behaviors in conjunction with other humans, animals, objects, sites & thoughts. The project arises out of the former and successfully finished internet project "The 4 Years In The 3rd Millennium Project."

"The 4 Years In The 3rd Millennium Project" (T4YIT3MP) is a multimedia project that will be presented through the internet in the form of a daily dispatch over the fixed period of four years, starting from the 30th of march 2005 until the 30th of march of 2009. The main focus of the dispatches will be sonic and musical events as well as visual and text based components. (...)

Through daily investigations, structured by rules, T4YIT3MP assisted me to discover constant elements of personal interests, thoughts, also manifested yet hidden in various works. As a result, the project will continue as a open ended personal research. The results will be presented at various contexts and in various forms, yet not on the internet as it was presented before. After four years accessibility without interruption through the internet, the first 611 documents/days will be removed. The rest 851 (starting with the video "greetings") will be accessible for a uncertain time. For more information please scroll down and/or visit T4YIT3MP.

Phillip Schulze, Singapore 31.05.2009

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Notes on The 4 Years In The 3rd Millennium Project.

The 4 Years In The 3rd Millennium Project examines the general idea of singular objects as well as a larger framework in which they are placed. An object in T4YIT3MP does not have to be aural but rather can be anything of interest as long as it can be stored as video, sound or still image.

Every day reveals a new window of opportunities that must be filled with material. The material within these openings can be diverse in content, nature and length; each acts and is understood as an autonomous object by itself as well more metaphorical relationships, a cross-referential network between objects and objects, and objects and observers.

The natural and regular interval of the day indicates the general rhythm in which all autonomous objects are organized. ‘Four years’ describes the overall length of the whole piece.

The one thousand four hundred fifty nine days form a long linear succession set in advance. The task of creatively identifying an object every day results in a structure, a body of regulations and rules in the form of an active framework. This structure forms a linearity that is distorted by each single event inside. These events symbolize and materialize individual microstructures that exist in their own time and sub-space, and can be accessed irregularly and at all times. A person who observes the material on the internet can experience the pieces actively in a non-linear, selective fashion and at his own distinctive speed. Consequently, time is not understood as one overall and linear arc only but as many different time-streams colliding with or rejecting each other.

The project’s structure is transparent and straightforward – nothing is hidden. Each day provides a slot for the unknown.

Most realizations of T4YIT3MP are recorded in a continuous process; the scenery of interest is recorded usually in a steady frame and without interruption. Everything that is visible and audible is represented in the same way it was recorded. With exceptions, no post-production methods (editing etc.) are used.

Most (video) pieces consist of simple still and moving object combinations. Objects in this case can be anything, physical beings or objects, sounds, the environment. These objects can somehow and in different ways relate or interact with each other. Depending on the nature of the object, their behavior might be in some ways random, fixed, etc. The framing of the camera sets the field of play, context and the site for object relations. The canvas can be entered into and left by objects or people, or they may exist as static components within. Objects situated outside the actual frame may have a certain influence on the occurrences that are visible.

It is most interesting to myself and, by extension, to observers when predictable happenings collide with presences or happenings that are unforeseeable to observer or to the participants themselves. This conflagration of obvious elements and unexpected elements is an example of the unintended but hoped-for “art coefficient.”

The overall serial structure of T4YIT3MP, in view of the fact that each single object shares a minimal and abstract nature, allows interactions on different levels between all other objects. These interactions are inescapable, prepared-for and welcome.

The thoughts of the observer are part of the “sculpture” as well. For example, reappearing places, objects and titles in different days create cross-references by the observer. These interactions put forth a nonlinear space or networks of connotations through which the singular state of each object is overcome metaphorically. With this in mind, not every piece has to be important as its solitary entity.

The resonance between a framework that restricts and a scheduled freedom of objects within or outside (participants, outside observer) is a major concern in all of my work.

Recapitulating, my projects’ fundaments are pre-established frameworks that are filled with matter (elements) subsequently. All elements are autonomous but in some ways regulated by the framework, e.g. a process. The essence of these elements is mostly minimal. However, the larger framework sets up play, a field in which all elements interact and conflict in various ways. The elements are minimal but their combination might not be.

Furthermore, the overall meta-structure of the project defines a distinct context in which each object and each realization is placed and brought to a more vivid state of being. The framework makes everything inside a part of the larger form.

The method of (dis-)placing an object (anything) into a new (in the case of T4YIT3MP serial) structure and a different context typifies a simplified ready-made procedure.

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