More Art in Unlikely Places

The Vuvuzela was a surprising art form...but so are CAKES! The Food Network TV show: Ace of Cakes, has recently been cancelled. This made me think about how the extravagant cakes are a surprising form of art. Throughout this semester, I've started to take more notice of art in unlikely places. A lot of things that don't immediately appear to be art, or things that don't fit the conventional concept of "art", are very intriguing. The following cakes are incredible and deserve to be noticed!

Vuvuzelas!

The instrument made famous by the 2010 World Cup gets some clever second lives as:

LIGHTS

LAMPS

CHRISTMAS TREE

EARRINGS

EDUCATION TABLE

FLOWER POTS

I think the way these Vuvuzelas have been reused is so creative, beautiful, AND functional! These designs in particular are very interesting and unique. It is so cool that these people took something that was so simple, but also so significant to the event (World Cup 2010), and created something that will last forever with it.

Photos found at: 

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Vuvuzela-Design-Competition/ss/events/lf/111510vuvuzela

Library Session

After our library session with Sherri about DreamWeaver today, I am SO EXCITED! All throughout high school I was chief editor for our Broadcast Journalism program. We used the Final Cut Pro Application to produce weekly newscasts. A lot of what we learned today reminded me of stuff I did while editing newscasts. I have missed editing since I graduated and am excited to work on this project. It seemed so daunting, as I mentioned yesterday, to create our own website...but after today I feel much better about it and I can't wait. We still need to gather all our information, pictures, links, videos, etc. but putting it all together in our own website will be fun. It will be a great way to see how everyone in my own group's, and in other groups' creative sides come out.

Picture of the Day:
Ojai Valley, California

Daunting Task...

It is true that the task of creating a webpage seems daunting. I, and probably many others have never done something like this before! But I have found some helpful YouTube videos that act as tutorials for the program DreamWeaver. One is below and many more can be found on YouTube.com:

1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUQKxsOTsX8&feature=channel
2 -

3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikMC7Ju49HY&feature=channel

Project 3: DAY ONE

After going to the High Museum together, Juan, Danny, Hyun Ki, and I had our first group meeting to work on project number 3 today. With this being the first group project we've done all semester, I am very excited! I think our group has a lot of potential and will work well together =) We have decided to make an Art Guide to Atlanta that incorporates a lot of concert and entertainment venues around Atlanta. We want to focus on how individuals interact with art. Some things we would like to include on our website are links to tickets, calendars of artists, maybe some history about the venue itself and also a selection of artists. We are planning to meet again sometime this weekend and I look forward to what we come up with. We will try to narrow down the venues we want to include, but so far some such venues are Philips area, Gwinnett Arena, Lakewood Amphitheater, Chastain Park Amphitheater, Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, The Tabernacle, The Loft, The Masquerade, The Alliance Theater, and The Fox.

Titian & the Golden Age of Venetian Painting Exhibit!

Today I went to the High Museum with my Project 3 Group (Hyun Ki Lee, Danny Rodriguez, and Juan Gers). We had a great time and explored the Titian exhibit as well as some of the permanent collections. When we first arrived we were a little worried because there were so many high school kids there on a field trip or something. But it was actually interesting to see the way these kids interacted with the art. It was completely different from how we were interacting with the art. While all of us were taking notes and really analyzing the drawings and paintings, as well as the space (“gallery” – O’Doherty) in which we found them. These high school kids just seemed to be enjoying the art at a surface level. Rather than really looking into each piece and interpreting it, they walked nonchalantly throughout the museum, laughing and having fun with friends, while enjoying the art and its beauty. One thing I noticed in my experience was how I had to remind myself to enjoy the art. I found myself analyzing so much about the surroundings of the art that I almost forgot to look at the actual drawing or painting. Initially I was so focused on the room itself, the lighting from the ceiling skylights, the space between the drawings, the frames around each drawing or painting, etc. Then when I caught myself, I rectified the situation and was able to appreciate the beauty of the drawings and paintings while analyzing the gallery as well.

My favorite part of the exhibit was definitely the paintings portion. There was a total of 13 paintings and what I particularly liked about them was the rich and ornate frames. The drawings/sketched from the first part of the exhibit were in simple wood frames. The paintings were in the most beautiful gold frames with extravagant details. Some even included interesting plaques on them. It is fitting that the paintings were in much more extravagant frames (than the sketches) because they were so much more colorful than the sketches. The paintings were also larger and more vivid…overall they were more exciting in my opinion! But I enjoyed the whole experience of the Titian & the Golden Age of Venetian Painting Exhibit.

The Russian Ark

The experience of watching this film, THE RUSSIAN ARK, was a unique and exciting one.

I think it’s pretty pointless tackling the film without a fairly solid knowledge of the last three centuries of Russian history –it’s clear that Alexander Sokurov’s target audience is primarily well-educated Russians (specifically St Petersburgers) like himself, and anyone who doesn’t fit that description has to do some prior homework in order to get much out of the film. Even relatively well known aspects of Russian history like the last days of the Romanov dynasty aren’t signposted especially obviously.

As for the character of Custine, I got the impression that he was meant to be annoying – as one of the key themes of the film is the way Russia has long been straddling the Europe/Asia divide, and its pretensions to be seen as ‘European’ (expressed not least through the city of St Petersburg itself, which many Russians regard with suspicion because of its origins as an artificial creation through which Peter the Great wanted to cement cultural ties between Europe and Russia).

Accordingly, Russia cozies up to characters like Custine, only to be belittled and patronized in return – and that’s a microcosm of a fair chunk of Russian history in itself. I certainly get the impression that a fair number of Russian viewers would be asking “why are we wasting time with this guy?” – and, by extension, wondering why Russia is bothering with Europe when it’s quite capable of standing on its own feet.

But overall, I found the whole thing rather like a play. It’s very much like a stage production and I admire it for that. Everyone had one shot to get it right. They had to all get everything together and make it happen in the same take. Imagine the rehearsal for that. It is a beautiful film, though much of that beauty can be attributed to the Hermitage I guess. Anyway you shoot that place it will look great.

As for cinematography, script, plot, actors, lighting, sound, editing and a coherant score from a film…if you take those out of any film and you’re left with, not a film. Regardless, this film still has all of that…except for editing of course and I suppose a coherent score could be argued.