Musical Breakfast

For my performance art piece, I decided to do something simple but meaningful. I bought a bagel and bottle of water at Einstein's Bagels and brought it to class in somewhat nice attire. I sat down in a chair, and played music on my iPhone while eating my meal. The music from the iPhone represented how easy it is to set up a scenario in which you can enjoy something as simple as a breakfast meal, even more. The portability of such technology helps us brighten up our day a little more, and make every experience seem in accordance with the music if you are listening to it. Here are the pictures of the performance art piece:

Xerox project

For our third project, we had to xerox parts of our body and paste the resulting copies onto a posterboard or some other medium. I chose to do only my hands and face, while utilizing the fading that xerox copies have. There is one specific xerox that is my favorite, and it is the frontal face one. My eyes in it look pretty neat I think. Here is a picture of the project:

Grid Art

For our second project, we had to create something using grids. I chose to cut a picture of a giraffe into a grid, draw it on seperate pieces of paper, and then transfer the picture piece by piece onto the ground using coffee and a knife. It took longer than I had expected, as I really wanted it to look good. Here are some pictures of the project in work:

Flip Book

A bit late, but here is the flipbook animation feedback:

Project 1: Flipbook animation-

I created a 200 page (197 pages actually... the cover lied to me when I bought it!) about a mushroom that comes alive and eats a gingerbread man. The animation then progresses through a crazy dream-like world which ends with the gingerbread man being reborn and eating the mushroom that had previously eaten him.

Here are my comments on others' works:

Victor: He made a video with music of several events including clouds raining and an adventure of a stick man. The fast-paced music fit it quite well.

Coleen: Beautiful succession of different seemingly random pictures.

Taylor: A novel transformed into a work of art.

Ciara: A seed sprouting into a flower when the sun rises and going back into a seed as the sun sets.

Ryan: A monster who eats a drug mushroom and feels like he is in Narnia.

Anastasia: A flower that grows, then dies, then turns into a peace sign and flower.

Bernadette: A yellow ball rolling down a staircase, then rain turning into an ocean and eventually a rainbow.

Matthew: A series of photos showing his apartment.

Adam: A series of blocks falling into place and forming a house.

Perri: A series of balloons, a butterfly, and flowers in motion.

Murad: Depicts a sun rising and a liquid falling. The liquid is apparently blood considering the title of the animation.

Ashley: A collage of shapes and colors, with tears in the paper where some heart shapes are. Several blank pages. A revised version sports quickly and sloppily drawn letters of the alphabet.

Brendan: Very solid and seems like it took a lot of effort to complete. A growig arrow turns into a sunset eventually. The entirely black pages with pictures being distinct, stood out in the project and seemed unique.

Shawn: A tank fighting a monster akin to the visuals in the movie The Hulk. Once the monster had been ultimately killed, another tank came onto the scene and after exchanging several rounds, the two kill each other. The message "War, what is it good for?" is shown.

Wired NextFest

I browsed through wirednextfest.com today and came across several interesting articles. Although not as significant as some of the others, the article on a game called "Brainball" aroused my interest. It is a game where a ball is put in the middle of a table, and two people wear headbands that measure stress level. The ball is connected to the headbands, and whoever is calmer, wins, as the ball rolls towards the player with more stress. I just find this fascinating because it goes against one of the principal rules of games - excitement and fun.

Another article I stumbled upon was one about a car powered by man-power. A four-seated, semi-electrical (for when you don't want to do anything) car, will be unveiled on Earth Day of 2009. Apparently, this car only needs the power of its passengers to push and pull a rowing-like thing to make the car accelerate. However, it does not specify what happens when less than four people are in the car, as we all know people tend to drive alone much of the time.

Overall, I find the site to be interesting. I will definitely check up on the site every now and then, as it has a Popular Science (magazine) feel to it. Most, if not all, of the articles on the site were new to me, and I most likely would never have known about any of them (excluding the more important ones as the man-powered car) if I had not read it on the site.

Flip Book

Creating a flip-book animation for this class was a very fun activity. I had never before done something like this, and became truly engrossed in my work as it progressed. Each time I picked up the book and pencil, I had a new idea about where I wanted to take the picture story. This created a story that was all over the place, but that just made me love it even more. I spent a good amount of time completing the project, but it was definitely worth it. I plan on scanning each page onto my computer and compiling an animation via flash.

Learning about opera

These past few weeks we have been learning about opera and how it has influenced modern media. We watched several operas and learned the different techniques brought to the table by several writers. The lighting effects, combined with sound and acting, provides an insight into how people are influenced and why we like certain things in our entertainment today. For instance, without the introduction of music into movies and television, they would be a lot more bland. Opera, having been the medium in which this technique was formed, has provided a huge leap in the entertainment time line.