Film Music

Mary Stewart in her textbook, Launching the Imagination, asks us to consider the effects of sound in film (310). Stewart relays Aaron Copland's five points of the enhancement of film with the help of music. Stewart also refers to Copland as "a master of film music" before sharing the five points as follows:

"Sound can create a more convincing atmosphere of time and place . . .
Sound can communicate the unspoken thoughts of a character or the unseen implications of a situation . . .
Sound can serve as a neutral background, filling space between bits of dialogue . . .
Sound can build a sense of continuity . . .
Sound often heralds the beginning of an event or rounds it off with  a sense of finality" (310).

One may think that sounds in a film are merely the cliche building of music as someone in a horror film is searching through their dark house with a baseball bat after they've heard a noise, however this is probably never the case. There is a slew of impacting elements that film music can use to give the viewer a more profound experience of the particular film. Stewart shares these elements that Copland outlined in order to explain that sound can make or break the setting, provide insight for a particular character, provide sound during breaks in dialogue in order to maintain that audience's interest, can create unity between scenes and ideas that would have otherwise been interpreted as separate, and then the building of the music that points toward a significant point such as the beginning, end, or climax (310). Nevertheless, the next time we view a film, we should stay aware that the messages in the film are not only conveyed visually. Due to the major roll that music plays in films we should recognize that it has an effect on our understanding of the visuals and overall messages conveyed by the film.

Intensity

I especially enjoyed the description of the intensity in Mary Stewart's textbook Launching the Imagination. She uses two examples to convey the idea of intensity in reference to the "level of energy in a performance or the quality of observation of an event" (Stewart 302). Both examples convey a social critique and both play on the morals of all people. The example that I would like to point out is in Figure 13.21 Mary Lucier, Migration (Monarch), 2000. Lucier photographed the death of a Monarch butterfly after it landed on a human hand, and displayed the series of photos in Manhattan. The message is that the butterfly is in fact "fragile and transient" (Stewart 302). I found this quite interesting because it shows that the emotional intensity of art is a way of portraying propaganda. Therefore the passionate feelings that the artist feels while they create and present their work, evokes a compassionate reaction. This is especially a propaganda piece because Lucier displayed a delicate, beautiful insect dying after an interaction with a human, which is a critique on human and nature interaction. More specifically it suggests that people who live in the city have become ignorant to nature's needs. The butterfly's death displays a critique on human's relationship with nature, and this assumption is due to the intensity of Lucier's work.

Uniting Tension and Torsion

In Mary Stewart's textbook, Launching the Imagination, she addresses the use of tension and torsion. She states that tension stretches or bends an object and torsion creates a twisting movement (273). I find this very interesting because I thought that a twisting movement would just create another type of tension. So I wondered if torsion is a type of tension or if it is a concept all its own. The definition of torsion as stated by the Oxford Dictionaries is essentially how Stewart had described it, "The action of twisting or the state of being twisted, especially of one end of an object relative to the other" (oxforddictionaries.com). Neither one of these sources indicates that torsion is a subcategory of tension, however I would assume that because an object is stretched tightly (to create tension) around itself in a twisting motion (to create torsion), that the art could depict both concepts. I believe the photo below does this, even though it it titled, "Torsion Encounter", because it seems to be undergoing torsion due to the way the wood is twisting, however it also seems to be stretching as if it is falling victim to tension.

Art created by Stian Korntved Ruud

Associations of Properties

According to Mary Stewart in Launching the Imagination, "Every material has unique psychological associations as well as physical properties . . . [no matter the design] materials have meaning" (258). I feel that this is a true statement because the viewer of the art is supposed to assume that everything the artist did within their work was intentional. I feel as though this must be true for everything-- for example, this idea is not limited to installations or sculptures. When someone uses tools as simple as say, a pencil and paper, one can associate the properties of graphite with the earth and naturalness since it is composed of the natural element carbon, and paper also with the sense of naturalness since it is derived from trees. Or the graphite can take on a different meanings due to its metallic color that could signify coldness, hardness, or even outer space. The paper can also be made of cloth that signifies many different ideas for example, "to conceal" much like our clothes conceal our bodies or virtually anything that one may think of when they hear the word cloth. It is also important to keep the subject matter of the art in mind, in order to detect what the author intended to tell their viewer with their media choices.

Veteran's Day | Light

In honor of Veteran's Day, I'd like to make this post about the Marine Corps Memorial located in Washington DC. I visited this Memorial as well as others on Veteran's day in 2010. What I remember most about this particular Memorial was how it looked in the dark. As it turns out, it was one of the last Memorials we visited that day, and we were headed for our hotel just after we visited the Memorial. Evidently, the way the directed light was cast upon the soldiers showed that the people who designed the Memorial wanted to make the work, "spatially rich" by using specific light placement, as defined in Mary Stewart's textbook, Launching the Imagination (206-10). In this photo, taken by photographer James Seith, it is apparent that the light is cast up from the ground to illuminate the men from their feet. This allows the viewer to see the texture in the sculpture, but it also contains symbolic value. Light from the ground, regardless of if it originates from different angles upward around the Memorial, reminds the viewer that strength comes from deep down within us, and that despite the war within the world, America can unite and raise up (shown by the men also raising the flag as a team) as the light rises to illuminate their faces.

Colored Chairs

I really liked what Mary Stewart wrote in our textbook about color and the reactions that are evoked from certain colors. Following Stewart's explanation about red, yellow, and blue used on a Fisher-Price toy for children, she described a collection of chairs in Figure 9.63 (210). These chairs, made by Toshiyuki Kita, were an array of colored chairs that had different colored cushions that could be switched out to match any color of chair in the collection (210). When I saw the picture however, (before reading the description) I really felt as though some of the chairs could evoke an ominous feeling from the person about to sit on it, or even a happy feeling, or a disgusted feeling. The red chair with the black cushion seemed eerie, the pink chair with the red cushion could represent happiness, while the green chair with the yellow cushion didn't look so visually pleasing. Either way, if the chair's had different colored cushions than the ones described, then they would evoke a completely different feeling altogether. Amazing how chairs can be so thought provoking, and their colors, so intriguing.

A Comparison | A Freestanding Work is Also an Earthwork

After reading chapter nine in Mary Stewart's book titled, Launching the imagination | A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Design, I wondered which other degrees of dimensionality the, Spiral Jetty, made by Robert Smithson in Great Salt Lake Utah (shown in Figure 9.13) could possibly represent. The art by Smithson is described in the book as an earthwork because it ". . . is a large scale outdoor instillation" (Stewart 186). This artwork falls within this category because it, ". . . extends beyond the walls of a museum or gallery". I find that this description also identifies the Statue of Liberty. This statue takes up an abundance of space, so it is a large scale outdoor instillation and it also extends beyond the walls of a museum or gallery so it is technically an earthwork, but it can also be considered a freestanding work, because it is ". . . designed to be seen from all sides. . . [and the statue's positioning by raising the torch indicates motion which] bring[s] to life the inanimate [bronze]" (Stewart 184). So after this comparison, I wonder if some degrees of dimensionality may overlap for certain works.