Video Art Can't Quit Playin'... Performance art UT TV

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Xerox project Hand Tree

Grid Project The Wave

Joseph Beuys, Leigh Bowery and Klaus Nomi

 Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, instillation, graphic artist, and art theorist. His work explored concepts of humanism, social philosophy, and anthroposophy. Joseph Beuys is now considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Beuys was a member of Fluxus and close with Nam June Paik and Marcel Duchamp. 

Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer. Bowery is considered one of the most influential artists of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of Bowery's peices include "Ich Bin Kunst" and "I'll Have You All" and had even formed a band for a short time in 1993 called Raw Sewage. They performed nude with their faces blackened, wearing platform shoes and wigs. 

Klaus Nomi, born Klaus Sperber, was another German performance artist known for his performance art. He used make-up, costumes, and a signature hair style. His songs ranged from synthesized classical opera to pop. During his childhood Nomi he performed on stage at the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin where he sang on stage. Nomi gained popularity in the US in New York during his "New Wave Vaudeville" in 1978. 

Fluxus

The term Fluxus comes from a Latin word meaning "to flow." Fluxus is actually an international network of artists, composers, and designers who were known for bringing together different artisic media and disciplines in the sixties. The term came from an artist Dick Higgins in his famous 1966 essay. The artists part of this group were leaders in the Neo-Dada music, visual arts, literature, urban planning, architecture, and design.  Fluxus started with the composer John Cage and his experimental music of the fifties. Another important man for Fluxus is artist George Maciunas who organized the first Fluxus event in 1961 at New York's AG Gallery and the first Fluxus festival in Europe in 1962.Fluxus encouraged a "do-it-yourself"aesthetic and valued simplicity, Fluxus encouraged anti-commercialism and anti-art ideals. Fluxus artists worked with the materials they had at hand.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus was a school in Germany from 1919 to 1933 founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Bauhaus students learned the arts and the school was known for their approach to design that was taught. In German "Bauhaus" means "House of Building" or "Building School." The school was founded on the idea of creating a total work of art in which all arts would be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential leaders in modernist architecture and design and influenced many of the most popular types of art such as architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design and typography. The school was a popular forced until it was forced to close in 1933 due to pressure from the Nazi's.

History of TETRIS

Tetris was first created in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, along with Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. “Tetris” was supposed to be a combination of ‘tetra’(the Greek prefix for four) and ‘tennis’.  He created the wonderful game while working for the Soviet Academy of Science on an Elektronika 60, which was a computer used by the Soviets.  It was made to be ported to the IBM PC.  From there the game made its way to Hungry where it was then discovered by a British software house by the name of Andromeda.  When they assumed they would secure the rights for the PC version from Pajitnov, they sold the rights to Spectrum HoloByte, who in 1986 released the game to the United States. It’s clear why everyone wanted a piece of this enormously popular game., Electronic Gaming Monthly’s 100^th issue awarded Tetris first place as the “Greatest Game of All Time”! In IGN’s “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” gave Tetris second place twenty years after the game was released here in the US.  By 1987 Andromeda obtained the copyright license for the IBM PC version and any other home computer system.  Just one year later the Soviet government began to fight for the rights to Tetris through an organization they created dubbed Elektronorgtechnica aka Elorg. Andromeda continued to license and sub-license rights that they themselves didn’t own, and Elorg had yet to see a dime. And one year after that the rights to Tetris had been claimed by half a dozen companies.  Elorg maintained that they were the only one that could legally produce the game and signed the rights over to Atari Games and Nintendo for all non-Japanese console and handheld rights . Nintendo claimed Atari Games had stolen the rights. Atari Games sued Nintendo believing they had the rights. After about a month on the market the courts ruled in favor of Nintendo, but the lawsuits continued until 1993. In 1996 however the rights to the game were given back to the original creator Pajitnov from the Russian state. He founded The Tetris Company and claimed to hold copyrights for all Tetris products worldwide. It can be said that this is a game of epic porportions, in fact the largest recorded fully funtional game of Tetris came in 1995 some Dutch student at Delft University of Technology  that stood 15 stories high on the Electrical Engineering department.

MZTV~Museum of Television

This is a unique and wonderful website with everything you could ever want to know about the television. Did you know that according to the MZTV website that there are more TV’s than indoor toilets, roughly one set for every four to five people that live on the planet. This website focuses on the importance of the receivers themselves,  “charting the history of the small screen.” Like we discussed in class, Moses Znaimer (the chairman/ executive producer of MZTV Museum of Television) mentions how television were symbols of wealth and status in the 1950s, and how the 60s and 70s considered televisions to be household commodities.  The website also talks about TV’s first star Felix the Cat. One of the most useful tools on the site is the Pioneers of Television, where you can learn about Paul Nipkow the first man accredited with the concept of the television, to Philo Farnsworth who demonstrated the first all electronic system of television in 1927. But my favorite aspect of the website is the ‘Television in Quotes’ section, here are some I found moving…

“Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.”

Camille Paglia- Author/ Critic/ Educator

“Anyone afraid of what television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world” 

            Clive James- Author

“The potential audience of television in its ultimate development may reasonably be expected to be limited only by the population of the Earth itself”

David Sarnoff Chairman, Radio Corp. of America (RCA)

“Television is the first truly democratic culture, the first culture available to everybody and entirely goverened by what people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want”

                        Clive Barnes- Critic, New York Times

Wired Article

I find it very interesting how far and in what pattern technology has emerged over the years. It seems that new breakthroughs in technology go hand in hand with popularity and success. From smell-o-vision, that allows an audience member to smell scents during major scenes, to James Cameron’s 3D Avatar, filmmakers are always trying to push the envelope to give the people what they haven’t seen before. One of the most interesting breakthroughs of the entire article in my opinion was Walt Disney’s Circle-Vision 360 (picture above). Composed of nine screens and shot using nine different cameras, Circle-Vision 360 was a movie going experience that literally surrounded the audience, and lead the way for what was to become IMAX films. It seems that each bit of breakthrough technology engenders the next big breakthrough. So the real question is, where would we be without all the simple technology we take for granted that has built the foundation for what we appreciate today? and what will the breakthroughs of tomorrow be?

Flip Book Animations

The Radio~OTR.com

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

Listening to the program on the radio is an interesting experience unlike any other. It was almost like listening to a book on tape. You get to hear the actors but you get to imagine what they would look like and how they interact.  They use voices to distinguish characters and music to set the mood. But no background music just mood music. It is very interesting how they incorporate advertisements into the stories. "The Strange Dr. Weird would like to take a break from his shadow... Buy an Adams Hat!"

1950-1971

1950 through 1971 was a very difficult time for people all over the world.  This is a time period when the Cold War was just getting into effect, a time where people were feeling tense and anxious. A couple of decades laden with war, political and military uncertainty, propaganda, and economic hardships.  From the time the film “Singing in the Rain” premiered to the revision of the song in the movie “Clockwork Orange” the world suffered through the Korean War, The Vietnam War, the Berlin Crisis (in which Berlin split and the Berlin Wall was built) , and the Cuban Missile Crisis. These number of major political events that took place during that time shaped the society into the cold, harsh critic who only could have envisioned that twisted version of “Singing in the Rain”.

Earthquake

My mother was born in the 1960’s and recalls the most memorable part of the movie Earthquake was the theme park attraction ride at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL that was created based on the film. The ride,  Earthquake:  The Big One”, would show you a bit of the movie, then tourists would board the ride and experience a special effects simulated earthquake.   The ride was open from 1990 to 2007 when it closed to be replaced by “Disaster!…A major motion picture ride…Staring You!” which uses many of the same effects as “Earthquake:  The Big One” did. 

Abel Gance and Georges Melies

Georges Melies and Abel Gance were very similar men in many ways. To start with they were both Frenchmen,  both born in Paris in fact, both men of the 1800’s just 27 year apart, but most importantly they were both innovators in the production of film. Gance was known for his experimental  practices that involved manipulation of the camera to create special effects. Melies preferred more performance style special effects using and manipulating the cinematography,  such as the stop trick. Melies was known as the first ever “Cinemagician." While Gance experimented with filming in sound and color, Melies was hand painting his film to personally add color.  Both men were breakthrough artist in the art of film.

Madama Butterfly Adaptaion

I found it extremely interesting how they adapted the opera into clay animation. It’s almost like an opera for kids, minus the sex scene (which, I must point out, was extremely graphic for clay animation).  The fish baby was a unique interpretation  of a child whos father is out to see. And even as clay doll you can feel how upset Madama Butterfly is when she is left waiting for her man, and when her son is torn from her to go live with the perfect “barbie” family. She is left so sad it tears her apart, literally.  But the butterfly ensures that she will always live on. 

Blackface performers, the origin of "jazz", and the causes of the stock market crash of 1929

Jazz.
The origin of the word jazz is of great interest to many and while highly researched, remains unknown. However, it's clear that the meaning of this slang term has changed over time. The first documented case of the word was in regard to baseball, printed in the LA Times in 1912, used with negative connotations. Over time jazz became known as a positive thing to mean enthusiasm or pep. Some believe the word came from an old slang term "jasm"meaning spirit, energy, or vigor. Jazz's first documented use to describe a genre of music was in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1915.

Blackface Performers.
In an age where only white men where privileged enough to be on stage... How can you create a vibrant and diverse cast? Why not just paint the actors faces! Well that's exactly what they did in the 1800's, here in America and in Europe as well. Performers would used burnt cork, shoe polish and even greasepaint to darken their skin. In the early 1900's many well know actors such as Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Shirley Temple, played blackface roles. The tradition died down around the mid 1900's due to new respect for race and racism.

Stock Market Crash.
Prior to the crash wealth and luxury were predominant in the US. The Roaring 20's where put to a sudden halt on October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday." It all started with a theory that "now was the time to buy stocks!". Millions of Americans started borrowing money to invest in stocks, about 8.5 billion dollars had been loaned out, more than the entire money supply in circulation during that time. Stock prices continued to soar and Americans continued to invest. When the market finally hit its peak on October 24th and began its downward trend, Americans began to panic and panic selling ensued. And following in suit the market crashed.

Art and Technology- wait and see.

I'm really looking foward to this class. Don't like to have to many expectations, that way reality can never fall short. No offense, just a time tested practice. I love starting new class though and I am very excited. Pesonally I hope to be able to incorporate my love of the ocean into some of my projects. I'll just have to wait and see... Time will tell.