Assignment 3

I liked to use the expression in AfterEffects, definitely interested to learn more about this. It saved me a lot of time and much easier for editing as far as some looping goes.

But how can I stop the loop at a certain timeframe after using the loop_Out expressions?

In general, I am quite happy how the illustration turns out...except needs to work on the animation of the character more. I think if I could to add some sound effects it could be better.

assignment 2 write up

In this assignment, I further experiment the possibility of using different transitions such as blending in through the colors, size and shapes, to create a more blend-in effect between each scene. I was hoping I could make the scenes blends better for a seamless effect but now I feel like I am ready to start on another project instead of editing this one.

I have drawn a mechanical character of Chopin instead of finding bitmap and collage one because I find illustrations much more interesting. I decided not to use color because most piano keys nowadays are black and white. Chopin, from the books and photos that I have seen is slim and tall (sick all the time), so I decided to mimic that and put a metronome for his body.

Artist

http://theaphroditeproject.tv/
http://www.milmoe.com/collaborations.htm

Assignment 1 Write Up

In this assignment, I decided to use the photos and images from last week as a experiment of my research project. Focusing only on the right hand melody and beats of Chopin's Nocturne No. 9 Op1, I rotated and adjusted the opacity of the photos in attempt to represent this piece in a visual way. I chose to use photos of glass, vase, lace and petals to represent his fragile and delicacy. In addition, I have also used candle light to represent the loneliness in his music. At then end of the movie, I used photo of water bubbles and concrete in contrast to his delicacy in art and his masculine nature.

This assignment is directly related to my research project as I created this as a test to see if my idea would actually work as a final, more developed, stay-alone piece.

"The Kid Stays in the Picture"

I enjoyed watching the documentary. I love the way how they utilize stills photos and animate it on the screen to make it looks like its video footages. Among all the scenes I watched, I think I like the"newspaper articles" where they overlay the texts and cut out the people... it was quite a refreshing idea for me.

I was impressed on how much work they've put into this documentary (as far as editing goes) just to keep the audiences' eyes entertained. Also was surprised how much credit the director gave to the After Effect "editor" (unlike the common director assholes stereotype). There's a transition that I particularly like in the movie -- where the camera goes through this beautiful house, from the living room then fireplace, at last it reaches outdoor pool. The camera looks down and focuses on the special effects and lighting on water and then another raining scene slowly fades in. It was very seamless and really nicely done.

Proposal

Music is one of the most primary forms of art. As humans we were introduced to rhythm by listening to heartbeats back when we were in our mothers' womb. Music travels through time and beyond the boundaries of languages and places. It is one of the fine arts that does not require formal training in order to appreciate and participate in.

I am going to use the Nocturnes, by Fredric Chopin, as inspiration for my research project. The compositions of Chopin's Nocturnes appear simple and typically do not require advanced skills to perform. Even the simplest notes of his Nocturnes could strike a chord with my deepest emotions.

My plan is to use the music notes from Chopin's pieces as a motion guide, calculating distances between the notes from each measures, as well as using different colors/shapes/objects to represent each key. By using these representational images, I will create abstract animations that match fingers' movement throughout the piece. I plan on using video clips or bitmap images such as glass, marbles, concrete, water waves, etc. that can best represent his music from my own interpretation without actually playing the music in the background.

Approach

Chopin is by far my favorite composer; my favorite of his works would be his Nocturne series. I'd like dedicate my research assignments to Chopin... using imagery and text to represent his music in a personal way...my own interpretation.

Of all the Nocturnes that Chopin wrote, my favorite piece perhaps, would be his Nocturne C Sharp Minor Pos. No. 2 -- one of the nocturnes that was published after his death. Every notes of this piece reaches my soul. It seems that he is so fragile, delicate, hesitate, and yet in the middle of the piece remains he remains hope, child-like and sign of happiness...

Glass -- the fragile, colorful, transparent, requires delicately handled material. I feel that by using imagery of glass or some sort of purple/blue mosaic tiles would be best to represent his music visually.

Books and articles

1. Chopin - The Man and His Music by James Huneker
   Published 1972 - Scholarly Press, Inc. New York.
   "... Whereas most of our life is passed far from blood, cries and swords, and the tears of men have become silent, invisible and almost spirtiual." "His outward state was not niggardly of incident thought his inner life was richer, nourished as it was in the silence and the profound every intrusion." "Chopin left Warsaw with a light heart, with a mind full of ideas, perhaps full of dreams and fame and happiness." ...
   "Chopin's purity of character was marked; he shrank from coarseness of all sorts, and the Fates only know what he must have suffered at times from George Sand and her gallant band of retainers." "Chopin needed an outlet for his sentimentalism. His piano was but a sieve for some, and we are rather amused than otherwise on reading the romantic nonsense of his boyish letters." "... Chopin's native indecision, his inability to make up his mind...Like many other men of genius he suffered all his life from folie de doute, indeed his was what specialists call 'a beauitful case.' This halting and irresolution was a stumbling block in his career and is faithfully mirrored in his art."
   "A thousand times he thought of renouncing his artistic ambitions and rushing to poland to fight for his country. He never did, and his indecision - it was not cowardice - is our gain. He put his patriotism .. his heroism into his Polonaises.... Chopin was psychically brave; let us not cavil at the almost miraculous delicacy of his organization"
   "My poor father! My dearest ones! perhaps they hunger?... Mother, poor suffering mother, is it for this you outlived your daughter?.... And I here unoccupied! And I am here with empty hands! Sometimes I groan, suffer and despair at the piano...."
   "A romantic by temperament he unquestionably was. Bu then his music, all color, nuance, and brilliancy, was not genuinely romantic in its themes"... "Forces its way to my soul".. "It pricks the nerves, it please the sense of the gigantic, the strange, the formless, but there is something uncanny about it all, like some huge prehistoric bird, horrid snout and scream."
   "Chopin is the narrative of an evening in the Chaussee d'Antin.."
   
   
   
2. Notes on Chopin by Andre Gide
   Philosophical Library. New York
   "His sole conern, it seems is to narrow limits, to reduce the means of expression to what is indispensable...." "Chopin proposes, supposes, insinuates, seduces, persuades; he almost never asserts" "... beyond his sadness he nevertheless attains joy; it is because the joy in him is dominant; a joy which has nothing of somewhat hasty and vulgar gaiety of Schumann; a felicity which joins hands with that of Mozart, but more human, participating in nature, and also incoroporated in the landscape that may be found in the ineffable smile of the scene at the water's edge in Beethoven's Pastorale."..."Chopin like a perfect artist, starts with notes; but, more than Valery, he at once allows a quite human emotion to invade this very simple situation, which he enlarges so that it becomes magnificent."...No Redundancy..."The way he is usually played, the way all the virtuosi play him, hardly anything remains but the effect. All the rest is imperceptible, which indeed, signifies above all: the very scret of a work in which no note is negligible... in which no rhetoric enters, no redundancy, where nothing is simple padding, as happens so often in the music of so many other composers, and I speak even of the greatest."
   
   
   
3. Designing and Making Mosaics
   Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
   
   
4. Flameworking - Glassmaking for the Craftsman
   Chilton Book Company. New York.
   The role of the artist-teacher is an interesting one. The expression he gives his ideas will be valuable to his students, but less important than a clear, forcible awakening in them of the adventurous artistic spirit. The teacher should remember as he progresses in h is own work that glass is still essentially unexplored. The material itself has depths of which we have only intimations: methods of display, lighting, the combination of glass with other materials in sculpture are questions which have scarcely been touched upon. So the student must be encouraged to go in his own direction. Everything depends on the student's own discovery of the inherent qualities of glass through his own experimentation. The teacher must at times remain as noncommittal as a Zen master; while at other times he must act decisively to discourage facile or imitative work. It is impossible to predict which students will continue to work in glass - to succeed as glass artists... The most brilliantly promising sometimes simply disappear or quit without any apparent reason or explanation. The teacher's primary obligation is to reveal for each student the full, unhindered range of creative possibilities available in glass. Once the student has adopted some discernible direction, the teacher can advise him of the implications and potentials of his course, illustrate techniques which might enhance his growth, and discuss the pertinent technology with him....,..... But because the most valuable techniques and processes employed before industrialization have been discovered anew and refined in the last ninety years, he probably will profit more by concentrating his historical attention on the great artists of the modern tradition... These men sought new kinds of beauty and new methods of achieving it. THe differed from their predecessors and are more pertinent to our own period because they were trained artists who became involved with glass out of fascination with its possibilities rather than as an extension of family involvement, or out of local tradition. ...
   The search for new materials and techniques is not only a part of the scene but may even be one of the driving forces.. The adventurous spirit of artists today has led them to tackle and master techniques heretofore throught to be solely within the province of industry, techniques such as electroformning... etc.
   
   "Art is a factor in the education of the whole man. The crafts and arts now mingle freely in the school, college, and university curriculum.... but the emphasis is now on the significance of the artist's search for a truly modern harmony of men and materials. The insistence on the value of individual creativity, the convicationo that the artist-crafsmen must freely explore his material and himself without restraints or imposed pressures, must remain the indispensible precondition to the development of the artist in general - and the glass artist in particular... THe glass artist needs to have an intimate feeling for the possibilties for the growth of form while he is working; he needs to be able to understand what he has done retrospectively, when the object has cooled, the artist has cooled, and the form can be studied... If the artist does not know what he's going to do until he does it, then he never can anticipate his technical requiremetns, he can satisfy them only when the need arises. His work determines everything. He is exploring not only a material, but himself as well!
   "Glass is often described as a supercooled liquid solution of inorganic materials with an amorphous structure. It is brittle, smooth, and hard, but also visous, flowing, endlessly ductile and responsive. It is brilliant or dull, opaque or transparent, intensely colored or colorless. The words used to describe glass are contradictory that anyone must wonder that any sense can be made of them. Yet, it is these very contradictions that mean so much to the artist. It is the change from the flowing viscous liquid that sticks and burns to the hard cold glass that beaks and cuts which endlessly fascinating to the artist. It is also th ekey to perceiving his own direction. BEcause glasss really has no shape, form, or definite substance, the artist is free to impose upon it his own sense of structure or form statement.
   
5. Mosaics by Angelica Garnett
   Oxford Paperbacks.UK, Oxford
   
   
6. Glassblowing - A Search for Form
   Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. New York.
   
   
7. Chopin's Bio
   http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=123
   " Rhythm: The left hand should act like an orchestra conductor...It is the clock...Rhythm must not be violated. "Rubato is for the right hand and should be restricted to a single bar or a melody figure but for where the rubato resides within the marked dynamics. The Mazurkas are the exceptions. "
   
   
   
8. The Nocturnes
   http://www.chopinsociety.org/chopin/nocturnes
   "A composer brought me a nocturne of so restless a description that it threatened to disturb my nocturnal rest." these pieces are 'too sweet,' or not very 'relevant' to our cheerless age, they are still expressive of another, happier age, and therefore entitled to bring pleasure to us poor deprived humans."
   "a pastiche of his nocturne style, with passages from his F minor Concerto. Friskin describes it as "a poverty-stricken nocturne."
   
   
9. Kaleidoscope Wiki
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope
   "the tumbling of the coloured objects presents the viewer with varying colours and patterns."
   "Any arbitrary pattern of objects shows up as a beautiful symmetric pattern because of the reflections in the mirrors."
   
   
10. Color meaning
    http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html
    "Light purple evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings.
    Dark purple evokes gloom and sad feelings. It can cause frustration."
    "Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.
    Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness."