Friday, September 29, 2006

A Very Artsy Week

Though we have done many different things so far this week, they have centered mostly around the arts, which has been amazing, as my main interests in this program rest with art and film. On Tuesday afternoon we were dispersed in the gallery district that is Chelsea. There are literally galleries on each side of the street, each as white-walled and minimalistic as the last, sometimes even more so than the last. My favorite (conceptual) piece from the galleries would have to be Yoko Ono's OnoCord, which consists of flashing a flashlight in a one-two-three pattern to represent the phrase "I love you." The accompanying video included her on stage at a concert, flashing her light at the crowd, who happily flashed the pattern back at her. I think Ono's exuberance at her own genius and simple idea was partly the reason for my captured interest, but I also just like the idea; I mean, if we were all a bit kinder to each other, the world would most likely be a better place.

On Wednesday we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. This was our first outing to Queens, and we were pretty amazed at the difference in the buildings; they were much shorter and the sidewalks were wider. The Museum itself was an interesting visit. It has all sorts of film, television, and video game artifacts, such as very old camers, film props, original video game consoles, etc. The Museum's core collection is also interactive in the fact that it has animation, sound, and film stations at which you can create, isolate, and thus better understand the different processes. I particularily liked the sound stations; we had the opportunity to re-record a portion of the movie "Babe," and also to isolate the different sound tracks in a scene of "Titanic." It was incredibly interesting to hear each track alone, combine them in different ways, and then re-listen to them all together. Our tour guide mentioned that a film can have up to about 99 different tracks; we only listened to 4 so I can hardly imagine what 99 would sound like.

Thursday included a visit to the Whitney Museum of American Art and a guided tour of the new exhibit about Picasso's influence on such American artists as Jasper Johns, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol, amongst others. The exhibit is incredibly well done, and features an extensive amount of paintings. The tour also provided a vast amount of insight; I was able to understand the manner in which the artists were subtly and directly influenced by Picasso, and it was interesting to see the actual effects on the paintings in front of me.

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