HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I've had a great time this semester. I'll genuinely miss ART 211 but I'm excited to move on. Have a great break everyone!

SO COOL.

Someone I know just posted this on Facebook. I feel like it belongs here. Enjoy.

Video Art

THE FUTURE

The NY Times article was both really cool and a little bit scary. The idea that in just the next couple decades we could be that advanced blows my mind.

I think the most compelling part of the article is the last section under the heading "Toward the Future." It says:

How will we reach such a future? The key is to grasp the importance of science and science education. Science is the engine of prosperity.

Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.

Years ago, pundits worried about a “digital divide.” It never happened, because access to computers became cheaper and cheaper. The real problem, however, is not access; it is jobs. Plenty of jobs are begging to be filled today, but those jobs require workers with a technical and scientific education. As Winston Churchill once said, “the empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” 

Read the full story below. Very cool stuff!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/kaku-a-scientist-predicts-the-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&

Slacker Art

Here's my thoughts on the two performance art projects that came in late...

I thought Liz did a great job! It's really cool to see a classmate effectively taking the directing road instead of doing the performance herself. I think it would've been cool to include the part where they got kicked out (as described on her blog) but it still ended up really fun!

I'd love to look at Jeff's performance too but it looks like he hasn't posted on his blog since November. I hope I remember to do it later but if I don't- I promise I looked for it!

Golan Levin in 3D

Not only was the Golan Levin interview compelling because of it's Kinect composition I also found these points he made interesting...

 -Video editing should be an essential college course -3D printing is the future
-Science fiction is often correct
-When something becomes smaller or cheaper it becomes completely different (leads to augmented reality)
-Open source government is possible and desirable -Computers will never surpass the way humans can respond to each other
-When all the human minds are connected we'll be thinking about... porn

Check out Levin's interactive art website at flong.com Cool Stuff!

Performance Art

"He's the king out there..."

I had no idea that the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had such an impact on the music industry. I wasn't even award that a soundtrack comprised of a compilation of songs was even eligible for a Grammy award. It's really interesting to me that a lot of the songs featured on the album had enjoyed previous success before being associated with the movie. 

It's been a while since I've seen the movie so I'm definitely going to dawn my bell bottoms and pop the dvd in next chance I get. However, this time I watch it I'll try being more aware of the music it uses.

As a music buff I was curious so I found the whole album on youtube. You can listen to it below...

Article: http://thedissolve.com/features/adventures-in-licensing/268-the-saturday-night-fever-soundtrack-helped-spread-/

And just for fun...

Breakdancing

So my research has pointed me toward James Brown's performances of Get on the Good Foot as the origin of breakdancing. Here is a performance circa 1972...

Professor Echeverry wanted us to concentrate on the 80's so I found two good examples that I think capture the era...

Good resource: (http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/history%20of%20breaking.htm)

D'Alessandro

I'm not sure if we were supposed to write a blog post about this or not. Since we were encouraged to explore and I did I thought I would make one anyway. I really like Professor D'Alessandro's work because a lot of it has an interactive element to it. Affecting people and getting them to identify with art is obviously a common goal and Professor D'Alessandro does this really interestingly. I was especially intrigued by...

 

Affliction (2008)

 

Project Sleep Walk/Talk (2008)

...and Paris Simulation (2007)

 

Performance Art in Modern Pop

This is Lady Gaga performing last night at her album release party, dubbed "ARTrave." Leigh Bowery anyone??

Jeff Koons Explains "The Gazing Ball" and the ARTPOP Cover

Get More: Lady Gaga, Music News

STRANGEr

XXXXXXXX

Speaking of Flash Mobs...

This one has been my favorite for a while. That Judas choreography is NOT easy and these kids slay it. AMAZING job!

Just for fun- here's the Judas music video. Even though ARTPOP is out, Judas remains my favorite of all of Gaga's songs and videos. Fun fact: The video cost 10 million to make, making it the most expensive music video of all time...

Warhol Lives

I thought I'd post classic some Warhol silkscreens in my favorite color combinations. Enjoy.

Red Liz (1967)

 

Pink Marilyn (1967)

 

Dollar Signs (1984)

 

Flowers (1964)

 

Fright Wig (1986)

 

Hammer and Sickle (1976)

 

Revolver (1981)

 

 

More Warhol posts coming soon!

Burgers.

Hamburger (1985) Andy Warhol

One of my favorite videos of the Warhol era. I just find it's a perfect summery of everything Warhol is about.

Archetypes

I'm actually really surprised no one knew what the word Archetype meant. It means an example or symbol that can be imitated.

My other fave, Marina and the Diamonds did a multimedia project she called the Archetypes in combination with the release of her second studio album, Electra Heart. It was a study of what she described as female archetypes and their role in American society. The imagery and visuals that went with it are absolutely amazing. I encourage everyone to check out the project tumblr below, which has all the pictures and videos.

The Archetypes

She wishes to say...

I was really excited going into the performance art portion of the class. Exploring Sheryl Oring's projects has definitely been a highlight for me. I am SO glad this got brought up in class because what she is doing is impactful both in the context of the project and in a broader view. I seriously love everything about her work.

I'm genuinely just speechless right now because I think these projects are so amazing. I think it would be extremely interesting if she enlisted the help of other transcribers and centered the works around other major events and milestones in in American politics.

I'm just in awe because for an artist to perfect their art in such a specific way is amazing. This is a perfect example of what the signature style of an artist can become. AMAZING. Bookmarked. I will definitely be following her work in the future.

Howl is Not Too Obscene

Reading the article 'Howl' Too Hot to Hear I was really more concerned about things the FCC is censoring besides the poem. Of course the language of the poem is interesting with the context we have for it today, but it wasn't the place of an independent station to air something with such a risk attached.

In places like Europe where audiences are desensitized to language and sexuality a poem like this would never be such a big deal. It makes me question why America holds the backwards values it does. I'd like to echo Professor Echeverry's question of why there was more outrage over Janet Jackson's boob than there was for 25 murdered children. It's wrong and the fact that Howl's language is still an issue decades after it was written shows just how backwards America is.

It seems pretty obvious. People should care more about bombs than they do about boobs.

Dream Machine

The Dream Machine was revolutionary invention by artist Brion Gysin. It features a lighted cylander with holes cut in it, placed on a turntable to make it spin. It produces a hallucinogenic and hypnotic effect without the use of drugs. It turned out to be an important tool, inspiring artists like David Bowie, Iggy Pop Paul McCartney, Marilyn Manson, Floria Sigismondi, Bruce Labruce, Nick Zinner , Beck and DJ Spooky. source



Here's a video showing how the Dream Machine is built and how it works...

Gysin and William Burroughs are also famous for pioneering the cutups method of contextualizing and reassembling poetry. The best example I could find of this is in the video below. I've also included a photo of a piece by Burroughs showing that the order of disassembling of words is completely up to the author.

The Fame Ball (Crevette Films)

After talking to professor Echeverry about Warhol after class the subject of Gaga's Crevette films for her first tour, The Fame Ball, came up. The films feature Gaga as one of her alter egos, Candy Warhol. I've posted them below. Unfortunately not all of them are in HQ yet. Gaga describes the Crevette films below:

"'Crevette' means 'shrimp' in French. I named them that because, it might be quite silly of me, but shrimp are small and decadent and tasty. Which is what I intend for my little 57-seconds films to be. And in these particular films, which I show throughout the performance are called 'Who Shot Candy Warhol?'. And the first film is called 'The Heart'. And the second film is called 'The Brain'. And the third is called 'The Face'."

The Heart.

The Brain.

The Face.

As a Warhol nerd, I feel obligated to make a blog post about highlights from his extensive career. Definitely look for that soon.

-Michael

Just Dropping By...

I have all my work done, my friends are home or the weekend, and I'm running high on coffee. Just overall sporting a great mood today so I thought I'd drop off the songs I'm listening to right now. I may look like an 18 year old male but I'm not afraid to admit that I have the musical taste of a 15 year old girl. Deal with it. Have a great day!

Two of my favorite videos...

And I'll just leave this here because it's so ridiculous...

The Banal Becomes the Interesting

While watching Emak-Bakia (1926) I was reminded of the way Warhol filmed. Emak-Bakia is like putting clips of every day life in a blender and seeing what came out. I'm hesitant to respond because I don't think I fully understand what Man Ray was going for in this piece. I plan on making an updated post on another day after it sinks in. If nothing else it's really cool and amazing that films like this were being made in 1926.

Here's a clip that gives a quick overview of some of Warhol's films. If you can't tell- its not actually a theatrical trailer.

Also- as a class I think we can appreciate the top comment on the Emak-Bakia film...

Post It. Pop it.

I suppose I was a bit inspired by Professor Echeverry's Modern Saints portraits from his website when doing my grid art project. (http://www.echeverry.tv/?f=photos&b=saints) I decided the best way to effectively translate an image from its original form into a grid was to project the image and build the project on top of it.

I decided the coolest way to do this (in keeping with the theme of my pop blog) was to use Post It Notes. I snuck into Plant Hall for a 3 hour night marathon of sticking post its to a projector screen. It ended up a lot bigger than the minimum requirement. Things I learned:

1) Post Its do not stick to screens. I had to use a small piece of scotch tape to get them to temportarily stay.

2) Do not assume a room will be free for the rest of the night when two professors tell you it is. A club meeting interrupted me an hour in. I had to wait outside and finish later

3) All projectors in Plant Hall automatically turn off at 10:20. I learned this the hard way and had to finish up without it. At least there wasn't much left.

4) Plant Hall is definitely haunted. I seriously can not explain the things I experienced that night.

I recreated what the projected image looked like on top of the Post Its...

The finished product without the projection...

Hundreds of Post It Notes and the aftermath... That wasn't even my Dairy Queen. :(

I'm really happy with the way it turned out!
-Michael

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith."

I've actually watched Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech several times over the course of the last few years. It seems to be becoming a standard part of curriculum in many courses. I watched it again for Art and Tech and the same quote always resonates with me.

"I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

Jobs' story about the development of typography on the Mac and how beautiful computer typography all stemmed from the calligraphy course he took when he dropped out of Reed is amazing. I'm sure we would eventually have come to the same conclusion but without Job's desire to follow what he loved it would have taken a lot longer.

Jobs sums it all up with this quote: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

-Michael

Remix Culture

We've been talking a lot about remix culture in class and I think Gaga's ARTPOP cover released today serves as a great example.

There are several inspirations present on the cover and more not yet discovered-

1) Jeff Koons' gazing ball... (Gaga on the cover is actually a Koons sculpture)

2) "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli...

 3) "Apollo and Daphne" by Bernini...

And just for fun here are a couple recent performances inspired by imagery also present on the cover...

Seashell girl at the iTunes Festival in London-

Koons Gazing ball at 1:40 on the 2013 VMA performance-

Hopefully this was pertinent to the class. Thanks for reading.

-Michael

Alan Turing and the Bombe

Alan Turing's computer related studies can be traced back to the summer of 1938 when he worked on a machine capable of breaking the German "Enigma code." The machine was preceded by a machine called "bomba," named after Polish ice cream. The frozen treat was replaced by Turing's invention, the "bombe," which was completely different and much more useful than it's predecessor. By the end of the war, the bombe was decoding between 39,000-84,000 messages per month. For his amazing contributions to the war effort, Turing was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire.


Following his work in the war, Turing went on to work for the National Physical Laboratory. At the NPL he developed a "general purpose" computer with advanced storage capabilities. His colleagues decided that engineering the project would be too difficult so a simplified version was built. If Turing's version had been made it would have been the most advanced computer of the day.

Turing was accused of being gay by the British government and sentenced to hormone therapy. His government clearance was also revoked. He wrote on Artificial Intellegance before commiting suicide in 1954.



Polish ice cream.

War of the Worlds Panic

After listening to the War of the Worlds broadcast from 1938 I can definitely see how people were convinced the martian invasion was real. If it was adapted for radio today I think it might even cause a similar disturbance. People are gullible and with the format it was presented in- it all makes sense.

The format of the broadcast was intentional to make headlines and cause panic. The way the music is cut in and out and the weather bulletin is given makes it seem like it's really happening. It goes beyond just immersing the audience in the story. I believe the broadcasters knew the implications of what they were doing which is why the disclaimer is present at the end. If they didn't foresee panic happening there would have been no reason for them to include it.

Welles and CBS definitely got the press they wanted the next day.

Full broadcast here:

Development of the Modern Battery

I found this clip explaining a theory on Egyptian batteries and the possibility that they powered light bulbs. Ignore the alien stuff at the end because I really don't think it's relevant to the main idea. Very interesting stuff!

The accepted battery timeline shows Voltaic pile as the first battery able to provide a current to a circuit continuously. It looked something like this...

This was followed by the Daniell Cell, which improved upon the Voltaic pile by using different metals.

Bunsen created the first liquid battery in 1842.

Leclanche created the first dry cell and therefore portable battery in 1866...

Carl Gassner invented the first first commercial battery in 1881 and the rest is history...

So...

...I watched Tommy and as far as cult classics go I thought it was great. The film relied heavily on symbols and I think it really worked. It's an art film and should be viewed as such.

A few comments/observations...

1) Where do I submit my application for The Church of Marilyn?
2) I think Tina is going to haunt my dreams.

3) Acid Queen is one of the grooviest things I've seen in a while. I love it.
4) The religious/cult themed scenes going on were absolutely amazing. Very very interesting.
5) I have a strange craving for baked beans.
6) But not this much...

Philip K. Dick

I think the main thing that resonated with me about the Phillip K. Dick article was how great authors and artists are often only discovered after their death. It's sad that they never get to truly enjoy the notoriety they deserve.

In the example of Dick, he wrote 44 books that eventually spawned amazing feature films and he never saw the fruits of his labor. Imagine if he had never been discovered! We may have never gotten this scene in Total Recall.

Seriously though I genuinely believe this is a major tragedy of our time.

Dick's full portfolio... http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1029.Best_of_Philip_K_Dick

Walking on Air

I thought I'd break up some of the class stuff and post some music I've been listening to recently. After all this is my blog right? :)

Puke Film

I honestly don't intend to relate everything to Gaga but a lot of her work legitimately applies to the things we're studying in Art 211. The following is the clip from Blade Runner we watched in class...

And this is how Gaga incorporated the audio from the scene in the Puke Film interlude on the first leg of her Monster Ball Tour...

ARTPOP Promotion Flip Book!

This is what I ended up with for my flip book.  I decided to experiment with different ways text can enter and exit a screen. I did my best to use different fonts and several different methods to transition words and phrases on and off the pages. Of course I had Gaga on the mind so I did something relating to the new album. This literally took me all week! wow. Enjoy! I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with!

Nadsat

I'm ashamed to admit I learned the most about the dialect in A Clockwork Orange from it's Wikipedia article. I guess this is just one of those times where wiki trumps a lot of the other sources. However, what I found was nonetheless interesting. The following is a quote from Wikipedia which explains Nadsat and why it was used in the book and in the film.


"Burgess, a polyglot who loved language in all its forms, was aware that linguistic slang was of a constantly changing nature. Burgess knew that if he used modes of speech that were contemporarily in use, the novel would very quickly become dated. His use of Nadsat was essentially pragmatic; he needed his narrator to have a unique voice that would remain ageless while reinforcing Alex's indifference to his society's norms, and to suggest that youth subculture existed independently of the rest of society. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex's interrogators describe the source of his argot as "subliminal penetration."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadsat

I think the idea of creating a slang for the future is quirky and definitely shows artistic intent. A couple of my favorite words from the Nadsat dictionary are...

Pretty Polly Money

Nochy  Night

Millicent Policeman

Lewdies  People

Ded  Old Man

Bugatty  Rich

Yarbles  Balls, testicles

Pooshka  Gun 

http://soomka.com/nadsat.html 

Faux Real

The Archetypes is an amazing series of videos by my favorite artist (besides Gaga), Marina and the Diamonds. I highly encourage anyone with an interest in Americana, pop music, or pop culture to check her out.

Marina did a couple of Archetypes videos that are direct throwbacks to silent films...

I'm sure I'll be able to tie more of the Archetype videos into our later discussions.

-Michael

Silent Films

Sorry this is coming a couple days late. I watched the videos but I haven't posted about them until now. I just have a couple of quick observations. The Trip to the Moon/ The Great Train Robbery examples are definitely valuable for class discussion.

The layering in Trip to the Moon is superb. This particular scene reminds me of Willy Wonka...

The way the background rolled by in the "window" behind the actors in The Great Train Robbery was an amazing special effect at the time...

-Michael

Gaga Goes to Oz...

I thought this video would be an interesting connection to the Wizard of Oz, as talked about in class. Great colors and a fun performance!

-Michael

Cinemagraphs

I found the Kevin Weir cinemagraphs particularly interesting because his style is so unique. He combines old, dark, and sometimes classic photos with modern and sometimes supernatural twists. They look very hipster to me.

I could stare at the hypnotic ones for hours...

 

-Michael

Photographic Edits

I just got out of my night class, pulled up Reddit, and saw this.  I thought it was a good coincidence considering our talk about photography today in class.  If nothing else, it's very cool

http://imgur.com/a/0b5Hi

-Michael

BROADWAY

Here's a couple of videos I thought were interesting from the Stage Door Blog...

I didn't know Titanic was a musical?

As if the original wasn't bizarre enough...

Don Giovanni 8 Bit Style!

Just like I mentioned in my paper!

Helpful Hint

I just wanted to show everyone the way I'm outlining the video game portion of the opera paper. Hopefully it helps if anyone is struggling.

I drew little boxes with figures stick figures acting out game as it would appear on the screen. I also put notes and information about cut scenes in between them. This has really helped me visualize the project so that I can write about it. I've got most of the first page done so hopefully this strategy works for the second and third pages.

-Michael