Video Art- Follow The Path

My video art piece is showing how in our generation today, we as college students are forced to stay on the right path and follow it throughout our time here and hopefully after we graduate. The video keeps getting faster and more abstract to show how some people stray from the path and rush their way through when they should be taking their time. It almost has a robotic tone to it to show how people get so caught up in their routines that they lose track of who they really are.

Performance Art

Xerox Project

Grid Art

Mark J Stock

I really enjoyed looking through the artwork of Mark J Stock. When going through his work I noticed that he had descriptions of what the artworks were representing. In his piece " There is no Cheese" you initially would not think that this is supposed to have any deeper meaning. It just looks like a something zoomed in on a grey type of texture with alot of detail. In his description he actually says that the work depicts an imaginary terrain that represents the measurements of "MRna" expressions in the brains of multiple different lab rats. Once I knew this about the piece I respected it alot more and couldn't stop looking at it and all the little details that were actually depicting brain activity.

I also really liked the first few pieces on his website that were paintings with many different colors and flow. I liked the way he would swirl the colors together but still make the piece to appear clean and like there are boundaries  to prevent all the colors from blending together.  It was interesting to see how the swirls that he made all over looked kind of like little eyeballs when I looked a second time.  I felt like with a lot of his work I would see more the second time looking back than I initially would since he seemed to put a great amount of thought into all of his art.

OTR radio show- Adventures of Horatio Hornblower

The radio show that I chose to watch was called Adventures of Horatio Hornblower. This radio series was about a fictional Napoleon war era navy officer and explores the missions and problems that he faces in his travels out at sea.
The first thing I noticed as I started to listen where the cheesy and annoying sound effects that were being used. A loud. ear piercing whistle was the first thing I heard (to mimic some type of bomb dropping). It was interesting to see what they had to resort to back then for sound effects while they were sometimes improvising live during the show. I also found it interesting how the voice that was narrating the radio show sounded so familiar. It sounded like the classic radio voice that I always hear something from back in that time period is being played.  The show only lasted about 20 minutes, and I was confused on what was going on most of the time since I just picked a random episode ( Chasing the Papillion) and it looks like the episodes went along with a story in order, so you would need to watch all of them to get a better understanding of the full story.

The Great Train Robbery

I found this movie to be very different from movies that I am used to watching. When I first started watching I immediately noticed that it was going to be a western type of movie that I have seen from time to time on TV on at weird hours. I noticed while watching it that the shots were alot different than ones that are used in modern movies today. The fact that there was no sound in the movie made me pay more attention to the way it was shot and the different forms of cinematography used. The black and white also made it a bit more bland, so you really were focused on the acting aspect.  I relied on the actors actions and ways the were interacting with the camera to get a better understanding of what exactly was going on.

Stop Motion

There were many interesting stop motion links posted on the class website. My favorite one was under the Stop Motion #2 link, and it was a 3d voodoo themed piece. I enjoyed it because it was very crazy and abstract. The main character in it that looked like the voodoo baby was very interesting and the graphics that he used for the 3d were very clean and polished. I also liked the fine details in the hand with the painted nails in the middle of the piece because it gives us another view point from a human and not just the voodoo dolls running around.

Vernacular vs. Pictorial

Vernacular: Photos of everyday life.






Pictorial: lack sharp focus, some visible brush strokes, other colors besides black and white.

Abe Morell

These are some of Abe Morells photographs. I like the way that he decides to do most of his work in black and white. The high contrast in the pictures give them a very strong impression and allows them to make more of a statement. My favorite one is the one where he captures the reflection of the city skyline on the window. Its amazing to see the line of symmetry and how a new object is formed by the two mirrored images.

Flip Book

This is my flip book animation project. As I approached this project, I decided to go with a more abstract idea of shapes and as it went along, I decided too add a human like aspect to them to make it more visually interesting.

Opera Movie Reaction

My initial reaction after watching the movie was that it was very interesting to see how the opera started and progressed to what it is today over the years. I learned that the Opera started as very small performances at weddings and grew into enormous productions that the people of the cities would take very seriously. The town would build enormous and elaborate colosseums to host the operas that could hold thousands of people that wanted to see the performance.
A part in particular that I liked was when the narrator was explaining how Opera was a huge form of nationalism for the people of Italy and they would use it as a tool to show their pride in their country and express their radical views during past times of war. He said that the Opera houses in the cities were always a main target for destruction when people invaded because they were so symbolic to towns.
It was explained that Operas used to be controversial and when ever an opera was written about something extreme or political, they would be rejected and were not that popular. The opera stories grew over the years and eventually the main story lines in Operas were all about tragic romance and love and contained a lot more violence and death than before. Everyone started to enjoy those types of operas more since they were a lot more captivating and sometimes relatable. That related to us in modern society present day because we all enjoy and go see the huge blockbusters that come out and most of them are always very emotional and tragic dramas that people get very emotionally in tune with. Everyone seems to like productions and movies more when the action is over the top along with the details and effects, and the same went for the people back then with the heavily detailed and elaborate productions that would take place in the operas.

Raul Cuero PhD "Creativity" video comments

There were many things in this video that you can apply to everyday life. The video opens up with Rual Cuero talking about how he was a kid and how he used to just heavily observe and study things to help him learn (the roaches in his grandmas house). Being a good observer can help you a lot in your daily life because you will start to notice the beauty and interesting things that are around you that you were once blind to.  Raul also talks about his claim to fame witch was his perseverance and his drive to try as hard as possible. This can also be applied to every day life because if you try as hard as you can, great things can happen like what happened to Raul with all his scientific inventions that positively impacted the world ( fruit with more antioxidants, things to help oil spills ext.)

Raul also talks about having a "universal conscious" and how it helps overcome obstacles in life. He says when you are universal you can overcome prejudice and you are not limited by society what what it tells you to do. If everyone applied this concept to everyday life, the world would be a freer and better place and new ideas that may have never be surfaced could come up and positively impact your environment. Along with having a universal conscious, Raul states that it was his creativity that helped him overcome many of the obstacles that he has faced in his life. He says that you need to surprise and do more than what other people expect from you, and that it when your creativity starts to flow the most. Again, in everyday life if I were to do this and try to exceed everyones expectations with my creativity and be more unpredictable, I could produce better art/projects and also ideas that could benefit my life and the peoples around me.

Juan Carlos Delgado comments

Juan Carlos Art comments :



My initial reaction to Juan Carlos's art was that is was very abstract and interesting. The one video titled FKA twigs- Pendulum really got my attention with the warping faces and the creepy music. As the video progresses the woman's face gets more and more distorted until it returns back to normal at the end. I like how he uses a combination of different types of media to produce his art including photos, paintings and videos.

The photo titled "Mas Surrealista Que Los Suenos" portrayed a lot of emotion. I liked how its in black and white and how that corresponds to the emotion of the photo with the woman getting suffocated by the large ball. Her facial expression shows that she is trying hard to break free or escape, so in the bigger picture the photo could be a metaphor for someone trying to get rid of a bad habit that is holding them back from the real world or from their family.