life never stops

video art and music

the video art we've seen has been pretty interesting.  i never even knew i had any video editing software on my computer at all until i started working on this project.  i think it's neat just playing with how video works and what can be done with it without having to make what we know as a movie or film.  it's like abstract painting where it's not about if the painting looks like anything in the end, it's just about exploring the medium and seeing what it can do.

the music i have really enjoyed.  i think it's really cool that music can be created digitally and sound just like it was recorded in a studio.  i don't want that to take away from real created music though because i feel that talented musicians deserve all the credit for the music they create and perform.  electronic music, while amazing and beautiful, can take away from that side of music.  but i do really like the songs we listened to soo.. i contradict myself and i'm not picking sides..

just a side note, i've been trying to comment on everyone's blogs but my computer hasn't been letting me

performance art: control

so basically, i took a song and i changed it so in the song there were commands like volume up/down, pitch up/down, fast forward, pause, mute, etc. so i started by me pushing play and then the remote started telling me what to do instead. unfortunately, the commands were a little too quiet so i don't know if everyone caught on to that.. but here's my pictures

ok still totally disturbed and don't think self mutilation is art, but that's my opinion.

i looked up performance art today. it talks about what we've talked about in class. then i looked up dance and it says it's art. so i guess i'm confused because it's part of the performing arts family. so i'm not sure what the difference between performance art and performing arts are. but i looked it all up... so... yea

class

ok so i've been really disturbed by what we've seen this week. i don't want to watch someone sew their mouth shut or mutilate their body. i don't think self harm is art, i think self harm is needing to go talk to a specialist about why you enjoy that. maybe this has to do with people i've known who have had a lot of problems with self mutilation but i don't consider that art at all.

i really enjoy the electronic music and the use of ordinary sounds that don't need to mean anything. we have talked about merce cunningham in my dance classes many times over the years and his work with john cage. basically john cage made his music and merce would tell him the length he needed it to be, then on the night of the performance, cunningham would tell his dancers the order in which they would perform their phrases and they would perform to john cage's music for the first time. they never heard the music until the show. this was one of the first times that dance and music did not mesh. cunningham felt like they didn't need to go together in the classical way that dance and music usually works.

as for the art of like "end after 9" and the blank white screen forever and things like that, i feel like that's not art. i think something i love about art is that not just anyone can do it, and a lot of what we're talking about in class makes it seem like art is just whatever but i think art is really special and everyone has it in them, but it's all different kinds of art. the art is however that person uses the talents they have. i didn't feel like some of the work really showed any kind of talent. that's just my opinion though sooo.....

the tree of life (my xerox project)

here's my tree of life. i actually really like this project a lot

class so far

class this second half of the semester has been a little weird... i don't know that dada is my favorite type of art. i do like the paintings that came out of the time. not the sculptures so much. i guess i've never really like a lot of sculpture though. the movies we have watched with the bugs coming out of the guys hand and with crazy aliens ripping people's faces apart with their ribs are really not my taste at all. i appreaciate that it was revolutionary but they're just not really something that i am that into.

i went to the dali museum the other day and it was pretty interesting. i like seeing the studies next to the art work that showed where his thoughts were before he put the piece together.

paz afuera

my artwork... peace outside

mztv,com

i think the thing i found the coolest about tv is that all the people who are the biggest names are people who had little to no education. farnsworth thought of the idea when he was in high school which is amazing. that's like someone inventing i don't even no what sitting right next to you while you doodle in class.

this website is really cool how it's interactive even in the still pictures. it has information about everything you'd want to know about tv and even everything you wouldn't want to know about tv. i really like how the first tv is the phantom teleceiver, i think that's a really funny name. instead of just calling it a tv, it gets to be a phantom.

bio art

so we had our last speaker yesterday. i won't lie, i didn't really get it. i thought the demonstration was interesting but that didn't seem like art to me. i guess maybe it was performance art? i think when we talked about "painting" with bacteria, being a bio person myself, i thought it really meant painting the bacteria on using swabs in different designs. for me, the use of the stamp kind of took away from the pieces because they were so precise i guess. i would have liked to see more experimentation with how all the different bacteria grows and how you can use that to your advantage in the art form.

electronics alive

both of the presentations so far have been pretty interesting. i guess i didn't really know how far the term art could be stretch and how much technology is having a part in things. i will be honest, some of the work that was shown i didn't really like, but that's just personal bias. i did really like the work that cynthia did with using the two images and interchanging them in different ways to ask the question is it movement or still? those were really cool. i really liked her work with photographing a place over a period of time and layering the images. the light boxes of those works were definitely my favorite.
for bruce's presentation i was pretty interested in seeing how you could take fine art and also make it digital. people did work and then photographed it and tweaked it, which i do so i thought that was cool. again, some of the works like the LED light installations, i wasn't a fan of, but oh well. i thought it was good that he talked about the jobs that were available to a digital artist in this time. he really gave a lot of information about a lot of international digital art awareness. i didn't know how widespread things were at this time. in looking at the virtual reality pieces, i really want to learn how to do that and make my own little world. after doing fine work for so long it just baffles me that you can create such intricate things using only a mouse and keyboard.

flip book

So, the card reader on my computer is broken right now but it's in the works to be fixed. As soon as it is, pictures will be going up of my flipbook. Basically I started out with a red ball that then gets zapped by a lightning bolt and turns green, then it breaks open and ants come out, then one ant spontaneously combusted, then the fire grows bigger and the pages turns yellow and gets erased by a blue eraser on a spring then a little man comes out and turns into a super hero with a cape and flies around and gets eaten by a big evil snake.

pictures coming soon

singin in the rain

ok, so i have no idea what happened between the first singing in the rain and clockwork orange other than a huge increase in drug usage. the civil rights movement was also getting started. the vietnam war was also taking place which could have influenced the huge increase in violence. to tell you the truth, i thought clockwork orange was pretty disturbing and i have no desire to watch the whole movie. i feel like a lot of the violent things seen in film really do influence people and how they act. how can we find torturing and hurting someone so much entertaining? i truly find it repulsive especially when it is someone being sick and twisted and hurting people just because they think it's fun. i don't want to watch any movie like that.

wearable computer? whaaaat???

ok i'm not sure at all how i feel about a wearable computer. i already don't like that i see in myself a desire to have instant gratification. i think this can be a dangerous thing because people will become more and more impatient with the technology that they have. i just don't think this is necessarily something that should be a common everyday thing. i think this is a really interesting technology that can be used for certain things. if everybody had one of these, i think they would just do everything with it. i already feel this way about the iphone. yes it's an impressive piece of technology but i think it takes a personal aspect of life away. i have sat with groups of people and they just take their iphones out and use all the different applications instead of being social and interacting with others. i think this new wearable computer would make that even more prevalent. new technologies like that always worry me.

broadway

i thought the history of broadway was pretty cool. i grew up with the theater and have seen a lot of the shows that the movie talked about. i didn't know a lot about the early early days though so it was interesting to see about the follies and stuff. i'm not sure how i feel about watching this opera... clearly i haven't done it yet, but hopefully it won't be that bad.

baroque opera class

I guess I haven't had a ton of exposure to opera. I am not really the biggest fan but I can appreciate the technology and advancements they made. I think it's totally ridiculous and crazy that they cut boys balls off to keep their voices high. That's not worth it at all. I thought Vatel was pretty cool with the fountains and fireworks was cool but it just shows how much people had to go through just to please the nobility. So, although I wasn't in love with the opera itself, I can appreciate different smaller pieces of it.

Sooo, I've never blogged before but this is a pretty cool idea to stay connected to our class. I'm supposed to post who I am. I'm Sarah. I have no idea what to expect from this class really but so far I'm excited to learn more about the projects and stuff. I'd rather have a class like this where I can be creative than the other ones where you listen and regurgitate everything you've ever heard.
That's it for now. (hope this is a good first blog...)