final class / final project

so i got a little behind on my reflections towards the end of the year, and i was absent two weeks ago so i missed one. but last class we mostly just worked on our final project and this week we critiqued them. it seems weird that the year is already over, and it was great to see how everyones final piece came together.
that being said, i was pretty unhappy with mine. i think technicially it was pretty good. i used the sounds from our sound project to create a heartbeat and i tried within the first second to create a tense feeling. i think in this part i was successful. conceptually, however, i wanted to illustrate how racism is institutionalize and not just the act of prejudice, and i wanted to try to get my viewer to think about that. where i went wrong, i think , is that i approached it from my own understanding after studying this topic intensely for a semester. i forgot that in the beginning of the semester when i first dealt with this topic, everything i ever thought about myself and race was completely questioned and changed. i forgot that what i was trying to convey took me months to accept and to realize, so how could i expect that of my viewers in a mere short video, especially when they do not understand what i am trying to do in the first place. i think that i was just overly ambition and made my piece more about my understanding of racism rather then reaching the viewers in an artistic and thought provoking way.
thinking of it now, i think it would have been better to go about the issue in some sort of satirical or ironic way, that way i could show the viewer that the issue is still relevant, because in order for them to eventually accept that the problem is not individual but systematic they must first see their is a problem

reflections/final

ok so i know i missed a couple reflections but i promise i'll catch up. As for today, it was awesome to have the visiting artist talk to us, his stuff was amazing!!!! i LOVE how he had the installations all be illusions, the chair one blew my mind. Also, the two people eating at a table but are separated, to me that stuff is so beyond cool. That is the kind of stuff i wish i could think up of and would like to do.
also, we got to watch a couple of the animations and they were so good, its really impressive what people can do and i deff appreciate all the time and effort people put into things like that after just going through it myself.

as for my final project, ive been thinking about it a lot and i am just in artistic block! i LOVED rotoscoping and animating and i think that is something i would like to play around with, its just a matter of finding a concept to work well with it. i cant decide if i would like to do something funny or like deep and meaningful. i just don't no. i still want to focus on the psychological aspects of race relations because it is something that fascinates me and is meaningful. Also, i am going to be starting the process of writing a like 15 page research paper on race relations and it literally is going to own my life, and i want to put as much time into the final as i can but the research paper is also my final, so at least if im doing the same topic i can kinda do research for both at the same time and save myself at least a little bit of stress.
the focus for my paper is about colorblindness, and how people just choose not to deal with race because most people grow up in a homogenous area, thus this leads to the notion that racism does not exist and the problem does not get solved. so i guess the question is, how can i expose the colorblindness amongst SU students in an artistic way? i think to just at least start things off i will survey and interview students and then maybe see where that leads me. I feel that for this project it will develope as i actually start to do work with it so i'm kinda just goning to roll with it i guess. I no i don't want my project to just be like a documentary type thing, but maybe i can take what people say and general ideas and somehow manipulate them.
i dont know, im really struggling with like a actual way to go with this, and maybe that is becuase i'm struggling with the topic, its a tough topic and my race class has been really tough and challenging. basically this semester the class has taken eveything we as white students have known about ourselves and relationships with others and completed challenged and destroyed what we thought. but that is why i've loved it so much and want to somehow give people who see my final project this same idea, i want it to challenge people and make them question things like this class has done for me

reflections 3/10

Today we learned a lot about sound and music, and it was really interesting and challenging. The whole shape sounds, or whatever, I really just don't understand. I know how to read music pretty well, and from the little example we got I dont see much difference between western notes and shape notes. I would like to maybe look at it a little more to understand it better, but I think regular notes are just as easy to learn if you learn them the right way, like the sound of music song. You learn how the notes sound, then just attach a word to that sound, so Do Fa la So, replace with words and you have a song.
The Cage music i also found extremely weird and hard to understand. It all just goes over my head. Like I said in my previous reflection, i always try to find rhythm and melody within sounds, so I just dont like the randomness of Cage
Also, i think his scores are insanely complicated and I dont understand them. However, I do appreciate them and think it is amazing that someone could think in that way and actually break out of what is embedded in our head and compose something so completely different and unique

Final Project

For my final project I'm really thinking about doing something with the human mind and how it works. The video we watched of people in the elevator and how they changed just because the group was changing was really funny and also intriguing. I think it is really interesting how people's minds work and will just subconsciously do something like that.
In my writing 209 class our subject is race and power, and a lot of what we have been learning is how racism is institutionalized and even though people may not be racist they do benefit from racist institutions (if they are white). One author we read a lot argues that subconsciously all white people are racist. Im not about to get into the whole racism argument, but I think it would be interesting to investigate the subconscious of race. If i could somehow design a project that would function like the elevator video, but put it in a social context and have it illustrate some sort of dialogue on race in america. What I immediately think of is this girl from my middle school (I went to a very diverse middle school) who would act "normal" around me and other white girls (and by me saying this way of her acting is normal plays into the whole racist ideal, what i've been learning is that it is a racist institution that I believe my way is the normal, but that's a whole other subject) and then whenever any of our black friends would come she would completely change demeanor and talk "ghetto" (again im being very ignorant my writing teacher would think i learned nothing from the course by discussing my topic in these terms but its just easier to get my idea across using this). Maybe something like that, I still don't really know exactly what i want, i'll have to do some more research on psychology of race and different experiements, but that's where im leaning towards.
If i dont go down the race path, i would like to keep with the psychology idea and maybe do something with language, like how we change and manipulate language. Maybe have a video of a person talking to someone who just learned english, but use slang and the non-english speaker will have no idea what there saying . . . Like "whats up" "that shirt is cool" "chillin" , these things make sense to us but to an outsider saying your shirt is cool would imply you literally think their shirt is cold.

reflections

The contact mics we made were really interesting and cool, i never knew that there were different kinds of mics other then the typical singing one. It was really fun to play around with it and see how things sound so different.
Also, i learned how to connect the mic to my computer so i can record directly to it, it is really great to learn things like this because i feel like im really getting my moneys worth with my computer by learning all these different things it can do
The project of making an instrument that just makes interesting noises to me is difficult. When i hear things i automatically search for harmony or rhythm, Ive danced for 15 years, played the piano and trumpet, so its hard for me to just do things for the sake of making interesting sounds, i want it to have a purpose and a meaning.

Gaga in Wonderland, i thought it was cool

original alice in wonderland movie, from 1903

this is soooooo cool!!!

http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr?flickr#colors=5c259a;

reflections 2/24

today's class was really intersting and annoying at the same time. the hole taking toys apart and reworking them and all that stuff was so cool and intestering, i really enjoyed it and learned a lot. What was annoying about it was the actual trying to take them apart, and the sodering (no clue how to spelll it) because i literally could not get it to work plus things that hot and dangerous scare me lol.
it was really cool to see how the toys work and how easily you can change it, when Mark Grim was playing with the video game controller, changing the sound and the visuals it was so sick!
i also really enjoyed critique because it was great to see everyone's interpretations of poems and to see what they themselves could do, not just edit.

Poem Video

2/17 Reflections

The music videos we watched were so cool! I forget the guys name already, but his work is amazing. Some of it I was already familiar with, like the white stripe videos, but the one with the girl walking around the 5 way intersection was so cool. Even the one from the 80's that was out to date and everything I was still thinking, how did he do that?
I didn't find the whole time code concept to difficult to understand, but I should bite my tounge because knowing how me and technology just don't get along i'll probably find a new way to screw it up.
I'm really excited for the next project with the poems, I think it'll be really excited to see how everyone interprets it and I have a lot of good ideas. My first thought was to do this really deep and meaningful poem and have this awesome movie thing going along with it, but after doing the last video project I realized that was way to ambitious. Now I think I want to do a more funny kind of informational video with a 50's style. I think it'll be a lot easier to get closer to my ideal vision of the project since i'll be controlling what is being filmed. At the same time, i have to find people willing to be in it, direct them, and manipulate the film so it looks professional and how I want, so that will be pretty difficult to do in a week.
I also had something that would have been a good idea to go off of for my final project but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is and this is really going to bug me!!! =/ hopefully i'll think of it

Gossip Girls

Gossip Girls from Erin McCarthy on Vimeo.

reflections

I liked the second half of the documentary we watched a lot better then the first. That old guy who looked like Donald trump was ridiculous, he seemed like an arrogant and pompous jerk lol. But the points he was making and the studies he did were fascinating! The whole idea of codes and the way in which he figures them out were really interesting to me, I love learning about the way in which the mind works and what sort of things trigger us. It almost makes me want to minor in psych of something like that. This is just a random side note, but i remember him saying how he worked with autistic children. . . and now he works with millionaires on how to sell "luxury" items and make people more money. Imagine what he could have done if he still worked with mentally disabled children, like all of the techniques and crazy things he has discovered about how a shoppers mind works, imagine if he used that effort to focus on how disable minds work. Instead its all about money, too bad.
another thing i really liked from the video was the man who made his living off of wording things in the write way. the study of language has fascinated me since i read 1984 in highschool and i actually wrote a researched paper on "newspeak" and the idea of language and thought based off of it. This guy works for politicians and companies helping them not reaarragne their policies so the public would like it better, but rearrange how they word their policies so the public will think they like it better. Its kinda of scary how much a person can control another in this way, it reminds me so much of 1984. I dont no if you read it, but in the book the language of newspeak is about eliminating words from teh language to make it less complicated, so not good instead of bad . . stuff like that. The whole point of my paper was about how a government can control their people in this way because they are controlling their minds, because how can people understand what freedom is and want freedom if they have no word to express it and therefor no understanding of what it is. I feel like what this guy is doing is the beginnings of heading in this direction, especially with the whole death panals thing.
finally, i feel like we spent the last part of class talking about whether or not we can use pop songs and existing things in our projects, and as frustrating as it is im glad we cant. i deff agree that our work will be much more creative without the ease and comfort of using something that is their for us, it just makes it a lot harder to do but i guess it will be worth it in the end.

just thought this was really cool. . its a real fish

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/26/17595/5947

Music Video's

Ok I know you hate coldplay. . . I don't know why but I love them and I love this music video. . . it makes NO sense to me, and from what I understand has nothing to do with the song, but I think the way they did it is AMAZING, what it until the very end too, I like how they end it and you get a sense of reality again. . .

More Poems : some cute shel silverstein and dr. seuss poems, i loved these books when i was little =]

poems

Seamus Heaney (1939-)

Digging

(he is coming to speak at syracuse later this year i believe)

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
robert frost
(cliche but i love it)

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.


The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

EMILY DICKINSON

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

credit cards

i totally forgot to post this!!!! ahhhhh im soooo sorry!!!

After reading this my first thought is immediately that i am so glad i do not have a credit card. I honestly do not understand the whole system and why you cant just pay things in money, and building up your credit and credit score. It all goes right over my head, so parts of the article did to. And i am not surprised at all about how much companies know about their customers and all the different techniques they use, their are entire industries dedicated to learning such things. I work in retail and part of my job is to set up displays and sales in a way to attract people like the companies do. For example, certain colors in different sections of the store will attract different types of people (i.e older or younger), and during sales we put things in bins messy because people think they are getting a better bargain when they have to rummage through bins. My store (Victoria's secret) actual has it's own credit card which can be used in the store and paid off directly in the store, and as a sales associated i have a certain amount of cards i have to open each segment. Although the company never officially trained me in how to target people to get to open credit cards, after reading this article i realized that i applied a lot of what the major companies do , and i feel horrible about it. Usually I'll go for younger women shopping in smaller groups, either by themselves or with one other person. I'll start by looking at what they are wearing, and what section of the store they are shopping it. I then go in and ask if they need help, if they say yes i do an amazing and extensive job in helping them. Usually judging off their clothes i can start some conversation topic, like if its preppy i'll talk about the hills or something, or if its kind of off beat i'll mention fall out boy, stuff like that (listening to their conversation if she's with someone helps a lot, then i talk about something like that and they think i actually care about them. . . man i feel horrible). Then when they find what they want to buy i start by saying, "this is such a great choice but did you know that with our angel's card you can get x amount off of your purchase, and also over 100 dollars in coupons instantly?" If they are not looking for anything then i will usually take out the newest selection in our popular pink brand that they would like based off what they are wearing, say something like how its brand new and we have hardly any left and wont be getting any more in, and that with our angels card you get x amount off. . oh you dont have one? well it only takes 2 mins to apply, is free, and you get 100 dollars in coupons instantly! I didnt even realize how many tricks i use, i feel horrible, i target stupid young girls who obviously dont have any credit and dont know better, or older women with a lot of things in their bag who are obvious bargain hunters!
So in terms of credit cards, and industries in general, it is hard to imagine how situationist techniques can work. All of these things go on behind curtains and closed doors, most people dont even know they are being manipulated in such a way so they would not even know there is a situation to stand up against and take situationist action against. From my understanding the situationist wanted to life to move away from capitalism and wanted to focus on the natural human desires shy of convention and restriction. It seems that this would be pretty hard to do when these companies base their job on knowing these very tendencies and desires. You could certainly assert yourself and create and share your own values by boycotting and avoiding such industries, but in our society that is nearly impossible to do. I know hardly anything about credit, since i have none, but from my understanding you cannot take out loans of buy houses or cars and such without having credit and good credit. If one wants to function in this society they almost have to conform to these industries. The situationist techniques i honestly do not think could work today, at least in the way they once did. Their technique in the past was about open resistance and overthrowing the government, i can honestly never see such a thing happening in our society since our government is a. so extremely complicated, b. already very separated and split, and ban all controlling aspect of our society. Certianly their techniques of open resistance would probably not be used today or work in todays climate, you just do not see things like the million man march anymore. In this digital age i feel that if the situationist were to fight against these industries it would be in the form of facebook groups, online petitions, twitter, and texting. Unfortunately that seems to be the way our society is heading, people don't gather in masses like they used to, they blog about it and tweet about it.
After reading this article and thinking about how it could affect me, I will certainly take great care in deciding when i open a credit card, because i no it is inevitable that i will have to. If i can i would love to avoid it because it sounds like more trouble then its worth, however i feel like the way our society is set up you have to have credit, hopefully some day soon i'll understand it all! =/

The biggest thing I learned today and about iDVD, the limitations and problems you can face. It was so frustrating to work with because I had so much I wanted to do and the program just would not let me do it. I wish that I had known the 99 menu rule, and the loop duration, stuff like that. This was the first time the project was done so hopefully the next group who does it will take into account these problems before hand.
The documentary on ad design was really interesting and I'm glad we watched because I was thinking about maybe doing ad design. By watching the video though it made me think do i really want to involve myself in something that is destroying culture? The whole song airline thing was interesting, because I have never heard of them before. At one part they talked about the store in Boston, i'm from there and have never seen it. I thought it was funny how the old guy was like what do you do? I can easily see how people would be really confused about what song is, I just immediately thought of my dad and his attitude, he would not get it at all and just be frustrated that they are trying to be too many things, he would just want to buy a cheap ticket and fly, no fancy work just get the job done.
I also like how we watched and learn how to do those videos where you edit the clip. Ive seen a lot of them where people take cartoons and make them rap or something, but i love the idea of making a song or transforming it completely with just the sounds from the clip, no outside sources. that makes it a lot more challenging but the result will be a lot better i feel

In this class the biggest thing I learned to do was how to use iDVD. It isn't too hard of a program but it was something i did not even know was on my computer (and I wish it did because that would have been SOOOO helpful when I was trying to make our senior video last year =/ ).
I found the Situationalist to be really interesting, though I would like to learn more about them because I still don't really understand how it was an art movement let alone how they almost threw over a government. I also found stumbleupon.com to be really interesting, the stuff I have been finding on it has been amazing!! I really think I am going to have to download that self control program that we were told about or else i'll never get work done between that and facebook.

flow chart

Class Reflections

The first thing that I learned was what exactly time art is. From other students and common sense I figured that it consisted of things like video and sound. I never really thought about all the different forms of expression that have some element of time. Like performance art, sports, even sculptures that are build for the purpose of lasting a certain amount of time. The narrative stories we are doing in which the reader decides which way to go I was familiar with yet never thought of it as time art before.

I found all the videos we watched to be extremely interesting and it made me really excited for this class. In particular I liked the one in the elevator and seeing how people reacted to the other riders standing backwards and what not. I think that is a really interesting concept and I find the idea of studying social behavior can be funny in the way it is presented but also very enlightening. It's something I might want to look into later on.

Another thing I thought was really interesting was the idea of Blind Chance and Run Lola Run, how your life is drastically effected by even the smallest decisions or actions. It makes you really think about your own life and how easily it could be very different just by missing a train. What I like so much about it is that it is very physiological and challenges the thought and mind, kind of like the social behavior video. I'm interested in these topics because through art they allow me to explore and think about other topics in other disciplines, which I love because my interest aren't limited to just what is offered in vpa. This kind of art allows me to combine learning and developing all kinds of interests.