Welcome

Welcome to the Springfield Township High School Art Blog. The purpose of this forum is to inspire discourse surrounding your artistic experiences while building writing skills, exercising your art vocabulary, and refining descriptive language relating to art. In your writing, you may choose to discuss museum and gallery exhibitions, publications, articles, professional works, student works, or responses to each other’s ideas and investigations. Additionally, participants may want to pose questions or react to artistic predicaments, sharing the trials, frustrations, solutions, or the general excitement we feel when we make or look at art.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

That Initial Response

It is hard not to think, “wow that's really awesome" or “that’s cool” after watching Seaweed or Making a Shell. But those meaningless phrases are not nearly effective enough to describe what you just saw or experienced. What does the word “awesome” even mean? It is really just as subjective as the word art is, my definition of awesome is certainly not the same as yours. We say these little fillers all the time, but it’s not our fault! We have been bombarded with these meaningless statements all throughout our lives. Even as a young child we hear and say “aww look how cute it is!” or “oh that’s adorable”, we throw around these meaningless adjectives when we really don’t know what they mean. We know what those words are supposed to represent, or what they are associated with, but not what they mean. The over use of these fluff words have made them become platitudes, second nature to us, almost as reflexive as someone saying “God bless you” after someone sneezes.

On another note, I noticed that both Seaweed and Making a Shell are short films. They were in no sense long narratives of any kind, more so snapshots. It's difficult to watch the videos without letting your mind wander as to what else you could do with that type of low-fi imaging. The seamless combination of photography and video creates this surrealists movement of the subject’s hands. Both films are really are beautiful catalysts for further exploration, inceptions.

Monday, February 21, 2011

So You Want to Talk About Time Based Art

I’m kind of interested in student reactions to Maddi’s YouTube® clips that are attached to her comments from the previous post (see links below if you missed them).  The one thing unique about visual art is that it affects a response.  Some reactions may be initial shallow exclamations like “that’s really cool and/or awesome” to “creepy,” but perhaps at the root of your initial reaction is a much deeper wealth of aesthetic understanding.  You are beginning to learn the basics of what I like to call “special effects.”  The elements and principles of design are the basic building blocks.  How you apply and manipulate these through your chosen medium’s techniques (in this case video) determines and alters your audiences’ response (and I don’t mean applause).  Perhaps you noticed in Seaweed and Making a Shell that the still photographs displayed visual movement and/or rhythm, or maybe you were more aware of repetition and the lighting effects, or even the musical accompaniment.  Maybe you were more aware of the figures moving behind the still images.  Although you may not have noticed any of the above, they were there.  The artists' timing and arrangement of those elements presents a new visual experience to you.  As you observe others using techniques in any medium, explore their methods, experiment yourself, and employ the basic principles of design.  They are your building blocks.
            Remi Weekes and Luke White who posted these videos are young award winning writers and directors.  Check out more short video experiments of theirs at:  http://www.tellnoone.co.uk/  Oh! Did I say “experiments?”  You mean there is a relationship between this post and the last?  I think Maddi knew that.
           
Making a Shell:              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw6qe1EdQkk
Also check out the related YouTube®/Guggenheim video below.
Another interesting approach to narrative…