Final Project Idea

Ok, so i have a boyfriend who smokes cigarettes, which i hate. A lot. So its something i am fairly passionate about. I want to do a rotoscoping project that shows the effect of smoking. I was thinking of having the whole thing take place over the course of a minute or so with just one straight take of someone smoking a cigarette, and then rotoscope the internal effect the cigarette is having on the smoker. I will probably avoid having it look scientific (as in showing lung damage). I was thinking of showing maybe some sort of battle of a smoke figure and the inside of the smoker. Or maybe as the smoke moves down the figure it become hallow until they smoke again to make a statement about the addictive nature of smoking.

Music Composition Part 1

Music Composition Part 2

Music

If anything can be music, what type of
music is worth making? What makes a combination of sound worth
listening to?

I think the music that John Cage was making, and his ideas behind it are the worth while type. He was challenging people's perception of what music is. He was considering where the combination of sound, silence, and composition creates music, and where those rules can be broken and still create music. I also think that "noise combinations" that may not sound appealing, but have interesting theories behind them are worth considering. (For example the weird scores created by Cage).

I think one thing that makes a combination of sound worth listening to is (like I said above) the theory behind it. In both music an art one of the most important things is to create rules and systematically break them. Sometimes the results are not "pleasant", but they are certainly interesting.

Awkwardly playing instrument =)

Original Commercial

Re-Edit

Transcribing commercial

The slate magazine would probably say that my ad is a "show the need problem" using a "symbol or graphic", in this case the man as the pig until he buys the condom.

Transcribing:
The first shot is of a bar full of pigs and women at different tables.
It switches to three pigs sitting at a bar, a women walks by and gives them dirty looks.
The shot switches from behind the bar to infront so the audience can see the woman walking away.
She walks past a different table, where a pig and a different woman appear to be having a conversation till she shakes her head.
The ad moves to a different pair where the woman appears to be listening to the pig speak but then makes a disinterested face and turns away.
Next a pair on the couch talk but the woman looks disgusted and makes a hand gesture to have the pig back off.
The camera goes back to the bar where a woman with a glass of wine speaks with a pig. The shot moves from both of them, to just the pig, to her giving him a disgusted look. It then goes back to him and then to a shot of both of them in which he gets down from the bar stool and begins to walk away. The camera switches to a view as if the viewer was the pig walking. We see another face shot of the pig walking and then it returns to his view as he walks down a hallway with women coming from the end walking past him. He enters a bathroom and the camera sees one of those bathroom condom dispensers from his point of view. You see his face again from the front, then the side. The shot returns to the condom machine and we see the pig hoof turn the nob. The camera swtiches down to the area where the condoms come out of the machine and the hand of a man takes the condom. The shot zooms out and we see him turn. The shot changes so we see him look at himself in the mirror over his shoulder. He re-enters the bar and as he walks in the shot returns to the woman who last rejected him. The camera moves closer to her as if he was walking towards her. Then we return to the shot from when the pig and her were talking previously but the man walks in instead. The camera goes to a shot of her smiling, then a shot of him smiling. Then it goes to a black screen with the word evolve, then one with the phrase: use a condom every time, with the trojan logo.

This advertisement is selling not only condoms, but a view of sex, and ideology about how things work. It is showing sex as a very nachaulant and simple thing. The underlying message is that each pig-man is looking to sleep with the women they are talking to and striking out becuase they are pigish. The commercial is suggesting that if a man is considerate enough to use a condom he deserves to get laid. Its saying that sex is for any guy who wants it bad enough to do his civic duty and "wrap before he taps". Its saying that you can expect sex from a first meeting at a bar with someone if it goes just right.
...can you tell this ad bugs me?

Situationists and such.

Would Situationist strategies of resistance work today? Would a credit
card company be able to predict and neutralize any resistance in
advance? With questions like these, there is not necessarily a right
answer. It is important to just struggle with the question and attempt
to think it through yourself.

I think that the main idea of the Situationists was to live in unpredictable ways. Maybe their original strategies would be predicted, but I feel that they would find new ways to dodge the consumer related and mainstream trends of society. Credit card companies are looking for trends or patterns in people's lives and use of their cards. Situationists are looking to break trends and live in ways unique to themselves and in defiance of the social norm. So I think that the strategies of the Situationists would work.

Introduction video

Art, not art?

1. Kaprow aimed for paradox, for making an artwork
which was not an artwork. When Kaprow brushed his
teeth, is this art or life? Does Kaprow succeed or fail?
I think Kaprow brushing his teeth every day is life. Art is understood to be some sort of visual experience. Although the theories, paradoxes, and ideas that Kaprow had are very interesting, I do not view the act of brushing his teeth, undocumented, as art. At the same time, I do not think that his claim to have created "tooth brushing art" is irrelevant or stupid. It brings up important questions about the nature and audience of art. But without an audience, or even intended audience it is not art.

2. What activities do you do in “nonconscious” ways?
What would change if you noticed them and document-
ed them? How do these activities relate to the passage of
time?
I eat in a nonconscious way. I talk to people. I sleep. I walk, breath, chew, and think in nonconscious ways. I always find that when I think about eating, or breathing, or any of those things one does naturally I start to get really awkward and mechanical about it. I don't know how it would be if I thought about speaking...Well, breathing we do all the time, so there isn't much of a way to document the passage of time that way. Eating breaks my day into thirds by meal. Sleep breaks my week down into days, and occasionally mornings and afternoons if I nap.