Post #15 - Reading and GRQ - Thompson and Bordwell - Film and Video History

As time progressed different styles of filmmaking started to emerge from Impressionism to Abstract animation. In Russia, Futurists wanted to embrace the "machine age" and filmed different things that had to do with the technological advances at the time. This all started in the 1910s, after this decade a new film started becoming popular in the 1920s with Abstract Animation in which artists began to experiment with different additions such as music and painting. Not only did this start to become popular in Russia but in France filmmakers also began to experiment with different ways in which to make film and ways to get emotion from the viewers. This experimentation then spread to different countries all around the world from Japan to the US, cinema became the new and shiny thing of the decade in the mid-'20s. All types of strange and uncanny ways to make film started to go around, however as the next war began film stopped at abstract and became more towards trying to portray the military along with violence; this mostly in Europe and the US. Not only that but cinema also began to warp into having an agenda almost poetic or storytelling.

 1. In the late 1910s in Germany, a few artists believed that since film was a visual art like painting its purest form would be abstract. One of them, Hans Ritcher, had studied art and worked with an Expressionist group. During World War I, Ritcher encountered a group of Dadaists in Switzerland......

2. Apparently knowing little of commercial animation techniques, Ruttmann painted with oil on glass, wiping off portions of the wet paint and repainting them. He photographed each change from above illumination placed beneath the glass.

3. By 1922, it was in serious decline, but key Dada films were still to come. In late 1924, Dada artist Francis Picabia staged his ballet Re/ache (meaning "performance called off"). Signs in the auditorium bore such statements as "if you are not satisfied, go to hell." During the intermission (or entr'acte), Rene Clair's short film Entr'acte was shown.

4. Germain Dulac, who had had already worked extensively in regular feature filmmaking and French Impressionism, turned briefly to Surrealism, directing a screenplay by poet Antonin Artaud. The result was The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), which combines Impressionist techniques of cinematography with the disjointed narrative logic of Surrealism.

5. These diverse, widely scattered filmmakers wanted to reduce film to its most basic elements in order to create lyricism and pure form. Indeed, French proponents of this approach soon termed it cinema pur.

6. Some filmmakers experimented by taking their cameras outdoors and capturing poetic aspects of urban landscapes. Their films formed another new genre, the city symphony.

7. In specialized journals and the general press, Deren promoted avant-grade cinema. She distinguished between a "horizontal" cinema that emphasizes action and plot and a "vertical" cinema that "probes the ramifications of the moment," emphasizing not what is happening but "what it feels like or means."

8. Here the filmmaker seeks to capture a personal perception or emotion, much as a poet conveys a flash of insight in a brief lyric. The film lyric aims to convey a sensation or a mood directly, with little or no recourse to narrative structure.

Post #20 - Lecture

Post internet art isn't only being able to create something on the Web but also have that second level of including of what the effects that come from technology and the internet has in society and people. 

Post internet art is different because it allows itself to be self-aware of the major impact technology itself has on people and it's able to use those facts towards what is trying to be portrayed, even if it's not just clearly stated.

Along with that post-internet art touches on the way that things sometimes might not be what they appear to be and the way that this in a way manipulates the perspective of the viewer and what we perceive. All of this can be seen in the video "How Not To Be Seen".

With installation art, the combination of mixed media and multimedia art brings different things to the table. Mixed media uses different kinds of materials allowing the artist to show different textures, etc. With multimedia not only are different materials used in the art but things such as dance, visual art, and audio may be included.

Video games can include all types of art styles and mediums in digital art, as all can be played i different vessels such as PC, gaming console, etc. Popular genres in video game sincluse FPS in which games such as Call or Duty and Halo allow the gamer to have a first person perspective in which most players choose multiplayer as they are able to play with mulpitple people around the world. With RPG games players are able to have a fictional experience to a game allowing the player to have missions and different ways in which the player can choose to play inside the game. Different genres allow players to experience all kinds of ways to play and learn new skills through a simple or complex game. With all of these graphics and reality can be mixed as reality can be used in order to shape a game. As all kinds of art styles can be portrayed through video games a wide variety of exploration to what can be done in the video game world. As the popularity of video games began to reach its peak some artists began to question if these forms are actually art. This can be argued since video games, just like paintings and cultures can include a variety of displayed art such as textures, cut scenes, stills, and voice over which are all considered part of multimedia art.

Discussion

"How Not To Be Seen"

In the video, the artist is portraying the message of how easily people can disappear and the way that the internet can hide those behind it, and by being there you can still not be there. Along with the fact that we can't truly see what goes on behind a camera from the way in which the artwork or video can be manipulated to show something that might not even be there or change something that the artist might not like. The artist of the video also discusses the way in which people in certain situations can "disappear" or be hidden from others, from a gated community to a woman over fifty.

Discussion 2

Are Video Games Art?

Video games are art because just like how very other form of at its main focus is to elicit emotion or entertain the person who is the "viewer" or player. Video games can take something that is known just like "Gof of War" in which norse mythology is explored in an artistic way by giving the player a way to put themselves in that world. The player being able to interact with this allows them to see the different details that are inside the game itself, from the texture of their surrounding, to the sounds that come from a rock hitting a wall or two characters having a conversation. Brining together all of these things allow video games to become multimedia art in itself. Along with the fact that there is an artist behind every video game that allow it to come into existence creatively.

Post #18 - Lecture - Computational Media and Digital Art

We have learned to use technology as our tool, more specifically computer. With a computer, we are able to navigate the internet, save data, create, and manipulate different resources that are at our disposal. Nowadays artists can use computers to create pieces of art just as how they used pencils and paintbrushes, there are applications in computers that can be used in order to create these projects. As digital art gets more and more popular with modern artists old techniques may have faded a bit, along with allowing new kinds of art styles to emerge. Conceptual art allowed artists to think of an idea and be able to create something new and that could be interpreted in many different depending on what the artist may want to portray this allowed artists to play with different things such as movement and sound. Kinetic sculptures also became more popular as art started to have an abstract definition as to what it could be. John Whitney was one of the "Fathers of Computer Dynamics" as he truly began to experiment on how to make art with computers. Whitney started to work more and more on computer animation first creating the graphic that is in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo, along with receiving the nomination for Best Animated Short Film for "Matrix". In EAT both engineers and artists came together to make pieces of combined digital, visual, and classic art; creating a new kind of art. With technological advances, film/video became more popular allowing artists and filmmakers to have more creative flexibility by being able to edit, especially with the popularity of Youtube on the rise in the early 2000s.

Discussion

Electronic Media and Performance

I believe the self-destruction of Banksy's painting was a way for him to give a certain meaning to what art is and how it should be appreciated or even interpreted, I think he wanted to get a reaction from the sudden destruction to what would have been a $1.4 million sale. Banksy also shows the way in which he likes to convey emotions and even irony through his spray paint artworks, not only by having clear messages that can be seen in the art but also in the places and locations that he chooses to put these artworks, along with the audacity of doing it in public areas in midday yet still staying with his hidden identity.

Post #13 - Reading and GRQ - Arson and Mansfield Modern Art Excerpts

1 In general, that art is characterized by abstract, geometric forms and a technique in various materials, often industrial in nature, are assembled rather than carved or modeled. But ___ originally referred to a movement of Russian artists after the 1917 Revolution who enlisted art in the service of the new Soviet system.

2 Faktura could be considered and treated as autonomous expression, as texture that generates specific forms. In this way the narrative function of figurative art was replaced by a self-contained system.

3 In Dada there was a central force of wildly imaginative humor, one of its lasting delights—whether manifested in free-word-association poetry readings drowned in the din of noise machines, in absurd theatrical or cabaret performances, in nonsense lectures, or in paintings produced by chance or intuition uncontrolled by reason.

4 Futurist dynamism, with its "machine aesthetic," was an optimistic, humorless exaltation of the new world of the machine, with progress measured in terms of speed, altitude, and efficiency.

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5 Tatlin developed a repertoire of forms in keeping with what he believed to be the properties of his chosen materials. According to the principles of what he called the "culture of materials" and "truth to materials," each substance, through its structural laws, dictates specific forms, such as the flat geo-metric plane of wood, the curved shell of glass, and the rolled cylinder or cone of metal.

6 Redchenko’s Hanging Construction is a nest of concentric circles, which move slowly in currents of air. The shapes, cut from a single piece of plywood, could be collapsed after exhibition and easily stored.

7 Gabo found himself increasingly at odds with those members of the avant-garde who denounced art in favor of utilitarian objects to aid in the establishment of the socialist state.

8 Stepanova, who made designs for the state textile factory in Moscow, created striking fabrics in repetitive, geometric patterns suitable for industrial printing methods.

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9 Liberated from rational thought processes, the laws of chnace, Arp felt, were more in tune with the workings of nature.

10 The Zurich Dadaists were violently opposed to any organized program in the arts, or any movement that might express the common stylistic denominator of a coherent group. Nevertheless, three factors shaped their creative efforts. These were bruitisme ("noise-music,"), simultaneity, and chance.

11 The industrial materials of iron and glass and the dynamic, kinetic nature of the work symbolized the new machine age.

12 Tatlin's phrase Art into Life" was the rallying cry of the Constructivists.

Post #16 - Lecture - Electronic Media and Performance

 Electronic media is media that uses electricity, used for the betterment of humanity and in order to help people with daily problems along with making them easier. From the improvement of transportation with the first car to fast metros that go hundreds of miles per hour. The first form of communication included and most popular was the telegraph. The first telephone was invented by Graham Bell, which was at the time only used for one-way communication, unlike modern times in which it is used as entertainment as well. As entertainment became more explored with technology the record player was created in order for people to be able to hear music without a live musician or a radio. Dickson invented the first film camera, which allowed different types of entertainment to be filmed and used. With the popularity of. television in the 1950s news and media became more reachable to others allowing people to become more informed about what is happening around them. However, just how it can be good, it can also have a bad side to eat, in the way that it can influence those who may be susceptible to being influenced in what others may say in the media. I believe that herd mentality is something that is affecting society in modern times because of how much it can influence people's lives. One of the most amazing tv showings was the moon landing, which was one of the moments in which all of the US united to watch such a feat. However because of certain speculations on the believability of the moon landing, maybe because of the lack of knowledge of people who might not have believed to was real because it s in a screen and was not able to seen in person. Benjamin believes that people are interested in those things that might not be acceptable but also with somethings in th media that might be glorified or over exaggerated it can affect the opinions of those who watch it. Some advantages and disadvantages of media are some of the following: something that has been researched is that becas of the media and the way in which affects us has actually caused us in the way that we learn. A new type of art also emerged with electric media art, with decollages being a style in which an artist would rip posters up and create a piece out of what remains behind. In performance art artists go through many different things in order to convey the message they want across.