Video Art

My video is not uploading again, but it did on YouTube.  Here is the link :) I based my video around the notion that Technology is taking over our lives.  Please enjoy :)

Pipilotti Rist

        Wow this girl is crazy.  She certainly proves that you can never go above and beyond in a movie.  Her video installations introduce so much color, image, music and of course, technology.  After watching her video art piece, I was eager to figure out her deal.  Her 11 minutes video piece, is combined with these flickering colors and completely random images.  Many of the images feature a woman falling.  The distortion of the images and colors are amazing.  The images become more random as the clip goes on, such as stop lights, dancing and a woman carrying a flower.  Throughout the art piece it looks as if it is all being projected from the TV which I thought was very cool.  Towards the end, there are clips of a woman stuggling and drowning.  
       I could even feel such a strong sense of her, while I was interacting on her website.  Another video of her we watched in class was called, "I'm not the girl that misses much." The girls voice speaking is extremely distorted into a very high pitched voice.  She is dancing with her breasts exposed, the pitch changes along with the screen color and the song by the Beatles, "Happiness is a Warm Gun," is incorporated with the video which I found fascinating.  And yes, I do love The Beatles.  The effects and transitions she uses are truly incredible.  

I'm not the Girl who Misses Much (1986)

          She believes in encouraging the mind and energy.  Rist uses art to try to destroy certain clichés.  Pippilotti Rist wants her audience members to forget about prejudices and free their minds.  Her happy images can also prove quite sexual.  More recently, (last year) in the Modern Museum of Art she had an exhibit with a 7354 Cubic Meters video projection, called Put Your Body Out.  

Pierre Schaeffer

          Pierre Schaeffer invented an electronic, stereophonic sound, called concrete music.  His interest in music, evolved with his occupation as a broadcaster with the ability to practice with sound. He spent much of his time at Radiodiffusion Francaise experimenting with mulitple different sounds, one normally would not label as music.  He played with the speed of sounds and integrated them together.  The sounds were also mixed with natural recordings, he had done himself.

             In 1948, radio stations equipment was limited to shellac record players, mixing desks, mechanical reverberation and microphones.  With the combination of these appliances musicians such as Schaeffer, could loop, extract, and filter songs.  Three years later he created a Researching Group for Concrete Music that attracted many composers, who would later become famous for their work.  His creation of the phonogene was on of the first machines to transform sound.  Concrete music is still being practiced. Here is a link I found online of a super strange one.  Today he serves as one of the most influential musicians of our time.

Jim Campbell & Engineering Interactive Art

       In 1956, a new type of interactive, video installation artist was born.  Jim Campbell, was going to introduce a new type of art that integrated his scientific background to create amazing electronic installations.  One of his pieces I found extraordinary was called, Hallucination.  It allowed viewers of his video art to experiment with their bodies.  When someone looked at the screen, his or her body could go on fire.  He also introduces a sneaky other person in the screen so the audience member is under the illusion someone else is in the room.
           Another work he created was called, Library he combined photos with different resolutions and edited each of them, removing certain aspects of a picture.  The photos moved with time, so the image was constantly changing.  
Campbell pushed interactive act to a new level, he did not want people to just push a button but he wanted his viewers to explore his work more intuitively.  A lot of his work focuses on layering images, like in his more recent piece Simultaneous Perspective, he captures the live environment of a bathroom,  and other various locations combined with previous architectonic images.  He uses time and mixes the past and present.  Currently, Campbell resides in California and is working with HDTV products.  

Leigh Bowery

       Leigh Bowery has made a tremendous impact for performing artists today.  He was born in a conservative home with a mother who loved fashion.  He left his native Australian town and moved to London to pursue his fashion designing career.  When all failed, he did start to earn a reputation for his outrageous outfits.  In 1982 he started to promote for a club while dressed up in his intricate designs.  His work was featured in numerous collections during London's fashion week too.  
          He was extremely self absorbed like Andy Wardhol and he looked up to him as a role model.  Bowery, later started the club Taboo, where not only did he run but he also performed at. His club was an escape for homosexuals who wanted to have fun without being judged.  He was widely flamboyant and often dressed up in clothes that emphasized his larger size. His fashion career sky rocketed in 1988 during a show in Dering Street Gallery that lasted a week.  Artists were extremely interested in his unique techniques.  He really captivated the street and it served as a major influence during the show.  He even played self recordings of traffic noises.  

            Leigh Bowery did not have the best financial means, and this hurt him in the end because he sold himself as a product and not enough of what he created.  He was casted in the group Minty, one of their performances called "Childbirth" had Bowery stage a naked woman to come out of his "vagina."  He was an extremely passionate performer and rehearsed religiously. 

           Bowery can be seen as an influence on Lady Gaga, because of her remarkable fashion and numerous outfit changes during her music videos.  In her music video "Paparazzi" she changed 10 times.  Some of her leather jumpsuits and high shoes also resemble what Leigh Bowery wore.  Leigh Bowery died from AIDS in 1994, while only telling a couple of people of his disease.  
        

Laurie Anderson

          After watching a performance by Laurie Anderson in class called "O Superman," (which reached number 2 on UKs billboard charts) I could tell she was not the typical MTV performer.  She completely questioned the traditional performance.  She has even invented objects for her productions, including a tape bow violin talking stick.  I recently watched a video called "Lost Art of Conversation" on her website, it was extremely interesting  because conversation is not what it used to be, especially with the rise of technology people cannot even communicate without their cell phones or computers!

        
           She grew up in a small town in Illinois called Glen Ellyn, and graduated from Columbia University with a MFA in sculpture.  In the 1970s while she was illustrating children's books, she also started to perform in New York. One of her earlier, more notorious performances involved her playing the violin ice skating on a frozen block of ice.  She has recorded 7 albums and this year released her new album Homeland.  

                  In the early 1990s she also created multiple different public service announcements,  that ranged from national debt to lunch menus   In her lunch menu public service announcement she says in the beginning she does not watch television and then talks about how lunch menus came on t.v. for high schools at 6am.  She talks about the music that went along with the menu, and then ends it by saying it "this is television at its best."  I interpreted it as totally poking fun at television and loved it.  I really like her personality in all of the clips I watched from her.
         Her most recent album was produced by her and husband Lou Reed, rock musician from Velvet Underground.  She used her voice filter invention in her new songs.  The songs touch up on issues such as foreign policy, torture, the economy, religion and more controversial topics.  The musically talented couple will be curating a month of programming at "The Stone" in February.  The Stone is a non-profit space dedicated to performance and experimental music.

Weekly Roundup

Hey, I found this really cool link where people are playing the piano while being in their piano.  I know it sounds crazy but check it out on Weekly Roundup.  Laurie Anderson is helping to promote this in Chicago sometime soon!

Joseph Beuys

         Joseph Beuys was not always an artist.  In 1921 he was born in a small northwestern, German city called Krefleld.  He was interested in medicine, but ended up volunteering for the military where he worked with piloting and aircrafts.  Beuys was seriously wounded many times and even survived a major crash.  At the end of the war, he was held as a prisoner in a British interment camp.


     When he returned he pursued his interest in medicine, and enrolled in the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. When he graduated in 1952, he spent most of his time drawing and reading.  He was offered to become a professor at Düsseldorf.  While he was teaching, he grew intrigued by the work of Nam June Paik and the fluxus movement.  His work was also heavily influenced from the images he collected from war time.  

         His first exhibit was in 1965 called, "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare."  It featured a man with his face covered in honey and gold coloring.  He explained his drawings on the walls to the dead hare he held.  Beuys also experimented with sculpting and installations. 
        He believed art to be a healthy way.  Joseph Beuys took risks and wanted his art to provoke people.  He did not want to create something beautiful, he wanted his audience members to question his work. As an art theorist Beuys also believed in conserving the environment.  He planted 7,000 trees in Kassel, Germany.  Unfortunately, he died in 1986 but his risks have transformed what we consider art today.  

Performance Art

                    My video does not want to upload at all!  Check out this link from my facebook, to see the video since it wants to only upload on there?  I passed out in front of starbucks, and within the first 10 seconds someone wanted to call the cops and thought I was in a drunken stupor from the night before.  I tried so hard not to laugh!! No one really helped me though, everyone just kind of stared and laughed or seemed very confused.  I tried to look prego too, as I stuffed a balloon up my dress.  I also put a wine bottle and a pack of cigarettes next to me.

Is Fluxus the new Dada?

    Marcel Duchamp's notion of readymade influenced the fluxus movement immensely.  Artists started to use themselves as art and interact with resources that were already available.  The Fluxus movement emerged right after the Dada movement in the 1960s.   It was an international avant garde style, which artists wanted to connect everyday life items to art.  They achieved this through film, music, collages and writing.  The earliest Fluxus movements occurred in New York at the AG Gallery in 1961 by George Maciunas.   Important performers that erupted out of this movement are also street performer Yoko Ono.  Fun Fact-she was married to John Lennon!
 
         I watched a video of her on youtube which was called her "cut piece" performance art.  It seems like many of her performances were very interactive with her audience.  In her piece she had each viewer cut a piece of her clothing off.

            Street art started to become more and more familiar, and live art was the latest trend.  Artists started to question what exactly art is.   Flux musicians such as John Cage, believed connect theater to media.  "Happenings" was a new term that evolved out of this period,  they were long performances that were meant to make the audience interact with the artist performing.  Artists started to eliminate the screen between them and their audience.

Xerox Project

        I spent a lot of time thinking about what part of my body I wanted to scan.  Since there was no censorship and I did want to go out of the box, I decided to do my vagina.  So I scanned it and then distorted it a little and made it extremely dark so you could barely see anything.  I didn't really want the whole world to see my vagina up close and personal.  I was inspired by the dada movement, and all the collages so I did a collage of words out of a magazine I thought reminded me of sex and the body in media.    I kind of placed the words so they appear like teeth on the lips I made out of a folder and FedEx box pieces.  I used the top of my desk, I was supposed to build months ago and I know I will never build it so I tiled the scanned pictures of myself and then wrote out what is the value on the bottom.  I finally made the lips pop off the board.  I think it looks pretty sweet.

Bahaus!

     Bahaus seemed like a fabulous institute! Bahaus literally means "house for building."  It featured most avant garde art of its time!  Bahaus was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919.  Gropius was a famous architect who wanted to bring people together through art.  Bahaus originally started in Weimar, then Dessau and ended in Berlin in 1933.  Each time the location changed, so did the directors.  Each director focused on a different concept.

Monochrome in Lincoln, Massachusetts built by Walter Gropius

      The schools focused on students ability to experiment and thing out of the box.  There were many different types of classes available as well such as pottery, carpentry, sculpting, weaving, printing and varieties of painting.  Architecture classes were also available but not initially, which I thought was ironic considering Gropius is an architect mastermind.
  










          Many art movements erupted from the institute.  One of the artists who taught at Bahaus was Wassily Kandinsky.  He was an art theorist who created completely original modern designs.  I attached one of his works called, On White II.  I really liked all the different figures and shapes combined together.  

(1923, Wassily Kandinsky)
I did not realize how influential Bahaus really is.  A lot of the modern furniture I have recently been viewing, has been influenced by Bahaus.  Also many buildings have been influenced by Bahaus architecture. Bahaus was much more than a school.  It was a community where artists could experiment with new ideas.  

Andalusion of A Dog?

      

 Whoa, I did not expect that movie to be so weird.  "Andalusion of a Dog" is a sixteen minute, black and white film produced by Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dali.  It emerged from the Dada movement around 1929. The movie is totally silent and in black and white so you have to concentrate more.  The music was not anything to pry about.  Fun Fact: This movie was also financed by Luis' mother.  The actors throughout the film were naturally extremely corny and over dramatic. It was cool to see what innovative technique would be used to change the scene.    

      I appreciated the constant fluidity within the film, it worked extremely well.  The film was very creative and had many unusual transformations.  One of the transformations I thought was cool was how the ants in the man's hand changed into armpit hair, then something that looked like a tumbleweed and finally a hand.    The scenes were pretty random, especially when the man was pulling two pianos with dead horses on them.  Check out the first part for yourself!  

Grid Art

I really did not know what type of piece I wanted to do for this project. I probably spent what seemed like an eternity at Home Depot looking up and down the aisles for the perfect grid.  I finally concluded I wanted to take a tile and make it look glamourous!  I wanted to add some color so I spray painted some of the tile hot pink.   I was going to glue Swavroski crystals on the tile, but it would be expensive so I just used beads I remembered I had.  All the bright colors from the beads reminded me of New York so I figured it would be cool if I spelled out I <3 New York in different color beads.  It did not come out as clean or as lined as wanted to.  There were a lot of beads and I wanted to add another layer or addition to it, so I thought it would be cool to spell out "The City That Never Sleeps," in magazine letters.  I hope you all liked it!

The Perfect Escape

       I went to the Tetris website and it is actually really cool!  I have always loved Tetris, I play it on my phone all the time.  It is kind of funny, my dad was actually addicted to it...i'm not kidding......ok perhaps I am exagerating.  He used to steal my "Gameboy" when I was younger and play Tetris for hours.  It made me so  furious!

       Tetris was born in Moscow!  In 1984 the first edition was created in Moscow by a man of the name of Alexey Pajitnov.  It was then ported to IBM and spread all over Soviet Union.  Tetris started to appear on IBMS in North America and Europe in 1987.  A mere year later, Henk Rogers discovered Tetris in Las Vegas at a Consumer Electronic Show.  Rogers had his own publishing company called Bullet Proof Software where he published his first Nintendo game.

   Rogers went to Moscow to get the rights to Tetris, and when he received the rights he sold it over to Nintendo.  Pajitnov and Rogers became friends.  In 1989 over 35 million copies were sold.  In 1996, Rogers gave the rights back to Pajitnov.   He moved to Hawaii where he established Blue Planet Software.  Hawaii does not sound too shabby.  When the rights were back to Pajitnov, he got Roger Dean to create a fresh look for the game.
 
      In 2000, Tetris became the most popular mobile game in Japan. After the success in Japan, Rogers founded Blue Lava Wireless to see how the game would work on cell phones in North America.  Two years later Jamdat bought Blue Lava Wireless and a 15 year license to buy Tetris through mobile devices.  In 2006, EA bought Jamdat and launched Tetris to iphones making it the number one game downloaded.
      
       I think movie studios started to realease video games because when someone sees a movie, the viewer escapes and can practically envision themselves on the screen.  Just imagine, in a video game you are in control and you become the character.  Movie studios are absolute genuises and make a killing from these games.  Video games like Harry Potter, James Bond, Saving Private Ryan and Batman are all extremely popular.  The gamer can be the hero, that he or she usually views on the screen.  Video games are the perfect escape.
     
       The future of video games is questionable, because of technology advancing into smaller and more accessible means.  Iphone games are hugely popular, as well as computer games.  According to market research firm NPD Group video games were down eight percent from a year ago.  Who knows what will happen next.

Flip book Comments

Rob Pollock-Whoa I totally thought it was a cross. it really does change things.
I really liked your contrast of dark and bright colors. I thought it was cool that your influence was the Space Odyssey.You can also tell that you spent a lot of time on each one of the pages, there are lots of little details I noticed. I enjoyed flipping through your book a lot, and liked the story line, it was planned out extremely well.

Julia Ponzek-Oh my goodness, one-the book you used was so "vintagely" awesome! It went along so well with your illustrations. It looked like the animation just happen to be in there. 

Your artwork was beautiful too, I loved your clever story. I liked that you didn't use color, but that is just my opinion. :) Your drawings were extremely unique. Keep up the good work!

Thuy Pham-Aww your book was adorable. I loved the use of color, that probably took a very long time. Your story line was cute and clever. It really tells a lot that you went over 400 pages, you were definitely dedicated to the project. Haha and its funny Rob said it too about stick figures, but they really do rock. I feel like they make a big difference, and it your story would not have been the same if it was "real" people. FABULOUS job! Keep up the good work.

John O'Neil-Unusual story, your pictures were neat. I liked the one with Gumbi because Gumbi is the cats pajamas. You used a lot of color which definitely shows your dedication to the flip book. It was fun to watch :) Good job!!

Alaina Malarkey- Your caterpillar was super cute.  I liked your theme of nature throughout the book.  It was fun to flip through, and the story made up for the fact that it was under 400 pages! I loved your use of color too. Great work.

Taylor Lane- Taylor! I loved yours! It was super dark and cool. I liked the sharpie idea too. It kind of reminded me of the book, The GIving Tree"-which is like my favorite book by the way. You had a cool concept and story. 

Phenomenal job!

Natasha Kipper-Your drawings were really cute. I liked your story, it was entertaining to flip through. It was cool watching the lives of each fish go by.

Cayla Birkestrand- I loved that you totally took over the book, your concept was really unique.  I liked the light use of color in the light bulb.  It seems like you had some fun with it!  Your work was amazing.  Keep it up!!  


Maureen Horan- I absolutely loved your idea of the ballerina dancing along the pages.  It was really smart of you to use tissue paper too.  I loved your brilliant use of color, and the design towards the end was beautiful.  You can definitely tell you spent a lot of time on the pages.  I can't wait to see more of your work!


Matyia Hamilton- Your flipbook was adorable.  I loved your use of color.  Your story was funny too! Good job!


Nathan Green-All things start small was a cool concept. It was unique and it seemed like you had fun playing with the idea. Your pages had a lot of detail too. Your story flowed well. Great work.

Jessica Delasnueces-Yours was definitely one of my favorites! Your idea was really original, I loved that you used Tetris. That was super smart. The bright colors you used were brilliant. Great work!!

Bianca Burrows-Wow, great idea! Your concept was really fun, and I liked your use of color. Your flipbook flowed really well. It was fun to flip through and you planned out the pages very well. Good job!

Musuem Of Television

       

  This museum almost humors me.  On its mission statement page it says that the museum concentrates on the history of television and the sets.  The statement makes is pretty clear that it is unlike any other NORTH AMERICAN store in the fact that it is exposing history and not just showing televisions (like some United States commercial one would).  Oh Canada, I feel like they totally hate Americans....but then again who doesn't?
        I did think the museum seemed pretty cool.  I liked the Marilyn Monroe exhibit.  The graphics and linkage techniques were really neat to experiment with.   The timeline was super awesome too.  Each time I scrolled to a new year new links instantly appeared, and the image changed immediately! It was like a powerpoint I could control myself.  I was very impressed with the technology used in this website.

WIRED!

Check it out.  http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/cinema-breakthroughs-busts/?pid=1205&viewall=true
      Whoa.  I have seen so many so many of these movies mentioned in this article, and I was not aware of how advanced they were for their time.  Snow White was probably the first movie I remember ever seeing!! 

I also saw Star Wars Attack of The Clone, that was shot in 24 frame-per-second HD digital video.  Just think exactly one century from Star Wars, was  Georges Méliès's movie A Trip to The Moon (Le Voyage Dans La Lune.   
     I totally feel like The Birth of a Nation would be a bore to watch, a silent action film?  Watching an action film in a theater is like going to a Metallica concert.  You may even loose your hearing!  I'm sure I have lost mine through my headphones.  Speaking of Action, I also watched Apocolypse Now in my cultural theory class.  I did think the movie was so loud!!!! Now I know why, it was because of its surround sound which was kind of awful but it was the first type of sound like that for its time.  


    Ya learn something new every day! P.S. SO EXCITED FOR GLEE TONIGHT.... 

    

Doctor Weird?

       I think the olden days are so corny.  Humor has totally changed throughout time.  Dr. Weird probably seemed probably so entertaining and funny to its viewers of the shows time, but if it was played today, I honestly do not think it would last.  Also, I do love that in this year and time that we are so spoiled by technology because the show sounds so harsh!  I could not stand listening to the fuzziness.
        
          Listening to a show and using your imagination is so much different.  I definitely had to concentrate a lot more to what I was hearing, I admit I did catch myself zoning out.   I missed being able to depend on my eyes!

http://www.otr.com/ra/01%20The%20House%20Where%20Death%20Lived.mp3

Flip book pages

Pages from my flip book animation! 

What happened?

SO CREEPY.
      

       A LOT happened between the 50s and 70s.  In the 50s tragedies went down like the Korean War, Suez Crisis and the Cuban Revolution.  The fifty's were a pretty good time for the most part though.  Well WWII was over and people were starting to get back on their feet.  Elvis also made is debut ;)  But SO did Marilyn Monroe. When the movie Singing in The Rain made its debut, it did not grow popular until later.  And is now considered to be one of the best on film musicals, probably because it was the first of its kind.  And check it out, Sputnik was launched-but we did get the first man on the moon.



    Civil rights went down too.  In 1954s infamous court case Brown v. Board, it was decided that segregated schools were no more.  Oh snap.  The next big riot began with Ms. Rosa Parks.  Her little stunt caused a boycott that pushed bus revenues down 80%.  Next thing you know, buses are desegregated.  These minor and MAJOR boycotts went on until 1968.  In 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act!  Martin Luther King Jr. became the father of desegregation and literally gave his life for African Americans rights.  And after that the ever so handsome John F. Kennedy was assasinated!

        Many people like John F. Kennedy too. The TV became pretty popular in 1960 and according to Britannica Encyclopedia, "Between 1960 and 1965, the average number of daily hours spent in front of a TV screen increased by 23 minutes, (the largest rise since 1950)."  At the end of the 60s people started to get riled up about the Vietnam War.    


   Singing in the Rain came out in the United States in 1952 when life was good in the United States-besides the Korean War.  People had money, cars, and they were starting to buy more and more televisions and telephones.  The scene we watched in class was couldn't help but make you happy and want to sing.  Life was good for America so why not sing about it?  


     It's funny, because the other "singing in the rain" scene, from A Clockwork Orange, made me want to vomit.   The character totally ignores rape and violence and commits heinous crimes.  The british movie was released at a time when the UK was not in a good position.  Their economy was on the rocks, and immigration became a problem.   In 1971 the microprocesser was created, which has to got to be like prehistoric to us now.  When the movie came out, the civil rights move was over and people felt free to speak their voices.  People started to express their feelings towards war ... and "The Beatles" kept releasing beautiful songs.  Everyone was a bit more accepting, music became more edgy, people started to experiment with drugs and engage in more sex.  


    One scene was released during a time when families were happy and the other extreme was shown when people started to express what they feel more and revolt. 
 


       

Earthquake

   
    When I asked my mom if she had seen the movie "Earthquake," she asked if that was the movie that scared everyone.  She told me that it was a pretty impressive film considering Mario Puzo wrote the screenplay, who also did for "The Godfather."  My mom remember the movie to be, as I quote her, "pretty cool" because large buildings were breaking apart and the earth started to open up.  She got scared during the movie when the earth started to suck people up, and it totally freaked her out.

Beginning of Film

      George Méliès was one of the fathers of early cinema. He wasn't a master of moving pictures, until 1896.  Originally, Méliès was only a magician and became affixed with the phenomena after witnessing Lumiere's work.  In the book, by Elizabeth Ezra, Georges Méliès: the birth of the auteur, he describes the moment and he said, "We sat there with our mouths open, without speaking filled with amazement."  (2, Ezra) From 1896 until 1914 he directed over a whopping 500 films.
      Méliès was notorious for creating tricks in his films, that were considered special effects back then.  The reason why he was able to succeed in these"tricks" was because he used multiple exposures.  He was able to make things change size and disappear.   In 1902 he produced his most famous work, "A Trip to the Moon."  The movie is a total of 14 minutes and used 16 frames per second.  Unfortunately, technology does move fast.  By1906 cameras became more accessible and cheaper. Competition became fierce with aspiring director such as Edwin S. Porter.  In 1923 George Méliès  declared bankruptcy and died in 1938.
     Abel Gance was a major, french film director in the 1920s.  He began working and directing for movies at the age of 21.  He is an extremely significant figure in cinematography because of his filming techniques.  Gance is also known for his historical battles that appear in his movies.  His name started to get recognized after his successful production of "J'accuse!" 
       In 1924, Abel Gance began the direction of the most groundbreaking film of his career, "Napoleon." It originally durated over 6 hours, but was later compressed to half that.  Gance introudced many new technologies, such as color tiniting and polyvision.  During the battle scences, he had numerous cameras filmuing to capture different scenes so everything was constantly in motion. Abel Gance was a master of editing, and also used superimpoisition. 
     Polyvision would serve as revolutionary for spectators to watch.  In the theature, three projectors played the movie and each projector showed different views for certain scenes.  He created a three-camera rig for shooting.  Gance had a tremendous impact for the future of film.  His experiments with different shooting approaches like close ups, different angle views and wipes paved the way for aspiring directors. 









 

Bring it on Broadway

            Musicals and plays are Broadway are such a great escape.  I remember the first time I saw"Wicked" with the notorious Idina Menzel and ever so peppy Kristin Chenoweth.  My butt practically fell on the floor because I was in such awe of the entire performance.  There is a rumor that a movie is to made, it definitely will not be anything like the musical. 


        It's weird how history also repeats itself.  In the beginning of World War I, entertainers were sent to the front line to remind the army of the support from the US.  Today, plenty of artists have performed for the soldiers.  Jessica Simpson even went to Kuwait to sing for the troops.   Hmm....I wonder how that went.


       After World War II, Broadway was on fire.  In 1943, the first play to sing songs and tell a story gave Broadway an entire new spin.  It was called Oklahoma.  That song "Oh what a beautiful morning," will forever remind me of my father because he blasted that song every time he could.  Broadway would also make a come back after 9/11.  People needed to remember that we must support artists of today.  They needed to go somewhere where they could forget about the war.  


        In the documentary about Broadway, the term Gullah was used. Gullah is a creole language that African Americans used who lived on the regions of South Carolina, and the north of Georgia.  Since many African Americans who came to America all spoke different dialects (from West Africa) they combined their different languages from Africa with English (they heard spoken from their owners).  


            Gullah is still spoken today, but only in "Gullah" areas of South Carolina and Georgia.  In 1979 there was a study to see how many people still spoke the language.  Representatives from Summer Institute of Linguistics concluded more than 100,000 still practiced it.  10,000 of those people did not even know English.  

1920's

     I always love learning new things about the 1920's.  I almost wish I was born in the 20's, except for that whole stock market crash and great depression.  That would not be too fun, but it sounds like great fun to be a flapper back then.  My mission on my blog today is to explain the origin of "jazz," "black face performers," and the effects of the stock market crash..dun dun dun. 

       The word jazz used to be spelled as "jass."  According to the, Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century, the word jazz is probably derived from a slang term for sexual intercourse. I found out in article, called "Brass tracks: Getting down to he origins of Jazz," that African Americans first started playing jazz in New Orleans.  I would have definitely thought New York first.  After New Orleans jazz became big in Chicago in 1915 and then in the 1920's it made it's debut in New York.  Jazz was a combination of African American beat and European rhythm. 
  
          I found an interesting, yet completely legitimate quote from Frederick Douglass that sums up a black face performer pretty well, "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." Black face performers were white people who actually pained their faces black. They also emphasized creating their lips look bigger.  The performers spoke in a different accent and wore rugged attire.  However, by the 1840s African Americans even participated in black face performers. 

    The first "black face" performer was a white comedian Thomas D. Rice who introduced the look in 1828 when he sang about Jim Crow Laws.  The black face performing shows were referred to as minstrelsy or a minstrel show.  In the 1920's even famous females blues singers such as singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith dressed up as "black face" performers.  By mid 1920's minstrel shows died out.    
     The stock market crash not only brought an end to Broadway but also everything that made the twenties roar.  There were no more extravagant outfits, Unemployment rates were the absolute worst, businesses and banks failed everywhere and even the wealthy were struggling.   People had been predicting that stock market prices were way too high, and when they plummeted people literally lost everything.  World War II had also put America is greater debt.  No one was buying anything from us, trading decreased tremendously.

      It is interesting how there are parallels between the recession going on now and the great depression.  Unemployment rate in April 2010 was 9.9% (according to an article, "Why a Rising Unemployment Rate is Good News," by Rick Newman) .  The unemployment rate in 1931 was still worse than now, but by not by too much.  The president now is trying to take ideas from Roosevelt, which I think is wise but I still think he should think more outside of the box. 

     I love learning about Broadway!

      

Opera!

So I just realized Publix Greenwise has Wifi.  I am still without internet, because I cannot get my priorities in order.  The VMA's are on too which I totally forgot about.  Hopefully Lady Gaga will perform, she is super outrageous.   Yum, it smells like cheeseburgers out here.

     Last class was pretty flipping sweet! We listened to Opera, ugh I love Opera man.  My teacher played old school opera too, which I usually do not listen a whole lot too.  I definitely want to introduce old school opera more into my daily life.  For our assignment due next week, we get to even watch an Opera move and write it about.  That is such a good excuse for me to drink wine too. Even though I tend to over use any excuse I can to drink.

      We watched this really cool scene from this movie, "Aria," and these two people were making love to this beautiful song composed by Richard Wagner, it was so unbelievable.  It freaked me out when they slit their wrist at the end.  I did not see that coming.  We listened to a lot of composers like Rossili and Puccini. He also played a clip from "Phillidelphia," boy Tom Hanks can act.

      I heard the song"Madame Butterfly," too.  I have heard the song name before, by Andrea Bocelli but the song he played was by a woman and much different.  I strongly recommend both.  I also never knew that "Rent"was created from "La Boheme."  I love muisc.  Now it smells like greasy chinese food...ew...later haters