Week Five

This week I found the video with the two dogs and the tennis ball the most interesting. When I first saw it, I wondered if I had seen that on Sesame Street before. Someone mentioned that in discussion, which is where it was confirmed that the artist had done pieces for Sesame Street. The author of this piece, I see as an animal lover. I see this person being fascinated by animals and being very observant of animals. I can picture this guy making up little games and tricks with his dogs. I can picture this guy being very patient as well. It obviously takes a lot of patience to work with animals, its not like you can just make an animal do something right away. The thing I found most interesting about this piece was the dog on the left side(when looking at the screen) because he kept looking all around. The other dog was just very stiff following the tennis ball without hesitation. The other dog kept trying to outsmart the man by anticipating his moves and guessing where it would go next. It was funny to watch this dog freak out. His head kept jerking around to the other side, just waiting for more movement. I think the dogs have control in this piece. The man is trying to manipulate the dogs by waving the tennis ball in front of them and trying to keep their attention, however the dogs just look where they want to. The dog on the right was watching the ball dead on, yet the dog on the left was looking all over the place. My eyes seemed to stay on that dog to see what he would do next. I kept thinking he was going to run around trying to achieve the ball.

Week Four

This week was interesting to see someone's work while she was there with us. It was nice to hear the artist's point of view for once. It was also interesting to hear what others had to say about Althea's work in discussion. One guy in class said that he saw her film in a gallery and thought she was being sarcastic in it, and then was uninterested to find out she was serious about it. I didn't see any of her work in galleries but I was kind of surprised about how serious she was about her work. I don't mean to cut her down, its just that her films were a little hard to take serious. I do give her credit though, for the fact that she majored in photography I believe? and now she is making films. It's taking me a while to learn how to do quality film pieces and I'm a film major myself. I thought her films kind of felt like she had come up with all these great ideas that she kept jotting down and then just decided to jam them all together in one piece. I found it amusing how Althea said she got so much feedback on her pieces that were unintentional in her work. For example, how she said she got comments of maybe the girl had an eating disorder in the first film we watched. I would have never thought of the ideas she had told us about, but once we heard it, it all made complete sense. I thought her piece "A Memory Lasts Forever" was really awkward and uncomfortable. It bothered me from the beginning how the girl was stumbling around all fake pretending she was drunk and one girl was even puking, and then once they found the dead dog- they were instantly sober; singing songs and panicking and all. I thought the song was a little korney too. It felt like a disney movie, like someone mentioned in class. I felt that "Songstress" was entertaining at first, but quickly got boring. I felt myself wanting to see the next clip only to see what she looked like and how she sounded. It seemed like the girls were trying a little too hard. The only one I really enjoyed was the girl with the braids and the orange skirt. I think she sounded a lot like Jewel and she looked like Alanis Moirsette. By the time we saw the last girl, I was just not interested in the whole thing. In the last film(I can't remember the name), I found this one the most interesting. I think it seemed like it had a lot more thought and planning behind it. I couldn't figure out quite what she wanted us to get out of it as a viewer, but it kept my interest. It kind of made me feel like there was some kind of message behind it but I just couldn't grasp what she was saying. It was cool to see the end stare at the end though from all the characters. It was also great how she used the camera on a track the whole time and just filmed without stopping the camera or without even pausing in one spot.

Week Three

I had a hard time this week with the class screenings and art work. I had trouble seeing most of it as art. We started off with the performance called "step piece". I didn't understand how this was considered an art form, it was just somebody stepping up and down. If we gathered a group together and watched as people walked down the street, would that be considered art or a performance piece? John Cage's 4'33" was kind of out there as well. I didn't find it amusing until I read the article about the piece. It said how Cage was imitating how there is no such thing as silence. It's interesting to think about it this way. When you would normally consider a moment as "silence", you can still hear ambient noises. You can hear humming and buzzing of buildings or heaters, etc. or you can hear animals like birds if you are outside. I never thought about it this way. It makes me wonder how Cage came up with his ideas. Was he just sitting around one day and he realized all the noises around him? Carl mentioned another piece in class, yet I can't remember who he said performed it. The piece consisted of someone saying they were having a poetry reading, so everyone gathered together, and then he came late and on his way he would call at every payphone to say where he was. It is an interesting concept in the way of how this person thought of it. Something you don't really pay much thought to, someone else saw it as a work of art, a performance piece of some sort. I wouldn't call it art myself, yet it was interesting. The thing that bugged me the most in class, was the picture we saw of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. It bugged me because it was just a urinal; a urinal with his name on it, that was turned on its side. I got the impression that he didn't physically make this urinal, therefore I don't feel he had the right to call it art, let alone his own work.