Video Art Piece

For my video art piece I wanted to create something out of the sounds I absolutely hate. I've always had a sort of phobia for loud eating sounds, or smacking sounds. Basically any loud cracking sound makes me feel uncomfortable. With that I thought about footsteps, and how the sound of walking depends on things like what kind of shoes you're wearing and what you are walking on. Then I thought, what if I just combine a various amount of walking sounds and try to blend them together.

I couldn't match the sound with the footsteps only because I wanted to speed up the video to be able to show as many locations as possible. I also sped up the sound of the footsteps, which I recorded separately. It's quite interesting that in the middle of the video the footsteps start to blend together and you hear one over the others, even though I matched the volume for each sound. The single footstep sound heard in the beginning is playing throughout the entire video, however it sort of disappears with the other footstep sounds. I made three different tapping sounds to create a rhythm to the piece, also to see if it would blend in with the other sounds. I would have wanted the video to run more smoothly, but I couldn't figure out how to put all the images together without just having them one after the other. I also thought about putting them transparently over each other, but there was just too many videos to do that.

Performance Art

For my performance art I wanted to create some kind of art piece using whatever was available to me. I've known about this Chess platform for a long time but this is the first time I actually use it. Keep in mind, I have no idea how to play chess. I thought it would be interesting to come up with my own pattern/game. I started out not really knowing what kind of pattern I was going to make, but then it all came along as I started putting it together. I really liked the black and white contrast, which is why I mixed the two colors in that I put black on white, and white on black. I actually did this two times but I ended up not liking the pattern I made in the other one. The man in the video that stopped was really confused with what I was doing and just thought I didn't know how to play chess...

Photocopy Assignment

It took me a while to figure out what to do for this assignment but I decided to just photocopy a bunch of random parts and then figure out what I wanted to do. It started out with more arms then hands, but then I realized there was a creepiness to the way the hands looked together, and I just started building off of that. I had this idea of a nightmare in my head where you have a group of objects coming towards you, and you have nowhere to go. It's hard to see my face in the corner but that was really to represent me sleeping as this hands are reaching for me. I added the eyes to give more life to the hands and to make it even creepier than it already was.

I could have used other body parts but I'm really happy with the way it came out just with the hands. At first I just had the one dark shade, but adding the lighter shade made it look so much better. I didn't count the amount of hands I used but it was A LOT. 

Art Grid Project

I decided to do my art grid using pearler beads. In my first attempt I tried to recreate the image of an elephant but it didn't really go my way, so I settled on a sunset. The hardest part was to recreate the sun as it was difficult to make it into a round shape. I was actually surprised of how time consuming this was, especially considering the many times I had re-do it and how small the pearls are. What was mostly frustrating, was that a slight movement or hit to the board could ruin the entire image. I learned this the hard way when I had about 4 rows left and dropped my phone on the board. I was very close to crying.

21st Century Technology

 During the 1990s, Bluetooth was invented by a Swedish team who worked for a networking and telecommunication company called Ericsson. I chose this technology specifically because I was born and raised in Sweden, and my first phone was actually an Ericsson phone. I also didn't know that Bluetooth was a Swedish invention. The idea behind Bluetooth was to find a way for devices, such as iMacs and mobile phones to be connected and to be able to transfer information between devices without having to use any sort of cable or USB drive. I've always had a hard time understanding how Bluetooth even works, but based on its massive use, it is safe to say that bluetooth is only going to get bigger and more advanced. Just look at a company such as Apple, who is moving towards making all their devices connected through bluetooth. Within the next couple of years, I believe that Bluetooth will make it possible to connect an unlimited amount of devices, and we will be able to control our everyday necessities using Bluetooth.
 The technology that influenced what is today known as Bluetooth, was the spread spectrum radio. It produced the same idea of transmitting information wirelessly. It was invented by Hedy Lamarr and George Anthelo in 1937 during World War II, in which they used piano rolls to generate radio frequencies (Skillful Blue Team). The purpose of the spread spectrum radio was to communicate information wirelessly, which is really a simpler version of what bluetooth does today. Since the spread spectrum radio was invented during World War II, it is no wonder that it was used as an advantage when passing on information about locations and other facts during the war. It is pretty fascinating that the same technology is used today in not only Bluetooth, but also Wi-Fi.  
 Even more interesting is the meaning behind the name "Bluetooth". Scandinavia is a part of northern Europe that consist of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. During the 10th century the Danish King Harald Blåtand was responsible for uniting these three countries (Nguyen). The English translation for "Blåtand" is bluetooth. One can definitely see the correlation as Bluetooth is of course meant to "unite" devices together. 
 As mentioned before, Bluetooth is becoming a huge part of the technical world we live in today. We want everything to be wireless and as simple as possible. The fact that we already have self driven cars means that we are moving towards a technology that will require less from us as the operators. As Bluetooth advances, we will be able to connect more devices together such as lights and air conditioning in our homes, where you can control the devices through Bluetooth. One thing that Bluetooth hasn't been able to improve on yet is its range from where it can be connected. Close range seem to be very important if you want a good connection between your devices. As bluetooth advances, I'm sure that you will be able to be further from your device and still be able to connect to it. 

Resources:

Skillful Blue Team, “Who Invented Bluetooth? The Interesting Tale of Our Frequently Used Technology.” SkillfulBlue, skillfulblue.com/who-invented-bluetooth/.

Nguyen, Tuan C. “Who Invented Bluetooth?” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 28 Feb. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-bluetooth-4038864.

Flip book

I chose to draw my flip book on one of what used to be, my favorite book series, City of Bones by Cassandra Claire. The book follows a young girl who discovers that she is a shadowhunter, which is a warrior that fights demons. Other than the basis of the story, there's a lot of interesting symbols, or what the book calls "runes", which have different meanings and powers. For my flip book, I wanted to pick a rune, and make the story off of what that rune meant. What's interesting about these runes, is that their meaning can be very broad, so it really makes you play with your own imagination. I decided to go with the rune that stands for "creation". 

The story starts off with a cube that grows larger and larger, then it shrinks, and forms into the actual "creation" rune, which then turns into a sun, which makes a flower grow. The idea is to imagine a continuous creations of things, where one thing turns into another, or one thing creates another thing. 

Angel de Quinta's blog Response

Angel de Quinta’s blog had many different Broadway show videos, all very interesting and fun to watch.  I’ve always wanted to go to a Broadway show in New York but I just never got to it. Watching these videos made me even more intrigued to go see a Broadway show, or any live show for that matter! I had the pleasure of seeing Les Misérables in London a couple of years ago when it was playing in the O2 Arena and it was completely mesmerizing. One show that I would love to see live after going through this blog is The Color Purple. I've seen the film many times and I've even heard about the Broadway show, but this was the first time I actually saw it performed on stage. Just the trailer for the Broadway show was so powerful, and so was the beautiful duet between Cynthia Erivo and Jennifer Hudson. There's so much to the choreography and music that makes the show feel the way that it is. A broadway show requires more "obvious" acting, where the actors express themselves very clearly in their movements and lines. However, it doesn't feel like the acting is being overdone, instead it makes the characters and the story feel more real. 

Another video that stood out to me was Bea Arthur singing the song “Fifty Percent” from a show called Ballroom. I’ve never heard about Ballroom before but the song made me interested to know more about it. "Fifty percent" is a love song, but it’s also very humorous, which makes you pay more attention to the words, as well as the performer.