Performance Video Artists

We were tasked to find and write about performance artists so here it goes.

For my first artist, I guess a major one would be Miley Cirus. She's a person who is consistently seen as acting out or is always making headlines with some outrageous action or outfit. I think she's a performance artist because what she claims to be doing is making art. Art is anything that the artist makes it out to be so if she claims that her actions and her stunts are art, then it's art.

Another artist who is no longer with us would without a doubt be Robin Williams. Robin Williams is someone who constantly used his art and performance skills to entertain people both on the set and in his normal life. There are many instances where he has used his Mrs. Doubtfire costume to fool and confuse people on his gender and identity. 

Yoko Ono is the other artist I would pick as a well know performance artist. She has done and continues to do performance art as a way of showing her thoughts and as a way of protesting touchy subjects to the public. One can simply search the Internet and in a matter of moments find something about her or one of her many performances.

Flip Book

This was an interesting one.

Instructed to create a two hundred page flip book, this quickly became a very difficult task for me to accomplish. I had so little inspiration when creating a flip book.

Hours I spent looking at my papers and having no idea what to do, but then I just started to draw. Nonsense turned into more nonsense and soon enough I had two hundred pages of nonsense being passed in front of my eyes by relaxing my thumb.

Unconventional Grid

One of our latest assignments was the create a grid out of items that your normally didn't expect to see a grid made out of. The assignment itself seemed simple enough but when it came down to execution, it became rather difficult in the long run. I had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas for what to do but I eventually settled on one thing.

Candy.

It was so simple. Candy came in so many colors and it could be used in a variety of ways. The next question came to be, where would I get all that candy from? Luckily, I had several bags of Starbursts lying around from when I purchased several bags months back. I laid them out, all facing the same way and with the same side facing up, and slowly built an image out of my favored flavored treats. The end result? A large question mark block signature to that of the Mario series.

3D Toy

I was given the task of creating a 3D model of a weapon that could also be categorized as a toy. To add tot he difficulty of this, I had to make something that wasn't already a toy which turned out to be quite a lot of things. To work around this I made a bullet of sorts but added a shark face design to it to make it more action like and appealing to a younger audience. It is of course not a real bullet but instead is something that is simply plastic. It could fired from a sling shot like device if need be but probably should be aimed at anyone's face.

Here is the image below of the finished product.

Ride of the Valkeries

Out of curiosity (and the link being on our Art 211 blog page), I decided to take a look at the Ride of the Valkyries excerpt that the famous song is often used from. Needless to say, I was entertained. I have always known that this song was from an opera but I never knew it was form such a tragedy themed showing. Countless times have I heard this song in movies and video games and shows and have always wondered at it's origins. The music has always been incredibly powerful for me and whenever it started playing, I knew something awesome was about to happen.

It' always interesting when something from our modern age of technology adapts a piece of music or part of an older piece of media, like this opera, for use in modern entertainment because we, as viewers, never know how well or poorly it's going to be used. In all the times I've heard the instrumental version of this song, it's always been a wonderful usage and I hope it continues to be.

Carmen Habanera

Recently, I watched the video of the opera song "Carmen Habanera" as per suggested by the Art 211 blog page. Normally, I'm no fan of opera, having only seen the Phantom of the Opera, but I found this very interesting. This was especially given this song in this opera are often made fun of or spoofed in old cartoons like Bugs Bunny and the sort that I used to watch when I was younger. It was really great for me to finally understand where this song originated from. But not only was it entertaining to learn it's origins, it was also wonderful to actually understand the point behind it's lyrics.

I'll be honest, I didn't really know what was going on the whole time that I watched it but I still found it very engrossing.

For me, I've always been interested in music and learning the meaning behind songs. Opera has always had very interesting lyrics to it and always has a very deep and profound meaning. Normally, one would have to pay an extreme amount of money to go see something like this, but the ease of the internet makes it so that I can watch or listen to such powerful music like this without too much hassle. Technology also allows for people who wish to remake or redo these famous operas for a new age can add more dazzling effects to them to immerse the audience further. A lot of people say that opera is a dying art but in fact, I think it's making a comeback with a new generation.

Art and Music

I spent a great deal of time taking a look through the links that were posted on our class blog page and none of them really stood out to me at all. Some of the links weren't that exciting or really all that great in my opinion. Then I came across one that we viewed in class and the memory was forever stuck in my mind. It was Die Antwood's music video for their song "Rich Bitch." It was way beyond what music I normally listen to and the themes and morals behind it weren't something I could really find myself interested in. But it still stuck out to me regardless. At first, I didn't really care for them or heir music, but then I began to start viewing them in a different light.

Art.

Art was the reason they were doing what they were doing. They weren't trying to make a quick buck off poor lyrics or trying to over-glamorize themselves like some modern day artists. They were only making art, and being artists, they were making art the way they thought art should be made. It really made me take a step back and made me start appreciating more types of artists like this.