Retinal Persistence

Angel De Quinta

Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life

00:52 The lights are uniquely used to create shadows of the dancing figures.

So In Love - Rachel York

00:36 The blue lighting paired with the warm pink lamp shade adds warmth to the scene. We can feel her longing and love for the man she is singing about.

Jerome Robbins Fancy Free.mp4

02:21 The single dim light in the background, which I believe is a lamp, sets the time of day and the seemingly barren scene. 

Fiddler On The Roof

01:15 The blue light and the bright moon in the background paired with the bare trees show us temperature. We can feel that the setting is a cold environment.

La Cage Aux Folles 

(Original Broadway Cast) - 

Live at the 1984 Tony Awards

00:35 Lighting combines with set design, staging, and costumes to guide our eyes to the important aspects of the scene. We can tell who we should be mainly watching because of the way the spot light is set.

Barbra Streisand 'I'd 

Rather Be Blue'

At the very beginning , the lighting adds to the story. We hear a man say “on her, her over there” as the spot light is searching for Barbara Streisand. This is comical and adds to the story. This shows us that we are most likely watching an unprofessional amateur possibly unplanned performance. The light gives us the back story.

Show Clip - South Pacific - "Younger Than Springtime"

00:07 The set with the bars is interestingly lit from the back so it casts shadows down the stage setting the scene and adding a distinct mood to the piece. 


From the multiple examples of lighting withing different Broadway performances, we can see how much more lighting can be used for other than just illuminating a set. It can be used to set temperature to a scene or even add to the plot line. There is much much more to lighting than I used to think. 

Abelardo Morell

I really like Abelardo Morell's work. It brings up a whole new side to art and interior design. I am really interested in how he actually does this because I would love to do this to my apartment. I've attached a few of my favorite pieces of his.

















I really like this one because of the juxtaposition of a calm almost empty room that is covered with busy and crowded New York City. Morell's work brings up a different side to internalizing external forces.

I love this one because even though i know that this in inside of a room, it looks like it is outside because of the picture posted on the walls.Usually the pictures being upside down throws me off but this one I didn't even notice until recently that it was upside down. Beautiful image.

I really like this one because the decoration inside works perfectly with the chapel that is being projected. I could picture the ornate mirror and the statue actually being inside of the chapel. I also love the color pictures as opposed to the black and white ones.

I like this one as well because the painting inside the room vibes bell with the Colosseum. I also love the deep red, brown and oranges of this photo
.

This one is awesome. It looks like an awesome crowded jungle with beautiful Italian architecture.


















I want this to be my room. Hands down. Gorgeous. My absolute favorite. Love love love.


 

Great Depression vs. Today's Recession

There are many similarities and differences between the Great Depression and the recession that is now in our country. I have pinpointed three similarities that I find quite interesting and a few differences. I have also found a trend in the success of technology during economically hard times.

                The first similarity is the decrease in jobs. Now, the job market is very poor and unemployment has risen to a new high. Yet, luckily the job market seems to be steadily, although very slowly, increasing. Jobs during the time of the Great Depression were also scarce. This was because the stock market crashed and many businesses had much of their money in stocks so they could not afford to keep as many workers as they could before.

                The second similarity is the state of the environment at the time. During the Great Depression, many people thought the farmers would be fine because they at least had food to feed themselves but large droughts and dust storms covered the Great Plains killing most of the crops. Today, there are not localized and specific environmental factors that are affecting our economy but global warming and pollution are two environmental factors which are a threat right now.

                The final similarity that I found is a little bit of a stretch. World War II was the driving force that ended the Great Depression because it created many jobs throughout the country. Seeing the wars and unrest that is going on around the world now, particularly in the Middle East, World War III might be what takes us out of this recession.

                One large difference between this recession and the Great Depression is response time. During the Great Depression when the stock market crashed, the government did not know what to do so they took a very long time to respond. Luckily now, politicians and government officials are continually looking for new ways to solve the problems that our recession has caused. Another possible difference is the banks. The banks crashed because everyone was trying to take out their money when the stock market crashed and they just didn’t have enough money to catch up so many closed. Although banks have had problems with lending out loans now-a-days, at least there isn’t one single event, like the stock market crash, that will cause everyone to want to withdraw all of their money at the same time.

                Technology was affected by the Great Depression. Radio, the free technology used as a means of entertainment, flourished. People didn’t have much money to spend on different technologies and this is why free radio flourished. During the recession now, the same thing is happening. People are starting to stop using the technology that costs, such as video games, DVD rentals, Game consoles, etc., and are starting to stick with the free means of entertainment; the internet. If this recession continues, I believe that we may see an end to video games that are not free, we are already seeing an end to DVD rental stores, and I also think in the future, television might start to diminish as well because of sites like hulu that allow you to watch TV shows for free. 

Madama Butterfly Animation Response

This animation was very interesting to say the least. The sound was quite informative, even though I didn’t know what the voice was singing about. The song in the beginning sounds beautiful, innocent, and full of hope when it is accompanied by the nature sounds. It symbolizes how full of life and love the woman is with the man. Yet, right after she has sex with him, he begins to control the song, her song. The whole time the man is in the animation, before he leaves, he is the one controlling the music. He is playing her life and emotions for her, she has no say in the matter.

When the man leaves, so does the butterfly. The butterfly, I believe, represents love and beauty which she thought she had through his eyes and when he leaves, so does the beauty she once had. When he is gone, all she can do is listen to the song of her past and wait till the man comes back so she can begin living again. She attempts to break from the song when she becomes pregnant. She tries to sing on her own but she cannot because the song of her past is much more powerful.

After her daughter is born, she doesn’t listen to the recorder anymore. She does not need to live through her past anymore; she can live with her daughter now. I did think it was weird that the mother and daughter are physically attached to each other, like she never cut the umbilical cord. But visually, it symbolizes their bond. She and her baby are now able to fly like the butterfly she used to have when she was with the man. They are happy together; and there are no words to express this happiness.

                Yet when the man comes back and takes her child from her, it is the only time in the whole animation where it actually seems like she is the one singing the song. She is expressing how she feels in response to him. Her emotional anguish is very powerful. When she steps out of the scene, it is like reality, pain, and suffering have finally hit her.

In regards to the part with the fish bowl, I am really not sure why the fish bowl was used as a pregnant belly.  Possibly to dehumanize the baby at the beginning and show that life and beauty are built through love between mother and child. It still confuses me a little bit. I like how it visually symbolized the woman’s water breaking though. Thinking further into the visual implication, it almost seems that the fish bowl is a simplification that you would tell a child when you are trying to describe a pregnancy. Quite interesting. 

Another Commercial

This one very interestingly appropriates opera. I saw it on tv yesterday and had to post it.

HP commercial appropriating the baroque

Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Bread and Circus

The only thing I can think of to be close to the bread and circus is events that are run on volunteers and donations. For example, a non-profit organization could host an event that is only paid for by the sponsors and the guests and volunteers eat free.

Another thing that just came to mind is free happy hours in my apartment complex. Every week, there is a free happy hour where residents can go and get free drinks and socialize with the other residents. All of the events that seem to be close to the bread and circus are typically centered on membership to a certain group. 

August 31 2011 Lecture

I really enjoy learning about art history because it enables us to see where everything came from. I believe in a postmodern world where everything has been created before and through appropriation we can acknowledge the past and build upon it to respond on the present.

                One thing that I learned in class that I didn’t know before, which seems so obvious now, is the correlation between discovering gold in the Americas and the Baroque period in Europe. It makes sense that with the abundance of gold, lavish decorative style would emerge. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the saturated baroque style but it is undeniable that there is beauty there.

                I also really enjoyed the section of the lecture on music because I took a music history class this summer and it builds upon everything I learned in that class. Music can be mathematical and that still intrigues me. Although I wish we would have listened to the Fugue no2 in C minor instead because you can trace the mathematical patterns and games that Bach plays in the Fugue. Overall very interesting and informative lecture. 

Juan Carlos Delgado’s Recent Exhibition

I love this exhibit. I love how the ice manages to change and shape the sculptures giving them entirely new meaning. The original piece, without the ice, reminds me of youth, peace, and serenity yet when it starts to ice over, it changes. The end picture, showing the sculpture almost completely iced over, looks like an old woman with regrets and sadness etched all over her face. Yet, what I like even more than the fact that the piece changes is that the pictures that are on the website probably look nothing like how the piece may look now. It is ever changing and developing.

I also like the piece with the frozen over bars. The first time I saw this it made me think of an awesome piece of performance art that could be made from this piece’s inspiration. If someone were to freeze ice that looks just like bars of a prison. Symbolizing the cold, unforgiving nature of prison. Then completely shatter the ice bars. Which could then symbolize the shattering of the lives of the loved ones of these prisoners. It could also symbolize the shattering effects of a prison sentence of that prisoner’s life when he/she gets out. Or it could also represent the inability of bars to keep faith, hope, and ideas from the prisoners. If I thought deeper I’m sure I could find much more meaning behind a possible piece like this. Such as the prison behind the bars could be completely symbolic itself and stand for the bars that people tend to put up around themselves. And building upon that, they wouldn’t have to be shattered they could be allowed to slowly melt away. I have lots of ideas on a piece like that.

Farinelli Response

 I found this article very interesting. I learned about Farinelli and the “castrati” in a music history course that I took this summer. I loved the course and I found the castrati quite interesting. The reason they made castratis was because females were not allowed to perform in public so there were no soprano vocalists. Interestingly though, despite theabsence soprano vocalists, soprano parts in music were all but eradicated. This caused parents and prominent prepubescent male vocalists to contemplate castration.

                This sounds like a huge and horrific leap to make but these castrati were extremely famous in their time. With this fame also came riches. Castrati were also known to be very popular with rich women because in a time without birth control, castrated males seemed to be quite useful. Farinelli was the most famous of all the castrati of his time.

                I had never heard about Farinelli suffering from “hyperostosis frontalis interna” though. This is very interesting to hear and brings up many questions. The first that comes to my head is did this disease kill Farinelli? Also, a much farther stretch, if males who are castrated have lessened levels of testosterone and are susceptible to this post-menopausal disease then can testosterone be used as a cure for this disease in women? This research, I’m sure, will be very useful to medicinal researchers.