Runny Noses

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nos

The quality that stuck with me the most from Gogol’s “The Nose” was the story’s silliness. I was amused by the possibility of a nose with legs and my dreams came true when Shostakovich’s opera was able to bring the nose to life. The sight of the nose prancing around the stage was forever etched into my mind because it was just so….silly. Because of this, my animation pays tribute to the prancing nose because I want to share the elation and thrill that my mind experienced when I first saw a person in a nose costume skipping around. I know…it’s weird and quirky. But hey, I dig quirky.

As if a nose running around wasn’t silly enough, I decided to make the animation reminiscent of a classic “Scooby-Doo” chase scene. I picked out a background with a passageway that led to multiple doors, allowing the nose to prance in an amusing manner by entering in one door and coming out the other. This shows the struggle that Koaloff experiences in his pursuit for the nose. The nose’s presence eventually becomes overwhelming, so as to mock Kovaloff that his pursuit is futile. Even though Kovaloff can see the nose, he can do nothing about it since no one believes that there is a nose on the loose. The only thing that he can do is utter the word: “nos” which is the Russian romanization for nose. The way the word is pronounced is blunt and simple so it sounds like a random grunt, showing his frustration.

 

Midphase

too many noses

 

 

Now as an added bonus, I also have a gif that loops perfectly! Enjoy!

loop

Creative Project 2: On the Mountain

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Aishwarya Creative Project 2

My animation is centered on the ideas of greed and mystery. In the story, Major Kovaloff is a victim of his own false pride and delusional ego. The series of events that follow is due to two tragedies: Kovaloff’s failure to understand nature’s mysterious course of action and society’s norm of choosing the wrong over the right path. Because the society values materialism, it ignores the most fundamental gift we have as humans—nature. As a result, in Act I of the story, I have shown a beautiful and picturesque mountain that a rich man is trying to climb. For him, the mountain is a social ladder that he can conquer and dominate. In his attempt to reach the top and acquire the small piece of diamond that seems to get smaller with time, (and eventually disappears), he ignores nature’s mysterious course of action that created a priceless diamond right in the middle of the scenery. The man’s ignorance is proof of his narrow-minded mentality and his tendency to aim for materialism. In ignoring his surroundings, he also ignores the impending dangers that nature foreshadows through the change in the skyline. When he finally reaches the top, some natural occurrences cause him to lose balance and fall. His life passes by him in a split second, and the change to black-and-white background conveys that abrupt change in emotions. When it seems like he has fallen into an abyss, nature resumes to its normal course. The mountain scenery looks exactly like it did before the man was in the frame.

The mid-phase of the opus

The mid-phase of the opus

In Act II, the destruction phase, I thought a color scheme would be apt to show ideas like greed and mystery since colors are fundamental, yet innate aspects of life.  My objective was to use colors to show how mankind’s greed and mystery prompts the end of the world. I started with the mountain scenery I had used initially and showed the man trying to fight (in an attempt to conquer) nature once again.  As the man comes in the frame, he dispels the color green, symbolic of greed and envy into the once-beautiful scenery. The green spreads throughout and the man becomes more powerful, an idea that is conveyed through the change in his size.  The orange specks in between the green shows how nature puts up a fight and shows resilience initially. Ultimately, however, nature is unable to balance the green, and as a result, the frame is displaced by red—a color that is commonly used to convey an intense feeling. The red begins to cover up the mountain and the man no longer exists. However, his actions leave an impact on the world and therefore result in the end. Here, motion blur is used as a tool to show an earthquake, which foreshadows the impending doom.  I try to showcase one message (“Learn to do what’s right”) to emphasize the responsibility we have as humans. As the red creeps in more and more, we come closer to a stage where nothing exists. In the end, we are left with nothing but one black void with debris. Lastly, the repetitive loops represent the idea that the cycle of life or world, however you may see it, repeats in the same pattern as nature becomes subject to human irrationality.

(Several other features were artistic choices—the importance of which may vary from one interpretation to the next—but, I will let the animation speak for itself!)

 

 

Works Cited:

A Business Man Climbing a Mountain. N.d. Canada. A Business Man Climbing a Mountain – Royalty Free Clipart Picture. Acclaim Imagery, Ltd. Web. 18 Oct. 2013. <http://www.picturesof.net/pages/090507-225482-024052.html>.

“Birds of Eden the Largest Free Flight Bird Aviary in the World, Plettenberg Bay Activities Garden Route Adventures South Africa.” Cyclone Yasi Slams Coastal Queensland. Birds of Eden, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.birdsofeden.co.za/index.php?comp=article>.

Diamond. 2013. Photograph. Transparency Revolution. Transparency Revolution, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.transparencyrevolution.com/2013/03/diamonds-are-bs/diamond/>.

“Sun Facts.” Weblog post. Sun Facts- News- Bubblews. Bubblews L.L.C., 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.bubblews.com/news/302536-sun-facts>.

Taylor, Richard. “North Yorkshire- December 05 Photo Gallery.” Online Posting. BBC News. BBC, Dec. 2007. Web. Oct. 19. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/content/image_galleries/december_gallery.shtml?9>.

“Traverse of Dolpo (July 2012): 3. Crossing Bagala La and Numala La.” N.p., July 2012. Web. 18 Oct. 2013. <http://ai.stanford.edu/~latombe/mountain/photo/dolpo-2012/dolpo12-3.htm>.

Sound Sculpture – Mosie, JJ, Shixu

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Moses Schrem, Jia Jun Wu, Shixu Zheng

Our sound sculpture tells a story of a boy who goes through the experiences of adolescence and immigration. The story begins with the boy feeling that his life is rapidly changing. As he turns older, he becomes more self-conscious and lonely. However, despite already facing so much change, he moves to another country. He experiences a major culture shock as he faces the new environment. The cacophony of people and noises is overwhelming, causing him to be lost in it. But soon he makes friends. They take him to all kinds of new places and he starts to feel the world open up to him.

Avicii. “Wake Me Up.” True. PRMD/Universal Island, 2013. MP3.

Emorej. “Disoriented.” Jamendo. 2 Nov. 2008. MP3.

Lost. “I’ve Got an Idea.” Jamendo. 7 Jan. 2007. MP3.

Morgantj. “Café Connection.” Creative Commons. 25 Jan. 2009. MP3.

Swift, Taylor. ”The Last Time.” Red. Big Machine, 2012. MP3.

The Working Hour. “Shoulda Never Let You Go.” Ellay. Bell-Roundel Music Group, 2011. MP3.

Creative Project #2 – Absurdity, Disorientation, and Helplessness

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Kevin Cheng - IDC

For my animation, I focused on the themes of absurdity, helplessness and disorientation. The absurdity, helplessness and disorientation that accompany a bad day influenced my choice of images. Personally when I have a bad day, it feels like I have completely lost control of everything and anything throughout the course of my day. My animation begins with Tom Riddle from the Harry Potter series, and then moves onto Voldemort. Then there is the insertion of the Wat meme, a thought that came to mind during my reading of the short story version of The Nose.

While I was reading the story, I was somewhat disoriented due to my sleep deprivation at the time, hence the drunk baby meme.  Furthermore when I reread the story in the morning, I still did not understand it. There is then an insertion of a cartoon nose that irritatingly moves back and forth in the image. When Kovaloff was attempting to reattach his nose, there was quite a sense of helplessness, represented by this irritating nose. Furthermore the retention of backgrounds of the various images was intentional, to remove any chance that the image would be aesthetically pleasing, which was the initial reaction I had while reading the novel. At the end of a bad day, all I ever want to do is just go to sleep so I can forget about that day.

A Russian GIF

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Creative Project 2

 Click on the black box to view the GIF

While reading Gogol’s “The Nose” all I could think about and visualize was Russia. The libretto epitomized Russian culture and social standing; reminding me of my high school and my old Russian peers. However, after seeing The Nose in opera form at the Met,  Soviet Russian society entered into the mix. Not only was the play about Russia, but now encompassed a specific time period in which Russia was a growing communist giant.

The gif I created is centralized around the Soviet Russia portrayed in the opera and how immersed Kovalyov is in that culture. According to my interpretation and my animation, Russia is the main character of the opera and not the man who loses his nose. However, the nose itself is an important aspect of the story. The nose encompasses Kovalyov, taking over his character and dominating his person in my final collage image. Despite how prominent and central the nose is, the location, time period, and society the opera takes place in are the most vital components of both the libretto and the opera. Therefore, that is why my construction depicts Russia as the foundation of the story and my destruction characterizes it as the last “man” standing instead of either Kovalyov or his nose. Russia cannot be erased nor covered up.Final Collage Final Collage Image

Sound Sculpture Alexandra and Joanne

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Our sound transformation is done to represent the events that come along with falling in love. It starts off with a kind of monotonous piece of music to represent the monotone lives that people live before meeting their significant life. Then, as you can hear, there is a major transformation. It is supposed to represent a young adult seeing someone for the first time and finding that this someone could actually be the one. Along with love comes a lot of confusion as well as a lot of different emotions surfacing that were not there before. We tried to represent this by compiling some very different types of musics, and by jumping abruptly from one to another. This is symbolic of the way one’s heart races when he/she is with someone that he/she really likes or may even love. It is also representative of one’s thoughts during that time. The songs with lyrics show the different types of thoughts that people have when there is an attraction. Their thoughts become jumbled, and they make no sense but they’re all along the same lines.

We hope you enjoy the rather chaotic event that is falling in love.
-Joanne Ramadani and Alexandra Szilagyi.

Works Cited

Apocalyptica. “Nothing Else Matters.” Toppinen, Eicca. Inquisition Symphony. Mercury Records/Universal Music Group, 1998. MP3.

Brand New. “Be Gone.” Accardi, Vinnie. Daisy. Interscope Records, 2009. MP3.

Coldplay. “Paradise.” Mylo Xyloto. Parlophone, 2011. MP3.

Death Cab for Cutie. “Soul Meets Body.” Gibbard, Ben. Plans. Atlantic Records, 2005. MP3.

Hellogoodbye. “Here (In Your Arms).” Kline, Forrest. Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!. Drive-Thru Records, 2006. MP3.

Jack’s Mannequin. “Dark Blue.” McMahon, Andrew. Everything in Transit. Maverick Records, 2005. MP3.

Marianas Trench. “Sing Sing.” Ramsay, Josh. Masterpiece Theatre. 604 Records, 2009. MP3.

Creative Project 2: Social Status

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GIF2

For my creative project animation, I decided to focus on the theme of social class and hierarchy. In Gogol’s The Nose, Kovaloff awakes one morning without his nose and desperately tries to hide his loss to avoid social humiliation. Throughout the story, it is quiet obvious that Kovaloff deeps cares for his status and ranking in society.

With The Nose in mind, my animation clearly reinforces the importance of social status. My photo collage depicts people fighting to climb to the top of a pyramid. Although obvious, the pyramid symbolizes social hierarchy while the people represent those who yearn for a high social rank. Like Gogol’s emphasis on social class, I made the hierarchy the focal point of my animation by creating a dark background for the orange pyramid to stand out. In addition, since Kovaloff loses his identity after losing his nose, I used plain black figures to represent the people. With no distinctive features, these figures essentially have no identity. Because their identity is derived from their socials status and how society views them, they desperately tries to reach a high social standing.

For the destruction aspect of my animation, I removed each person one by one and then deleted the pyramid replacing it with a nose. Without social status, these people are basically nothing because much of their identity and existence relies on ranking and class. In the end, I replaced the pyramid with a nose to connect back to Gogol’s story with the nose as a symbol of power and rank.

That NYTimes Article

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This article discusses a recent new exhibition for the Smithsonian Art Museum which features work from many artists across multiple disciplines that all correlate to a theme of destruction and chaos. Saltpeter and tnt blocks by Liz Larner sit side by side with photos of destroyed bedrooms by Jeff Walls a a video of rioting by Roy Arden. The exhibition will even feature a reprisal of a live art performance by Raphael Ortiz, who gained fame when he destroyed a piano in 1966. The work featured in the show is not modern- in fact most of it premiered decades before, when art featuring violence and destruction was a scandalous subject to tackle.  The reason behind showcasing an exhibition which on the surface, seems to merely show cool destroyed stuff, is centered on the idea that art must destroy before it can create. Another viewpoint mentioned in the article and particularly interesting to me, is that destruction is a form of pessimism. This is explained by Gustav Metzger, an artist and Holocaust survivor. An interesting note made by the article’s author is that Metzger was also the mentor for Pete Townshend, the guitarist of the Who. Metzger’s theories on auto-destruction and anti-art, depicted in his public art works of throwing acid on his own paintings, was influential to Townshend who himself explored destruction by smashing his guitar onstage. This is now a rock classic.

The exhibition by the Smithsonian explores works across many decades and disciplines and is archival in nature. Although the idea of violence in arts is not new, it is still prevalent in todays art world and considered radical.

The greatest irony for me while reading of art exhibitions that try to display and intellectualize violence and destruction, is that they themselves reject violence. When it is done by an artist, it is considered high art. When it is done by an ordinary person, it is considered pornography.

I think violence can be very expansive for the mind and broaden a person’s understanding of normal. Although we hate to admit it, violence is inside each and every one of us. We love seeing things blow up. Watching Tarantino slice off dozens of heads per movie is exciting and delightful. Yet we try to reject those feelings as being inhuman. I think that violence can be a form of exploration and release. Many of our society’s members, most drawn to violence, take on jobs that let them do so- ex. Policemen, surgeons, and butchers. We consider this normal. However, going on forums like 4chan or sites like tumblr to watch videos of people being killed/burned etc is considered not normal. It is not considered art.

I think it is silly to destroy a piano, guitar, or car in an exhibition and celebrate it as anything more than the same type of destruction that people do in their backyards when they try to blow up watermelons or the like. While the curator, Fergusen, says the exhibition is not just about smashing things up, I’m sure if he looked closer, or read the book ‘Violence in the Arts’ by Fraser, he might see that it is.

Also, the reason why this post sucks is because my computer crashed three times while writing it and my autosave failed every time. I’m not rewriting it. Feel free to destroy it in the comments as you wish.

 

Gopnik, Blake. “Bang! Kaboom! Art! ‘Damage Control,’ at the Hirshhorn, Explores Neglected Trend.” NYTimes. N.p., 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

Creative Project #2- A GIF of the Supernatural in The Nose

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(Click to watch)

(Click to watch)

For my animation, I drew my inspiration from the theme of the supernatural and “dream-like” state in The Nose. In the beginning, my animation starts out with a weird background, representing the strange items and the hallucination aspect of the story. Later, stars begin to fly across the top of the screen to demonstrate that the story is beginning, or in my idea, the dream is beginning. Next, a nose flies by, (shocker), which is the nose running away from his face to go and gain power (notice that the nose is already, in fact, in uniform). Lastly, another nose flies by, and people in distress and panic begin to pop up to show the confusion and chaos that this nose has presented in the story. Once “help” has been provided, a cloud takes over the screen to finish the animation. Finally, a man wakes up and touches his face. He realizes that his nose is on his face and feels a sense of relief.

In my animation, I also wanted to portray the chaos and disorder that was reflected in both the story and opera by mixing in many different kinds of images that don’t really have much to do with each other. While Gogol intended to have an underlying tone of seriousness in his story, it was obviously portrayed as a comedy. People generally would not be so calm if they saw a nose walking around in the street, nor would they be so eager to help find the nose! I hope you enjoy my animation!

Final Collage:

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