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.