Artist: Gratuitous Art Films

The film titled “Primitive Earth Part 1: Volcanoes” is a piece created by the group Gratuitous Art Films and is a combined visual and audio experience. This group consists of two individuals, filmmaker Jeff Burns and artist Cat Gilbert, and is set out to do nothing in particular but to be the evil twin of Andy Warhol, “mocking him every step of the way”, or at least that is how their website tells it. After researching the group Gratuitous Art Films, this is about the most I could find on them. Their website consists of film works and images with an artist statement that describes the journey of art and its emotions separate from the artist and viewers, speaking as if it is from its own perspective. This, however difficult to write about, says much about the artists and their journey to create audio/visual films that inspire and provoke its viewers.

PRIMITIVE EARTH PART 1: VOLCANOES from Gratuitous Art Films on Vimeo.

The piece I focused on while viewing the site, “Primitive Earth Part I: Volcanoes” shows clips of island beauty and slowly overlaps other visuals, transitioning from one in the dominant foreground to the other. It starts with a book, on which is written “Aloha”, the traditional Hawaiian greeting and goodbye. This sets the scene for from where these videos are taken. All of the images have altered colors in some form or another and, on occasion, become unrecognizable, whether because of coloring, shape, or placement over the paired images. The island’s landscape transitions into erupting volcanoes to forests to animals, and even showing the occasional man made object, such as the car. This visuals contrast the destruction of the volcanoes and the beauty in its surroundings, showing homes and forests burning paired with animals and beach views, as well as flowing lava and volcanic sprays with full spectrum rainbows. As the footage continues, we see the explosion of the volcano, displayed in bright pinks, blues, purples, and gold. The audio that is played over top of the images is that of jungle sounds, ambient noises, and strings of electronic notes. We watch the smoke rise, the ash fall, the wild life set on fire, and then finally, we end with the closing of the book with which we started, reading “Aloha”, yet backwards.
“Primitive Earth Part I: Volcanoes” is a commentary on the beauty that originates and is ended by the Volcanoes’ force, utilizing the perfect example of the setting of Hawaii. As the piece begins, with its impressionist like blending of the image, making it almost unrecognizable, abstract video, we are transitioned from the beauty of the island-scape and taken into the power of the volcano’s eruption. Throughout the whole video we hear the same audio, the sound of wildlife, ambient noises, and the abstract note changes. This consistent audio helps to create a smooth change in the video from the beauty to the disaster, decreasing the intensity of the visual of destruction and creating a tangible visual of the transitions of nature. This ease of change is also aided by the coloring of the clips. By altering the image, reducing the intensity of the overall picture and focusing our attention to certain elements by the use of bright outlining/highlighting, reduction of the image content, and darkening of specific areas, the artist presents the viewer with an abstract of disaster. The pleasing colors combined with the fireworks display of nature unify the more frenetic images with that of the original beach views. This keeps the mind in the same frequency, allowing for thought of what the images may be and what the implications are by creating such a change. The artists are asking the viewer to think about how things have come to be and where things are going, highlighting the necessity and inevitability of destruction in order to lead to creation.
I find this work appealing in both its artistic qualities and its intellectual qualities, causing the mind of the viewer to not only focus on the interesting visual created but also putting thought in the mind of the cycle of nature, life, and destruction. The brightening and blurring of the colors reinforces the beauty of the scenery, while emphasizing and adding this same beauty to the disastrous eruptions portrayed. The audio of the animal life keeps the persistent thought of the existence of the living in this tropical wild land, and the life that once lived where the destruction was occurring. To improve upon the film, smoother transitions between the book image and the island images could be made, possibly guiding us into the contents of the page and becoming the blurred colors of the video. The array of colors, combined with interesting and ambient audio, push the video into a beautiful, yet forceful display of what this Earth is capable of, asking the viewer to consider not only what is, but what came before it and what is yet to come.