This is the photo I submitted for snapshot day. The photo is of the fire hydrant parked conveniently outside my house. The light was provided by the street light. I think it gives it a cool shadow and effect.

Enjoy!

Our analysis of American Gothic by Grant Wood.

Recently, I visited the International Center of Photography. The whole feel  and setup of the museum is very clean and particular which I liked.

One exhibit which I really liked was the Signs of Life exhibit. It really brought me back to the 30’s even though I obviously never lived in that time. It was like a window to the past that let me get a glimpse of what life was like back then. I like all the filters the photographer uses or lack there of .

I also liked the Haper’s Bazaar exhibit. Its definitely bazaar. I loved the picture with the lady in the white dress hanging off of the metal structure. The empire state building in the background really takes the picture to the next level for me. It reminds me of King Kong when the ape holds the woman on the empire state building.

Just as everyone else mentioned the 9/11 exhibit was also great. I think it helps bring a very real perspective of the event that some people across the country might not have gotten at the time.

Photographs can really tell a story the way other mediums aren’t able to (cliche: a picture’s worth a thousand words) and the ones at ICP really are able to do that.

Growing up I never really liked going to the city. I enjoyed Brooklyn but aside from hanging out with friends there wasn’t much to do. I would always hear people talking on Monday mornings that they spent their Sunday in the city. For girls the fun always seemed to be shopping in the city, but I could not care less about shopping. For the boys it was Dillon’s candy shop that allured them to the city. I always thought to myself, everyone loves the city, I must be missing something here. But I don’t think I am.

You can go shopping, see a play, go to the park, and a bunch of other things in the city. But I never really cared for that. I much rather be playing basketball, football or softball with my friends on my free time. I like open spaces which is one reason why I can’t stand the city.

So I guess my New York would be one that I try to avoid. My favorite time of the year is the summer. Obviously because of the free time but also its because I go to the jersey shore with my family. I leave Brooklyn which has some characteristics of the city, and any thoughts of going to Manhattan get thrown away. Half of this probably made no sense but I think I’ll conclude by saying that in my future I will strongly considering moving to somewhere with a lot of space and very few claustrophobic areas. Maybe then I’ll understand that living near NYC is really a luxury.

I was kind of excited to see the opera when I first heard we were going. I got even more excited after hearing we were seeing Faust, which is a story I enjoy. But after actually going I’m sad to say I was a little disappointed.

I enjoy music and I can appreciate a good orchestra but I think what really threw me off was the language barrier. I thought the sub-titles were a good idea but I definitely lost something from having to look down every couple of seconds in anticipation of the next line. I really couldn’t enjoy the music and I got lost a few times in the story because I couldn’t understand what was going on. I think if we had seen an English opera I would have appreciated it a whole lot more.

I did enjoy the theatrics of the whole performance. The lights being raised before each act, the use of props. I would have liked to see the set have changed more then it was. It always had that laboratory and metallic feel even in the outdoor/street scenes. Maybe thats what they were going for but I would have liked to see more of a distinction of the scenery. I liked how they tried (and succeeded) to make it a very fancy and high class experience. The entrances are very grand and most people get dressed up for it.

The opera was definitely and great experience but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it were in English so I could understand what the singers are saying in real time without having to look down after a couple of second delay.

I gotta say I was very surprised to see how nice and big the museum actually is. When we were talking about it in class I thought it was little hole in the wall museum that Brooklyn has so they can claim they have a museum. But when I walked out of the train station and saw the big entrance and awning like thing in the front I was pleasantly surprised.

The first exhibit I looked at was the Dinner Party. I was having a hard time interpreting what it was at first. As I went along I got the main idea, that some of my colleagues have already posted about, but I still don’t know the reason behind it and what it is trying to show. The one thing I was really confused about was the “Ethel Smyth” piano plate (picture at the bottom). I understand that she was a composer so a piano is fitting in that regard but it totally strays from the common vulva symbol. Thats my take on it.

The rest of the museum was great as well. I enjoyed the “Young and Beauty” exhibit. It touched on a lot of things the we spoke about in class about the beauty in regards to the human body.

The piece with the boxes on the wall accompanied with a video of the artist struggling to put them up was also very interesting. Its a new perspective when you actually see the struggle the artist puts into his/her work, which is why I think the video was trying to convey.

The whole museum exceeded my expectation by far and I enjoyed the trip a lot.

Last night (its Tuesday, November 22) I went to Meet the Artist at the Macaulay building. The artist performing that night was Alicia Hall Moran. When I RSVP’d I saw that she was a musician/composer so I expected some musical performance.

I arrived ten minutes late because I miscalculated the time it would take to get to the building. I walked in to a room with a stage and Mrs. Moran was standing on it with another fellow holding a guitar. She talked, for around 10 minutes, about the influence Motown music had on her style of music. She then told us she was going to perform a mash up of a Motown and opera. I’m kind of familiar with Motown but I don’t know much about opera so I was expecting a Motown sound.

Mrs. Moran started to perform and the first thing that came out of her mouth was a very high pitched note that you would usually hear in an opera. Since I was expecting Motown, I was extremely surprised but interested at the same time. (I found out later that in the ten minutes I missed, Mrs. Moran explained that she sings opera with Motown lyrics and feel so I shouldn’t have been surprised at all).

This mash up was a very unusual sound to me. It at first intrigued me but then, after realizing I’m not a big fan of opera or Motown, I started to get bored of the music. Nothing against her, its just that I don’t particularly like that genre of music.

I did, however, enjoy the guitarist and flutist (Yes she brought someone who can play the flute with her) performances very much.

After she finished the song she talked for a little while about performing, choosing a career, and life in general. She performed another song she composed (Motown-opera mash up) and talked for a little more. She closed with one last song and offered us some tickets to her show tonight (which from what I understood  she was an understudy).

It was an interesting night which I learned another genre of music and some music history.

Waking up the Sunday morning that we went to Beacon was the earliest I had woken up on a Sunday in months. But after the sleepiness wore off some excitement started to arise as we gathered by the clock in Grand Central Station.

After the 90 minute train ride we had finally arrived. Then we started to look at some of the exhibits once we entered the gallery. The first one that we saw was the dots/squares on the floor in the middle of the room. It kinda set the tone for many of the other pieces. It seemed like many of the pieces shared a common theme of math. Something they also shared was their openness. Almost all the art was not blocked off or guarded. They were able to be touched and ruined (or enhanced?) by anyone with a marker or pen. The only security was the occasional gallery security guard who would say not to touch the art. I thought the ropes/string that looked like a piece of glass was very cool because its an illusion and I enjoy that type of stuff, David Blaine being a good example of someone who always uses illusions.

After the gallery, we went to the basement for an interpretive dance. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it too much. Aside from the performance which I didn’t love, the chairs were extremely uncomfortable and for me, its kind of a make or break type thing. I would have been more comfortable standing the entire time. I think comfort is a big part of entertainment (unless the point is to be uncomfortable). Even when I was watching a really cool stunt show at MGM studios in Disney, I couldn’t fully enjoy it because the bleachers were similar to the one at Beacon and if I’m constantly thinking about my back it takes away from the performance. So even though it might sound like I’m complaining a little too much, if the chairs were better I think, for me, the performance would have been better.

To address the actual dance, I didn’t really get it. I couldn’t connect at all with the performance and I had no emotion towards it aside from a slight annoyance at the repetition. After reading the NO manifesto, I might have been doing the right thing by  not feeling anything.

Overall I did not really connect with the whole day. But I’m not going to say that what we saw wasn’t art. I agree that it was art but not everyone likes all art. I, in particular, did not enjoy that style of art. But I will defend its right to be art. Its kind of like that quote from Voltaire, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

As we were leaving the 9/11 memorial we walked toward the train and I saw what looked like some sort of flea market type of thing. There were many people gathered in one area in a very unorganized way. Then I noticed signs and mattresses everywhere and realized this was actually the Wall Street protest. So I took a couple of pictures as we continued walking and here they are:

To me a protest is art in away. It is self expression of a group or person. These people are expressing there ideals and what they want to be done. Besides for the actual protest being art, these posters are clearly art and are kinda unique to New York.

P.S. I saw a poster that said “Too Legit To Quit.” If anybody gets the reference, comment.

When we started walking towards the 9/11 memorial, after passing security, Jonathan Edelstein and I were having a conversation about the tragedy that happened. When we saw the memorial I stopped for a second, mid sentence, and got the chills. Pictures do the memorial very little justice. Before I saw it up close and personal I thought it was just a big wishing well type of thing. But when you actually see it and how big it is you start to realize how big the twin towers really were. And thats just the size of the foundation we were looking at. The actual towers seemed like they were never ending, as if they were heading towards the heavens. The people in the buildings and on the planes have reached the heavens and this memorial is here as a tribute to their lives. Each one of them has a story and each of those names had a person behind them with an actual life.

The architectural design of the memorial is amazing and everything built must have been for a reason and I think was intended to have meaning. I don’t know what that meaning is exactly but for me it is sort of a mirror of what was. Just like from ground level you could never see the top of the towers, if you are standing on ground level you cannot see the bottom of the inside of the memorial.

Heres a video I took at the site.

9/11 memorial