Open Space

I didn't feel anywhere near as "prepared" for this event compared to the others. I didn't really have a clue what to expect when I was heading over to the theatre. This could be a good thing I guess. Idon't really know where to start with this so I guess I'll just start at the beginning.

The lecture at 7:00 seemed a little over my head. I though that I know quite a bit about music, I can read enough music to play piano and sing (well kinda sing). I know what things like forte and stagato and other things mean. However, when he was talking about how he writes music, I felt in over my head. Music is by far my most difficult thing we've talked about in class...

The things we talked about in class on Monday helped to understand better though. I'm glad we had a bit of background about composing and Wolfe himself. I actually wish we could have spent more time learning about him in preperation for the event.

Now on to the actual event themselves. The first song was... well... interesting. I really like the idea of using instuments for different purposes than the intended ones, however, I don't know if this really worked so well... I liked both parts and I think they complimented eachother well, however it seemed to be missing a third peice.

I'm sure from a musician's viewpoint, the second peice was very interesting. But I found it (dare i say it?) boring. It seemed like somthing to do in a classroom or as a warm up, but I don't know if I'd consider it a concert ready peice. I can appricate it for the groundbreaking strides the style made and the complicated nature, but just listening to it from the point of view or a non-music student... I don't know that I could say I like it.

Alright the third peice, the play. I really liked having a little background before the play. First, I'll talk about that. If i remember right, he said it was considered a childrens play... I can see why although I beleive it would have been appropriate for kids 50 years ago, but not today. Kids today are too sheltered to understand it (at least i think so). I think the concept is one that is too complicated for a child to understand on their own, but I think with the right preperation for the play, it is a very good lesson for the kids to learn. Maybe they can grow up to be a less judgemental generation than even mine.

So on to the actual play. Where do i start? I suppose the music. I thought it fit in well with the play. I don't really have anything to say about it except that it was a little abrubt in the starting and stopping playing. However, I think this was intentional.

Now the singing. The female singer drove me nuts. I don't even know why, I can't explain this. But she did.... The end where everyone was singing got across the point I think they were going for, but it was... well...wierd. plus some of them wern't the best singers.

The acting was fantastic, as i'm coming to expect from UNC. I especially liked watching the poor man carrying the bags (I forget what he was called). I think that he portrayed his emotions and thoughts like his character would have, even with his very little lines.

What else to say about this? All in all, I enjoyed the 2nd part of the night the most.

What to listen for(Adolphe)

I have to admit, not having too much of a music background, I feel a little in over my head reguarding some of this. A chord you can't play? broken vs flat? arpeggio? However, I feel that I can relate some of this to art and therefore understand a little better. I really agree with "technique merely serves the ear, the inmagination. It is not an end but a means." I drove my art teacher in HS crazy with breaking all the "rules" and "techniques" and still producing worth-while paintings. To me, they are merely guidelines or tips.

However, by far my favorite part of this was "understanding isoften a matter of noticing and naming. Inspiration is often a matter of seeing without naming." While I beleive there is more to understanding than this, and inspiration is not quite seeing w/o naming... I think it's an interesting way of defining then two terms. Even though I don't necessacarily agree, I can appriciate the definitions.

As far as the poem (?) I don't really have too much to say. I like the part where he says a peice seems boring when the ideas are repetive/commonplace. This can be true for anything. But when we give them significance or associate them with meaning, they are metaphors for somthing meaningful.

This is alittle off topic, but I think it relates. Most music, to me, is simply music. I have everything from classical to the beatles to pat benatar to AFI and the sound of music on my ipod (those are what has played since I started reading Adolph) and most of it is simply music. It's entertaining, some of it's even boring. However, a song like "The moment I said it" or "landslide" come on and I'm no longer living in the present but back in my memories. Both of these songs have quite a history with me, and they bring back images from different times, even thoughts and emotions. The lights of a big empty stage, the nervousness of my first ever solo riffle toss (winterguard compitition) and even the face of my little sister right before we started.

I know that's ramboly and probably only makes since to me (at least at the end) but.... I though I'd put my (rather incoherent) thoughts out there for everyone else.

Music runs deeper than emotions

Sessions caught my interest right from the very first page. I am not a musically inclined person, however, I do enjoy listening to music and can play piano a little. However...on to the essay...

Sessions said that "emotion" is to specific and individual to describe the essence of musical expression. He says music is deeper than emotions, it expresses the very energies of our "psychic life." He explains this what "creates a pattern which has an existence, laws, and human significance of its own." So I took this to mean that music expresses basically the world around us and inside us, think, ect.

He goes on to say it "reproduces for us the most intimate essence." This is the part that I really agreed with. There are certain songs that I can listen to that evoke feelings much deeper than just emotions.

But continuing on past the first page... I though it was interesting that the idea that music was a seperate art apart from dance or somthing else was a very recent idea. This is somthing I've never really thought of.

His idea that there are two parts in creating music interested me. The first was inspiration, which is the impulse which sets creation in movement. This may come in a flash, or may take form in an impulse towards a certain goal. The second part is conception. The interesting part about this for me was how he said, "compostition is a deed, an action, and a genuine action of any kind is, psychologically speaking, th simplest thing in the world." He says that since it is such a simple act, writing the peice of music is the simplest thing, which to me seems like the hardest.

Abstraction

The abstraction project was very different when transforming a collage into an actual abstract work of art. In high school, I took almost three years of drawing/painting, one of photo, and one semester of graphic design. I am no stranger to abstract art, though I have never created it in this way before. I did several abstract paintings as well as one abstract in adobe Photoshop. I have never “abstract-ified” another piece though.

I found the project to be fairly difficult at first, turning a college of real pictures into something abstract, especially such amazing pictures that I took and am fairly proud of. However, once I got the picture on my laptop and just started playing with it in Photoshop, I started to have fun with it. I’m only sharing my favorite outcomes, though there were a lot more than this.

Here's the original:

My abstrations:

This first one is actually four parts, there is the main pic, which is the top half of the image, then the second part which is just the top half fliped and reflected on the bottom. The top had a black backgound and the bottom was white. So I made half of the images transparent so you can see the images under... I know this is confusing... I can't really explain it...So anyways, the lines are made with a "neon glow" filter, the bottom of it is the inverse of the filter.

This is the face in the bottom right hand corner of the college. It's really simple, just put threw a filter and then distorted. The filter was called "cutout" (I think anyways...I dont remember for sure) and then distorted threw a stained glass things (not a filter, but somthings else).

This one was isn't really that abstract, but it was a little more time consuming so I thought I'd put it up anyways. There is a stained glass filter applied to the picture, then I cut it out in the shape of the words and a heart, then applied a border and "stained glass" the photo again to include the border. Then just put a square in the background and colored it black.

Im Winter ein Jahr

I really enjoyed this film. I think it is my favorite thing we've done thus far in class. I went into it, not knowing what to expect at all. It was a little confusing at some times, but not to bad. I really enjoyed listening to the german language becuase my family is german and growing up, my oma taught me quite a bit. Somewhere in my subconsious I remembered quite a bit.

But beyond that, I LOVED the main character. I could relate to her in so many ways. I haven't necessacarily been through the same things, but I felt like I was her during the whole movie. I beleive she was the first character in a movie who I could fully understand.

The filming of the movie was a little rough at times, but I beleive it fit quite well with the style and message of it. The cinematography was great, some of the shots and angles in the movie were awesome. Though again, it was a little rough around the edges, so to say.

The ending was a little cheesey compared to the tone of the rest of the movie, but I think it was really fitting looking back on it. It kind of bothered me that we never found out why her brother committed suicide, though I guess its better that we didn't. It's one of those things that we're just never ment to know.

It's hard to talk about the film because I'm kind of at a loss of words. I would love to get a copy of it to watch with my oma because I think she would appriciate it as well. I am gonna keep this short and maybe add more later after I've had some time to digest and sort out my thoughts.

Overall though, I am very glad that I went to see this.

Render me stupid

I really enjoyed meeting Delton and seeing his art, but I beleive the art show was alittle, do I dare say, boring. We saw much of his work in class, I felt that the gallery didn't add much to what we had already seen. But with that said, I have some comments about his art.


First, I think that this was one of my favorite peices, though I can't pick a fav. I like the final peice on its own, but I loved being able to see his whole process of the blog. I beleive it's incredibly creative and it looks like it came from a 50's sears catalog or somthing. I really like the simplistic details. I beleive it follows the actual logo really well, but looks like it could easily be the real logo as well.

I like this because drawing people is a fun hobby of mine, though I am not to great at it. I am impressed by this sketch. You can tell right away who it was and the emotions and everything. It amazes me.






I know this wasn't at the gallery, and it's not finished, but i really like this. It's like the beer ad in many ways.





One thing about the show that I thought was interesting was that he had all of the little "thumbnail" images of different color samples. It was kind of cool to see all the different trials.

I was also supprised that a lot of the paitings were very small. I felt that the oversized frames really took away from the paintings on some of the pictures. Also, there were really huge paintings as well. But very few "typical" things. They were all "out of the box" for the most part.

I leave you today with this. The film of Delton painting this mural. I loved watching him work. From one painter watching another, I was impressed by how he worked. He didn't hesitate, didn't stumble. He barely even noticed the other people watching him or around him, just kept working, seemingly lost in his own world.

Film as Art

I want to preface this entry with a comment about the "what is art" contreversey in general. I beleive it is not up to "us" (meaning the people in general) to define what is and isn't art. If you create somthing, whether it be a film or photo, and to YOU it is art, then who can tell you that it's not? And if there someone else beleives it is not art, they really don't have the place to say that.

But now onto the topic...

FILM AS ART

The first comment I would like to make is about how film didn't start out as "art." The paper makes this seem like a big deal, but if you put yourself in the mindset of a person from the early 20th century, of course film and photos weren't art. They were so new and there wasn't much room for artists to put their artisticness (?) into them. They were scientific inventions, not used by artists.

So most of the points against film as art are good points, but they really are outdated. For example, the idea that they were mechanical productions.

A point I would like to talk about thought is that they are not media, but a means of recording the media. The other examples of this were a painting put on a postcard. The painting is art, but the postcard is not. My counterresponce to this is that putting the painting on the postcard is a means of copying the artwork, not a means of producing it.

At one point in history (had I lived many years ago), I would have agreed that films were just a means of recording art. However, today cameras don't simply record things and put them out there for others to show. Real work and creative talent goes into every aspect of them, from the story to colors and costumes.

I like the "absence of intentionality" arguement. If the creator's purpose is not to create art, then most likely, it will not be artistic. Though this can't be used as a hard and true definition of what is art. But then again, when it comes to art, there really isn't set "right" and "wrong" ideas.