Creative Project 3

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Creative3-animation

The story begins with a picture of a city. Then, a bicycle emerges from the right. After reaching the near center of the city, a trophy-like vase of willow appears from the left. A part of the background turns blue while the bicycle tries to catch the vase of willow. But the bicycle cannot catch the vase of willow as it continuously moves away. The bicycle follows and experiences changes in its size. Meanwhile, the background also transforms into a variety of colors. Finally, the bicycle touches the vase of willow and they disappear, leaving the background in a completely transformed image. Then this process starts over again.

My creative project revolves around three themes: life, desire, and change. In essence, it is a representation of our progression. Like the bicycle, we step out into this modern world and have aspirations represented by the vase of willow. Of course, we would pursue these goals, but it is not always easy. The path to our desires will be littered with obstacles and hinderances (the vase of willow avoiding the bicycle). Also, throughout our journey, we would come to experience many things which would alter our views of the world, thus the color change and the size change of the bike. But hopefully, with persistence, we will have a good chance of securing our desires. Then, after we’ve achieved our goals, this sequence starts again, whether it is our or another person’s strive. 

Mid-phase:

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visual transformation

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While watching Nosferatu, I was reminded of some photos I took on my phone. I experimented with some filters so I distinctly remember three edited photos. The three I used for my gif. Instead of taking new photos and forcing them to fit themes from Nosferatu, I used what reminded me of the film. Shadows, religion and the supernatural are the three themes I chose to use.

First, the photo is a random mid-bus-ride shot with the sketch art filter offered in the Samsung Galaxy S4. Second, I took the second photo on the roof of CCNY’s architecture building. It shows the skyline of lower Manhattan with the engraving filter. Last, the photo is of my close friend Keith Newman. In my group of friends from high school, Keith was the supernatural one. He is obsessed with everything out of the ordinary.

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Creative Project 3

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My project explores the motifs of belonging, not-belonging and fear through the lens of economic inequality in America. As my animation begins, it shows the expanding middle class that rose after the Great Depression which is represented by an average house. However, as time passes the once dominant middle class begins to split into two groups, the rich who “belong,” and the poor who do not “belong.”

More importantly, my animation focuses on the miscommunication and apathy that growing economic inequality fosters between the two classes. Through the smudge tool, I tried to represent how a growing wealth gap blurs both classes’ ability to understand and sympathize with the with the opposite class. At the same time, I tried to represent how the lack of understanding and sympathy between the two classes leads to fear and encourages the rich and poor to gate and distance themselves from one another.

 

 

Sound Sculpture

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A New Perspective    a piece composed by Kenneth Connolly(Editor), Jake Greenburg(Scream/ideas), and Nick Artnotes(French Horn); Featuring: Paul McHugh(Guest Violinist)

This piece we composed was made entirely by us and our friends. I personally have a friend at Binghamton who is a state level violinist, record under my supervision and guidance. I made sure that he used dissonant chords and diatonic scales in order to create a feeling of discomfort in the beginning and made the music upbeat and hopeful towards the end. This piece is best listened to using headphones because I used an effect to make full discomfort for someone in the start. Nick, the member of our group, also contributed his own French horn playing into the mix, making up the middle time in which the life altering event happens.

We do not want to tell you exactly what this piece is, as to make you decide what the meaning is for yourself but we will let you know what the desired emotions and our thinking behind certain moments in the piece was,

In the beginning the listener is immediately presented with the overlay of violins with a slight delay. This creates a feeling of discomfort and uneasiness. This is where the dissonant chords are seen most prominently. There is also a background noise which mimics that of a heartbeat with growing intensity and tempo as the piece progresses.

The piece begins to climax when Nicks French horn begins to mask the violin in the background and take the listener deeper into the feeling of suspense. Finally Jake’s scream represents something major in this person’s life, it can be really anything but we tend to think of it is as a life endangering/ending event.

Finally, there is just the violin at the end, and if you listen carefully you will know whether the person in the song is alive/dead/afterlife. Once again we want you to come up with your own story based on the piece but that’s the artistic vision we took from this.

If you comment on this piece please tell us the story you heard from the piece.

 

Works Cited

Mussorgosky, Modest Petrovich. “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs.” Sonatas for Piano Solo. Dewagtere, Bernard. France: 2011. 17-27.

Shore, Howard “Concerning Hobbits” Lord of The Rings. 2003.London. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nov 2004. Web.

Webber, Andrew Lloyd. “Phantom of the Opera” For Piano/Keyboard. Duet Piano Education. Hal Leonard, 2009. Web.

Creative Project # 3

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In my animation, we see three archetypes in the form of a butterfly, a red hand and shadows.  The butterfly is meant to represent desire and longing.  I almost wanted to lay the scene quite literally how it was done in the play Nosferatu where the creature “says that he has always waited for a sunset and now he dreams of a sunrise.  This is his forbidden fruit, this is what he cannot have…It turns out people always miss what thy can’t have.”  These are the words of Grzegorz Jarzyna, writer and director of BAM’s Nosferatu.  In this “scene”, the butterfly is Nosferatu longing for the sun that is centered at the middle of the photo.  An interesting story about the butterfly is that it is a symbol of life after death which also played into my decision to use it to represent Nosferatu’s longing.

The butterfly is trying to escape, but the red hand acts a a suppressor that attempts to stop the butterfly on its path toward the sun.  It is the archetype of not belonging. The picture in the background is that of a Coney Island sunset which I selected because of its wonderful representation of shadows in the quite literal sense as there is nice contrast between light and dark.  I liked this to use because amidst the butterfly’s longing and desire and the hand attempting to suppress it, there is a sense of unknowing and confusion with the shadows looming in the background always present.

COLLAGE:

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In “Act I” of the animation, what we see is an almost dance-like sequence between the hand and the butterfly, with the hand rotating itself around the butterfly as to “swat” it away.  There is a struggle for power in a sense.  The hand seems to be fading away and the butterfly makes progress toward its target.  The hand alters and even removes the sun at points in the animation as to deceive the butterfly. However, by the midway point of the animation, we are essentially back where we started, but we see the addition of a brighter, colorful background that plays in the butterfly’s favor.  Things become murkier again until we see the appearance of a second butterfly that assists the first in achieving its goal.  At the conclusion of Act II after many trials and tribulations, both butterflies roams free once they have been freed from the oppressive hand that has faded into obscurity.  The last frame shows a green flash that leaves behind only the blacked out sun.

ANIMATION :

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Animation

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Ehlun

 

In my animation I incorporated three major motifs present in Nosferatu. The first was shadows. The picture of the sunset (the shadows) represents the balance between light and dark, which is quite apparent in Nosferatu. The shadow is our dark side, our personal receptacle for things we are uncomfortable with, our fears, and inhibitions. Shadows are dark, mysterious, and a very important aspect of Nosferatu. For example, when he walks toward the camera at a threatening angle and casts eerie shadows on the castle walls. Next, I brought in a theme of female submission coupled with male dominance. In Nosferatu, Ellen is portrayed as weak, helpless, and has absolutely no say in this particular scene when Hutton says he has to leave right away for business and be gone a very long time. Ellen also gives herself to the vampire one night so that he will be with her when the sun rises and so will be destroyed. My photograph of the two girls (taken during an anti human trafficking photoshoot) portrays male dominance and female submission. The final picture (the guy on the bike), represents power. He is present in almost every second of this gif, and takes the attention of the viewer. Similarly,  every time Nosferatu enters from some unknown space, or randomly appears with the help of special effects,  there’s an overwhelming sense of power to his stillness. The film’s most “terrifying” images are those of minimal movement. (Nosferatu’s face through the cracks of his coffin)

 

Creative Project 3 – Shixu Zheng

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I chose longing, darkness, and power as three motifs in my animation. I took my background picture downstairs my apartment during the sunset. When I edited the pictures, I followed the storyline of the film Nosferatu in which two lovers are separate from each other and the heroine is jeopardized by the vampire. The dark background represents the setting of the whole story and the full heart symbolizes the complete love of the two main characters. The heart breaks into two parts because two people are separate far away from each other. The blinking hand and the red eyes demonstrate the power and evilness of the vampire. The left part of the heart fades and stays at the top left corner of the picture and the other part becomes a broken heart with a male face with longing eyes that depicts the desire to re-unite with his love. However, he keeps wandering and loses his way at the bottom right corner. With his evil mind, the vampire finds the girl (the semi-transparent heart on top left) and finally kills her as the broken heart plummets into the blood river. The vampire dies too. The blood submerges the two characters and everything fades into white. Everyone is gone. It’s a tragedy full of darkness and creepiness..

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I used blinking to add some dramatic effects and intense feelings in my animation to make it creepy and dark. I should give credits to Tina Shen because she draws the broken heart with my face for me and it perfectly fits into my motif of longing. The final image consists of every element I used; it represents the time when the vampire tries to reach the girl while the male is still lost in his way. I hope you guys won’t be scared, especially by the creepy red eyes.

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Creative Project #3

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My final image embodies the themes of shadow, blood, and the plague from Nosferatu. The first image is the shadow of a hand, which represents Nosferatu’s power in the world. I chose to make it specifically a hand because there’s a saying “the world in my hands,” and I think it fully expresses the importance of both shadows and Nosfeartu’s power. Next, there are streams of red food coloring that spell out the word “Blood.” I placed that in second to show the effect Nosfeartu has in the world, bloodshed everywhere. Finally, the image of the clock with the world map represents the plague because it shows how it affects everyone all over the world, taking away the time they have left to live. I placed the image of the watch in the fingertips of the shadow to express how Nosferatu is causing a worldwide disease or plague, and time is of essence.

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As for the destruction of the image, I tried to characterize how Nosferatu was destroyed. After the final image, everything kind of goes dark, which represents his presence, and then the shadow of a woman appears. When the light is completely erased, there is a brief moment of distortion, which signifies Nina’s loss of innocence. But after that, her shadow reappears, along with specs of light. The specs show that hope is restored, everyone is safe again, and Nosferatu has been defeated.

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NYTimes Arts Blog: The Bartering System for HealthCare

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In “Will Play for Health Care (at Least at One Music Event) by Ben Sisario, we are introduced to a severe problem faced by many self-employed musicians. Beginning just the Friday past, a three-day festival, called the O+ Festival, began. The O+ Festival was started by Joe Concra, a painter who help start the event three years ago in Kingston, N.Y. with the goal of exchanging art for health treatment in what can be deemed as a barter system. It had come to Mr. Concra’s attention that many artists (painters, singers, songwriters, creative workers, etc.) do not have health insurance. A recent survey stated that 43 percent of all artists and 53 percent of musicians did not have health insurance. These numbers contrast starkly to the national average of 17.7 percent.

The main reason why many creative workers are uninsured is that they are self-employed. Sure, some of them receive health benefits from their day jobs, spouses, or unions. However, there are also many who solely concentrate on their music and are, as said before, self-employed. For example, Richard Buckner, an independent singer-songwriter, 49, was billed $8000 for dental work on his front tooth that fell out during his tour. To pay the hefty price, he had to schedule three additional tours through January. The big problem here is that everything he is earning through these three tours are not going to him – everything is going straight into the wallet of the dentist.

Currently, many industry organizations are working to guide creative workers through the new healthcare system. The changes to the system are allowing for the extension of young person’s coverage under his/her parents’ policies. Additionally, more subsidies are being offered for buying insurance plans. Unfortunately, the efforts to inform creative workers about the changes to the healthcare system is minimal. Many creative workers, managers, and business representatives are befuddled by the entirety of the system.

Even the organizations involved with leading creative workers through the new health plans are concerned that their efforts are not effectively because their voices are small and decentralized to rise above the the national, political debate about the Affordable Health Care. These organizations include HeadCount, the Actors Fund, and MusiCares. MusiCares is a charity supported mainly by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (this is the same organization responsible for the Grammy Awards).

For now, the main goal of these organizations is to spread the word. Mr. Concra’s O+ Festival definitely helps to reach that goal and it has been spreading farther since it’s inception three years ago.

I find it intriguing that many creative workers are uninsured. It’s baffling that, despite all the political debate going on about healthcare, an entire portion of the U.S. population has been overlooked. It’s admirable that organizations are reaching out to help these creative workers but it will be a tough ride as there’s much political healthcare debates not involved with insuring these artists in the news. However, Mr. Concra’s efforts with the O+ Festival definitely does not hurt the effort. Just last month, approximately $100,000 worth of arts and health services were exchanged.