Todays class was all about exhibition, how we present ourself and work. Paul talked to us for a bit on what people want and what their preferences are. People prefer to be able to interact with things, they like it when everything can be easily accessed, when theres a relevance to them and a personal engagement with them. Thats in order of importance as well. This means when ever I make my own personal space online for my work or for pleasure that it crucial at it not in deepest hard to find areas of the internet, thankfully with social media be the powerhouse that is you can link just about anything to your Twitter handle or your Facebook. This enables you to direct attention to your website a whole lot easier, although it doesn't make it easier get the attention it will everything more accessible. This relates to what Paul was saying about your community of geography is smaller than your community of interest, which means there are more people that share the same interests than you, than there are people in your local community. Which me basically means to me if you want to advertise yourself do it online, unless your providing a service for people in your local community then of course advertise locally.
Paul then moved on to start talking about Museums and in the modern world they seem to be struggling and less people want to go and visit them. He explains that this is due to a lack evolving throughout the years, stay to the same mentality white walls, wide open spaces and it just appeal to people anymore. Paul wanted to show us some museums that have decided to break the mold. Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Abba: The Museum in Stockholm and Science gallery dublin. The one that stood out the most to me was the Abba: The Museum because they tried to make going to it like a day out and make it no necessarily feel like a museum. Paul said it ironic and it knows its crap which I found funny because it is a museum that knows museum are crap, so it makes it a different type of crap and people start going. They know what they are doing they are making the experience fun and not so serious. Not only that at the end you can get a recording of your day there so you get personal momento of your day there, doesn't museum I have been too before.
At the end of the class Paul talked about a piece of performance art that he was apart of. He got inspiration from Japanese water fountains that acted as signs. He got Seamus Deane an Irish poet, to them a poem and then had James Nesbitt read it out while being filmed by a hacked xbox kinetic camera which gave the footage a cool effect. To be completely honest there was so much going on I didn't know what to make of it, I couldn't really correlate and opinion of it.
Tuesday 5 January 2016
Week 7
Paul was not taking us today but instead there was a new tutor for Cinematic arts Dr. Victoria McCullen who taking us in his stead. She started by tell us what she did previously, she is very academic (obviously,she is a university tutor) having a BA Hons in Media Arts, a MA in Film and Visual Studies and a PHD in Horror Film Studies. She worked with UTV, BBC, MTV and then after finishing her PHD she worked with HBO. While working in HBO she work on a new show Vinyl's teaser trailer. Whilst talking about her time at HBO she not so subtly dropped that Game of Thrones is HBO's main source of money and that they are going to need to create a new show to bring in more money once it ended. This was something that just caught my attention because Game of Thrones is one of my favourite shows at the moment.
However Victoria wanted to focus on American Post 9/11 horror films which is what she wrote about
during her PHD. This was obviously something she is very passionate about and I myself am a fan of
horror films, Victoria asked the class what was our favourite horror films were, while I didn't answer at the time, its "Evil Dead: Army of Darkness". B movie gold. But she seems to into Horror for completely different reasons than myself or I was, but now I can say that I have a much greater appreciation for them. Victoria talked about how horror films are more politically charged than I previously thought. In the 1950's horror films where about the Cold War and nuclear tension and the 1960's they were about the aids crisis by having monstrous children in them. While I do understand films having at times political agendas I did not see them in horror movies before.
Victoria talked to us about the movie "Cloverfield" and how its a post 9/11 horror film, while personally I won't of classed it as a horror film myself, I thought of more as a thriller but it does have those darker horror themes. She shown us a clip of the film, its one at the start of movie, right when action is about to kick in and without thinking that this movie is about 9/11 I would of never of seen why it is. The movie is a found footage film and scene simulates what it would be like for a on looker watching 9/11 happen, as well the now so painfully obvious symbolism of the statue of liberty's head being torn off being as attack on liberty and freedom (the American ideal).
Victoria went to can about the movie "The Devils Rejects" by Rob Zombie and what political views are used in the movie. She when on to explain that the Sheriff in movie is meant to symbolise the stereotype of the American Right, a God fearing backwards man. This is the personification of Bush's views on Iraq and the Firefly family would be Iraq. But the movie represents the firefly family as a loving family that do a lot bad to other people, this comes back to a point when she was talking about misunderstood monsters mainly to do with the vampires in "True Blood". This is mean't to be Rob Zombies views on Iraq being about misunderstood monsters.
However Victoria wanted to focus on American Post 9/11 horror films which is what she wrote about
during her PHD. This was obviously something she is very passionate about and I myself am a fan of
horror films, Victoria asked the class what was our favourite horror films were, while I didn't answer at the time, its "Evil Dead: Army of Darkness". B movie gold. But she seems to into Horror for completely different reasons than myself or I was, but now I can say that I have a much greater appreciation for them. Victoria talked about how horror films are more politically charged than I previously thought. In the 1950's horror films where about the Cold War and nuclear tension and the 1960's they were about the aids crisis by having monstrous children in them. While I do understand films having at times political agendas I did not see them in horror movies before.
Victoria talked to us about the movie "Cloverfield" and how its a post 9/11 horror film, while personally I won't of classed it as a horror film myself, I thought of more as a thriller but it does have those darker horror themes. She shown us a clip of the film, its one at the start of movie, right when action is about to kick in and without thinking that this movie is about 9/11 I would of never of seen why it is. The movie is a found footage film and scene simulates what it would be like for a on looker watching 9/11 happen, as well the now so painfully obvious symbolism of the statue of liberty's head being torn off being as attack on liberty and freedom (the American ideal).
Victoria went to can about the movie "The Devils Rejects" by Rob Zombie and what political views are used in the movie. She when on to explain that the Sheriff in movie is meant to symbolise the stereotype of the American Right, a God fearing backwards man. This is the personification of Bush's views on Iraq and the Firefly family would be Iraq. But the movie represents the firefly family as a loving family that do a lot bad to other people, this comes back to a point when she was talking about misunderstood monsters mainly to do with the vampires in "True Blood". This is mean't to be Rob Zombies views on Iraq being about misunderstood monsters.
Week 6
So todays lecture we started by watching a Ted talk by a man called Deb Roy from MIT. Deb Roy
wanted to build a database of his families life while his son was learning how to speak, so he built a
"home recording system" that record audio and video in every room in his house. Without a meaning
behind doing this, it comes off a little creepy but the things he was able to find by doing this was amazing. He was able to identify the noise his son would make to indicate water, "Gaga" and then take the audio of any time his son would say "gaga", then he was able to show the process of his son learning how to say water. But not only that he was able to see where his son would learn words the most, he called these "social hotspots" and even further than the he was able to create what he called "Wordscapes". Wordscapes are like 3D graphs that create spikes that look like mountains in areas where a word of said the most. Now the presentation takes a very interesting turn and uses this in order to see and record how social interactions work through social media on topics such as TV. They were able to create visual representations of people commenting on social media and then linking them to a TV program, through this they were able to see the different threads of conversations that people had on the topic. This opens up huge potential in marketing and advertising, as well as being able to learn how people interact on social media. The presentation was oddly personal which made everything just a little bit more meaning full and it was able to captivate me just a little bit more because of it.
Paul then started to go on to talk about the "Internet of Things" (IOT) a phrase supposedly coined by
Kevin Ashton. The IOT is a network connected to electronics that can exchange data between them, it means the Internet is tied to more than just your computer, Paul gave examples of fridges that tell you when your food goes out and wine coolers that tell when your wine is cold. But even now a days cars have Internet access, I have sat in a friends cars and watched youtube on a screen where the radio it meant to be. But not only that your phone connects to the Internet and then you can connect your phone to other devices, for instance my younger brother is selling wireless, waterproof speakers meant to be used in the shower for his A-Level business studies class. You can connect your phone to the speaker and use to play your music off of it, even if it is on an app like spotify.
One of the last things that Paul talked about was Cloud storage. Clouds are huge data farms connected to the internet so you can save files and data to the internet and access then whenever you want as long as you are connected to the internet. This is something that I think that if a individual were too travel a lot cloud storage would an extremely handy, instead of using memory pens or external hard drives that you can loss. But I heard of a very interesting way that Nintendo are looking to use them for there up and coming console. Nintendo are looking to use clouds in such a way to give Console much more processing power. But not only but it can use the Internet to use other consoles and use them to help them render games. However unfortunately this information my not be correct due to the source but I'm going to leave a link to it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulXqo0XB9c (Obviously I don't take credit)
wanted to build a database of his families life while his son was learning how to speak, so he built a
"home recording system" that record audio and video in every room in his house. Without a meaning
behind doing this, it comes off a little creepy but the things he was able to find by doing this was amazing. He was able to identify the noise his son would make to indicate water, "Gaga" and then take the audio of any time his son would say "gaga", then he was able to show the process of his son learning how to say water. But not only that he was able to see where his son would learn words the most, he called these "social hotspots" and even further than the he was able to create what he called "Wordscapes". Wordscapes are like 3D graphs that create spikes that look like mountains in areas where a word of said the most. Now the presentation takes a very interesting turn and uses this in order to see and record how social interactions work through social media on topics such as TV. They were able to create visual representations of people commenting on social media and then linking them to a TV program, through this they were able to see the different threads of conversations that people had on the topic. This opens up huge potential in marketing and advertising, as well as being able to learn how people interact on social media. The presentation was oddly personal which made everything just a little bit more meaning full and it was able to captivate me just a little bit more because of it.
Paul then started to go on to talk about the "Internet of Things" (IOT) a phrase supposedly coined by
Kevin Ashton. The IOT is a network connected to electronics that can exchange data between them, it means the Internet is tied to more than just your computer, Paul gave examples of fridges that tell you when your food goes out and wine coolers that tell when your wine is cold. But even now a days cars have Internet access, I have sat in a friends cars and watched youtube on a screen where the radio it meant to be. But not only that your phone connects to the Internet and then you can connect your phone to other devices, for instance my younger brother is selling wireless, waterproof speakers meant to be used in the shower for his A-Level business studies class. You can connect your phone to the speaker and use to play your music off of it, even if it is on an app like spotify.
One of the last things that Paul talked about was Cloud storage. Clouds are huge data farms connected to the internet so you can save files and data to the internet and access then whenever you want as long as you are connected to the internet. This is something that I think that if a individual were too travel a lot cloud storage would an extremely handy, instead of using memory pens or external hard drives that you can loss. But I heard of a very interesting way that Nintendo are looking to use them for there up and coming console. Nintendo are looking to use clouds in such a way to give Console much more processing power. But not only but it can use the Internet to use other consoles and use them to help them render games. However unfortunately this information my not be correct due to the source but I'm going to leave a link to it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulXqo0XB9c (Obviously I don't take credit)
Allingham Festival
I was unfortunately unable to attend this weeks lecture due to going to the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon, So for this blog piece I have decided to write about my experience there and the things I have learnt. There was a lot of information being thrown at me that, from current and past students
on the the design course, as well as a comprehensive list of talks from tutors as well other people who in different fields of the industry. But I get to them later. Mean while I got the opportunity help some third years for do a workshop on stop motion animation for other students. This was my first time doing any animation and I understand that stop motion is kind of basic when it comes to animation so it wasn't hard to understand help out the students when it came to creating their animations.
on the the design course, as well as a comprehensive list of talks from tutors as well other people who in different fields of the industry. But I get to them later. Mean while I got the opportunity help some third years for do a workshop on stop motion animation for other students. This was my first time doing any animation and I understand that stop motion is kind of basic when it comes to animation so it wasn't hard to understand help out the students when it came to creating their animations.
After lunch we got stuck into a couple of talks, some from tutors from Magee like Anthony Hutton and Mark Cullen, then others from people from within different areas in the design industry. Mark was talking about his Dumbo in Donegal project where he is looking to bring investors/ producers and designer closer together. Creating a better community within the industry so that investor and producers can find the designers with the right skill set for their project within Donegal. But not only that the idea gives designers more creative freedom allowing them to choose what projects they would like to work on. Its a great idea and very grandiose one at that, I have also heard of Dan Luvisi (Creator of the comic Last.Man.Standing) trying to do the same in America. However
personally I'm not to sure how it would work out, I think when it comes to certain businesses money trumps creativity and I don't think that is going to change. Anthony's talk had this over arching theme that if machine makes is it still art. The type of thing if a designer designs a model to be 3D printed is it still the art. Which I think it is, I mean technology is a tool which we should utilise much in the same way a paint brush is a tool for Painter and nail gun is to a builder.
undecided about want direction I want to take my life in (obviously in deisgn) it gives me a lot of motivation that if I work hard and maybe with a little bit of luck I could make a name for myself.
Overall the Allingham festival was a huge eye opener for me about what is going on in the design industry but where it might be heading in Northern Ireland.
Week 4
Today Paul talked to us for awhile about our blog and what makes a good one. He shown us a few
examples of past pupils blogs and went through what where the pros and cons, elements like the
presentation of the blog and way that they are written were the main factors. Now I am confident that I have presented my blog in a clearly, I didn't want to make it flashy with multicoloured text and a bold background, in my opinion it doesn't like good. However I do believe that when it comes to the written elements of my blog thats where my main downfall will come from (I say this while writing a blog) because I don't have a particular affinity for writing.
After Paul finished talking about the blog he went on to talk about Steve Jobs and with great
admiration too. He says that Jobs changed the world four times, The Mac, Ipod, Ipad and Iphone. The
first Macs were the first PC's before there was PC's. The Ipod change the way we listen to music and how we store are own collection. The Ipad has now got a place within business and made presentational work far more efficient and convenient. The Iphone has made everyone more connected than ever as well as changing the way we communicate.
We were then shown a commencement speech that Jobs did at the Stanford in 2005 and it was truly awe inspiring. He talked about the start to the end of his journey at that point and time, a
bout how he first started his business and then was fired. About how he found that when he was unsure about what to do it was the best times of his life because it lead to some of his best innovations and creative periods of his life. He said that when he was fired from apple "the heaviness of being successful was replaced by lightness of being a beginner again." I think that can a be message for any designer, to be always looking for something new. One of the things that I found the most interesting was that he was able to use knowledge that he thought that would never benefited him such as taking a calligraphy class after dropping out of College. This would go on to the reason why the first Mac had multiple type faces and Jobs would then go on a get a dig in to Microsoft saying they copied this and thats why every PC has them. It just goes to show, don't skip out on learning something new, you never know when it could be useful to you.
At the end of the lecturer Paul would then go on to talk about the culture differenced between Apple
and Microsoft and how that played apart in how the business where run and how it affected the
products that they made. Both companies came from different parts of America, Apple in California
and Microsoft in Albuquerque. Apple is consider to be very free thinking and Liberal while Microsoft
would be much more Business oriented and conservative. I guess even when it comes to technology
where you come from highly affects what you make, just like in art.
examples of past pupils blogs and went through what where the pros and cons, elements like the
presentation of the blog and way that they are written were the main factors. Now I am confident that I have presented my blog in a clearly, I didn't want to make it flashy with multicoloured text and a bold background, in my opinion it doesn't like good. However I do believe that when it comes to the written elements of my blog thats where my main downfall will come from (I say this while writing a blog) because I don't have a particular affinity for writing.
After Paul finished talking about the blog he went on to talk about Steve Jobs and with great
admiration too. He says that Jobs changed the world four times, The Mac, Ipod, Ipad and Iphone. The
first Macs were the first PC's before there was PC's. The Ipod change the way we listen to music and how we store are own collection. The Ipad has now got a place within business and made presentational work far more efficient and convenient. The Iphone has made everyone more connected than ever as well as changing the way we communicate.
We were then shown a commencement speech that Jobs did at the Stanford in 2005 and it was truly awe inspiring. He talked about the start to the end of his journey at that point and time, about how he first started his business and then was fired. About how he found that when he was unsure about what to do it was the best times of his life because it lead to some of his best innovations and creative periods of his life. He said that when he was fired from apple "the heaviness of being successful was replaced by lightness of being a beginner again." I think that can a be message for any designer, to be always looking for something new. One of the things that I found the most interesting was that he was able to use knowledge that he thought that would never benefited him such as taking a calligraphy class after dropping out of College. This would go on to the reason why the first Mac had multiple type faces and Jobs would then go on a get a dig in to Microsoft saying they copied this and thats why every PC has them. It just goes to show, don't skip out on learning something new, you never know when it could be useful to you.
At the end of the lecturer Paul would then go on to talk about the culture differenced between Apple
and Microsoft and how that played apart in how the business where run and how it affected the
products that they made. Both companies came from different parts of America, Apple in California
and Microsoft in Albuquerque. Apple is consider to be very free thinking and Liberal while Microsoft
would be much more Business oriented and conservative. I guess even when it comes to technology
where you come from highly affects what you make, just like in art.
Week 3
The lecture for week three was a continuation of last week’s lecture only focusing on sound and how sound can be used to portray meaning. The best way that I can describe this for myself is how sound is used in horror movies. Sound is typically used in horror films to help build up fear in the viewer for when the antagonist jumps out to scare us. Usually it’s an out of tune violin that gets louder and high pitched but personally this isn't the best use of sound in these movies. I personally think keeping the sound ambient or silent it’s the best way to build suspense. There’s nothing creepier than hearing the panicking breath of person when they are in complete silence. I guess this plays on what was talked about in a lecture as culture memory comes into play. We recognised the panicking breathing as something that’s associated with fear and then the feeling is engaged within us.
Paul talked about John Cage’s 4 33 and how it was consider avant-garde for it time. We were even shown it being played, despite it putting an entire audience into complete silence, you didn’t hear silence. It’s amazing how hundreds of people gathered together and stayed silent. It knocks you back to say the least. Its not something I could really put my finger on straight away, but it something that I see countless people being pissed off because they bought tickets for. I am saying this because I think I fall into the category at least for awhile but its because of that reason that I think its so impactful. A successful artist either makes love or hate their work.
Something that stuck out to me when Paul was talking about sound qualities was that sound cannot be frozen. I had never thought about this before. If I was photographing a person I would be doing freezing an image of that person in time to be view upon at a later time. But with sound you have to take it in through a period of time, if you try to pause sound, it ceases to exist. The reason why this stuck out to me was because last year in tech my final project was to do with photography. My main influence for this work was an artist called David Hockney, while researching his Joiners work he mention how limiting photography was as medium due to photographs being an image frozen in time, which he found to be lifeless. In his Joiners work he collaged photographs together in order to create a scene thats not frozen in time and I used this idea to create pieces of work that were made up of different perspectives, showing different perspectives through mirrors.
I'm personally not someone who looks to deeply into sound although I understand its importance within film and animation to give scenes an atmosphere. Even when it comes music I don't really look into the meaning of most songs that listen too, I fact half the songs I listen too I don't even know the meaning. I can't something that I would dedicate a lot of my time too, but I am interested in it.
Paul talked about John Cage’s 4 33 and how it was consider avant-garde for it time. We were even shown it being played, despite it putting an entire audience into complete silence, you didn’t hear silence. It’s amazing how hundreds of people gathered together and stayed silent. It knocks you back to say the least. Its not something I could really put my finger on straight away, but it something that I see countless people being pissed off because they bought tickets for. I am saying this because I think I fall into the category at least for awhile but its because of that reason that I think its so impactful. A successful artist either makes love or hate their work.
Something that stuck out to me when Paul was talking about sound qualities was that sound cannot be frozen. I had never thought about this before. If I was photographing a person I would be doing freezing an image of that person in time to be view upon at a later time. But with sound you have to take it in through a period of time, if you try to pause sound, it ceases to exist. The reason why this stuck out to me was because last year in tech my final project was to do with photography. My main influence for this work was an artist called David Hockney, while researching his Joiners work he mention how limiting photography was as medium due to photographs being an image frozen in time, which he found to be lifeless. In his Joiners work he collaged photographs together in order to create a scene thats not frozen in time and I used this idea to create pieces of work that were made up of different perspectives, showing different perspectives through mirrors.
I'm personally not someone who looks to deeply into sound although I understand its importance within film and animation to give scenes an atmosphere. Even when it comes music I don't really look into the meaning of most songs that listen too, I fact half the songs I listen too I don't even know the meaning. I can't something that I would dedicate a lot of my time too, but I am interested in it.
Week 2
This week’s class was about the deeper meaning within everything, that everything has a deeper meaning to it. It is something that is normalised within social interaction where we read peoples expressions and body language to understand the meaning being put across. Looking deeper into the meaning of art is something that I have been doing for a while now; I have always been interested in art that challenges my mind. However it’s not been something that I can say I am particularly good at. I spend a lot of time reading up other people’s opinions and researching about what the artist was trying to portray, before I can formulate an opinion of my own. But that’s only with contemporary art that I think meaning is unclear.
We took place in exercises or examples in order for us think about how we could find a deeper meaning. We were shown two jackets, I know now that they are both biker jackets but at the beginning at though the first jacket was from the punk era. The mixture of leather and studs seemed reminiscent of the rough nature the subculture. But I guess that was due to the culture memory I have toward it. The second jacket I knew was a biker jacket only because a friend of mine is into the biker subculture I recognised some the elements that make it jacket. But again I missed certain elements that shown the origins of the jacket it being Southern California and that it is from an outlaw biker club. I guess these shows that sometimes to understand the message you must at least know where it comes from, so if I wanted to accurately convey a message,
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a good understanding of the place it comes from is essential.
Semiotics came up, something that I had never of heard of before till now. It’s obviously essential to design in order to communicate a meaning across. For example in John Cooper Clarke’s poem “I married a Monster From Outer Space” the signifier would be the language in which he uses and the signified would be the negativity toward interracial couples. Though I don’t think it has to a deep and meaningful message to put across in order to use Semiotics. Simple emoticons can use semiotics as well. I understand that this is something that I will have to a good grasp of in order to portray meanings across in my work.
One of the last things we looked at was a short film about a farmer and his useless dog. I felt that subtext within the film was pretty clear, it is a sort of love hate relationship between owner and dog. The owner does nothing but talk negatively about the dog but the tone of the film was very warm and loving. There were also a few scenes where you see the owner loving playing with the his dog. I have thought about subtext before in films but was never sure of my opinion on it to really voice it.
To be honest I think a lot of these meanings in films or in art are left up to an individual’s own perspective of the subject matter, regardless of what the initial message was. “The Death Of The Author”. I think that whenever everybody understands subtext or meaning behind the art is when the artist is successfully in portrayed their message.
We took place in exercises or examples in order for us think about how we could find a deeper meaning. We were shown two jackets, I know now that they are both biker jackets but at the beginning at though the first jacket was from the punk era. The mixture of leather and studs seemed reminiscent of the rough nature the subculture. But I guess that was due to the culture memory I have toward it. The second jacket I knew was a biker jacket only because a friend of mine is into the biker subculture I recognised some the elements that make it jacket. But again I missed certain elements that shown the origins of the jacket it being Southern California and that it is from an outlaw biker club. I guess these shows that sometimes to understand the message you must at least know where it comes from, so if I wanted to accurately convey a message,
Semiotics came up, something that I had never of heard of before till now. It’s obviously essential to design in order to communicate a meaning across. For example in John Cooper Clarke’s poem “I married a Monster From Outer Space” the signifier would be the language in which he uses and the signified would be the negativity toward interracial couples. Though I don’t think it has to a deep and meaningful message to put across in order to use Semiotics. Simple emoticons can use semiotics as well. I understand that this is something that I will have to a good grasp of in order to portray meanings across in my work.
To be honest I think a lot of these meanings in films or in art are left up to an individual’s own perspective of the subject matter, regardless of what the initial message was. “The Death Of The Author”. I think that whenever everybody understands subtext or meaning behind the art is when the artist is successfully in portrayed their message.
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