Month: November 2017

Part 1:

The alumni presentations were about how they evolved their work and got into the work place with the skills they have developed. Each one was interesting, with their stories of how they evolved and found out what they love to do and making their own living, with a couple making it through advertisement and another starting with advertisement but going on to doing her own projects and selling through creativity. It gives me a good image of what I could look forward to after graduation.

Part 2:

Possible Internships:

Barefoot Student, Graphic Design Internship: https://www.barefootstudent.com/austin/jobs/internships/graphic_design_internship_1920297043

Tenderling Design, Graphic Design Internship: https://www.helpwanted.com/7af4bce36b3a4-Graphic-Design-Internship-job-listings

C3 Presents, Creative Design Internship: http://edmjobs.com/job/creative-design-intern/

I have recently listened to a podcast by Radio Lad called “Beyond Time”. The podcast talks about how time affects all in human society, and how things like certain societies and objects change over time, as well as people who want to change time, like turn it back.

It starts with an artist who made a sculpture made with steel and aluminum which mixes over time, and the sculpture would not be done until 3,500 years in the future. There were children who saw this statue and went up to observe it, touch it, even hug it. It was interesting that the guy would do this, even with how fast time changes different places, that he would do this project to watch how the metals mix and fuse, and that it wouldn’t be finished until he is long gone.

The podcast goes on to talk about how to emulate the beginning of things, elements, and the universe, since all we have now was made from something before it, so the guy observes some actions of nature and atomic reactions and some historical and current projects and works done by people and how they change over time and how the way people do things change. They observed both old and new objects, so it further emphasizes what all the world can change over time, and that nothing stays the same.

The podcast definitely showed how time affects people and objects alike, and the stance people take on time, whether they want to go back to the past or let time progress.

Recently I have watched a TED talk by David Blaine on how he held his breath for 17 minutes. Blaine is a well-known magician from New York who always tries to go beyond the human body limits in order to amaze people.

Throughout the TED talk, Blaine describes his journey to trying to increase the amount of time he can go without breathing. When he first started doing magic, he would usually do tricks where he would survive in closed spaces with only water for several days and live under certain conditions which would hurt the brain. He decided that his next challenge was with breathing, so he trained to break the world record for holding his breath, which included studying the people who have lived the longest without breathing and getting brain damage, studying pearl divers, and undergoing a diet to make him lose 50 pounds in three months. He kept increasing his capacity up until he finally was able to reach his goal.

What amazed me, though, is that despite thinking about doing it, he did not take shortcuts and create the illusion of holding his breath. The methods he was going to use, though, would not have worked as well because they would have been exposing, and people would notice, so he ended up just training to hold his breath. This amazed me since he very much could take the magician route, but ended up trying to exceed his limits anyways.

This talk was inspirational that you could achieve something if you work for it. His way of drawing attention and amazing people with magic and exceeding bodily limits shows what people are drawn to when wondering about what we are capable of.

I have watched this video recently called “The way things go” by an unnamed YouTube user. This video shows a series of objects being moved and changing, as a consequence of another force or object acting upon them.

This video mainly reminded me of the videos of complicated contraptions, used for the purpose of trapping a creature or performing a task. The many items used to make this film is fascinating, especially when they used every day, ordinary items plus a few chemicals and special effects to add to the movement. This emphasizes the cause and effect plus the movement of the items and the transition from one action to the next.

Other than the sounds of the objects and how they move, there is no additional sounds in the film. It just observes the objects used moving and the motions and reactions. All the way to the end, there’s nothing but this observation, so the whole film is a contraption with no real purpose, however uses a lot of placements to keep the items going.

This film mainly paid attention to the physics and movements of random objects, and seems just to be made for the purpose of observation, which is what it did show to the viewers.

I watched a video called Guitar Moves with Keith Richards: “There’s Two Sides to Every Story”. Keith Richards is a famous guitar player, this interview covers how he learned how to play guitar and learned his own music style.

Before Richard starts off his story, he tells the person interviewing him that in order to become a great guitar player, one must start off with the acoustic guitar, so that the person gets a feel of playing the guitar, learns all the basics, and then afterwards can add in all the effects to the sound. I feel that this applies to a lot of other things, in art or science, since in order to truly understand one or more subjects, you need to learn the basics of it then build up from those to reach or make something new.

His story then starts off with him talking about his grandfather, who gave him his first guitar. His grandfather was a musician, who played a variety of instruments and loved his own work, so he was very skilled. Richards did not receive his first guitar easily, however. His grandfather told him that if he could reach for the guitar on the wall, he’ll let him play around with it. So Richards, being a kid and short at the time, took a chair and reached for and got the guitar from the wall, to which his grandfather decided to teach him a few chords and how to play the guitar. I feel that this part might have awakened the lesson that sometimes, you have to work for being able to start something, and keep working to finish it, that nothing you get skilled at can come easily to you. After all, you can’t improve on your own work or self without working for it.

This was an interesting watch, to learn how the guitarist for Rolling Stones became skilled and even influenced other musicians with his work, especially since he got some influence of his own.

I watched the movie Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino, a famous film from the 1990s. One of the things that many notice about it is the use of time in the movie.

One of the things I noticed about the use of time was that when moments were silent, or a conversation was being held, the time itself between those moments would be held realistically, but not to the point where the viewer would hold suspense. The suspenseful parts was mainly for the parts which danger was happening, such as when the men dealt with missions and during the scene of saving the boss’ wife from overdose. Silence would be held during certain parts to emphasize the moment itself.

The other areas involving time include the excitement parts, where they tend to go faster than the relaxed or detailed parts, since when the actual excitement happens in real life, it tends to go by fast, so the film captured those moments well.

I feel this movie gave a more realistic approach to how time and moments are used in real life, and keeps the fluidity of the actions appropriate to the atmosphere of the current scene or moment in the movie. It felt that this movie could keep up and not lose the audience with the method of the use of time that it has used.

I have recently watched a film by Hans Richter called Rhythmus 21. The film creator experimented with the rhythm of visuals in film, in order to express this, he used white squares and rectangles with a black background and had them move in a continuous and rhythmical pattern.

One of the things about this film that intrigued me was the lack of any music or beat. The rhythm of the movement of the squares and rectangles in the film was just based on visuals and not any sound or song. This meant the viewer was more drawn to the actual objects of focus and, in turn, is able to focus on the rhythmic movement of the squares and rectangles.

As I watched this, I thought about the objects used, the white squares and rectangles, and thought about why these might have been used for the film. Any other subject, i.e. other shapes and shape-types, could have been used, but the filmmaker stuck with just the white rectangular shapes and the black background, and added nothing ordinary to it. It might have been just to keep it simple to show the effects of rhythmic visuals, rather than just getting the viewer’s attention.

This film, overall, was one that showed and experimented with the art of creating focus and fluid, rhythmic movement in film.