February 18th, 2010

I learned today that research and brainstorming are essential to coming up with good topics for projects. Asking questions, taking breaks, relaxing, and letting ideas flow through you are the only sources for dynamic, and sustainable ideas. 

I learned about Functional Fixedness and Percolation Stage and the difference between them, and what role they play in the brainstorm project.

I learned passion and interest is essential in creating an effective project. 

Response to three prompt questions

Do you think vanity reflects self esteem?

YES! Someone who is vain has a need to seem like the best, prettiest, more important etc. They find the need to push opinions on other people and to represent themselves as better than everyone else around them in order to delude them self into thinking that they are.

What makes someone vain?

Someone who is solely concerned with the way other people think about them, including looks, possessions, attitudes, and personalities. Someone who is solely concerned with making friends who are popular or make them looks better. Someone who only cares about how they seem rather than who they actually are. 

Is vanity wrong if it's not affecting anyone but them self?

It is still a negative trait if the person is hurting them self because this can hurt the people around them. It can hurt feelings, feel like a lie, or damage relationships. Being vain is never merely a personal decision, it does affect people around you. Being vain has to do with creating a specific form of interaction and interaction is with other people. 

Art of Creativity

1. I have experienced a "flash of inspiration" like the one described in the article. Especially when I can't think of the name of something I was talking before. This lost piece of information always comes to me when I am least expecting it. When I exercise, sometimes I go over whatever I was studying the night before, and everything is much clearer. My best ideas for art projects comes when I am not stressed and it just comes to me. 

2. My method for finding new ideas is to do something else. If I am just completely focused on making new creative ideas, it will never be as innovative as I want to be. I need to step away and distract myself from the stress of coming up with a good idea. I let life happen, take inspiration from it, and then let my ideas come to me. 

3. My days are so standard and so structured that I took time to change it up. I called up a bunch of girls from my sorority who I do not know and scheduled coffee dates with them. they are strangers and it is completely out of character, and I found myself feeling much more comfortable with the house I am and generally happier during the day. I love meeting new people, and when it changes up my routine, I enjoy my day a lot more. I think that mixing my routine is an important thing to do, otherwise everything you do during your day loses its original purpose.

4. Emotions and physical sensations and actions have everything to do with creative avenues. Via our emotions and sensations, we can discover the message we want to send to our viewers. We can make decisions about aesthetics and concepts all based on what we are feeling and sensing. If we go outside and feel the cold and feel the sores on our ankles from our boots, and feel the wind whip at our face, maybe this could lead to a genius idea for the video we want to make, or the sound we want to create, or the painting we want to start. If we are happy and enjoying ourselves, this will reflect itself in our ideas and our work. What we do in every day life serves as our inspiration, so however we experience life with our senses and emotions is how we will represent it. 

5. Depending on the time period and era, this skill of using emotions and senses to create would result in a very different aesthetic. In the 1500-1800 time period in Europe, there were a lot of wars, a lot of gore, a lot of revolution. This was before advanced technology, paved roads, and large cities, meaning that the people of this time would feel and experience things that are very different from what we know. The art of this time period is focused almost entirely on the same ideas of revolution, war, poverty, and struggle.

February 11th, 2010

Today I learned:

1. The body and the mind are not necessarily connected, and this can be manipulated to create certain kinds of emotions in the listener/viewer.---correction, the body and mind are absolutely connected according to increased research. It is an urban myth that the mind and body are not connected based on the idea that it is better or at least easier to think rather than feel.

2. Music is created through the use of beat, harmony, and melody. Anything that is missing one of these elements is not music, though it might seem like music, or evoke similar emotions as music. Sound in general (not just music) can influence how we feel and understand things.

3. There are multiple components that need to be considered while creating a sound piece. These include: rhythm, contrast, timbre, amplitude, simultaneity, alikeness vs, difference, constancy vs. variation, and/or attack and decay. Varying and considering all of these can result in pretty much any environment or emotion the creator wants.

February 11th, 2010

1.     How can the attitudes toward sound we discussed in class be applied to the works of these two artists? Januk Schaefer is clearly a noise appreciator. His work is based around listening to silence, and realizing that there really is no such thing as silence. He listens to, and emphasizes what we consider to be white noise coming from outdoors or from around the corner. Stephen Vitiello is a Sound Beautification artist and is interested in creating a kind of music with sounds he finds. It is rhythmical, has a beat, harmony, and melody. It sounds as if it goes with some sort of display just like the one with the bulbs we looked at in class. 

2.     What formal vocabulary can you use to describe their works? Januk Schaefer's work is mostly industrial, but working with noise that is not commonly acknowledged as interesting sound. It is noise we drown out, so he takes it and creates an ambient background. It is not necessarily clear but there is certainly simultaneity throughout. Stephen Vitiello is all about creating a musical feel which either tells a story or describes an emotion. He uses tone, pitch, amplitude, beat, and harmony to his advantage to create a mood. 

3.     Do you agree more with the Sound Explorers approach and attitudes toward sound or would you prefer one of the other groups discussed in class? Personally, I do not agree with either of their approaches. While I do believe that Sound Beautification can contribute to an environment's atmosphere, I am much more of a nature sound lover. There is nothing more beautiful than the natural sounds that we cannot necessarily hear in an urban setting. 

Learning style

February 4th, 2010

Goal: Possibility!- How to make work you want to make with time based media

* Formal Vocabulary

*History/Theory/Criticality > sound, attitude 

* Technical Proficiency> filters, manipulating space, hands-on time

*Research

3 things learned: 

The influence of sound on us, nature, and our environment is a crucial element to the way we live our lives and the way we think about things. It is not often that we consciously think about the sound around us and the way it makes us interact, but sound is certainly influential. 

Different artists and movements think about industry and the sound and implications of industry in different ways. Some think it is beautiful, others send a message of caution.

The idea of distorting sound and mixing it in with melodies is confusing. The idea of an intervention and creating a parody in a composed environment is humorous and unexpected, but loud groans and booms from industry in the background of aged music is like white noise on top of white noise. I guess what you have to take away from sound like that, is that attitudes towards sound are just as different as people's attitudes and tastes towards music or food.