video project

ok, i've officially come up with a better idea.
Title: The Real World
The idea is taking the title of the horribly popular reality TV show and turning it into actual reality. I plan to film the real world at its best, and its worst, and its ordinary-ness. The challange will be the amount of clips and editing, and keeping it interesting. I feel like its a challange I can take on and happily conquer. Woot.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thunder!!!!!

I have been brainstorming like crazy, and I just cannot come up with anything for this video project! I searched the innernet for inspiration, thought for the longest time in the library with my pencil held motionless over my notebook. I've racked my brain so much it hurts. I am considering doing a video about myself desperatly trying to make a video. I'll have to map it out, but perhaps something will come of it. Sigh. I'm trying :/

On a brighter note, I started the design for my final DVD menu and i'm loving it so far. Woot.

For my photography project, I was thinking of doing something with the musical I am currently rehearsing for.
The idea I had was to bring my camera to practice one night, and every time the director yells at the cast, I would take a picture.
I'm not sure if this would work
1. because there are many times he yells when I am on stage, and I can't bring the camera up there with me. It's pretty large.
and
2. because the show is next weekend, he isn't yelling as much. Most people have already fixed the problems he had ranted about in the past.

I'll keep considering it though.

In reading the article assigned, I have come to accept the fact that I know nothing about art. Well, mostly about artists. In each article we've read, I understand what the author is saying for the most part, but any references to artists or art movements and such, and it goes right over my head. In class, Prof Allyn will mention an artist and say, you know them right? And most of the class will nod or say, wasn't that the guy who lived in a cage for a year or crucified himself to a volkswagon? But unless it is Leonardo Divinci, I usually sit quietly and wonder who on earth they are talking about. And I learn, I'll listen and learn, but there are so many names and I have a horrible memory. I've learned who Vito Acconci is (and I don't like him very much...) and I'll always remember Wegman and his dogs (mostly because I have a Wegman's supermarket near my house, and I'm a dog person...). There are certain people who stick with me, but the rest are lost in the unabsorbant chaos that is my mind.
Reading the article Performing the moment, I felt as though I was missing something crucial because I don't recognize the names that are mentioned. The only artist that I knew was Yoko Ono, and that's just because of The Beatles.
It doesn't really bother me much, I'm not torn apart for not knowing artists, but i guess it's just interesting to me how much the other students in my class do know them. Maybe it's just the few who speak up that are knowledgable in art, and the rest of the class is clueless like me. At least I know the other IMM majors are usually unfamiliar with artists as well.
I know the article had nothing to do with knowledge of art, but this is just what was brought to my attention in reading it. As far as photography (which was the subject of the writing), I love it. I have no idea who in the world has made a name for themselves in photography or what great experimental movements have gone on with photographs, I don't know who revolutionized the artistic use of the camera, and if I was taught I would probably forget them anyway. Point here is, I love photography, and I love art, and I will always love and use these wonderful mediums to make my life and the lives of others a little more colorful. I'm a hands on learner, and unless some famous photographer is right next to me teaching me their ways, chances are I won't remember their name. : /

I'm pretty excited for the performance tomorrow. Kelli and I love our idea.

And oddly enough I'm excited to present my powerpoint about the Guerilla Girls. (I say oddly because I usually hate class presentations....) They are so cool. :)

Response to Walter Benjamin

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" -Walter Benjamin This quote specifically made sense to me. Looking at art broadly, from paintings to architechture to literature, it seems to be the only direct thing that survives time and links us directly to the past. People die, and with them their stories and their knowledge. Society changes, languages fade out. It seems that art is only thing that we can hold in our hand or study personally and say, this artifact has been around since the middle ages. It was made by a person who lived then, and it presents to us directly what they valued in beauty and ideas. Art is the ultimate description of any culture. It reveals beliefs, priorities, social norms, physical means. Cultures have changed so immensly throughout time and place and the only way to study this kind history is through art. "We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. " No doubt, I have experienced and loved experiencing auras. I recall waking up one morning and glancing out my window. It was spring, and a pink budded tree branched crossed the cloudless sky. It was so picturesque, so real. (As corny as it sounds...) That morning i recognized my appreciation for the auras in life, although I had known no name for it at the time. My inspirational morning was so lovely, that I wished to capture it. I whipped out my handy dandy camera and focused a lovely shot out my window. I knew though that it would not be developed with that aura. I got that picture developed and sighed at the camera's inability to reproduce my inspirational scene. The photograph was enough for me to look at it and be reminded of the feeling I had imersed in that aura, but if I had shown that picture to another person, it would mean absolutely nothing to them. But then that brings me to a question (I suppose the question I will use in class). Let's take DaVinci's Mona Lisa. Because of course Mona Lisa is probably used in every general art example ever... Do you think that DaVinci was disappointed with a lack of aura in his painting? Assuming he painted the portrait from a model, is it possible that he saw such an aura from that woman that compelled him to paint her, but can only be reminded of it when he looks at the painting, like me with my photograph? Then when he shows it to others, perhaps it means nothing to them compared to the reminder of some lovely feeling of DaVinci's alone? Then can we say that reproduction doesn't actually change any aura of the art, because the art is actually a reproduction of something else, and in being a reproduction, it has lost the aura already that the inspiration in real life had? I think art is a reproduction of life. Even if it is not a visual thing in life. It can be an emotion or an idea. Art reproduces life, in truth or lies, in detail or just generalization. Art reproduces culture, relationships, individuality. If art is a reproduction, than can reproducing art really have a negative effect on the original artwork? I'm not saying that I don't believe reproduction of art has a negative effect, in fact I really am not sure. But these are just ideas running through my head.

Guerrilla Girls

Unchain the women directors!

Women directed only 7% of the top 200 films of 2005.

No woman director has ever won the Oscar!

Only 3 have been nominated.

www.guerrillagirls.com

These girls are my heroines.

Class perfomance #2

Today's performance was very successful I think. We went with the idea that as communication is progressing, it's really digressing. We begin shaking hands in the middle of a circle of viewers, saying "hello" to eachother and the surrounding audience. We stepped off the stage and picked up cups with strings, saying hello into those, and encouraging our audience members to try. We stepped out of the circle, picking up house phones and repeating "hello". Then we each picked up our cellphones, getting a little less friendly with our "hello?!" By this point we're much farther out of the circle. Then we turned our backs on our audience and on eachother, and all they could hear was the beeping from our text messaging. Finally, we killed the lights, and an electronic voice was heard. "Hello. Sorry I'm no longer at home. Leave a message. Thanks."
Nobody seemed to have a problem understanding our point. In fact, a classmate excitedly asked to explain it before we did. I was pleasantly surprised at how well our class identified with our issue. I was even more surprised that the class laughed during our performance. They laughed as we grew farther apart, giggling in a way that told us "yeah, thats so true". I was mostly surprised though that our professor had no negative comments, or nothing to add. I think that this performance was much more successful than our first. There was no question that the viewers enjoyed and understood our performance, and I enjoyed doing it as well.

our class performance

I think our class performance was interesting.
Interesting in a good way (because i often use interesting in a negative way...)
We posed as a politician, an audience, and a puppeteer. I was the politician at a make shift podium, silently giving a speech. My gestures were big and authoritative. Kelli played an audience member, smiling and clapping the whole time. Sebastian stood on a stool above me, control my motions as if I was a marrionette.
The best part of this performance was that it all took place in the men's bathroom of the fourth floor of the art building.
Bringing the class in there seemed to get a great reaction from our classmates, and the professor as well. They were suprised, some a little weirded out. But it had a good effect. As Sebastian said, what better place for a political speech then next to the urinals.
The idea was that, even though people have no idea what politicians are saying they will back up whoever appears powerful. And politicians often don't even know what they are saying. Everybody's identity is scewed in politics. Politicians pretend to be someone they usually aren't. Voters are fooled, and their judgement and individuality is messed up.
I think we got our point across.

John Cage

http://www.peripatetic.us/classes/1.htm
The most interesting artist in this slideshow to me was John Cage. The fact that he made his audience sit and listen to nothing for four minutes and thirty three seconds is brilliant. I like to think that there really is music everywhere- in nature, in human whispers, in creaks of buildings. And John Cage had a bunch of people there to hear his music, hear their own music, and the music of the world. people going to a performance expect to have art and liesure thrown at them to enjoy. This time around, they had to work for it. They had to think, and they had to realize the everyday pleasantness that most of them pass by without a thought. I'm sure people were confused, but John Cage was happy to take the chance that people wouldn't understand him, just so that he can possibly enlighten some about the world around them. I say bravo Cage.

Interesting Class period...

Class on Monday was very interesting. It really got me thinking, what is art, anyway? What actually constitutes as art, and who says so?

The videos in class of performance art were...odd. I don't think I can confidently say that any of that is art. Some of it was interesting, some comical, amusing, but artistic? I'm skeptical.

I used to say that art is anything that takes creative effort and has some meaning to the artist, even if it is simply beauty, or something more like a symbol of identity. But certain things just don't seem like art.

A dog trying to get a treat out of glass bottle- cute, but not art. America's funniest home videos maybe. But then, how can I claim that when I put together film of my friends, that that is art? That isn't very fair of me, is it? But am I not in the art department at this college? Do I not live in the art building making projects with video and music? Just because Wegman's dog video was much simpler, does that allow me to tell him he is not an artist, but I may be?

There are lots of activities that flip flop over the fuzzy line of art and not art. One could argue decorating, or even pastry making. If dance is an art, is gymnastics? What about beauticians, are they artists? Architects? Advertisers? The list goes on and on, threatening the idea of how we see art. Truely, I don't think it is really all that necessary to establish a fine line. But it does make me wonder where it might be, had it been found.

I always like to say that art is whatever the individual decides it is, but then I go past the art building on campus and I see two dozen or so empty poland spring water bottles hanging from a tree by string. It's an art project.

I say nay, that is not an art project.

And until somebody tells me the deeper meaning of those water bottles, I will see them as nothing but carefully placed litter.

Response: The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism

http://www.peripatetic.us/classes/manifesto_futurism.pdf

The language in this is beautiful. The imagery is so well described with incredibly powerful words. I must say I was confused, but it seems like the author purposely used vagueness in this piece. Reading through the description of futurism, it is evident that these people are demanding a social change, a revolution in literature. The writing seems so powerful that I almost want to join them. Until I got to the part about burning books and destroying old cities and people. It gives me the impression that these people are a cult, and while they may have fabulous writing skills and really great ideas about new literature, they scare me a bit.
If you want a revolution, power to ya. I love people trying to change the world. In fact, I wish I had the guts and the power to do something drastic, and I hope one day I will. I totally admire people, especially artisits, who want a change and actually do something about it. It's nice when people recognize the need for change, but when people sit around and complain, it pisses me off. I love to hear about those who actually decide to do something, to contribute in whatever way they are able.
But when it comes to violence and such, I am out. Anything that adds pointless pain and suffering of the world is NOT good.

Performance Art

I thought the article was very interesting. I have never really considered the fact the performance art is the complete opposite of what most consider the "performing arts", like singing and dancing. It is interesting that a prominant characteristic of performance art is that it is in "real time", which ties it to this time based class. The author expressed extreme passion for this unique form of art, which i may never fully understand.I must admit it is true that when I think of performance art, I think of weird abstract things, like crazy naked people running into things. But, being a creative person myself, I think I can take the time to try and understand what is being portrayed and appreciate the artists' visions.

January 22

Hoorah! New Blog!