Last week in class, my classmates, and I recited poetry. Each of us was given poems, at random. We had to find facts about the poet’s life, and other significant works the poet may have written. My poet’s name was Laurie Sheck, and the name of the poem I had to recite was called “The Subway Platform”. This particular poem was about the hard work it takes to get where you want to go, but when you get there all that hard work was worth it. I felt as if every poem had a similar theme, about perseverance. There was a poem by Langston Hughes in which many of the poems he writes are about perseverance. There was also one about racial stereotypes, and how to get through the embarrassment of being stereotyped. Even the poem I read was about persevering through the bad times, until the bad times payoff.
Author: mgriffin86
Matthew Griffin Blog Post
Last Wednesday, my classmates and I presented our videos on sculptures in New York City. I found this project very informative because if we knew about a particular sculpture we learned things we never knew before. On the other hand, if you never heard about a particular sculpture the videos would give you the information you needed. Our video contained information about The Statue of Liberty, Postcards, The Statue of Christoper Columbus, and The Statue of William Tecumseh Sherman. I believe we did a great job in our video, but what we could have done better was show some more photos of the statues from different angles. We also could have shown more photos corresponding to what we were talking about in the video. For example. we talked about a statue in Hoboken, yet we didn’t show it in the video. My favorite video was the one about the statues in the train station. I loved how these little statues encompassed something bigger. They all had a theme that really spoke to me, about economic inequality. I also loved that I have been to this station many times and never thought twice about the statues. I thought thus video was definitely the best one.
Matt Griffin blog 11/2
In class on November 2nd we had a guest Professor in the person of our Macaulay ITF Joe. I really like the way he taught the class, he infused a lot of humor into the message he was trying to send. He talked to us about the plot of “A Bronx Tale”. He told us about how many stories are put into different medias. He taught us about Frankenstien and the many ways it has been adapted into different medias. An exercise that Joe gave us that really opened my eyes was when he told us to find two stories adapted into at least three medias. My group and I used Star Wars and Spiderman, but there were so many choices. It shows how many medias a story can be adapted into.
October 26th blog
On Wednesday October 26th my classmates, and I had a guest professor name Professor Wechsler. He told us that he is a flute player and is a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He showed us Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930s. They consisted of a cartoon flapper and songs. The songs were very strange, but catchy. He then told us about his career and how he got his start in music.He told us that he got his start in a New York City public school which struck a nerve with me because I am a firm believer in public education. He then said that sometimes in order to succeed sometime you must be in the right place at the right time. After speaking to us about this he played the flute for us. First he played a wooden flute, and then a metal flute to show us how the notes changed a bit. The strangest thing he did was play an electric flute which works almost like a computer. He said that you can change noises and save them on the device. This was really cool to see and hear because I did not think an electric flute actually existed.
Matt Griffin Bob Dylan Blog
Bob Dylan
Last class my classmates and I talked about, and listened to some songs written by Bob Dylan and I found them very interesting. The first song we listened to was called Blowing in the Wind. The main idea of the song was obviously all the tragic things going on overseas during the Vietnam War. The thing I was trying to figure out during the song was what he meant was “blowing in the wind”. Finally, it came to me that what he meant was probably the=at dust was blowing in the wind, playing on the popular phrase that all we are at the end of the day is dust in the wind. In other words, what he meant was that if the war continues many more people are going to die, and become dust in the wind. The strange thing about this song is apparently when it first came out it was popular, but not with Bob Dylan, with other singers. Apparently some people did not consider Bob Dylan a great artist because he did not embody what many people believed a classy singer to look like. Instead they got straight arrow squeaky clean singers to sing this song on shows like the Ed Sullivan Show. Another Dylan song we listened to was Hard rains are gunna’ fall. This song warns that if people don’t start to make peace then we could be in for nuclear war and possibly the end of times. This song fit right into what people were thinking around this time. Many schools would participate in Bomb drills just in case the United States had a bomb dropped on us. Kids would practice hiding under their desks, obviously the adults knowing that would not save them. Instead this was more of comfort thing, if these kids had to die at least let them go out thinking they would survive. Finally, the thing that strikes me the most about Bob Dylan is different from what other people might say. Although many people probably can’t see his impact in modern music I disagree. The way Dylan “sings” his songs, isn’t singing at all instead the songs are almost talked. This gave the song more of an edge, but also contributed to people really not accepting Dylan’s style. All this being said I believe, as hard as it may be to believe, that Bob Dylan influenced many rappers today. Not only did he talk his music, but he also wrote songs about social issues like many rappers do today.
Don Giovanni Matt Griffin Blog
Don Giovanni Blog
Last week my classmates and I took a trip to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The experience was interesting to say the least. The thing that struck me when I first arrived at the Met were the people dressed up so nicely. Although I did expect people to be dresses half-way decent, I did not expect to see people in suites and other clothing items that are deemed fancy. Another thing that stood out to me at the Met was the red carpeted stairs, they seemed so elegant and almost felt out of place in New York City. We think of New York as such a rough and tumble, hardnosed town that something as simple as stairs help to transport us to a more elegant time. The show started pretty much how I expected with the rape of Anna and the killing of her father by Don Giovanni. The way the show progressed was a surprise to me, I didn’t believe that all the people Don Giovanni wronged would meet and try to collectively bring him down. The scene that confused me the most in the opera was when Leporello disguised himself as Don Giovanni, and vice versa. I know this may sound stupid, but the entire time it was bugging me how nobody noticed that the two had just switched clothes. Also their voices are completely different. I found the translators on the seats very helpful, but at some points kind of awkward. Since the opera is sung in Italian and I read it translated into English the lyrics sometimes don’t seem to match up sometimes. What I mean is the words in Italian sound good together, but in English they don’t rhyme. Here in America in modern times we are so used to hearing songs with lyrics that rhyme that any deviation from this just doesn’t make any sense. One last thing that stuck me a bit about this opera was the emphasis put on the singing in the opera. Although obviously a main part of the show is the singing, it isn’t necessarily the only proponent of the show. There is also a component of the show that entails the singers act too. Not only did I find the acting rather subpar, but I also felt the writing wasn’t very good. Again this is probably the fact this opera was written over 215 years ago and tastes were different then.
blog 6 Matt Griffin
In the last class we learned about the opera, specifically Don Giovanni a play written by Mozart. This play has to deal with a man who is obsessed with women, such that, he goes as far as to rape these women. We heard a couple of songs from the opera, and I do not believe I am going to enjoy the opera tomorrow. Although some people do enjoy the opera, I am enjoy listening to certain genres of music and this is not one of them. All that being said, you cannot knock something till you try it, so I am eager to try out the opera tomorrow night. Professor Kahan also talked about how she thought the opera is like a sporting event because you go to watch someone perform a super-human feat. I do agree that singing opera is a super-human feat but I don’t believe the opera will be like a sporting event. When I go to a sporting event I go with the intention of seeing my team win. Even if a player on the opposing team were to perform a super-human feat, I would not be impressed, only disgruntled.
After class, my classmates and I were assigned an article to read. The article was a synopsis of Don Giovanni by Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard spoke about a couple of points I would like to hit on. The first point is Kierkegaard refers to Don Giovanni, a rapist, as the “hero” of the opera. This is an interesting word choice considering in the first scene he rapes a girl and murders her father. Also, the opera also talks about how the “hero’s” favorite type of girl is the young one. This is also interesting behavior for a hero. Kierkegaard also refers to some parts of this opera as “comical”, although the play could probably be comical to people a long time ago, in society today we don’t find rape funny. Another interesting idea Kierkegaard brings up is the fact that Don Giovanni was created not as a character, but as an idea. I believe he was created as a harsh reality of the time this play was created. I also believe that Don Giovanni could represent Mozart himself. I think this because the only information I know about Mozart is from the movie “Amadeus”. In this movie Mozart engages in some rather promiscuous behavior, not unlike Don Giovanni.
Matthew Griffin Blog post 9/28
In class on the 28th my classmates and I watched the movie “Ace in the Hole” directed by Billy Wilder. In this movie a newspaper writer named Charles Tatum has been fired from a dozen papers so he gets a job with a small paper in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After a year he he finds no big leads so he decides to go out and create one. He does this by lying and deceiving his readers.
Overall I didn’t very much enjoy the movie, it was just not my cup of tea. I like more modern movies with more action. One thing I learned from the movie is how deceiving the media and press can be. This is scary because of the election coming up and how the media can bend a story to fit their narrative. Another thing I learned from the movie is how the camera angles actually do affect the movie. In this movie it was the movement and lack of facetime in questionable scenarios for Tatum. This painted a shady and unpredictable picture of Tatum.
Matt Griffin Blog 9/21
In class on Wednesday we learned about the different techniques that different directors use to make their movies unique. It was interesting to learn where and how these things pop up in movies. Some of the movies Professor Kahan showed I had seen multiple times, but I had never noticed the certain technique that had been used. We saw several clips from movies, including, The Godfather and Goodfellas. The clip we saw from The Godfather was the first seen and it showed how the first scene of a movie can be deceiving. Although the man that was zoomed in on seemed to be the main character it was clear after a couple of seconds that he was not. As the zoomed out you could see the outline of Don Corleone and suddenly realized that he was the main character. In addition to the clip we saw from The Godfather we also saw two clips from Goodfellas. One scene also demonstrated that the opening scene of a film can be misleading. It started out as three guys just driving, while in actuality they were carrying the body of a man they had killed in the trunk. The next scene in we saw was an example of track. A camera followed behind Ray Liota in a restaurant almost as if you could see the perspective of a person following behind him. Overall I really enjoyed the lesson.
Blog September 14th Matt Griffin
In class on Wednesday September 14th my classmates and I were introduced to professional photography by Professor Rinehart. She showed us various pictures of Syrian refugees and explained to us how the size of the photo can affect the way a photo is perceived. For example she showed us a photo of a Syrian family with different resolutions. The different resolution drew your eye to a different place in the photograph. We also learned how editing can make pictures look better. For example if you take a picture of the sky you can deepen the blue, or make it lighter depending upon your preference. Overall it was an enjoyable class, and I am excited to see the art on display tomorrow.
After the class was over my classmates and I went to look at the art on display at the Brooklyn Museum. What was really cool about the art there was a lot of it was really old and historic. For example, there were many artifacts from ancient Africa on display including some masks that I found somewhat disturbing. The most interesting thing I saw on display was an art piece just entitled “Chair”. It essentially was just a chair from ancient China, but what was crazy is that it was considered art. It made me realize even the most obscure things can be categorized as art.