A reminder that if you need to print photos on glossy paper, tomorrow (Monday 11/26) is the day to do this! I will be in the Baruch Honors Program office during my regular office hours from 12-2, and then again from 4-5. Come any time, you don’t need to let me know in advance. Please bring your images on a USB drive as JPEG (preferred) or PDF files, and try to combine multiple photos onto a single 8.5×11″ page to print so that we use less paper (you can do this in either PowerPoint or by using the free web app Canva, just ask me if you’re having trouble).
I will also be able to print photos next Monday, December 3, during my regular office hours from 12-2. If none of these times work for anyone in your group, please let me know ASAP and we will try to figure out an alternative time to meet.
The Honors Program office is at 138 E26th St., room 306. This is also the office where your advisors have their offices, and is right next door to the temporary honors lounge.
If you need any art supplies for your project and you haven’t already asked, the deadline to do this is TODAY. Please send both me AND Prof. Kolb a list including item number, quantity, color, size, and any other things that need to be specified. These should be either from dickblick.com or amazon.com. Please do this before 3pm today.
The signups for STEAM fest will open this Monday, Nov. 19. They are going to be available at this website: eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/steamfest. I will remind you of this on Tuesday, but especially if you need to present on a certain day because of religious obligations, I recommend that you sign up Monday. ONLY ONE PERSON PER GROUP should sign up for the entire group, with everyone’s names.
A few of you have emailed me to express that you’re having difficulty finding the correct address in Maps Marker. The main issue here is that the address finder in Maps Marker is pretty bad! It really doesn’t want to put you in the correct spot. So here’s my recommendation:
Enter your address, and include the borough. You might still get a few options in the auto-find, but it should put you close enough.
When Maps Marker suggest a place, look to see if the cross streets are correct or even if the marker is in the correct building on the block. You can cross-reference this with Google Maps, which I highly suggest since Google is much more accurate.
Manually drag the marker to the correct spot. You can zoom in as needed to make sure it’s in the right place.
This is also a way you can go back and fix old markers. You can cross-reference the exact location in Google Maps and then drag the Maps Marker spot to match where you know it should go.
Although Maps Marker’s address finder is lacking in accuracy, the functionality of the rest of the plugin, including its ability to turn off certain layers when looking at a composite map and the ability to embed content within each marker, make it an invaluable mapping tool. I find that the trade off is entirely worth it, even if it’s a little frustrating to find the exact right spot for a marker.
If you’re continuing to have trouble, let me know.
Maps Marker Pro is now working again, our apologies for the downtime. You can go ahead and add your reading marker (remember to add this as a marker, NOT a layer), and make sure you assign it to both your personal layer (your last name) as well as the “Readings” layer.
A reminder that while you’re in the plugin screen, you should check to make sure that your other three markers (from the Lions, Galleries, and Public Art assignments) are all in the correct location on the map. To do this, click “List all markers” and then filter by your last name using the drop down menu. Select your markers and click “Edit.” Double check to make sure that your pin marker is in the correct borough, and on the correct part of the street (some of you might notice that, for some reason, even if you enter an address on the West Side in Chelsea it will drop the marker somewhere between 5th and 6th avenues, for example). So you might have to manually adjust the marker even after you’ve entered the correct address.
In addition to the short readings already assigned for tomorrow, please read through Plato’s Crito, which as you’ll recall was also the name of the fourth movement of Soper’s Ipsa Dixit.If you’d like a refresher of what this sounded like, the movement is here on YouTube.
See you tomorrow, excited to talk about this challenging piece with you all!
Blog post #5: Preliminary proposals for final projects
We are now about halfway through the semester—which means it’s time to start thinking about final projects. For your final projects, you will make a work of art. You have a lot of freedom, here, but here are the mandatory elements to consider before jumping in:
You will be working with a group of between 2 and 5 people. You may choose your own groups, but I reserve the right to do some integrating/re-shuffling. (Ie, if two tiny groups were proposing similar projects, I might ask them to work together).
Each member of the group must have a defined role and set of tasks. You’re a unified team, but you aren’t all necessarily doing the same thing. Dividing up the labor is a huge part of the task, here.
Your work of art must in some way be related to what we’ve read and what we’ve experienced this semester, and you should be able to articulate what that relationship is.
Your work of art must be displayable—since it will be on display at the STEAM festival. So, if you’re, say, creating a series of lion paintings in different styles, your task is pretty easy here! But if you’re doing, instead, a handmade chapbook or an illustrated anthology of poems (which are also totally acceptable projects), you’ll want to think about how to display this—possibly including a reading of certain poems at key points in the festival.
Your work of art will be the basis of your own final piece of writing for the class: a reflective essay due at the end of term.
As a reminder, here are some topics we’ve thought about this semester, and that we WILL think about
New York City – as the subject matter of art, and as a space of displaying and consuming art
Lions, and the representational strategies artists use in creating them
The spaces of display: museums vs galleries vs public art. (So, let’s say you now love public art. You could create an artwork meant to be engage audiences moving through public spaces—a portable mural, or a sculpture. Or, let’s say you love galleries. You could create a 3-D model of your own gallery—your own white cube!–and hang it with photos from the class Instagram, or with other (tiny!) works of art)
Photography
Opera and performance – you might write a scene to be sung in recitative, ending in an aria! Or you might play around with the idea of using noumenal and phenomenal music in a performance in other ways.
Writing the city – we’ll be turning to poetry next week, and to Teju Cole’s NYC novel, Open City, after that
Political art – art that seeks to change people’s minds.
For next week’s blog post I am asking you to write up and post a preliminary proposal. (This is a CHANGE to the syllabus, and the website will be updated to reflect this shortly)
Your preliminary proposal will be a relatively short (500-600 words) document consisting of
1. The names of the group members
2. Your preliminary idea for a work of art you might create for your final project/the STEAM festival. For each one, describe:
– What you might make
– How it relates to the themes and readings of the semester
– How you imagine (at this point) displaying it at the STEAM festival
NOTE 1: This assignment is all about brainstorming. You may include several ideas, rather than committing to just one, if that’s more productive for you. But for each one, tell us what you might make, how it relates to the themes and readings of the semester, and how you imagine displaying it at the STEAM festival.
NOTE 2: You may at this stage post a proposal solo (though you are encouraged to find a group). We will work on integrating you into a group—either of other solo folk or a group that matches your interests. Groups are in part necessary because of the structure of the STEAM festival, as designed by Macaulay, but within those groups members may have very different tasks. (So, for example, if you’re continuing to explore lions in art: one of you might paint a series of lion pictures; another might write and perform music inspired by lions; a third might create a lion graffiti wall.)
Due on the blog Sunday at 9, with category Blog Post 5. Your title should contain group members’ first names plus a description (suggestive or factual, clever or straightforward) of your project idea.
Thanks for what I thought was a great discussion in class Tuesday. I hope you’re excited about the opera! As I said, if there are questions that you have about anything with tech, even if you’re not sure you have questions, I am available for consultations. No question is “dumb” or “obvious.” On that note, a reminder that my office hours are Mondays from 12-2 in my usual spot at the Honors Program Office in room 306 at 138 E 26th st. If that time doesn’t work for you, let me know and we can make a plan for another time, or we can converse via Skype.
One other thing I forgot to mention is applause at the opera. It is a tradition that audiences will applaud after a big aria. It doesn’t always happen, but often does (you’ll notice no one does in the clips below). They also applaud after each act. And in the case of Aida, when the monstrous set in Act II, scene 2 appears with all the animals and the extras and the monuments, the audience often cheers. The best rule of thumb is: applaud when everyone else does. If you feel like applauding at all, that is!
As a follow up to Tuesday, I wanted to give you a few moments to watch from Aida with some commentary. One important thing to remember is that every production — that is, the set, the stage direction, the costuming and props — is different. So when we talk about Aida, the music and text remain the same, but the visual production will differ across time and place. The videos below are from a production in London that is very different from the production we’ll be seeing next week. Please watch and note some of the things that I’m pointing out, which might help you think about connections to make when watching other parts of the opera, too.
As noted, Aida (the character) has a theme, which is the first thing we hear in the entire opera.
The introductory orchestral music, before any singing starts, is built around this theme, and we hear it over and over again.
Moving ahead now to the introductory scene between Radames (the Egyptian hero in love with Aida) and the Pharoah’s adviser, we hear a bit of recitative between the two men. Here, Verdi uses recitative because it helps move the plot along and gives us that sense of verisimilitude, that we are somehow watching a conversation that is actually happening (setting aside the fact that they are singing!).
As we can hear, this is a fully accompanied recitative, meaning that there is a full orchestra underneath the singing, playing along. Still, this singing follows the natural rhythms of speech, and it’s not a melody that is memorable or even that remarkable. In fact, the orchestra’s music here is much prettier than the vocal music, which is somewhat monotone.
But then at 6:45, once the adviser leaves, Radames starts singing slightly more excitedly. Why is this? Look at what he’s singing about. He’s no longer having a conversation with an important member of the ruler’s inner circle, now he’s thinking about his possibility of victory in battle. As we mentioned in class, Verdi uses brass instruments playing a series of phrases that sound like military horn calls to both tell us that Radames is a warrior, and that he’s fantasizing about being the military hero.
As soon as he says “dolce Aida” (“sweet Aida”), the music switches back to strings, a “sweet” sound, and his singing also becomes more gentle. Verdi is letting the music enhance the drama. Then, all this recitative finally pays off, and Verdi gives us one of Radames’ most beloved arias, “Celeste Aida” (“Heavenly Aida”):
Note how different the singing and music of “Celeste Aida” is from all the previous recitative. Verdi has Radames end on a big high note, it’s truly his big moment.
At 11:00, once “Celeste Aida” has finished, Amneris appears, the daughter of Pharoah who is both in love with Radames and who has Aida as a slave. She sees him in this state after singing “Celeste Aida” and assumes correctly that he is in love — with her, she hopes (incorrectly). It’s an interesting moment, because it makes us wonder: was Radames actually singing (“phenomenal” music) and Amneris heard him? Or was the singing just “noumenal,” something going on in the character’s head that only we the audience can hear, but that reflects his mood and state of mind. So she asks him about it, in a flirtatious way, using recitative:
Radames deflects, claiming that he just had this dreamy look on his face because he was dreaming about being named the general of the army. Amneris plays it cool, and asks “Did you not have another dream, which spoke to your heart?” Radames immediately freaks out because Amneris knows that he’s in love, and Verdi perfectly describes this anxiety in the music, which becomes agitated, fast, and excited or almost angry at 12:50.
At this point, both Radames and Amneris sing in recitative, each of them nervous about something. Radames is nervous that Amneris knows he’s in love with someone else because he is in love with an enemy slave, and Amneris is nervous that he’s in love with someone else because it will break her heart. They both sing these as a set of asides, where neither of them can “hear” each other.
Then, at 13:30, we hear Aida’s theme in the clarinets, which is the cue for her to appear onstage. Her appearance and the music are a brief interruption in the nervous music, which resumes at 14:00 once Amneris begins to figure out that Radames is in love with Aida. But then, Amneris plays it cool: she immediately falls back into a sweet melody as she sings to Aida about how they are so close. Again here, we’re meant to understand that Amneris is speaking to Aida, and that Aida can hear these words.
This scene finally ends with all three main characters each interweaving their vocal lines, each of them singing about the predicament that they’re now in, all over Amneris’s anxious/angry music. This is neither a recitative nor an aria. It’s a trio where the musical value lies in the way that each melody interweaves, along with the music of the orchestra, and it leads to a satisfying and exciting conclusion to this scene, both dramatically and musically.
Eventually, trumpets herald the entrance of the Pharoah, who announces Radames as the chosen warrior leader, and the scene concludes with more pomp, featuring a military march “Ritorna vincero” that sounds a lot like revolutionary songs of the European 19th century (right around the time of the composition of Aida, Italy was overthrowing the Austro-Hungarian empire and establishing its national autonomy; Verdi was actually a symbol of national identity and pride, and his name became a popular rallying cry as an acronym for “Vittorio Emmanuel, Re D’Italia!”). Then Aida sings a long solo scene that combines recitatives with aria where she realizes she is caught between her loyalty to Ethiopia and her love for the Egyptian warrior who seeks to overthrow Ethiopia.
In her singing in defense of Ethiopia, she is strong and powerful, but then when she starts singing about Radames and her love, her singing becomes tender and fragile. This is a way that Verdi is characterizing her conflict in music, but it’s also important to note how Verdi plays on patriarchal ideas about female weakness and love.
The Act ends with an eerie temple scene, where Verdi writes a ceremony in the temple of the gods to anoint Radames.
All this description is a long way of saying that while watching the opera next Monday, you won’t be able to pick up on all the subtleties that I’ve pointed out here, but it’s important to think about the ways that Verdi might be using music and the conventions of opera to help tell this story and enhance the drama. By watching these clips and reading through my description, I hope that you’ll have something to recognize and see how it’s done differently in the production we’re going to see, with a different cast and new staging. If you have questions about the opera, or any parts of the clips that I’ve posted above, please let me know.
In preparation for next week, there are three readings about opera which are now all up on the website: these include a longer piece by Tim Carter introducing some basic ideas about opera, as well as two shorter pieces about opera in America and the Met/Lincoln Center in particular. For the Carter reading, you’ll see that I’ve asked you to only read excerpts, so any time you reach a red star, you can skip ahead to the following red arrow. However, if you’re curious, you can read the whole thing.
As you’re reading the Carter, you should consider the following questions, which we will address in our in-class discussion. You do not need to write up answers to these, but be prepared to discuss possible answers, and so you may want to jot down some notes in response:
In the first section, what are the major issues that Carter presents when studying opera? Where are the lines of conflict?
Highlighted text on p. 4: what is the absurdity that Carter points out? What does he mean by “space, agency, and outcome”?
Why is it significant that the Met receives much of its yearly operating budget from donor and investment income?
What’s the difference between a performing repertoire and performing new operas? When did this shift take place?
Why are so many operas performed that are by the same composers?
What is verisimilitude (look up the word)? Why is that a particularly important term for opera? Why does Carter point out that it’s OK for some characters, like Orpheus, to sing in an opera?
What is the difference between “phenomenal” and “noumenal” music?
What is a “set piece” and why might these pose a problem for verisimilitude?
What does Carter mean in the last sentence (highlighted) that “we all know, deep down, that [Dr. Johnson] was exactly right”?
Through our Arts in NYC Macaulay course at Baruch College, our IDC class has been given a chance to explore the diversity and beauty of New York City. We explore NYC while trying to understand how a variety of public art and the interactions of people add to the beauty of the city. We studied various street photographers such as Henri Cartier Bresson and Valerie Jardin which allowed us to understand and grasp the intricacies and motives behind the need to capture life as it blossoms around us in its purest form. By taking part in the Street Photography project, each individual of our class has been given the opportunity to express their unique vision through the various photographs they have captured. We have discovered the hidden creativity that lies in all of us. Before this project, many of our classmates claimed they did not have an artistic side. However, through simply clicking a button and taking the time to thoroughly look at our own photographs, many of us have been able to pinpoint exactly what excites us as people while also showing us all that NYC has to offer which continues to intrigue us.
Please enjoy our insights into the city of New York through our photographs!
I hope that those of you who went on the Gallery crawl today enjoyed yourselves, despite the soggy weather!
A reminder that the mapping component of your first two blog posts is also due by this Sunday evening. This includes a minimum of three markers: your lion, a gallery visit, and public art. Also a reminder that your marker should include photos and a description. In your description, you do not have to be as thorough as you do in the full blog post. However, you should describe concisely a bit of what you saw and what your impression was. Try to avoid generalizations or vague descriptions that leave the reader wanting to know more. For example, if you write “this was totally different than what I was expecting,” you should explain why it was different or what you were expecting. Markers are meant to be informal writing, but they should not leave a reader wondering what you meant.
Be sure to assign all your markers both to your own personal layer (the one with your last name) as well as the assignment specific layer (Lions, Galleries, or Public Art).
You should only be creating one layer, which is the one that has your last name (most of you have already done this, but 5 of you still have not). All other layers will be created by me or Prof. Kolb. You are creating markers, not layers.
I am out of town this weekend and will only have sporadic access to email. So if you need help with Maps Marker you should contact me before the weekend, and only after reviewing the tutorial. I won’t necessarily be able to troubleshoot with you during the weekend.
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