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.