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.
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...
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!
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."
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...
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.
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...
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 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
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.
It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of shock value in performance art. It's part of the reason I follow Gaga in such an obsessive way. That being said, I think there's a very distinct difference between the styles that Gaga and Die Antwoord use.
Musically and in the eyes of the world they're on completely different levels. Gaga is a five time Grammy Award winning recording artist that sells out 20,000 seat arenas with ease worldwide while Die is mostly known for her outlandish "Rich Bitch" single.
They're completely different types of artists with different fan bases, different genres of music, different messages, and different ends. Most importantly their means are different when they attempt to shock their audiences.
Gaga draws inspiration from established artists, forms, and styles and creates something new. For example- Here's a painting by Salvador Dali and the way Gaga turned that inspiration into an iconic performance...
Die chooses another route, poking fun at an artistic statement by Gaga...
...attacking Gaga personally, and of course drawing inspiration from a very dark time in American stage history...
I searched for a long while looking for an explanation of this but came up with nothing.
While Gaga can back up her performances with lists of references and frequently does interviews explaining her artistic intent, Die Antwoord is left with classless references to racism and inaccurate assumptions about Gaga's art.
The Madama Butterfly animation was incredibly sad. The section where the sailor returns, pops the umbilical cord, and Madama falls to the ground is very tragic. To be honest it genuinely has me depressed right now.
Stylistically I thought it was really interesting. It seems both Madama and her child are both made up of a rubbery clay of some sort which I think really added to the aesthetic and the way the figures moved.
While I don't find opera itself particularly captivating the assigned documentary, The History and Life of Opera, was interesting. It was definitely valuable to learn about the history of opera and it's modern implications. The segment on opera in China especially grabbed my attention as China has grown even more since the documentary was made.
To be completely honest it has left me craving Chinese food.
