First Thoughts

I have started my new web blog here on blogger.com and am unsure of what to write about. I guess when the professor gives me a subject to write about I will try my best to come up with something to say. Hopefully something that makes sense and covers the subject matter in some relevant detail. Iam not a good writer and this is something I would like to improve on and so I will probably purchase a book from the Dummies series on writing for Dummies or something like that. Hopefully that will help me improve my writing ability and content creation.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Future of Cinema slide presentation

docs.google.com/presentationdocs.google.com/presentation

The future of Cinema has to start with movie history because without history you don't have a future.The future of Cinema starts with the first invention to produce motion. In 1873 former California governor Leland Stanford needed help winning a bet he had made with a friend.(Media Literacy and Culture Stanley J. Baran) He was convinced that horses in a full gallop had all four feet off the ground, he had to prove it. The governor turned to professional photographer Eadweard Muybridge for help solving this problem. In 1877 Muybridge arranged a series of still cameras along a stretch of racetrack. (Media Literacy and Culture Stanley J. Baran)The horse raced pass the series of camera's which took a single shot from each camera which proved that when the photo's viewed together in order it created motion. Muybridge continued to experiment with motion shots and invented the Zoopraxiscope, a machine for projecting slides onto a wall. Muybridge met with the great inventor Thomas Edison in 1888 who took his Zoopraxiscope and improved on the idea with his own inventor William Dickson. William Dickson combined Hannibal Goodwin's newly invented celluloid roll film with George Eastman's easy to use Kodak camera to make a motion picture camera that took 40 photo's a second. (Media Literacy and Culture Stanley J. Baran)

William Dickson then used his Kinetograph to film all types of theatrical performances, some non famous people and others famous like Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody.(Media Literacy and Culture Stanley J. Baran)

 Thomas edison was the first to change camera placement and editing. His movie the Great Train Robbery(1903) was the first movie to use inntercutting scenes and mobile cameras to tell a story.

The Future of Cinema continued with these short films which brought audiences to come to the new Cinema the nikelodeons some of these having as much as 100 seats.

The Future of Cinema continued with hundreds and hundreds of these Nickelodeons poping up everywhere all over the country there was a need for more movies to be made.

Production companies started to sping up to produce these movies and people making these movies had to learn all aspects of the process. Writer, actor, and camera operator D. W. Griffith was quickly recognized as a brilliant director. He introduced innovations like scheduled rehearsals before final shooting and production based on a shooting script. D.W. Griffith also used closeups, lighting and costume in his productions which brought a more dramatic look to his films.

The Future of Cinema grew because of D. W. Griffiths film in 1915 Birth of a Nation which was distributed across the country and became won of the highest grossing films until 1939's Gone with the Wind.

The Future of Cinema thrived because of Thomas Eddisons (MPPC) which was Edisons way of controling what types of movies were produced and distributed. The independent producers, writers,directors did not like this so the moved to Hollywood and started their own studio system.

The newly formed studios of Universal, Paramount, and Fox Films started to produce their own films for the twenty thousand theaters that were present at the time.

The Future of Cinema continued to grow in innovation in the mid 1920's with the invention to the talkie. The silent film era was at a close and sound in film became important Don Jaun (1926) starring the great John Barrymore distributed with synchronized music and sound effects. The Jazz Singer (1927) starring Al Jolson, had many speaking scenes (354 words) but was mostly silent.

The Future of Cinema was bright by the end of the 1930's weekly attendance at movie theaters was over eighty million with Hollywood producing five hundred pictures a year. The cinema was a meeting place for family entertainment across the country.

The Future of Cinema is bright according to Christopher Nolan who said that "Movie studio;s, producers, and theater owners will have to work for it, demonstrably inproving the experience of going to the movie theater." Christopher Nolan also said, "that Bigger theaters,expensive projection, and new directors will usher in a new era of cinema.

The future of Cinema rests with the creative writers, producers and directors of the future and what they produce for the Cinema. Wally Pfister say's that. " While people can watch content on any device, in any location, the future of movies rests in delineating the theatrical experience from your home theater and your mobile phone."

Christopher Nolan hopes that new film makers like we had in the 1990's such as Lars von Trier, and Quentin Tarantino will bring in new life to the cinema.

The Cinema Journal 45, No. 1 2005 states that "convergence now stands as one measure of success in the studios. To acheive this end, the conglomerates constantly work to exploit the economic conditions and business practices in film that historically difined television."

The Future of Cinema has to include the innovations of technology which should excite and thrill cinema's future audiences. Michelle Lhooq say's that because of lasers in IMAX movies the lasers produce deeper black colors which make sharper images overall.

Laser projection systems also promise to fix the washed out, eye straining quality of 3d movies according to Michelle lhooq. The major film studios during the 2012 CinemaCon gave their stamp of approval on new technology with a prototype shown at the con.

The other improvements in cinema are in the use of digital camera's like the Red One which Steven Soderbergh have been using to shoot their new film productions. They are less expensive for studio's and easier to carry to on location filming.

Iphones have also made their way into the future of cinema with whole movies being shot on smart phones. In 2011 the movie Olive was shot by Hooman Khali on a Nokia smartphone.

The Future of Cinema also features improvements in 3d movies with Lenticular lens technology which redirects light to each eye allowing the audience to process two different images at the same time(the way we do in real life) giving us greater perception of depth.

The Future of Cinema also includes sound and the only masters of sound for the past fourty years have be Dolby. Dolby has come up with the Atomos sound system which debut in 2012. They say by adding a rigging of speakers to the ceiling and adding more speaker feeds/audio inputs all around, the system pushes sound out from even more directions- making auditory effects almost alarmingly naturalistic.

In conclusion the Future of Cinema is bright because it includes the elements of technology with the elements of the creative minds of our new century. Cinema is not dead its just starting a new phase in its history. Hopefully instead of the Comic book movies which Hollywood has been producing the past couple of years, they will focus on better narrative story telling and less on the blockbuster movie making.




Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Field Trip continued

Hirschhorn Museum Field Trip 

by Eric J. Woody

The third work of art I chose is from artist Claes Oldenburg who wrote "Iam for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself." He created this work 7-Up made in 1961 which was made of papiermache. He wanted to show his work as a slick piece of  commercial design into a lumpy, paint-dripped object, simultaneously equating the sale of art with everyday retail. I saw it as a representation of American culture which we see in television commercials everyday. It is an Icon of advertising which has been around for decades. We as americans love our soft drinks and 7-Up has been as popular as many others like Coke, Pepsi, DR. Pepper. 


What other works of art or TV shows/films or advertisements do these inner images remind you of?
I think these art works remind me of everyday life, and show how art imitates life in the way we create art.How do these inner images get borrowed back-and-forth? We usually repeat things we see that are successful in advertisement, TV shows, film, and things in nature.Does this change the Art-ness of these images? I think everyone has their own interpretation of what is art and how they want to create art and what messages they want people to see in their art.If Art is defined as any form of media, which makes you, think in a new way, how did your three selected works challenge you to think differently? How art they Art? I think that the works of Art i wrote about were interesting, and got me to look at art with more understanding of even though I am not a fan of art. The works of art i looked at are art because these are the interpretations of life that the artist want to project to the audience and these are there creations from their unique ideas.

What books and gifts can be purchased at the gift shop? What does this say about the works of art in the Museum? Art books and art gifts are the main attractions of the Hirschhorn Museum gift shop and this shows that the works of art are the main focus of the museum. Who decides what goes into this art museum? Why did they get this privilege? Who paid for the Museum Who paid for the special exhibit. Joseph H. Hirshhorn
Joseph H. HirshhornThe Hirshhorn Museum’s founding donor, Joseph H. Hirshhorn (1899–1981), immigrated to New York from Latvia when he was eight years old. His widowed mother settled with her children (Joseph was the twelfth of thirteen) in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
In time, Joseph Hirshhorn would become a financier, philanthropist, and well-known collector of modern art whose gift to the nation of nearly 6,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and mixed media pieces established his namesake museum on the National Mall. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has been open to the public since October 4, 1974. The Board of Trustees get the privilege of picking the art which goes into the Hirschhorn Museum. The Smithsonian paid for the building of the Hirschhorn Museum in honor of the philanthropist and art. What should have been in this museum, but wasn't? What should have been in the gift shop but wasn't? Why do you think these were left out? I think picasso should have been in this museum but wasn't because his abstract art fits the modern art theme of the museum. I didn't see a lot of standard Smithsonian gifts which show the Museum and the Smithsonian logo. These gifts were left out because the museum wants people to absorb the atmosphere of the modern art exhibits not the standard brand gifts which are in the rest of the Smithsonian Museums.How is the value of the artworks in this museum determined? What makes one piece of artwork more valuable then the others? In a world where artworks can be reproduced (like the books and posters in the gift shop)- how does this change the original work of art? Why is a reproduction worth less money than an original Can you describe a type of artwork which doesn't have an original? 
What Determines the Commercial Value of Art?
Like currency, the commercial value of art is based on collective intentionality. There is no intrinsic, objective value (no more than that of a hundred-dollar bill). Human stipulation and declaration create and sustain the commercial value. Reproductions mimic the original artwork but try to enhance the original works value by making it a brand 
The reason that many people continue to be astonished or enraged when they hear that a particular work of art has been sold for a large sum of money is that they believe art serves no necessary function. It is neither utilitarian, nor does it seem to be linked to any essential activity. You cannot live in it, drive it, eat, drink, or wear it. Even Plato considered the value of art to be dubious because it was mimesis, an imitation of reality.
.Reproductions mimic the original artwork but try to enhance the original works value by making it a brand which will be recognized with a larger audience. 

What is the difference between an original artwork and a reproduction of it?

7 Answers
Michelle Gaugy
Michelle Gaugyart gallery owner, author, art consultant
2.3k Views • Michelle is a Most Viewed Writer in Artwork with 200+ answers.
When an artist creates a unique artwork, that is an original. That original may be a painting of some kind, or a sculpture, or a performance work, or one of many other kinds of media. It seems that the types of original media proliferate daily. However, if the artist makes it with his/her own hands OR under his/her supervision (Jeff Koons has a huge workshop with lots of "helpers" as does the glassmaker Dale Chihuly - and so did many of the Renaissance artists), then it is an original.

With printmaking, there is a lot more confusion in the artworld, and in fact, Bernd's answer needs a bit of clarification. When an artist does original printmaking, they make a printing plate from which an edition is printed. The plate does NOT copy a work of art that was originally produced in some other medium (an oil painting, acryclic, etc.). It is a unique work, created solely as a print. The pieces of the edition are signed and numbered by the artist. (note: There are also "monoprints", which are one of a kind prints that an artist makes - each one a unique piece - these are just like originals, except they are made by a printing process)

If the printing plate - these days plates can be made photographically - copies, or in other words, REPRODUCES an image that the artist originally made in some other medium, and then the works in the edition replicate THAT image, then even if the artist numbers and signs them and even if he or she makes some little extra unique squiggles on them with their own hand, and even if the gallery calls them "originals", they are stillreproductions.  And what is really important to understand, is that they are of much less value that any kind of original created by the artist, no matter how they are hyped.  This is the area where the greatest misinformation and flat out frauds in the art business have occurred.

To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with reproductions. They can be great, and serve an excellent purpose. I own reproductions of images I love, because I could never afford the originals. But the question is an important one, because it is critical to understand the difference, since the words "original" and "priint" are so frequently misused and misexplained, and substantial amounts of money can get caught up in the confusion.

Hirschhorn Museum Field Trip

The Field Trip to the Museum

by Eric J. Woody


The first work I chose to talk about is a photo work by Jan Dibbets called the Tide created in 1969. It is a series of photos of the shoreline showing the tides coming in and going out. Jan Dibbets created a trench at this beach site which looked too me like a painted line drawn in the sand. Jan Dibbets photographed this scene in such away too make each shot appear square. It appeared to me like he moved up towards the tide to get a closer look of the tide as it came in and went out making the trench seem as if it was disappearing into the surf. The first couple of frames only showed the trench as if it were a line drawn into the sand going forward toward the surf. It didn't do anything for me until I saw the surf and the way it blended into the background and created a peaceful scene.


This second work by Nick Cave called the Soundsuit made in 2009. Nick cave has made dozens of this visual wearable art suits which create sound as well as a visual effect for the audience who is present during a performance. He made these wearable suits out of cast off materials from flea markets and thrift stores. I first thought it was an assembly of junk sculpted to make a sculpture which represented our wasteful society. We as humans waste a lot of materials and do not recycle most of what we throw away. Nick Cave wanted the suits to be worn by performers so as to amplify the performers movements from the materials attached to the suit and be both visually appealing and aurally interesting.