digital media

Spring Concert: Gym Class Heroes, The White Panda, and New Boyz

The spring concert showed two excellent forms of art: music/sound, as well as performance. Out of the three bands that performed, I only had heard of the headline band, the Gym Class Heroes. I knew a few of their songs but not very many, so I was going in not quite knowing what to expect.

The opening band, the New Boyz were alright. As I said, I did not know any of their songs so it was kind of hard to really enjoy them too much. Also since they were the first band, I was still getting used to the atmosphere of the  situation. Out of the three, the New Boyz definitely had the least amount of skill in the performance aspect. They didn’t really get involved with the crowd too much other than asking the crowd how they were doing and your average things.

The second band, The White Panda was actually my favorite of the night. I’m not too big of a fan of electronic music, but their use of lights and overall performance aspect was awesome. It also may have swayed my opinion that I knew almost every song, although they were remixes. The White Panda used all sorts of lights including strobe lights during their performance. The two guys in the band also wore panda masks and black and white dress clothes. 

The main act, the Gym Class Heroes were pretty good, although the sound aspect of it I was not too keen on. Travie McCoy, the lead singer, seemed kind of stuck up and distant, although he did get the crowd involved and did a nice job introducing the songs with stories. I was unhappy that a lot of what they played was pre-recorded, so I really don’t know how much actual singing and rapping Travie did. All the songs by Gym Class Heroes that I know I really like, so I definitely enjoyed their performance despite the lack of performing. I especially liked when Travie introduced the band. They have a tambourine player that was really talented and did a solo once the crowd got loud enough. 

Overall I really liked the spring concert. My favorite parts were The White Panda and Gym Class Heroes, especially the tambourine player. As always when I go to a concert, I find it amazing just to see the artists performing right in front of me. It is better of course if they are actually performing, but even Travie was impressive to see since I have only seen him on videos or album covers. 

Response to The 5 Obstructions

I thought that The 5 Obstructions was pretty good. I thought it was really clever how the first obstruction was composed of Jørgen’s own thoughts, and just that Lars put them together to form a challenge for him. That was definitely my favorite creation of an obstruction. My favorite finished obstruction was probably either the cartoon or the final obstruction. I don’t normally like cartoons either, but something about that cartoon I found interesting. I think it was the transformation from previous obstructions to cartoon that I found so appealing. I liked seeing how the characters looked in cartoon form. I also liked the final obstruction because it was so different than the others and basically summed up the whole project. 

From what scenes of The Perfect Human were shown, I did not really like the movie. I feel like I get what Jørgen was trying to show in his idea of “the perfect human” but I thought it was kind of boring.  

Lori Nix Lecture

I really liked Lori Nix’s work. It reminded me a lot of Slinkachu, the street artist who makes big scenes out of mini people. In a way Ms. Nix’s work is even more impressive because she makes the entire scene while Slinkachu only uses mini people in already made scenes for the most part. 

Although Ms. Nix claims to be shy, she’s a really good speaker. She was really funny and did a good job of talking about lots of stuff instead of just her work or her materials. She told stories about some pictures, described how she made others, and asked us how we thought she made others. 

I thought it was really interesting how she used lots of different everyday materials to make such intense pictures. It was sort of inspiring, although I could never work with such small, intricate things. Ms. Nix was definitely the best speaker I’ve been to so far and her work was among the most interesting I’ve seen. 

Final Project Idea

My idea for the final project is to take the idea that a camera captures images and reflects them inside, just like the human eye does, and reverse it. I want to do something where the human head is replaced by a camera, and it is looking through the human head just like we look through a lens to take pictures.

I am interested in this idea because I am interested in photography. I got this idea when Ms. Lovera explained how the camera worked in one of our first classes. Once we were assigned to think of something to exhibit at the pool, I realized I might actually be able to take that idea and do something with it. 

For the exhibit at the pool, I was thinking of making a life size human out of any material (wire, plastic wrap, wax, clay, papier-mache, etc), but with a camera for a head, then taking the head part (most likely made out of plaster, clay, and/or wax) and having the camera human holding it, just as we hold cameras. I was thinking of maybe projecting what the head is seeing or just having photographs somehow around the figure showing what the head is seeing. If somehow I could make the eyes on the head blink, and have a photograph for each blink I think that would be really cool. I would want to have the figure facing either outside or some area that changes throughout the day/time so that each picture would be slightly different, documenting the day.