Overall Contemporary Context Goals

1. The contemporary cultural contexts of UNCSA

As a school we are incredibly diverse in the contemporary context. As an arts school we are on the front lines of this contemporary context. We are constantly producing new, fun and engaging works of art to share with the world that encompass many other art forms. Art and technology continue to evolve and change with each other which is great for me as a filmmaker. Every generation of film has to account for the technologies they have at hand. With this constant evolution, it allows for us a filmmakers to grow with the art through the years and make our mark in the contemporary context.

2. What makes us all composers?

We are all composers creating our works of art. In a sense as an artist we orchestrate our work. Whether of not you be a music composer, director, actor, writer or dancer. We are all composing and creating. It is through a creative drive that we compose and build new works that could potentially influence millions. Now looking at construction, a building is a work of art that someone composed and created. A machine that works on an assembly line building other machines, is a work composed by someone.

3. What makes artistic types of composing unique?

 As artists, we create art that people will consider more a composition then that of the product designer. For us, people can look at our work and say, they composed this work of art, which is very nice because it is clear to people what you are doing.

4. How composers in various artistic domains or fields conceptualize and enact the composing process

The composing process is a lot of tedious prep work. To build a composition, you need to put hours of work in. I believe composers become one with their art form when composing and allow for their free expression to leak out and guide their hands. Composing is a difficult task that must be allowed to flourish when given the opportunity.

5. What it feels like to compose in an artist field other then your own

This is a difficult question for me to answer since I have been acting for so long and playing the violin since I was 5. I also simultaneously started making movies when I was 5 years old so those three art forms I just have absorbed over the years and am capable of composing music, creating films and acting on a stage/or film. It's just what I do and who I am. Dance on the other hand is a skill that I am incapable of learning and when I do work in that field it is very awkward for me, not just because I'm uncoordinated but because it isn't what I am comfortable with. Having to come out of my shell for dance is very hard and I know I will never be capable of creating or performing in a really good dance.

6. What happens when first-generation multimedia (dance, design and production, drama, film, liberal arts, music, and visual arts) and second-generation multimedia (digital text, image, audio, and video) are combined, recombined, and remixed in contemporary composing 

For starters this idea of generations is weird to me since, in my opinion, Audio/Image/Video were already apart of film from its very start. But today we can combine so many different multimedia styes and create really intricate works. Art is in a constant evolution along with technology and as a filmmaker I can see as technology improves, it becomes easier and more plausible to combine different aspects of art into one. Which in the end really shows how the contemporary context really affects our lives.

Composing in Movement and Performance

This was the most shaky subject we learned about. Going into this unit I believed it was supposed to be about dance and acting but I didn't get that at all. For starters the first class that was supposed to be about dance, never happened. For some reason the speaker couldn't show up that day so I didn't get anything. The second day was Dean Wilcox who was the best speaker of the year, but he didn't talk about acting at all, it was more of philosophical discussion dealing with Dada and different experimental art forms. Dean Wilcox's final lecture did a great job of tying everything together and was a great way for the class to go out. What the final lecture did really get at which I wasn't expecting was the idea that everything is a performance.

I was an actor for all of high school and most of middle school, so I had a very good understanding of that art form. Dance I have come to gain a very good understanding of through my "Writing About Dance" class taught by Joe Mills. I wish I had gotten to learn from an actual dance choreographer in class though. While acting in the musicals through high school, I was taught by my Choreographer Jean Sorbera. She was wonderful and taught me everything I know. She also put up with my terrible dancing and worked with me to better me which was a great experience.

One huge thing I learned was the realization that performance doesn't just pertain to a orchestral concert, or a dance, or acting on a stage. It encompasses much much more which I found interesting. Being tasked to do a performance in public in a non traditional way was great assignment that I actually learned a lot from. Watching videos of my colleagues I witnessed a large variety of videos that normally I would not have considered a performance but after further though I realized, yes this is a performance. It has changed the way I look at a lot of things I see now. Seeing my friends just play their guitars in a room now is a performance to me where as before I would usually just think of it as the playing around. In my performance video I sat a top a laundry machine and played a very simple guitar song by Eddy Van Halen. People who were in the room watched and/or listened to me play. I am not a guitarist. I never have been and probably never will be, but it was fun to try and perform on the guitar for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwrErYNsEo&list=UUpGGMp-gwX7CJzbDxpdDWNw&index=1

I would very much like to learn more about Dada from Dean Wilcox. His whole philosophical ideals were incredibly engaging and made me think a lot. I really loved the whole idea of chance that Dean Wilcox touched upon. The idea that just a second or two could change your life based on the chances of you forgetting your key or taking an extra second to put your coat on. I just loved this whole discussion and want to research it a lot more.

All in all, I learned so much from Dean Wilcox about performance and what defines art. It was very refreshing for me and I enjoyed the simplicity that came from some of this. These basic ideas that when looked at from a new perspective, can completely flip and turn inside out.

Composing in Film, Video and New Media

Finally we got to discuss my field, film, and I loved it. In this new digital age shorts and films are being produced in large quantities. This is great but the line between film and video has been slightly blurred due to the renaissance of the internet. Youtube is a game changer for artist allowing for their work to potentially reach millions. We learned through class lectures, discussions and visual examples from the speakers. John LeBlanc and Julian Semillian did excellent jobs of teaching our lectures and I found these class days to be the most refreshing of the year.

As a filmmaker I actually for the most part knew what they were talking about. John really stressed collaboration, which is a key part for not only film but all art forms. Collaboration is a very important in film because it is a field that absorbs every other. Film deals with photography, design and production, acting, music and dance. Every one of these basic building blocks can collaborate together in film and create wonders.

I learned a lot from Julian for the most part because what Julian talks about is a more experimental avon guard style of filmmaking that I legitimately know nothing about. It is a free style of expression that Julian has grasped onto very heavily and is very passionate about. One thing we did that was pretty fun was we made a surf video, which I will link below, that was fun to do. I took some of my older work and pieced it together in a somewhat linear way that could potentially be a weird teaser trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tSJa5kCKGk&list=UUpGGMp-gwX7CJzbDxpdDWNw

Moving forward I would like very much to learn more about experimental and avon guard filmmaking from Julian Semillian. He is a very intriguing individual who has very interesting aspects on film that I would like to dive deeper into. I am thinking about sitting down with Julian sometime next semester to dive deeper into this topic.

Overall, I enjoyed this unit of study. It was the one I was really looking forward to from the beginning and it hit my expectations. Filmmaking is such a powerful field that can reach and affect millions, but none of that is possible without collaboration.

Composing in Language, Sound and Music

This unit of language, sound and music was my favorite unit so far. Through our lecturers we were introduced to scope and scale of the importance of sound in the modern age that we live in. We briefly touched on things such as sound in the real world, the ideas of the written language and also the written musical language.

Going into this unit I wasn't entirely sure what the focus was going to be but it generally went in the direction of music and sound, which is something I am fairly well versed in. As a violinist since the age of 5, I have developed a pretty keen musical ear and talent for playing music. I constantly hear musical notes in public. I also came into the idea of language with a very historical background in my journal talking about the phoneticians creating a phonetic alphabet for trade and connecting it to the internet and the language of the wide web today.

I've actually learned a lot from this unit, especially in week one. The reading in week one were incredibly informative and I found them very enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the idea that through using the internet as a species we are actually reading and writing even more then before. Knowledge is at our finger tips now and all we have to do is open up our computers. I always find myself on various articles reading and filling my brain with new knowledge and ideas. The internet has allowed for us as a race to become smarter as information is readily available to us. In class we had an interesting lecture from Bruno Lochouarn on music and sound that was very entertaining as he engaged the class and involved us in the discussion by having us sing which I've never had a teacher do outside of a music class. One fun thing we did this unit was create our own soundbites blending and combining sounds to create something new and interesting. I would post my soundbites that I create but due to a glitch in SoundCloud I was unable to upload them.

I think I would like to dig deeper into the idea of blending sounds and musical notes together to create new interesting works. I believe that would be a lot of fun and something useful that I could use later on with my film work.

All and all, I very much enjoyed this unit. It was interesting discussing language and sound in the contemporary context. Living in the digital age we are truly advancing technological but it is nice to see that things like sound and language where it all started are also moving in the same direction as us humans.

Composing In Design and Visual Art

Composing in Design and Visual Arts is a very interesting aspect of the modern age of composing. drawing while using the whole space and architecture being two important aspects of this section. Through our presenters we learned a lot about the importance and correct ways to implement lighting an architecture into our work.

Going into this topic I already knew about the importance of using the entire canvas for your work. As a filmmaker I don't want to have a frame that has images that don't fit and or are really boring.  It is crucial for any art form to fill the space in which you are confined. Most of my knowledge of architecture comes from reading Ann Rands The Fountainhead  , so really I don't know much about it but from a design aspect, I know that architects put their heart and soul into what they design and then ultimately create.

I actually learned quite a lot in this unit. What I have come to learn and understand about this class is that the main over arching theme is to borrow from other artists but do it in your own way. You don't want to borrow and make an exact copy of something, especially in architecture. Now I learned a lot about architecture, especially the idea that you can design a building to look like animals or objects. Abstract metal curving buildings also are a very cool aspect of architecture which is semi futuristic to me and I never really thought of building being made to look like that. It is so easy to create and make artwork especially in our digital age when we can combined images and blend them together though photoshop.

Introduction to Composing In Context

1) 'Introduction'

 Introduce the topic of Composing in Context and explain the scope of the topic and how we approached it. 

Composing in Context is a very interesting idea on the relationship between living in the technology filled modern world, and its effects on the art form of which we are pursuing. The world around us is constantly changing and moving forward. One of the biggest ideas behind composing is that when you compose you are making art. Everything we do is art and can be constantly influenced by new ideas and technologies. So far we have had three lectures in class giving us insightful views on the ideas of writing and lighting. It was very insightful and it showed me the wonders of what could be done with lights and its relationship to the film or play in which it was being used.

2) 'Starting points'

Describe what you already knew --from experience, thought, and/or study-- about composing and the topic of Composing in Context. (This is sort of like a 'before' section that will eventually get paired with an 'after' section in your conclusion.) 

I already knew a few things that had been told to us in our lectures. For instance, I knew the process of writing pretty well. It was something I had been doing for a long time. Drafting, editing, revising. All fundamental aspects of writing a story/paper. The lighting lecture, going into it I knew lighting was key in portraying certain aspects of film/plays. But what I got out of that class completely changed my perspective and now see lighting in a different light.

3) 'What I learned' 

Describe what you learned from your individual journal writing, from your social writing in the discussion forum, from the assigned readings, from the lecture presentations, and from the website and blog projects. 

I’ve learned that I am able to comprehend and absorb information from a lecture, and then take that information and organize it into a collective rhyme and reason. The class has been very insightful and I’ve learned a lot about writing, a lot about Hello Kitty, and a lot about the importance of making.

4) 'Things I would like to learn more about'  

Elaborate a bit on the points or activities that struck you as most intriguing or interesting in the unit, and how you would pursue learning more about them.

I would like to learn more about the importance and theories behind lighting a scene. It was very intriguing to me the way in which lighting can be used to affect the look, feel, and just the general aesthetics of the importance of lights.

5) Conclusion

Our first unit has been very intriguing and engaging. Our lecturing professors have been phenomenal in there teaching and have gotten their points across extremely well. I am very excited going forward to see what is in store for us all as artist in the class. The past two lectures have not been in subjects I am incredibly interested it, but going forward I am excited to see where the class takes us and what I could learn about other topics. This class is great because it gives us a look into subjects we may or may not have been interested in before hand.