Final Thoughts on Class

Overall, this was an interesting, out of the box experience. I have seen things in this class I never knew existed. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't. But the point of this class was not to show me videos I liked, but to educate me what has actually occurred relating to art and technology. I would never do any of these projects in any of my business classes. In those classes we are tought only what is in the textbook. Even though the content of this may not directly help me in the business world, the ideas of forming new ideas and thinking out of the box will be extremely helpful. From this class I learned that is important to approach certain topics with an unbiased viewpoint. You have to understand that even if you don't want to learn about a certain side of a topic, it is necessary to learn from it. I want to say thanks to Santiago for being so passionate about this class. This kept me motivated to come to class and learn. If I had some of my other teachers for this class, which I won't name names, they may have made this class extremely boring. It's all about the way you approach the topic. You have to keep an open mind.

Last Day of Class

Everybody's video art pieces were very interesting. I was really glad they were all so different so we didn't have to watch the same types of viedeos over and over. My favorite was Kayla's "hard news". I learned a lot about everybody in class. Every project we did revealed new things about everyone. This was my favorite project to do. I really got attached to the project and spent hours looking at different clips relating to Iraq. It put a lot into perspective. God Bless our Troops!

My Video Art Piece!

Video Art

We also learned about video art last week, I forgot to post it before electronic music. I have very similar views to video art as I have for electronic music. There seems to be a ton of really cool video art pieces and installations, but some as well that seem to drag on. Maybe because I'm not an art major or I don't understand some of it is the reason for me not enjoying some of the lengthy pieces. I believe after a certain point in time I lose focus. I'm glad there is a 1:30 time limit (which I exceeded a little bit) to our video art pieces, so I can contribute equal focus to all of them.

Electronic Music

Last week, we learned about electronic music. As a guitar payer, I try to respect many different types of music. As for electronic music, I believe it is extremely interesting and the boundaries are endless. There have been many awesome techno songs that I've heard and some cool techno remixes as well. However, I have heard some repetitive techno music that seems to never end. I think some of these song are set up to be played for long periods of time in a club. I can understand this in a club, but if I were to be listening to a 15 minute rave song on my ipod, I'd probably go crazy. But a lot of techno is really awesome.

Performance Art Today!

Today everyone did their performance art piece. I was pretty nervous. It ended up not being that bad at all. I'm glad I'm done with it anyway. Everyone's performances were very interesting and different. Today was my favorite class so far. I learned a lot not only about people's interpretations of art and technology, but I also learned a lot about my classmates.

Classmate's Performance Art

Laura - very nice, my favorite part was when you broke the cell phone
Adam - one of my favorite performances, cool how you used music to air brush
John - very simple and meaningful performance
Bernie - very creative, great idea to use cherry's as paint
Ashley - great, i liked the blender in the background
Laura - very funny, a lot of gamers can relate to this
Sierra - really cool, your a very good painter, i could never do that live
Sean - a lot of kids can definitely relate to this "guitar hero" experience
Ryan - really creative and awesome soundtrack
Perri - very meaningful, i strongly relate to the amount of time we spend dealing with technology
Stacy - funny and cool performance, I liked the end when you fell
Coleen - also very meaningful, a lot of girls can relate to your performance
Brendan - i guessed wrong, but i could see how it was the first song, I liked the audience interaction
Victor - awesome, as a guitarist myself I respect live musical performances

Classmate's Xerox Project

Victor - simple idea that worked out great
Taylor - simple and very creative (i wish i thought of that)
Adam - it was cool how you enlarged the hands
MaKayla - the mirror was a good idea, funny that it broke
Murad - the UT sign was very creative
Perri - very cool design
Ryan - great job, my favorite project
Bernie - two projects!, cool how you wrote things on your hands
Ashley - i like the id tag, showed who you are
Laura - very cool dragon
Sierra - the jewelry made it different and interesting
Shawn - wow, scanners are much more clear than xerox
Staci - your photos made a very clear butterfly, really cool
John - really neat fade effect

Grid Art Project's

Victor - really cool how you incorporated Pac Man and an everyday grid
Colleen - one of my favorites, the eye idea was awesome
Makayla - really neat and creative mosaic design
Ryan- cool picture, but had similar flaw to mine (no clear grid)
John - really detailed, must of took a long time!
Perri - that's a lot of color in one racket, cool
Stacy - another time consuming project, nice
Bernie - simple and colorful, i like it
Adam - the best project, imo
Murad - cool idea for a grid
Shawn - good idea, just needs more
Brenden - i wish i could draw like that, awesome

11/6

recently we have been talking about performance art. It's interesting, freaky, and extremely out of the ordinarily. when you think of art, you def don't think of performance art. People cutting themselves in public for a live performance. In my mind, it seems a little unnecessary. Some of the performance art with technology and dancing is cool. But the performances involving pain doesn't really interest me and I would never go see them. we have a performance art project coming up and I'm a little clueless about what I'm going to do. Also, really nervous!

Xerox Project

In the xerox project we had to xerox our body and dilsplay the pictures. I basically took a regular box, cut it up a little, and made a 3D posterboard out of it. I took pictures of my hands, face, ear, keys, iphone, an backpack. Then i cut all the photos up and pasted them in my box. In one picture, I moved my fingers when the xero machine scanned my hand and it made a fire-like effect. It was pretty cool. this project was definetely different. I was really nervous to take pictures of me on xerox, but it really wasn't that bad.

Grid Art Project

In the grid art project, I drew a guitar on my glass sliding door. I made a grid out of music notation. Umm, the problem with the project, which Santiago let me know, was that I didn't really use a grid. Instead I made a grid to go along with my picture. What I was originally going to do was draw the guitar on my blinds because they made a cool grid. It would of been really cool to a photo of that when the sun is rising and the there would be horizontal beams of natural light. However, I hit a speed bump or a brick wall when I bought dry-erase markers and found out they didn't erase on my blinds. Luckily I tested it out with just a small dot of marker on my blinds which is still present. So, I had to improvise and draw it on my glass door instead. And I suck at drawing.

Flip Book

Last week in class we had to do a 200 page flipbook. At first I was scared because I suck at drawing and I thought now I'm gonna have to draw 200 pictures! Luckily I was able to use technology. I recorded a 30 sec video of a virtual tour of my apartment. Yes, 30 seconds was more than enough time to video all 500 sq. feet. Then I broke the movie clip down into frames. Since their were roughly 450 frames, I only used every other. I printed them onto two sets of business cards. To keep them together, I was going to hole punch like 3 at time. I knew that would take forever because I would have to hole punch each one in the same exact spot. So instead, I took the cards to kinkos. They had a drill that drills a uniform hole through paper. I had two sets of cards and the young guy at kinkos insisted he can do all 225 in one shot. He went into the back, came back, and said he messed it up. The drill bit went through half and then slipped out to the side. Luckily, it slipped out to the side where there was no pictures so I just asked him to make a new whole and not do them all at once. He didn't charge me, so I was pretty happy about that. Overall, it was a fun experience. If I knew what I was going to do in the end, it would not have taken me so long. However, like everything else in life, I made some annoying mistakes that cost a lot of time and some money.

Damien Hirst

Today we talked about the artist Damien Hirst. His work is very interesting. The fact that he made 200 million dollars off his work proves that he is definitely talented. I didn't even know this type of art existed. One of my favorite pieces by him is called the "Virgin Mother". It is a statue of a pregnant woman. Half of the statue is in the regular cement looking tone and the other half highlights the inside of her body including the fetus in color. The split cows was a cool peice two. I wonder were most of his work is displayed? Living on Long Island, I go to NYC a lot. I would be interested in seeing some of his work if any of it is in the city.

9/11 Question of the Day

Today's question in art and technology is:

Why did they use a piano player for background music in the first motion pictures?

Well, I beleive the most obvious answer is because the first motion pictures had no sound. Therefore, the sound was played by a piano player because the recording sound technology along with motion picture was not yet available. The music played added emotion to the motion picture. If the scene conisists of happiness, cheerful music would be played. If the scene consists of sadness, melow music would be played. It is basically an additional effect to make the motion picture seem as if it were occuring live before your eyes.