Final Project "Multiple Personality Disorder"

The following is my final project for Honors Art and Technology. Our assignment was to create a three minute video art piece using different effects. After watching the movie Silent Hill I got the idea to do something that had to do with different personalities for my project. In the video I act as three different people who are all extremely different and struggling because they all have different motives but need to come together as one person. 

Hatsune Miku

If you thought Miley Stewart (Actress Miley Cyrus) creating a fake alter-ego of Hannah Montana for the stage was weird wait until you hear about popular Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku, a holographic female persona with virtually no human being behind her presence on stage. Hatsune Miku is shown as a sixteen year old, 93 pound, 5'2 foot female anime character with blue ponytails and a pencil thin waist. The meaning of her name stands for the 'first sound of the future'. Her personality was created to portray her as an easy-going, fun-loving, energetic and happy girl. She has even been said to have been in a "relationship" with another holographic Vocaloid character named Kaito. 
What is Vocaloid? This is how Hatsune Miku sings. Technically she is a synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media which uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2 synthesizing technology to produce sound. After the Vocaloid 2 was produced, Crypton Future Media began to develop Vocaloid 3. The creators of Hatsune Miku's music partly come from voice samples from a japanese actress Saki Fujita at different pitches and tones but is then altered and changed by a synthesizer engine to create full words, phrases, and songs. 
This Japanese pop star was officially released on August 31st, 2007 and Crypton promoted her as "an android diva in the near future world where songs are lost". Not too shortly after, Nico Nico Douga a popular Japanese video sharing site began to post Miku's videos and her popularity increased. In October 2011 Crypton posted a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy onto Miku's facebook fan page addressing her "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy: 

One fan was quoted saying "She's rather more like a goddess: She has human parts but she transcends human limitations. She's the great posthuman pop star". Although I do agree with Lexy on her post about how it is unfair to create a role model that no one can live up to (tiny perfect waist, perfect proportions at 16, floor-length blue hair) there are benefits to a holographic star. For one, she will never die. She is never going to go off stage and get drunk, or get our of a car and flash the paparazzi. She can be seen as the perfect star because she will forever have a perfect image without ever having to opportunity to mess up. 

Scopitones

The Scopitone was a jukebox that played music videos for the public before the internet and MTV came alone. It has a 16 mm film component and was originated in France. The films were called 'Soundies' and were put in nightclubs, bars, and amusement areas. By the 1960's the popularity of this machine quickly died down, the very last one ever made in 1978. The following are just a few examples of what a scopitone would have looked like on the juke-box screen. 

Difference between advertisement and propaganda

Advertisement and propaganda can both be portrayed in the same way, making it hard sometimes to distinguish between them and how we are supposed to view the message. Both are mean to appeal to emotions and trigger a response but they are meant for different purposes. Propaganda is also often done through advertising, so it can be tricky. The picture below is an example of propaganda -

The next picture is an example of advertisement - 

Advertisements are meant to make people feel like they need the product in order to make their lives better. The woman with the long thick luscious hair is promising that if you buy the product, you too can be like her, beautiful and happy. The first picture is progaganda because it is using peoples feelings to get them to do something. Propaganda only presents one side of something, giving the public no other choice. Unlike an advertisement where the message is "Hey, you should buy this because it will --------(something helpful or positive)", the message is more of a guilt tactic to get people into thinking a certain way in order to support something (for example, a political stance), do something (ex. join the army) or get other people to do something (ex. vote). 

Favorite Flash Mob!

How cool would it be to be living your average daily old boring life and for suddenly something super exciting and high-energy to start randomly happening all around you? I think it would be so cool to participate in a flash mob - especially one that no one in the area knew was about to happen. Usually the type of flash mobs we see in the movies are dancing flash mobs but since I think Christmas is one of the most  festive times of the year i picked the "Christmas Flash Mob". I like it because it is on of the most un-anticipated ones I saw. It takes place in a mall food court where there are people of all ages with all different agendas. The flash mobs I see in the movies are all young able people, and I liked how this video included the elderly and children.

Performance Piece

For my performance art piece, I wanted to make a statement about social media. My generation has gone from AIM chat to Myspace to Facebook to Twitter and then to an explosion of Snapchat, Tumblr, Instagram etc. Facebook is mainly the only one of these I really use. It is appropriate for finding long-long friends, sharing pictures and posting things. I have never been a fan of dumb statuses though, which is mainly how I see Twitter. My friends forced me to get a Twitter last year and I tried to pick it up, but never really got into it as much as  I feel everyone else did. Twitter to me is just a bunch of annoying statuses about doing nothing and can just be bothersome to some people. People would never say out loud to the entire world, "Going to the bathroom" or "Need a coke" because people would look at them like they were crazy yet people have no problem doing this on the Internet. During my project I was dressed up as a twitter icon and did some of the actions that people on twitter do such as statuses, tweeting at other people, and "following" people. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usme7jVrfmE

Over the boundaries of gender

Meet Eva and Adele, two women who are supporters of the theory that the body is the canvas itself. You don't need a canvas or a video camera, you yourself can be a big statement. If you visit their website, www.evaadele.com, you can get an idea of their different statements, different projects and biographies. One of their statements that I found interesting was "over the boundaries of gender". Eva and Adele are married and although you wouldn't be able to tell, Eva is actually a man, who chooses to express his marriage with Adele as a female-female marriage. Eva had his gender legally changed but chose to keep his body the way it is without undergoing the actual sex change. They are always seen in full make-up in public, as part of their image. One of their projects that I found interesting was CUM. Like any other two 'women' who love having their pictures taken in full make-up, Eva and Adele adore collecting pictures that other people have taken of them and use it to portray to the public how other people see couples. They will often provide a stamped postcard to the photographer so that they can receive a copy of the photo in return for permission for the photo to be used as the photographer likes. 

Xerox Project

Word of advice - Its best to explain to the librarians who stare at you like you are a crazy person and possibly a threat to the library why you are sticking your butt, face and feet on top of the scanner before you do it. Lexy and I entered the library nervous and giggly about sticking our body parts onto a paper machine and after getting a few incriminating looks from others, went to the front desk to explain our project. The librarian was bewildered and told us how previous students had been breaking the scanners doing projects like this and told us to be careful and not get our oils on the machine. He also gave us wipes to clean up after ourselves as if our pores were going to excrete masses of oil and dirt all over his machine. I enjoyed when Lexy scanned her butt and the guy across the room narrowed his eyes at us and she made some awkward comment back to him. My favorite was scanning my ear and seeing all the piercings so visibly captured. 

I ended up doing a vague statement piece on walking blindly into danger. 

I used a yellow caution sign that the janitors use over wet spots as my main object. I used copies of my feet leading up to it to symbolize the start of the walk. All over the front side are hands, and on the back are different pictures of a face. On the side are pictures of wide-open eyes. Interpret if however you like but this is the story I imagined - We are very often blind to what is going on around us and walk straight into a trap where we are bound to fall. The hands are plastered to the caution sign because we always figure out we need to turn back when its too late, and then we cant. You can see the feet moving up on the sign as we begin to fall. The faces are the stages we go through to from blind and happy to eyes open and in panic. Then after it is all over, you tell yourself next time watch out. 

Iconoclast

An iconoclast is a person who pursues the destruction of religious symbols or any time of dogma or conventions or with religious statements with political motives. Iconoclasm is the term of what the iconoclasts are doing. There are examples of iconoclasm all over the world - 
              1. Several Muslim denominations seek out iconoclastic agendas  - Over the years controversy has risen within Islam because of destruction of historic sites by Meccas authorities 
              2. In 2001 there was an act of destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamyan by the Taliban government of Afghanistan. After this protests began because obviously other Muslims and Muslim government did not support this. The act was seen as a threat against "the coexistence between the Buddhas and the Muslim population that marveled at them for over a millennium". 
              3. In 2012 the Tuareg rebellion occurred and Ansar Dine destroyed a few Sufi shrines in the city of Timbuktu, Mali  
              4. From class today, Orlan was shown in several pictures dressed as Mother Theresa religiously making the pictures sexual and turning the crosses upside down. It's completely unnecessary and offensive. 

Sheryl Oring

"I wish to say" is a national campaign started by Sheryl Oring in hopes that the public will voice their opinions and stand up for what they have to say. Oring was concerned that not enough people were expressing their entitled-by-the-constitution opinions to the government and our president. Oring set up a portable puclic office and presents a typewriter to the public so that as they pass, they have the option to write notes to the President (who at the time was Bush). She gives them the card and the stamp. The typewriter is meant to "set the mood". Oring said, "There is something about the typewriter that really draws people in and it is also a symbolic reminder of a different era when people took the time to write letters and people slowed down and listened to each other." Oring planned to take the project she has started nationally, all over the country throughout the election and then will eventually write a book. It is unknown if the president read the letters sent to him. 

Joseph Beuys

                                                   

Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1921 and spent a lot of his early adult life in the military, trained to be an aircraft radio operator and combat pilot. Unfortunately he was wounded many times, one time during a plane crash when he was rescued by nomadic Tartars who decided to rub him down with fat and and wrap him in felt to warm him. (Because of this a lot of his later pieces involved the usage of fat and felt. The image below makes use of the felt) 

                                    

After his return from the war Beuys decided not to pursue a career in medicine like he originally planned and enrolled in the Dusseldorf Academy of Art so that he could started sculpture. He also focussed on drawing and made thousands of drawings during the 1950s. In the 1960s the Academy became more and more important for contemporary art and really helpeed Beuys develop as an artist based on the Fluxus movement. He began performances, which he termed "actions". He exhibited his sculptures, objects, drawings and room installations. His calls for reform and reaching out to the public were moving but were also seen as unconventional and they cost him his job as a teacher after he refused to stop insisting that admission to the art school should be open to anyone.

Brion Gysin - Dream Machine

Born in 1916 in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, Brion Gysin had many skills including being a poet, a painter, writer and performance artist. After graduating from school early, Gysin moved to Paris and took an open course at the Sorbonne called La Civilisation Francaise and began to make literary and artistic contacts with others. He developed a surrealist viewpoint of art and is widely known for his 'cut-up technique' alone with his friend William S. Burroughs. The cut-up technique discovery happened accidentally in the 1950s when Gysin was cutting through newspapers and noticed how the different layers put together offered "interesting juxtapositions of text and image". 
The Dreamachine was shortly after created and is a flicker machine used to work the mind as individuals sit before it with their eyes closed and let the color and light create images in their minds. It was an attempt to create a hallucinatory experience based off an a similar experience Gysin had in his lifetime. 

Bauhouse / The 1950's with McCarthy

Bauhaus - 
The literal transition of the German word is "house of building". The term is now used to describe a type of architecture created in 1919 after a design school named "Bauhaus" was built for students who wanted to break traditional design and begin a modernist style. The students there wanted to combine art, technology and craftmanship to create a new kind of philosophical way of designing. In 1925 the Bauhaus design school moved from Weimar to Dessau and then moved again in 1932 to Berlin. The architects that built the design school rejected "bourgeois" ideas like cornices, eaves and other decorations and instead the Bauhaus buildings had cube shapes, flat roofs, and smooth surfaces. When the Nazis began ruling in Germany, the school discontinued.

The 1950s with McCarthy -

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a famous American politician who was known during the time of the Cold War right before communism began to take reign. His claims that he made fed the fear that was beginning to spread about communism and people felt that he was either talking B.S. or completely the truth. From McCarthy, the term McCarthyism was created. It referred to McCarthy's ways and was used in situations where communist activity was implemented. McCarthyism is often used in accusatory situations.

Grid Art Project - Jonah and the Whale

For our grid art project, we were to create a 30x30 grid which ends up to be 900 squares of any substance. I chose fish pebbles because the image I chose - Jonah and the Whale - required a lot of blue and appparently fish love blue accessories because it was the only thing at Michaels that came in different shades of blue. It ended up working out though. I will post some pictures to show the process of how it came together. I believe all in all it took less time than my flip book but still quite a lot of effort because it required several trips to the store, arrangement and re-arrangement of pebbles, 28 sticks of hot glue (some of which burned my fingers), painting pebbles to make different shades of gray for the sky, and lastly keeping visitors in our room from trampling on it while I worked in the middle of our dorm room!

Jonah and the Whale! 

The Dada Manifesto

The Dada Manifesto began in Europe as an avant-garde art movement in the early 1900s around 1916. Avant-Garde is a term to describe these who took the risk in creating something new, which exactly what dada art is. It started as a reaction from WW1 by artists, poets, and innovators that were part of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. They didn't want anything to do with structure, form, order or dictation. Instead they sought an art form that represented a nonsensical world. "Dada" literally means "yes, yes". Public gatherings, demonstrations, publications, new political ideas, culture and most importantly new art were all products of the movement. There were many propogandists for the Dada Manifesto including Tristan Tzara. 
Tristan Tzara, who was originally Samuel Rosenstock was born into a Jewish family in Romania. Tzara was a major contributor to surrealist activity and ideology. He delivered several speeches pertaining to the Dada movement and was known as one of the presidents of Dada. 
The following passage is long but worth the read- It is Tristan's thoughts about the movement which are really powerful is you try to take a walk in his shoes - 

"There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement. 

I say unto you: there is no beginning and we do not tremble, we are not sentimental. We are a furious Wind, tearing the dirty linen of clouds and prayers, preparing the great spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition.* We will put an end to mourning and replace tears by sirens screeching from one continent to another. Pavilions of intense joy and widowers with the sadness of poison. Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry. 

I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual. 

Philosophy is the question: from which side shall we look at life, God, the idea or other phenomena. Everything one looks at is false. I do not consider the relative result more important than the choice between cake and cherries after dinner. The system of quickly looking at the other side of a thing in order to impose your opinion indirectly is called dialectics, in other words, haggling over the spirit of fried potatoes while dancing method around it. 



If I cry out: 
Ideal, ideal, ideal,
Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge,
Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom,

I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so manv books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom, and that the writer is entitled to his boomboom: the satisfaction of pathological curiosity; a private bell for inexplicable needs; a bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions in life; the authority of the mystic wand formulated as the bouquet of a phantom orchestra made up of silent fiddle bows greased with philtres made of chicken manure. With the blue eye-glasses of an angel they have excavated the inner life for a dime's worth of unanimous gratitude. If all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be right. Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it puts to sleep the anti-objective impulses of men and systematizes the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease. To this element philosophers always like to add: the power of observation. But actually this magnificent quality of the mind is the proof of its impotence. We observe, we regard from one or more points of view, we choose them among the millions that exist. Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties. Science disgusts me as soon as it becomes a speculative system, loses its character of utility-that is so useless but is at least individual. I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on, my children, humanity . . . Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none. To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own littleness, to fill the vessel with one's individuality, to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies.... Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructivc action: *Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determined, enthusiastic; to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them -with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least-with the same intensity in the thicket of one's soul-pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangels. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE"

Do Violent Video Games Lead to Violence and Bullying?

Parents and psychologists all over have been wondering for some time, "Does violence in video games lead to real-life violence?" Back in the 80's when games like Pac-man and Donkey Kong were first coming out, the video game industry had the defense of the video games being so unrealistic the gamers couldn't possibly take it out of the game to the real world. But look at the video games that are coming out today. The technology makes the games so much more realistic- the people, guns, and voices sound real. Real blood is seen spurting out of dying human bodies - the gore is actually unbearable for me. Yes, there is the same amount of violence on television as well that children are being exposed to, but often practicing an action teaches and conditions a child more to be a certain way than just watching it.
And the military actually uses video game simulations to help train for real life situations. If the military is using it for real life training- why wouldn't children start to become more violent as a result of shooting and killing hundreds of people on the screen? 
Fox New wrote an article about the topic and I quote - "Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe how playing video games might affect the brain. The results indicated that boys who played violent video games experienced changes in regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control." But! It has not been proved the violent video games leads to real life violence or bullying. Bullying comes from a number of things like insecurity, because of home problems, to be in control or other issues. I do not believe that playing a game turns a child into a bully. I do believe that age-inappropriate games can affect a child if they are over exposed to cuss words, pornography or saying the word "kill", but that is another story. If anything violent video games can glorify bullying, but not cause it. 

5 Interesting Facts about the Computer World

During class, I was actually very interested to hear about the rise and fall of Steve Jobs, the rivalry between Macintosh and IBM, the creation of Microsoft by Bill Gates, and the great care every Google employee receives. Since I could probably write several lengthy pages on all of that information, I will just give you five interesting facts about the computer world. 

1. Every wondered why the company Apple is called Apple? The popularly believed theory is that Steve Jobs had spent some time working in apple orchards in Oregon and began a "fruitarian diet" ( which allowed him to eat only fruits, nuts, and seeds). When naming his company, he thought that the name "Apple" would be simple, fun and spirited. Another theory is that it was a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles. 

2. Microsoft Windows is called got the name "Windows" because at the time when the team was working on the project, they worked in a big building without any windows. They wanted to "build the windows". Microsoft also has a history of using short words like Office and Word to sound official and direct. 

3. Google was originally supposed to be named "Googol" to represent the number 10^100 but the companies founders misspelled it, and the company instead was named "Google" (which is now a verb! 

"Can you Google that?") The colors of the letters also represent legos. 

4. Google's founders were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They created Google to clear up the internet and make it much more accessible to people trying to search for things. The way it works is that Google copies millions of pages to index them and duplicate them into their own service. In the beginning, some companies and website owners were appalled at this. They thought it was stealing and didn't realize that without Google, their website would go unvisited. Google uses "Googlebots" to attach to the websites and monitor the change and update so Google can update it in their search engine. "Page Rank" determines which pages to show first based on which sites have to most links linked to them. It is like a popularity contest. 

5. The original Apple logo looked like this - 

It is a picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree which is a theory of Newton's law of gravitation.  

 

This is what it changed to a rainbow apple - 

Before it was finally changed to the simple current version - 

Who is Ray Kurzweil?

In high school, Ray Kurzweil took the first step up the staircase of the rest of his future career by programming a computer to analyze patterns in musical compositions that were done by famous composers. The computer then composed a new song with the same style as the other pieces. The project is now known for having a computer do "pattern recognition". Kurzweil won 1st prize in the International Science Fair. 
He went on to attend MIT and began a small business that helped high school kids find the college best fitted to them. A computer with enough memory to hold 2 million facts on 3,000 colleges was rented for 1,000 an hour and Kurzwel would use it to match students up with specific colleges. Kurzweil then noticed how computers can really affect peoples' lives. He sold the company for over $100,000. 
His first real company was called Kurzweil Computer Products Inc. The company "taught" computers to recognize printed or typed characters in different fonts and printing quality. Before they could only recognize a few fonts. 
The company also developed a tool suggested by a blind man - Optical Character Recognition. OCR would read typed documents out loud.
In 1982 a new business,  Kurzweil Music Systems was created and the Kurzweil 250 was made which was "the first computer-based instrument that could realistically recreate the musical response of the grand piano or other orchestral instruments".
Kurzweil Applied Intelligence was created in 1982 as well to develop computer based speech recognition. 
In 1996, Kurzweil Educational Systems was created for print-to-speech reading technology. 
As you can see Kurzweil became very successful and ended up writing many books, including his best seller The Age of Spiritual Machines, on his doings. He has received multiple awards, prizes and recognitions and is still alive today. 

My Flip-book Project

To begin this project, I went to the nearest thrift store and purchased My Sister's Keeper for $1.99. This book is 421 pages long, perfect for what I was about to do. The assignment was to create a 200 page flipbook animation on a normal book. There were no instructions or guidelines; the topic was open. Before starting the project, I actually did read the book. It had a different synopsis than the movie and was quite the tear-jerker. But back to the project! 

I began with a star that grew and then ripped apart, turning into birds. I then added water, an island, a palm tree and a sun. 

The sun then set. Next, the right coconut fell from the tree into the water and turned into a wooden boat. I added a man who begins to fish happily until a fish comes along that ends up being five times the size he is and eats the boat AND him up. 

Next it begins to rain and the world floods as the water level rises and there is a fresh slate. I do some abstract animation for 30 pages until an eyeball appears that blinks and then turns into a turtle that poops and exits. It turns into more abstract art that shrinks into a deformed heart and drips. The drip slides off the page and then turns into a real heart. A human is drawn around the heart and then the human rips out his heart in anger

He then regrets it immediately, covering his mouth in shock and then goes after it to hopefully retrieve it. Next a gas meter appears and the dial runs from full to empty and turns to a pizza pie which is eaten slice by slice until it is gone. The last image is the same star that the book began with.
 

War of Worlds Radio Broadcast

As mentioned in my earlier post, while listening to this radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds", radio listeners thought it to be real, that the world was actually under invasion by martians. A widespread panic spread in response to this.
Today of course, at radio listener would not take this seriously because of how much garbage is put out on the air and online. We are taught today to question everything. But those back in 1938 had no reason to NOT believe this broadcast that was done to professionally and seriously. The show includes "interviews" with astronomers, witnesses like Mr. Wilman, real facts about the distance from earth to mars, and detailed descriptions about what was happening to the earth - like the size of meteorites, what the gas is going to do etc.
I noticed how music was played in intervals between the broadcasts. It made it feel strange to me because if it really were a broadcast about the end of our world, I don't think they would have played music, or been as calm for that matter.
Go to 15:25-16:40 and listen to the yelling in the background as the radio announcer pretends to spot something horrendous as large as a bear with black eyes and a saliva-dripping mouth. The frightened people yelling in the background do sound convincing and natural. Then the radio announcer says he will be right back and it stops, like something happened. He even says the police have arrived, which also makes it sound convincing.
I don't think the people who panicked after listening to this were stupid for believing it. I still fall for things on the radio today and I know better. They didn't- so why shouldn't they have? I think the radio broadcast, even though it was described after by the media as cruel, was well done and set up well to be a great show that was never appreciated as a "show", but a trick.

Mztv.com and Ofr.com

Mztv is set up like a virtual museum for television, It documents important moments, sets, and figures during the development of television. I first viewed Marilyn Monroe's page, after hearing about her in class. I didn't know her name was originally "Norma Jean" and found it interesting that the documentary we watched in class portrayed her as an amateur who cried "I'll never be an actress!" and then turned into a film icon. Monroe was "too big" for television, and did not make many appearances in her lifetime because her beauty and sex appeal was wasted on a small black and white screen.
I also checked out the timeline of television history where they mentioned Felix the Cat, television's first star in 1928, just like we also talked about in class.
Link-  mztv.com

On www.otr.com I clicked on Private Eyes in the left-hand column and listened to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar which was done by Detective Harkness and was a first-person narrative detective fiction. Detective fiction was becoming very successful during the time. The pulp authors created characters that "tended to operate outside of the law in order to bring criminals to justice" and the authors always incorporated their opinions into the story. Johnny Dollar was an insurance investigator who got called to investigate secretly for clients and usually put himself in danger for justice. 
(http://www.otr.com/ra/privateeyes/YTJD%2049-03-11%20005%20Murder%20is%20a%20Merry-Go-Round.mp3) 

Panic during The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds is a 60-minute episode in the series The Mercury Theatre on the Air and was presented as a radio drama during the Halloween season in 1938. The episode was aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, during the time when radio had become the number one source of entertainment. After the depression, the people needed a form of entertainment that they didn't have to go out and pay a dollar for. Radio could sometimes be seen as propaganda and often included advertising and commercial breaks. Unlike the television we have today, radio allowed the imagination to run wild. Each person listening could be a set and costume designer, creating the scenery and costumes for each person talking. But anyways, during this episode of which a fake broadcast was done pretending that Martians were invading the Earth and that the world was ending as people knew it, people began to panic. Why? The first two thirds of the broadcast were done seriously without humor and presented without commercials as a simulated new bulletin. It seemed like a legitimate news report. Some described it as a cruel and deceptive thing to do. People actually fled their homes and the days following the broadcast were filled with panic and outrage. Those who had only turned on their radio briefly and heard the boradcast without knowing it was just a show especially fell for it because they mistook it as an actual news report. Jack Paar from The Tonight Show had to announce on the air, "The world is not coming to an end. Trust me. When have I ever lied to you?" But people thought he was lying to cover up what was really happening. After one month, the episode had become entirely famous, having 12,500 articles published about what had happened. 

Walter Carlos and Clockwork Orange

Walter Carlos, born is 1939, underwent a sex change in 1972 to become to girl he had always wanted to be. He had studied music and physics at Brown University which helped him to do the project he is known for - electronic music for Clockwork Orange. He created a new synthesizer that helped develop the audio for the movie. 
During Clockwork Orange the song "Singin in the Rain" by Gene Kelly is played during a painful scene of a woman being raped. The song is supposed to be cheerful, light and fun, which contradicts the scene being played out on screen. I think think it is supposed to make the audience feel uncomfortable and it is a sort of irony because Alex's gang treats the violence rape very lightly just like the song. 

Earthquake

When I asked my parents about the 1974 movie "Earthquake", I didn't get a grand reaction out of them like I was hoping. My dad had never heard of it and my mom said "I think I saw it on VHS in junior high". After I reminded her of the plot, she sort of remembered. She said, "It was a devastating movie and now that I think about it, it remind me of 9/11. People were stuck in this building and it was scary." Obviously she didn't have anything to say about the effects because she didn't see it in the movie theater. The movie was meant to be an "Event Film" to bring the audience back to see the movie again over and over. To make it have impact, "sensurround" was used which meant a bunch of large speakers and an amplifier would create "infra bass" sound waves to make it seem like a real earthquake was happening. People in the audience were not used to these effects and many panicked when seeing the movie. Some ran out, some had heart attacks. It was not for the fatal heart. Even some of the ceiling tiles in the theater would move, making it all more real.

Audio and Video

Silent movies may look cool, old and antique to us now, but back in the day, that was all they really had. When audio and video first began to work together making "talking pictures", there were many challenges presented. (Side note - Professor Santiago would wish that I emphasize that Audio and Video are two VERY different and separate things. Yes, they can synchronize but audio did it's own completely separate and video did it's own thing). One of the challenges was the microphone, because they were not very high-tech in the beginning. The microphone had to be positioned so that the sound was consistent in volume even when the actors and actresses turned their heads or away from each other. Another challenge was the synchronization. This meant they had to get the audio to match the video so every word, expression and sound matched together with the lip movement and motion of objects. 
Actress Myrna Loy said to New York Times writer Guy Flatley in 1977, ‘This is ridiculous!  Who wants to hear people talk?" Many People didn't understand why there needed to be a change. Silent films were appreciated because that's all they had and weren't used to talking pictures. People didn't understand them. It is like how I often go to the movies and purposely choose the normal movie over the 3D version, because I just don't see why it's necessary sometimes. 
Sound affected every person in film though. It must have been extremely frustrating for the directors, producers, and confusing for the actors and actresses who were forced to change their job description. 
Singing in the Rain from 1952 is a great example of a movie made right at the beginning of the sound in film era. 

The Great Train Robbery / Napolean

"The Great Train Robbery" was filmed in 1903 by Edwin Porter. The following is a list of observations while watching it on the effects and camera angles.

 

-When the robbers first boarded the train I noticed how camera moves along and you can see from the train opening how quickly the train is moving as the surrounding whiz by.
-the smoke when the explosive sets off inside one of the train cars was colored when the
-As the robbers move on top of the train, the camera is positioned in the back of the train so that the audience can see what they are doing, and feel as if they are on the train moving with it.
-the camera gives a perspective of the size of the train and when all the people jump off and put their hands up, you can see the big jump to the ground.
-when the man who tries to escape runs out of the crowd and towards the camera, it symbolizes that where we are as the audience is freedom and escape from the robbers, yet he is shot.
-To me the camera felt like a third-party bystander, like someone watching from the outside looking in. Perhaps this was because of the lack of sound. The people who the train robber's stole from and killed were avenged in the end as they were shot themselves and had their stolen possessions stolen once again.
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"Napoleon" is a French silent film directed by Abel Gance in 1927 that depicts the Napoleon's life in his earlier years. The reason why it is famous is because of the fluid camera motion. Most films during this time had a lot of static. The following are new innovative effects used in the film that were fairly new in the technological world -
-Fast cutting
-Extensive close-ups
-hand-held camera shots
-location shooting
-point of view shots
-multiple-cameras
-multiple exposure
-superimposition
-underwater camera
-kaleidoscopic images
-film tinting
-split screen
-mosaic shots

A Trip to the Moon

Georges Melies' black and white twelve minute film from 1902 was the first science fiction film and first animation.  film was projected at 16 frames per second, which was how films were measured in the earlier film days, and this actually was the standard frame rate at the time. You would think Melies would have made a nice profit, writing, directing and producing the first fiction film and animation, but unfortunately Thomas Edison's film technicians were secretly (now what would be called 'illegally') making copies and selling them. This film came right before the Nickelodeon Era, where people could pay 5 cents (NICKELodeon) to individually view a movie.

During this film, a rocket is carefully constructed  and the shell is seen being launched. Then "the shell pierces the eye of the moon", which to me looks like a giant cheese pizza with a face. The animation of it is the comedy of the film, quite different than comedy today. The shell crashes down and the men who had been contained inside get out and explore the landscape. There are stars with women for faces, explosions, and snow. This is before the astronomers are captured and taken to the King. At last, the shell drops into the sea. This film not meant to be serious, but a narrated fiction with real people and a fake background.

7 Video Excerpts

After viewing the Stage Door blog and looking at all of the videos, I have selected 7 to share along with a description of why I thought the technology added to the clip.

1. The video begins off dimly lit but quickly the special effect of lightening wakes the audience up using visual and sound effects. Then towards the middle, the mixture of red and yellow spotlights creates a warm friendly environment and the use of background dancers excites the crowd. At all times, a mixture of smiling people surround Harris as he sings out about the proposition of life becoming more like theater. If that were true, we would need a constant crew of people trailing us around the handle the lights, camera, make-up, costumes etc.

2. If you watch the curtains behind the bed right as the video begins, you can see light coming from behind them and you can see them blowing which gives off a feel of outdoors in her bedroom as she sings. Also if you look at the ground around 2:05 you can get a good view of a colorful disco effect. There are several blue green and yellow circles spiraling across the ground the give the whole scene a star-gazing kind of feel.

3. In the video, the entire set is the yellow couch upon which Kristen sits, but the use of the spotlight that follows her around on stage makes her shine even brightly as she sings. I laughed at the interaction between her and the orchestra in the beginning. It made the audience laugh and reminded me that music really is a technology because it is one of the main factors when it comes to mood.

4. Oh my gosh! The amount of colors, extravagant costumes, lights and glitter. I see the electric "passionelle" sign in 0:04, petals falling from the sky in 0:25, and the black background with the twinkling sparkles in 2:45. This Broadway show seems to revolve around glitz and glamour at first glance but as I watch the brief previews of the rest of the clips it seems to be a conflicting tale based on Genesis from the Bible. Any show with Kristen is entirely glamorous in my opinion. 

5 and 6. Look at the difference between the sets and costumes in the first video in 1960 and the second from the 21st century! I am just amazed how far theater has come. The 1960 Peter Pan video reminds me of the video style from the Brady Bunch. Their costumes are a plain cloth brown while the second video has belts, colors, different textures and add-ons. The background in the second video is also much more elaborate. The trees in the 1960 video look crafted by an elementary school child whereas the audience can really believe Peter is in a mystical world in the more modern video. The    updated technology gives the story a more "real" feel.

7. While most stages have three walls and one "fourth/imaginary" wall, this stage is very uniquely set up, sort of like a game show. The walls and floors both lit up and the lights not only change color but move. This video has similar technologies to the Patrick Neil Harris video. The flashier stages also tend to break the fourth wall (like Glitter and Be Gay). I think it would have been an added touch if the inner circle of the circular stage span while everyone was singing in unison. If not possible, they could make the stage rise at the end and then when the lights go off, an attached staircase at the end would get them down safely.

Jazz in the 20's

  If you go to any dance club today, you might be appalled at the moves you see on the dance floor. This is how many people felt about the Charleston! If you have never seen the Charleston live before let me give you a brief summary. This dance can be done by yourself, with a partner or in a line. It involves kicking of the legs and swinging of the arms done oppositely. There are four basic moves done loosely with the limbs. The dance was done mostly by flappers, rebellious young women who cut their hair short, wore bright lipstick and wore shorter hems. This dance was a representation of enthusiasm and life, and a way for people to express themselves. The Charleston was a precursor to the Lindy Hop, another popular dance from the 1930s. It is amusing to us how flappers and Jazz music were so scandalous because of our culture today, and makes me wonder what the dress and social change will be like in the next decades to come.

When Jazz Music was especially popular in the early 20th century, it also served as a symbol for social change. Black musicians were beginning to be able to record or be known as artists. It was a gateway that helped many people have less prejudice towards the African American race during the Civil Rights Movement. Jazz music was a culmination of black music, spirituals, gospel, and music from the westindies. A few famous black jazz musicians were Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington.