We've done a lot in class so far, from reading about the origins of time to nude figure drawings, and honestly I've enjoyed it all! I definitely liked the art projects better than the reading and analyzing though because I came into the class expecting to be exploring different forms of art, not different ideas about time and memory. However, I am not disappointed at the lack of art projects in the first half of the semester because I learned a lot, but i'm definitely excited about the new projects coming up!

     My favorite thing so far was the drawing session with the nude model. It was my first time doing that so i was very excited and not uncomfortable at all. It was nice to be in a room where the human body was an inspiration for art instead of something to be ashamed or afraid of. I also loved just looking at the outline of the ladies body and finding cool shapes in the negative space. After we finished all of our figure drawings we had to make a collage out of them with little guidelines. I'm really used to having pretty strict rules for projects in art classes so the freedom of this project was nice. I can definitely tell we are going to have a lot more freedom than we did in my high school studio art class. Everyone's collage came out different and it was fun to hear about everyone's inspiration for their collage. 

     Watching Momento and trying to understand the order of the scenes and what exactly was happening was challenging but awesome. I love that movie! It is a perfect example of how one can manipulate time and order to completely change the feel of a movie for a viewer. It fit in well with everything that we were studying concerning time and memory. I had seen it before and was so confused so I was happy to see it again and was definitely able to put things together better. 

     I am really excited that we are learning about animation because it's something I really love doing and want to know more about. I've done some video animation, mostly claymation, so I decided to do a flip book for this project so I can try something new! I also really like the freedom of this project and I'm excited to see how everyones project came out. 

ARTIST RESEARCH

Zach Pine

Zach Pine is a sculptor who makes all of his work out of organic material. He does a lot of work with balancing rocks, but is also known for his balls of sand which he has mastered and installed in various places. This is how he describes himself as an artist. "Using materials from nature, I create ephemeral abstract sculptures. Some of my work is made solo, but the majority of my art involves others, in the tradition of social sculpture. Healing, seeking balance, valuing interdependence, and accepting uncertainty and impermanence are important themes in my art and in my life."
I'm interested in this guy because I love nature sculptures!
http://www.naturesculpture.com/




Alex Grey...
because he's awesome!
Alex Grey is a really unique artists who makes spiritual and psychedelic 2D and 3D work. Everything he does is giant too so its amazing to see it in person. Every full moon he has a gathering and I went once went to his house for it and he talked about his beliefs and showed his art and then there was a crazy drum circle dance party :) His art is gorgeous!
http://www.alexgrey.com/



Andy Goldsworthy
Another super talented nature sculptor. I love all of his work! He makes temporary and permanent sculptures from things he finds outside. He is kind of similar to Zach Pine.
http://www.morning-earth.org/artistnaturalists/an_goldsworthy.html

     In class on Tuesday we watched Man With A Movie Camera, a silent Russian documentary with no real plot. I thought it was crazy how the editing style was so new in the early 1900's and how the film was criticized for its short frames. It seems like short shots are a lot more mainstream nowadays! We also split up into groups and made a collage of lines shapes that had to either feel anxious or calm. When we had to guess the feelings of the collages the first things I looked at were colors. Cool colors always seem calm and warm colors always seem more exciting. However it seemed like a lot of people were looking at the shapes first, simple and smooth being calm, and busy and jagged being anxious. The rest of class we spent collaging our figure drawings which I really enjoyed because we had a lot of freedom which makes it easier for me to work. That night we read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, a book I am also reading for my freshman seminar. It worked out well because Chapter 4 was my next assigned reading for my seminar too! The most interesting part was when McCloud talked about how time can be showed in a single frame just from the movement of one's eyes. I also liked how he remade the Muybridge photograph below with his cartoon character. 

     On Thursday we finished up our collages and discussed everyone's piece.  It was interesting to see how different everyone's collages were and whether people had planned an idea for their collage or if things had just flowed.

 Questions:

1. How have shot lengths changed throughout movie making history?

2. Why does our brain associate different colors with different emotions and feelings? 

     I decided to research average shot lengths (ASL) and how shot lengths have changed throughout movie making history. I did this because the ASL in Man With A Movie Camera was way shorter than the average movie in the early 1900's and it was criticized because of this.   I counted the shot lengths in Man With A Movie Camera, like I showed before, and then looked at something most people watch nowadays on TV. It seemed that most shows had a similar ASL as did Man With A Movie Camera, so something tat was once highly criticized is now becoming mainstream. I started off by looking up music videos to see if the has been a decrease in ASL over time. When I looked up "Music Videos" Lady GaGa's Bad Romance was the first thing that came up. Wow it was scary... I hadn't really listened to the song and I don't really watch music videos so it was quite surprising. Anyhow, in this music video the shots are mostly between one and three seconds long.

     Then I looked at the first music videos from the 1980's. Their ASL's seemed to be around 8-13 seconds. An example I used for that was Talking Head's Once In A Lifetime. 

     Average Shot Lengths seem to be getting shorter and shorter. I looked up a database on line that documented ASL's from a bunch of different movies over time but the database was kind of confusing and I'm not sure how accurate it was but it showed that the longer shot lengths were from older movies in the mid 1900's and the shorter shot lengths were more in the present. http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php. 

     I also looked at how these short shots have been linked to attention problems such as Attention Deficit Disorder. "In contrast to the way real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, the pace of TV is greatly sped up." says Christakis. His research appears in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics. Quick scene shifts of video images become "normal," to a baby "when in fact, it’s decidedly not normal or natural." Christakis says. Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways." 

"In the study of more than 2,000 children, Christakis found that for every hour watched at age one and age three, the children had almost a ten percent higher chance of developing attention problems that could be diagnosed as ADHD by age 7. A toddler watching three hours of infant television daily had nearly a 30 percent higher chance of having attention problems in school." 

     The decrease in ASL could also be an explanation to why there are a lot more attention problems in children then there have ever been. 

http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=ADHD%20Toddlers