Weird Carmen

Well, weird is a gross understatement for the bizarre nature of this music video. It's cool to see how they gradually ease into the weirdness that is to ensue, first by adding a few effects, then the robot, then one of the performers, then the stage with it all, and finally the camera filter. All in all, it was pretty awesome, bizzare, but awesome. It was also interesing to see the transition into the dubstep/sampling/house remix of the song near the end. The visuals were prevoking, and the music was original.

Blog Continuity

So my blog is very out of order as I'm trying to get everything I've missed by going through my notes, which due to the end of the semester are very scrambled and all over the place. So sorry for the completely messed up order for some of the posts.

Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are a fantastic example of courage and tenacity. They stand up to their name using Guerrilla tactics like bulletin boards and other subtle but profound protests against gender inequality, especially in the art world. They have fantastic art pieces in gallery, and a great message they spread through their unique nature of protest.

IMG Source http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

Flash Mob Examples

Performance Art

Performance Art Project

For my performance art, I got a white body suit, some paint, and invited people to paint me.

In my previous assignment my professor was dissapointed that I didn't open up and expose myself. So I put myself an awkward situation, and then deprived myself of senses, both to expose myself, and to make the painters feel like they could do whatever they wanted. I wore a blindfold (even though I could barely see in the first place) and put in earbuds with medium-loud music so I couldn't hear distinct voices or what they were saying.

The point of the art was to expose myself and put myself at the mercy of others. I was inspired by the performance in class where the artist allowed people to cut off her clothes, and threaten her physically. While this is a bit more peaceful, the idea was the same.

Thank you to Madison Bass for video taping the performance, and to those who participated.

Muse Displaying Live Video Of Concert At Concert As Art

We were discussing in class presenting processed video of live events during class and I brought up muse. This is actually a compilation of the concert I went to. If you watch the screens (not so much in the first few songs, but skip to half way through) it is actually live video of the concert with some processing applied.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RklTkfVyYk0#!

Surrealism

We were instructed to look up surrealism on our own. I stumbled across a few sites, but the one that struck me as the most accurate is ArtStory. This site explains the nature of the movement. Surrealism was born out of Dadaism. However surrealism is more structured and spiritual. Instead of intending to be random, it is drawn out of creativity, intentionally crafted. They believed that imagination could be influenced by "every day life" and that could be intentionally added to their art pieces.

According to the article, Andre Breton made the art form official when he defined it as "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought."

Surrealism art piece stretch the imagination, revealing strange and bizarre images of the mind, art that confuse and inspire.

Image:

http://abduzeedo.com/impressive-and-creative-digital-surrealism

Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil is a developer at google. He has published many books, the most important of which are "The Age of Intellegent Machines" which focuses on physical computing advancing to the ability to think for themselves, and the "Age of Spiritual Machines"where machines become better than humans on all fronts.

Raymond is a futurist like myself, I love his ideas of eternal mortal life, however I don't believe we will live forever like he does, because I understand that the universe will end, be it the heat death, or another model, he is not accounting for that. Regardless, his efforts at extending his own life, and reviving himself post-death are interesting to me.

He studies in his books the difference between mechanical and biological intelligence, the difference being what is known as "free will". While I disagree with the concept of free will, I can see how he might mistake that biological creatures have more control than physical computing devices.

However I found an article while searching for an image for this post and read up on some of his ideas for furthering biological advancement and human longevity.
http://mybusiness.com.au/experts/reprogramming-dna-raymond-kurzweil-on-technological-leaps-without-boundaries
It's really interesting to read his ideas, how technology is doubling or more yearly, and how he believes that bio-computing research will start to follow such a trend.