German Expressionism Vs. Projection Art

German Expressionism

"If you don't behave, Nolde will come and get you, and smear you all over his canvas."

~Scornful mother

1. Definition
2. Stylistic Qualities
3. Time Period + Significant Events
4. Why this style began + Initial Artists

Kirchner, "Berlin Street Scene," 1913

Kollwitz, "Infant Mortality," 1925

Kandinsky, “Improvisation 31,” 1913

"Degenerate Art"

Projection Art

1. Definition
2. Stylistic Qualities
3. Time Period + Significant Events
4. Why this style began + Initial Artists

Urbanscreen. "555 KubiK"

Start: 018

Triggered by sound and movement.



Capable of tracking moving objects.

Traditional Projection Art

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Conclusion:

Paint is for old people.

Winner: Projection Art

Imagine Native Film Festival + Fuse Advertisement Agency Field Trip

Yesterday the CyberArts grade 9, 11, and 12 classes had the opportunity to attend the Imagine Native Film Festival. There we watched multiple short films centred on the culture of first nation people from coast to coast, as well as across the world. There was a variety in mediums, effects, and story lines in the short films. The first film was a one-minute sketch with a humorous mood, while another one later in the screening was an animation depicting child abuse and neglect. Out of the films I watched, my favourite was the very first one.

Scene from The Indian and the Tourist

The first film was my favourite because of how short and simple it was. While I was intrigued by the issues that all the other films expressed, this was the only one that had a humorous approach to the social issue addressed. Titled, The Indian and the Tourist,  the setting takes place in an open field, with a first nation man playing guitar in the middle. In the midst of his playing, a tourist comes over with a camera to take a picture of him. While looking through the viewfinder, the tourist feels that something is missing. He grabs some feathers and a blanket, and dresses the musician up to look like a stereotypical Indian. He snaps the picture, and deems it a masterpiece. To end the film, the musician is seen chasing the tourist with his guitar, angry with how racist he was.

I enjoyed this because as I mentioned earlier, it was the only humorous film in the screening. However, just because the film made me laugh, it doesn't mean that it didn't have any deeper meaning. The backstory of the short, as told by the creator, took place in the early 20th century. A tourist visiting Canada saw a group of first nation musicians playing on the street, and decided he wanted to take a picture of them. He felt they were too "assimilated" to Canadian culture though, wearing clothes that white people typically wore. To fix this, he dressed them up in clothes that he felt looked Indian to him, possibly because he wanted a more interesting picture to show off when he got home. I liked the way the director approached this story because I feel that most filmmakers would typically want to approach a serious issue in a serious manner, perhaps because they feel that if they make a joke out of it, the audience might not take the matter as seriously, or even get offended. I liked this film because it made me laugh, but still reminded me of the racism that first nation people have faced in the past and the present.

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For the second half of the field trip, the grade 11s and 12s visited an advertising agency located at Adelaide and Spadina called Fuse. This is a popular agency in Toronto, having sponsored the 2015 Pan Am games. For this event they were responsible for the display of advertisements, promotion of the games, and also to create the official Pan Am games website that many people may be familiar with. At this agency, we got a small taste of the world of advertising through some of the company representatives who gave their time to talk to us.

Symphony of Swings, by Marc Pelland

While we were there, we got a small tour of the office from Lane Buie, VP of digital marketing. He brought us to a room that looked like something out of a movie about a mad scientist. There were wires and mechanical and electronic parts scattered on the tables and floor, a robotic arm holding a beaker of water on one table, an Xbox Kinect attached to a computer, and a 3D printer in the middle of creating a small skull statue. There we met the company's creative technologist, Marc Pelland, whose job is to create new technology to be used in experiential marketing (non-traditional marketing). An example of his work at Fuse is the CIBC Symphony of Swings, an interactive light-up swing set that created music and changed colour as riders swung back and forth. In fact, I remember seeing this swing while on a walk with my dad downtown to the Luminato Festival. Although I didn't ride it myself, I did get to see it up close.

Pan Am games website, designed by Fuse

After the tour of the agency, we received a briefing from Lane Buie, Marc Pelland, and Patrick Weir, creative director at Fuse. To start, both the CyberARTs class and the Fuse representatives shared their background. The students shared what they learned in CyberARTs, and the presenters told us about their past education and work before their time at Fuse. Following that, they told us about some of the past projects Fuse had done, such as the Symphony of Swings and Pan Am games mentioned earlier. "We like to stay away from traditional advertising," said Patrick Weir, meaning they didn't want to stick to usual billboard and poster ads you see all over the city. Instead, the company is always looking for bolder and more creative ways to rise above the sea of posters and grab the attention of passersby.

I'm glad the CyberARTs class was able to visit Fuse because our current project is to re-design the ad campaign of one of the given products by our teacher, and this trip has given me some genuine ideas I could use for my own use.

Fuse Logo

The Imitation Game: Christopher

“The judge gave me a choice: either two years in prison, or hormonal therapy…chemical castration to cure me of my homosexual predilections.”

Video Self-Portrait

Title: The End



Artist Statement:

My final project for CyberARTs was to create a video self-portrait that expresses myself. The basic idea of the video is that I am a creative and artistic person, not a scientific or mathematical one. In the beginning I am waking up and looking tiredly at the clock, and then getting out of bed. I included this to tell viewers that it is the beginning of the day, and how I am feeling. I show the extreme opposite of enthusiasm towards my math work when I sit down to do it and almost immediately pass out from frustration. I continue to show this frustration by showing that I am sleeping on my desk in all of my classes throughout the day. For the music, I wrote it so it matched the stressed feeling I had while going through my day. This gives the viewer the overall idea that school is just something that I have to survive everyday. After that I show myself going home so there is a bit of a transition from the setting going from school to home. If I didn’t put this in, it would take the viewers off guard because they wouldn’t be ready for a scene change, which would make them have to adjust quickly to the new setting. When I go inside and am doing artistic activities, the music immediately changes so it is much more pleasant and relaxed, the same mood that I am feeling in the video. A measure before the change in setting I made the music quickly buildup in volume and change from a minor to major key so the audience isn’t taken off guard by the sudden change in music, just like how I added a transition between me being at school and home. For the scene when I am doing artistic things, I do multiple things like reading, writing, and playing instruments. I wanted to include myself doing art, but I couldn’t use an easel because it was broken, and I couldn’t film myself drawing while staying within the same camera shot, so I left that out. After that, I am reading in my bed at night in my pajamas and look at the clock to see it is late at night. This is supposed to tell the audience that I have been reading, writing, drawing, making music, etc., all night. At this part I made the music slow down, and the melodic phrasing in a way so it matched the idea that I was winding down for the night and getting ready to go to bed.  I turned off the light and kept it off for a few seconds to represent the time I spend sleeping, except obviously I didn’t film the darkness for 7 hours while I slept. Instead, I kept the light off for a few seconds and then switched to the exact same shot as in the beginning, which is of me lying in bed. I did this to make the audience realize that the whole video is just my daily routine. At the beginning and end I wrote, “The End,” because waking up in the morning is the end of the day for me, and the beginning is when I get home from school to do art, music, and writing. Also, throughout the film I made the music not only match the video by mood, but I also timed it so it corresponded with shot changes to create more of a connection between the two. Because it is easier to edit the video to match the music than the other way around, I wrote the music so it went with the video as close as I could, and then did the fine-tuning in the video editor. For the technical part of the assignment, I wrote the music using Cubase 7.5 and Komplete 9 Ultimate. For the video editing, I used Corel Video Studio Pro. I used different video and audio software because they are both much easier to use, and also have more features. I exported the audio as a WAV file from Cubase and then converted it to an MP3 because WAV files are too large to use in Corel, and they also increase the file size of the project, making it harder to move across devices. I exported the video file as an HDV 1080i (PC) because the visual and audio quality are the highest they can get, and also because they file is meant to be viewed on the computer, which is the main platform that the video will be viewed on.