We had our last I2 class on May 1. We talked about how successful the concert was on Saturday (despite the technical difficulties) and enjoyed new group project presentations. I thought that this concluding class was one of the most inspiring meetings we've had. Each group had such unique ideas and showed a high level of collaboration. In this blog I would like to share my response to each project.
Team Green
This team had a theme: loneliness. They presented a great combination of text (poem), moving image, and piano improvisation. They told us there was supposed to be a dance improvisation from another site simultaneously to go along with everything else but due to some technical failure they could not have the dancer's image. I thought that the idea was great, and although they could not have the dancer's part, what they had shown us was inspiring.
Team Red
Their project was titled "Friend for Life" and it was animation and story telling in Chinese intended for children. I really enjoyed the animated characters that were original and the story that was very simple but touching: a lonely character finds a friend for life.
Team Orange
The whole class got really excited about this team's idea! Their idea was to use skype connection among them (three people), each going to an ordinary place on campus making it an extraordinary one by communicating through skype and experiencing surrounding sounds and images through a computer screen. Because of a technical problem they were unable to have the three way online connection but Nick, one of the team members went outside. With him on the large screen, he took the class to a whole new world; going into a library, elevator, talking to a random person... Yes, those things were no longer mundane then. What a simple idea, yet how incredible the effect is!
One of the conclusion statements by Dr. Gilbert was memorable and I believe this notion is what all arts and history are based on. He shared with us his creating process, process that involves time, sometimes a split second, and sometimes years. He told us that some of the images he used in his latest movie were from the last project. He told us that over years old ideas provided basis for new ideas and now he has ideas for the future. This process is true for many of us including great composers in the history of music. Beethoven wrote Choral Fantasy and later he wrote his 9th Symphony based on Choral Fantasy. Liszt was inspired by Beethoven's symphonies and transcribed all of them into piano music. Nicolle and I used the materials and concepts we already had and produced our Therapeutic I2 project.
Through I2 experiences, I noticed the unlimited amount of imagination and endless possibilities by working together as a group. Collaboration in I2 is perhaps a new means to make the world smaller and better place to live. I would like to conclude this term with the message Nicolle and I have at the end of our project movie, "Internet2 can bring people together. Connect the world with Internet2."
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Therapeutic Internet2---group project
Nicolle and I discussed our possible ideas for a group project. There were so many possibilities! We wanted to:
1. Involve people (concept of our April 28 concert)
2. Use materials that already existed
3. Do something with photography (Nicolle's passion)
4. Do something with music (my passion)
5. Utilize I2 to unify all of the above points
6. Create a movie that tells our story
As we shared our own experiences, we found that we both were involved in therapeutic programs at hospitals. Nicolle had taken pictures of artworks created by patients, and I had performed piano music for patients. So we came up with the concept of therapeutic use of I2, where patients can interact with artists and musicians from another site without having to leave their hospitals. I2 connection can occur among patients as well providing them with a whole different dimension.
So we made a movie, using still images of patients' artworks Nicholle had taken before and my performance video from earlier in the semester. The movie can be viewed here: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mk870/therapy.html
Nicolle and I are hoping to continue with this project since we believe it can be done. Our knowledge of I2 will some day help enrich patients' culture and life!
1. Involve people (concept of our April 28 concert)
2. Use materials that already existed
3. Do something with photography (Nicolle's passion)
4. Do something with music (my passion)
5. Utilize I2 to unify all of the above points
6. Create a movie that tells our story
As we shared our own experiences, we found that we both were involved in therapeutic programs at hospitals. Nicolle had taken pictures of artworks created by patients, and I had performed piano music for patients. So we came up with the concept of therapeutic use of I2, where patients can interact with artists and musicians from another site without having to leave their hospitals. I2 connection can occur among patients as well providing them with a whole different dimension.
So we made a movie, using still images of patients' artworks Nicholle had taken before and my performance video from earlier in the semester. The movie can be viewed here: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mk870/therapy.html
Nicolle and I are hoping to continue with this project since we believe it can be done. Our knowledge of I2 will some day help enrich patients' culture and life!
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Art, Music, Dance, and Love: Internet2 Concert
Finally our biggest project of the semester took place on April 28, 2007 at Frederic Loewe Theatre in NYC. It was a concert to celebrate two important professors at NYU: Dr. Denu Ghezzo who was retiring from his long teaching career at the university and Dr. Ron Mazurek who passed away unexpectedly two days before the concert.
The concert was very beautiful and touching. Everyone participated in his or her best way and contributed to the success of the event. I learned many things that day as one of the camera crew, from taping all the cables down to the floor so that nobody would trip over them to setting a camera so that people would not be walking in front of it but behind it. I realized how much dedication and concentration it needed to set up the audio and visual system in the theatre. We were constantly running across and in and out of the theatre, trying to solve problems.
Yes, the biggest lesson I learned that day was that there would always be problems. But important thing is to go along with those problems, if they are unsolvable. The V Brick at UCI failed to work that day, preventing us from having the high speed I2 connection. Although we had to change our program and we could not have an interactive session between audiences in NYU and UCI, our effort to do the best we could then made the event still highly valuable. I believe that the audience enjoyed the improvisations very much.
I was in charge of interviewing people as they entered the theatre and documenting overall the event. I was paired up with Nicolle and I think we worked very well together that evening. When we started to interview, asking people how they knew Dr. Ghezzo and to share their memories, at first they were somewhat hesitant to be interviewed. However, when we started asking people to congratulate Dr. Ghezzo, they were more than happy to share their words with us. In the end we had about 2/3 of the audience in the video. During the concert, I focused on the audience to capture their response to the performances by walking around the theatre. It was incredible to know how involved the audience was to every single performance, and to realize how much energy it provided to the whole production. I suggested to Nicolle to go backstage to take closeup video of the performers from behind, remembering some documentation movies I've seen of stage productions, which I thought was very effective.
Yes, we were exhausted from being there since 9am and dealing with unfamiliar problems after problems, but our facial expressions were filled with proud and achievement. We were a team and no longer a bunch of aloof graduate students. All the music, art, and dance we had that night were empowered by people's strong love and appreciation for those two important professors.
After all of this, I think now I am an expert on setting up a camera as well as taping the cables down and removing the tape from cables!
The concert was very beautiful and touching. Everyone participated in his or her best way and contributed to the success of the event. I learned many things that day as one of the camera crew, from taping all the cables down to the floor so that nobody would trip over them to setting a camera so that people would not be walking in front of it but behind it. I realized how much dedication and concentration it needed to set up the audio and visual system in the theatre. We were constantly running across and in and out of the theatre, trying to solve problems.
Yes, the biggest lesson I learned that day was that there would always be problems. But important thing is to go along with those problems, if they are unsolvable. The V Brick at UCI failed to work that day, preventing us from having the high speed I2 connection. Although we had to change our program and we could not have an interactive session between audiences in NYU and UCI, our effort to do the best we could then made the event still highly valuable. I believe that the audience enjoyed the improvisations very much.
I was in charge of interviewing people as they entered the theatre and documenting overall the event. I was paired up with Nicolle and I think we worked very well together that evening. When we started to interview, asking people how they knew Dr. Ghezzo and to share their memories, at first they were somewhat hesitant to be interviewed. However, when we started asking people to congratulate Dr. Ghezzo, they were more than happy to share their words with us. In the end we had about 2/3 of the audience in the video. During the concert, I focused on the audience to capture their response to the performances by walking around the theatre. It was incredible to know how involved the audience was to every single performance, and to realize how much energy it provided to the whole production. I suggested to Nicolle to go backstage to take closeup video of the performers from behind, remembering some documentation movies I've seen of stage productions, which I thought was very effective.
Yes, we were exhausted from being there since 9am and dealing with unfamiliar problems after problems, but our facial expressions were filled with proud and achievement. We were a team and no longer a bunch of aloof graduate students. All the music, art, and dance we had that night were empowered by people's strong love and appreciation for those two important professors.
After all of this, I think now I am an expert on setting up a camera as well as taping the cables down and removing the tape from cables!
Monday, April 23, 2007
On Sight Reading
I love the fact that we can interact with each other inside and outside the class time and try to answer each other's quetions. The other day I ran into Tom Beyer and he gave great tips on sight reading. He overheard me at one of the improv sessions when I was expressing to another student my difficulties of improvising and sight reading.
He said the key to improve my sight reading skills is to devote a certain amount of time everyday only to sight reading. Stopping everytime I make a mistake is habitual, he said, and instead of practicing in a right way, I've been practicing in a wrong way: stopping in the middle of the music. Of course if I am perfecting a piece of music I need to stop and practice passages over and over again till they are right, but practicing sight reading is different from perfecting a piece. I told him also that my eyes cannot capture many notes at once, they tend to only look at only a few and that my fingers often cannot measure intervals without my eyes looking at them.
So he gave me three main practice methods according to my needs.
1. Read a new piece of music and never stop no matter what happens
2. Read a single line of notes to expand my horizontal view
3. Play something I know in the dark
These are great insights and I have been devoting about 30 minutes everyday since. It's going to take some time and I will have to be patient with myself; however I believe that this practice menu will help me enhance my sight reading abilities, as Tom Beyer assured it would.
I have noticed that people who are great sight readers are also great improvisers. This may be because they can already hear in their head what's coming while they read a written score. So I hope by practicing sight reading I will also help develop my improvisation abilities. I look forward to the progress as well as the process in weeks, months, and years to come.
He said the key to improve my sight reading skills is to devote a certain amount of time everyday only to sight reading. Stopping everytime I make a mistake is habitual, he said, and instead of practicing in a right way, I've been practicing in a wrong way: stopping in the middle of the music. Of course if I am perfecting a piece of music I need to stop and practice passages over and over again till they are right, but practicing sight reading is different from perfecting a piece. I told him also that my eyes cannot capture many notes at once, they tend to only look at only a few and that my fingers often cannot measure intervals without my eyes looking at them.
So he gave me three main practice methods according to my needs.
1. Read a new piece of music and never stop no matter what happens
2. Read a single line of notes to expand my horizontal view
3. Play something I know in the dark
These are great insights and I have been devoting about 30 minutes everyday since. It's going to take some time and I will have to be patient with myself; however I believe that this practice menu will help me enhance my sight reading abilities, as Tom Beyer assured it would.
I have noticed that people who are great sight readers are also great improvisers. This may be because they can already hear in their head what's coming while they read a written score. So I hope by practicing sight reading I will also help develop my improvisation abilities. I look forward to the progress as well as the process in weeks, months, and years to come.
Audience Becomes Art
In our I2 class we have been discussing and sharing ideas for the April 28th concert between NYU and UCI. One of the plans is to film the people as they enter the Loewe Theatre and show the images on the main screen during the concert to include them as part of the production.
When I was reading the New York Times a couple of days ago this article caught me eyes: "Art's Audiences Become Artworks Themselves." It tells about an artist who created artworks with the same concept. Thomas Struth's works at Marian Goodman Gallery show photographs of spectators at the museum looking at various artworks. Pictures are quite amusing; some crossing their arms, some listening closely to the audio guide, some taking pictures---all of them are unaware that they are being photographed.
How eye catching these works are! They provide a whole different perspective to the notion of visual art.
The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/arts/design/10stru.html
When I was reading the New York Times a couple of days ago this article caught me eyes: "Art's Audiences Become Artworks Themselves." It tells about an artist who created artworks with the same concept. Thomas Struth's works at Marian Goodman Gallery show photographs of spectators at the museum looking at various artworks. Pictures are quite amusing; some crossing their arms, some listening closely to the audio guide, some taking pictures---all of them are unaware that they are being photographed.
How eye catching these works are! They provide a whole different perspective to the notion of visual art.
The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/arts/design/10stru.html
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Art of Improvisation 3
Our first major improvisation session with UCI took place last Tuesday. The class was divided into two groups; one group worked from Tower Building on Lafayette Street and the other worked from Avery Room in the Bobst Library. The video conference connecting three sites was made possible by ichat. Improvisation between two NYU groups worked out wonderfully; there was great musical energy shared by synthesizer, piano, toy piano, flute,and voice. Although there seemed to be an audio problem between NY and California and thus the UCI dancers did not pick up on our music, I think the session was very successful, at least between two NYU groups.
So here I'm going to report my performance in the improvisation session. As I made a promise last week, I was able to fight of my fear and just start playing simple musical ideas on the toy piano. Some were good, others not so inspirational (and the great thing was that I could blame the toy piano for its unevenly constructed keys). So far so good. Then I went on to the real piano and started playing something...then it suddenly became so hard because the sounds were much more exposed than those of the toy piano. But I didn't stop trying there. I thought I would just forget about all the unintentional dissonances I was making and would just focus on the musical gesture. I concentrated on my imaginative phrases and sounds and just went for them. The outcome was not that great but I think I did very well for my first major improvisation session!
As I listened to the sounds of other musicians I noticed there are no right notes or right rhythms; they simply play what they felt at a given moment. Next class I am going to explore further on improvisation, maybe introduce some dancing as well, and try different directions to expand my possibilities of music making.
So here I'm going to report my performance in the improvisation session. As I made a promise last week, I was able to fight of my fear and just start playing simple musical ideas on the toy piano. Some were good, others not so inspirational (and the great thing was that I could blame the toy piano for its unevenly constructed keys). So far so good. Then I went on to the real piano and started playing something...then it suddenly became so hard because the sounds were much more exposed than those of the toy piano. But I didn't stop trying there. I thought I would just forget about all the unintentional dissonances I was making and would just focus on the musical gesture. I concentrated on my imaginative phrases and sounds and just went for them. The outcome was not that great but I think I did very well for my first major improvisation session!
As I listened to the sounds of other musicians I noticed there are no right notes or right rhythms; they simply play what they felt at a given moment. Next class I am going to explore further on improvisation, maybe introduce some dancing as well, and try different directions to expand my possibilities of music making.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Multimedia Opera Production 2
So opera nowadays is getting more and more into using multimedia. Brooklyn Academy of Music introduced another multimedia "Magic Flute" with use of video images by a South African artist William Kentridge, as New York Times reports. Here is the description of the production in the article:
"The result is an exuberant dialogue between drawing and music, a three-dimensional work of art with video projected across and around the human figures onstange. Sometimes the animations echo the characters' thoughts; mathematical diagrams stand in for the teachings of Sarastro and his priests. Sometimes they reflect the music, with white lines reaching upward during a chorus, like fireworks. Sometimes they form antic glosses, suddenly coalescing into birds, a line, a dancing rhinoceros....Mr. Kentridges's "magic Flute" is based on the metaphor of the early camera, using the palette of a film negative, white on black, to reflect the opera's shifting presentation of good and evil."
As the technology advances it is quite common today to see musical works with mixture of different media. Many opera productions have attracted artists to collaborate. Opera is not just music; it has drama, dance, visual art, anything you can think of as a form of art. I am blown away every time I go to the Met to see an opera to find how creative the production can be. Opera is one huge art creation and there is no limit to how much more art it can contain. I am curious to see what direction opera is headed in the near future.
Article:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40F17F63F5B0C7A8CDDAD0894DF404482
"The result is an exuberant dialogue between drawing and music, a three-dimensional work of art with video projected across and around the human figures onstange. Sometimes the animations echo the characters' thoughts; mathematical diagrams stand in for the teachings of Sarastro and his priests. Sometimes they reflect the music, with white lines reaching upward during a chorus, like fireworks. Sometimes they form antic glosses, suddenly coalescing into birds, a line, a dancing rhinoceros....Mr. Kentridges's "magic Flute" is based on the metaphor of the early camera, using the palette of a film negative, white on black, to reflect the opera's shifting presentation of good and evil."
As the technology advances it is quite common today to see musical works with mixture of different media. Many opera productions have attracted artists to collaborate. Opera is not just music; it has drama, dance, visual art, anything you can think of as a form of art. I am blown away every time I go to the Met to see an opera to find how creative the production can be. Opera is one huge art creation and there is no limit to how much more art it can contain. I am curious to see what direction opera is headed in the near future.
Article:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40F17F63F5B0C7A8CDDAD0894DF404482
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