Arts 1601 - Fall 2007

I did my presentation on the Brothers Quay. A brief overview of them is that they were born in 1947 in Pennsylvania and now live and work in England. They are now well known stop motion artists but before they were so they worked as professional illustrators. They have done some music videos for a couple groups but did not do any for Tool like many people mistakingly believe. Most of their stop motion has a creaapy and dark atmosphere to them and often use dolls.

To watch some of their work just copy and paste this adress with the number at the end being from 6135-6151
https://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/embed/(insert number here without parenthesis)

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For my final project I started off with an idea that did not work out so I then decided to try and make an audio representation of what my day is like. In it I wanted to try and portray a depressed atmoshpere since I deal with depression quite a lot. To do this I tried to be minamalistic in the sounds I used for the day and to not have people interaction and also had a background track of sighs and other things. Overall I think that I got the mood across but that is because I know what I was trying to get across so I am not sure if other people get the same atmoshpere from it.

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On December 5th, 2007 at the Weisman Lowery Sims did a presentaion on art works that had to to with being enviromentally friendly and global warming. During the presentation she showed many works of art that in some way or another had to do with the enviroment. The purpose of a lot of these artworks were to get people to think more about the enviroment than we do. The artworks that she talked about ranged in style a lot from paintings to earth works. An example of one of the earth works is a mountain that was man made and then had 10,000 trees planted on it arranged into the shape of a spiral. Also, there was a painting depicting a future in which a city was flooded over but life went on for wildlife like birds and jellyfish. Some of the artworks were just to get people to think about the enviroment on a whole while others were more specific and were about global warming. Like one were the artwork was marking around the city how high the water level would be if a future flood was to happen. Throughout the presentation though she showed a lot of artwork from other people she did not show her own.

On April 19th, 2007 Kelly Dobson did a presentation at the Regis. Her presentation was about machine therapy and how we connect with machines. Also, she talked about her current project. In her lecture she said that people can connect with machines more than just using them for there purpose. She found this out when she was walking by a construction zone and used the loud levels of noise to cover up her screaming. She then started to go back and make noises next to the machines and harmonize with them which made her feel conected to them. Because of this she believes that machines have unintentional affordances that affect us. In the lecture she talked about transitioinal objects or objects that we rely on for a need or comfort that we phase out of use when we no longer need them to fullfil that need or comfort. Along these lines she made something she called the sceam body. What it is is a bag that you can scream into and it absorbs the sound so it can't be heard and also records it so that you can realese it later. She hopes that it can be a transitional object that can help people be more comfortable with letting out a scream when they really feel like they need to. Other than through sound Kelly believes that machines might comunicate with us through electromagnetic communication since our heart makes an electromagnetic field that pulses according to our moods. Her current project is Umo, Amo. and Omo. These are little machines that are supposed to communicate with people through different means. Umo does through with sound by making a purring like noise. Amo does so by making electromagnetic fields. And Omo does so by breathing. Overall I found her theories and work to be very intriguing and would like to see how her current project works out.

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When I started off on the project I knew that it would take a lot of work to make stop motion but I didn't think that it would take as much time as it did. I found it to be a very time consuming and at times tedious process to go through to make a video but in the end when you get to see the fruits of your labors it does make it worth it. There was a real sense of fullfillment when you watch your inanimate objects brought to life on a video. Overall I had a lot of fun with this project though there were times when things got really annoying like when things would fall over or not be able to move in the ways that were invisioned when planning. Also batteries dying in the camera can be really annoying. Well I am glad that this was out third project since it was a new experience that I enjoyed on the whole and I plan to continue doing stop motion videos on my own for the fun of it.

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For my final project I would make a new film. In this film I want to try and depict how society is becoming narrow minded and somewhat robotic. What I mean by this is society expects everyone to stay within the lines and follow a basic path (i.e. go to school, go to college, get a job.) for your life and if someone steps out of the lines they become an outcast or someone that should be avoided. Some things I want to do in the film are have most people looking the same(maybe get some cheap mask so the faces are the same too) and depict the news and neuropharmaceuticals as controlling techniques. Also I would like to have the people that look the same force anyone that is different to conform. As I earlier stated I want to make this as a video. I do not know how long I want to make it, I guess long enough to get my point across. The video will be real time for the most part but I might mix in some stop motion. The audience for this will be the general population.

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When it was first said that we were going to do a stop motion video for the next project I immediatly started thinking of what I would like to use for it. In the end I decided that I want to use a basic human figurine. What I want to do in the video is to make it like it is a dream. I have been thinking I want to start off by having someone lying down to sleep in normal video and then jump into using the figurine and then maybe even end it with the person waking up and moving around in stop motion. I have been tossing around multiple ideas for locations for the dream part of the film. From outdoors to trying to make small sets at my place for it. For the sounds in the film I plan to make and maybe alter sounds that I can record from anything that I have lying around my place.

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When we first got this project I didn't know what I wanted to do. Then through some exploration I decided that I would do a card trick and that I would do it as a silent film. Making it a silent film made the filming process pretty simple since there was no script or audio to screw up. The only porblems that I encountered during filming then were camera angles and screwing up on part of the trick. The editing process was a little more difficult. At first I wanted to use both a close up of the cards for teaching and also just show the trick being performed but with having to use text to say everything it soon became evident that I could not do it that way becuase it would not have fit within the given amount of time. Also, it became very monotonous. So with taking some advice I changed it up a little and decided to use the performance part to teach the basics and then use the close up to teach the harder parts of the trick. This then fit the film in the allotted time but in the end made it a little bit harder to follow than the other way.

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How to do a card magic trick.

Continue reading "Project 2 proposal" »

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The place that i chose was the Hidden Falls Regional Park and this is because it is a peaceful and relaxing park. I also thought it is interesting that while here as in any park in the cities you get both sounds from nature like birds and crickets but also sounds that are from cities and the such like traffic in the background. One thing that was unexpected for me was on the day I went to go get sounds there were basically no other people at the park and so it was extremely quiet and I had to make some sounds myself by throwing pebbles into the water among some other things. When it came to organizing the sounds that I got I set them up in the order of the places I stopped around the park. For me this was the most logical since it then follows some sort of path. When it came to editing the piece in audacity I used some repeating to get some sounds to last the same amount of time as others that needed to go together and I also amplified some quiet sounds so that they were easier to hear. I also used the envelope tool to try and get a spatial sound with the motor boat. All in all I did find the project to be fun though challenging at times. It was difficult to try and figure out what I wanted to do with the sounds when I was editing and when I was out recording I wasn't even sure that anything was being picked up for the most part since it was a quiet day out there. When I got back and listened to the recordings and found out I did get sounds it made me fell a lot better.

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Theresa Handy
Twins, 2007
For me this piece was a great representation of how dark and bleak the colder seasons in Minnesota can seem. The piece was dark, gloomy, and barren apart from the twins in the water in the upper left. It was very effective at giving off the depressing mood that the seasons can hold for people.

Chris Larson
Shotgun Landscape, 2007
This piece really struck home with me since the landscape depicted looks very similar to how the country side i grew up in looked during late fall. The landscape in this piece again shows more of a barren open area surrounded by woods. Most of the plants in the landscape look dead since the trees are devoid of leaves and the grass is brown. Again as with the last piece i talked about the barren and dead look to everything gives off a depressing atmosphere. There are no real signs of life during the film so it also seems like a very lonely place. The way at which the landscape was revealed was pretty inventive i think. It also goes along with country life (at least where i grew up) where you go out and shoot target practice for fun on whatever you have around.

Kathrine Turczan
Hidden Beach, Mudman, 2003
To me this one really portrayed sadness and loneliness. The man in this photo is just standing there expressionless and with slouched shoulders which conveys a lack of energy and joy. In this picture he is all by himself on a wooded part of the beach which helps make it seem like he is all alone. The fact that this picture was in black and white adds to the mood it portrays but not brightening things up. This goes for the rest of the hidden beach series of photos that the wiesman had as well. One thing that i really liked about the series is that no one was smiling in any of the pictures even though they were at a beach where people would tend to have fun.

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