NYT Blog Entry on PowerPoint

This New York Times blog has many interesting comments about PowerPoint: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/using-powerpoint-with-discretion/. It took 7 before someone posted about Tufte. If you feel like revisiting the whoe Tufte/PowerPoint issue, this would be the place.

Link

Blogging

Hey everybody s the semester winds down to an end i just wanted to say it was fun to have class with all of you, Everybody comeing from different perspectives really made for an interesting and thought provoking class. By the way i ahve started my own blog, its about food so please check it out and leave some comments! Sorry i know this isnt really the subject matter for the class, But it is visual...

http://sekbowmeyaa.blogspot.com/

Stranger than fiction

I recently saw the movie "Stranger than Fiction" with Will Ferral (by the way, i didnt know that he could act). If you havent seen it, i reccomend it. Anyway, this movie made me think of a conversation we had in class about modernism, and art being self reflexive. Well this movie was definitely that, it had to with the main character, a IRS tax man, who finds himself being narrated by a woman who is writing a book about his life. This movie reminded me of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", or "Adaption", I find these kind of movies very compelling. This movie, despite other of Will Ferral's comedies, had something much more admirable about it. It was intellegent and kept me thinking and guessing right untill the end. I believe that this modern way of making movies is a move in the right direction for film.

Name Without a Face

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

This is an article about Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, and his social experiment regarding classical music.

" It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant."

I had a variety of quick reactions after reading this article. 1: Inspired by a bold experiment to see how the general public would react 2: Sadness for the ignorance by the passerbys as Bell plays some of the great violin pieces.

We all recognize names. Sports figures, movie stars, as well as composers. Too often we hear these names without really knowing their faces. An example: Last year I was fortunate to have a picture taken with the great film composer John Williams. If you ask anyone in the Film Scoring they will automatically know the name. However, as I showed the picture around I recieced the too often "Who is that?" response. Is this ignorance on part of the student? It seems essential to know these composers by their name as well as their face. This will prevent you from looking inexperienced in social gatherings. This article made me think of the evolution of ads, like we had discussed in class. Text based to picture based to logo based. The Nike symbol can immediately be recognized without saying "Nike". Is it our job to know what Nike is? No, thats why they have marketing departments to make sure that we do. Is this departure of facial recognition due to the increase of global communications? As the world becomes smaller, is personal technologies, such as the ipod, preventing us from social interaction? Relationsihps are essential for anyone's success. I think that in general, society needs to "lighten up and look up". Pay attention to those around you, interact socially with them, and stop looking at the ground. In essence we are all humans. Why should we shut out those around us?

Art in War

"All art is propaganda", repeated on numerous occasions by one of my professors. Every piece is intended to create some sort of emotional response or reaction. War is something that we all have become too familiar with, being portrayed in the news and cinema religiously. It has become a fore-front of our culture, visually, socially, and economically. After visiting the "War and Discontent" gallery in the MFA this became even clearer to me. It was interesting to see how each artist interprets the concept of war. Wikipedia defines war as:

"War is a state of widespread conflict between states, organisations, or relatively large groups of people, which is characterised by the use of violent, physical force between combatants or upon civilians. War is contrasted with peace, which is usually defined as the absence of war. "

When analyzing their works, or any work rather, you have to consider the multi-dimensional aspects of war. I believe it is not exclusive to militaristic actions. As stated in this definition it is a conflict between masses of people. It has, however, become associated with the military as clearly portrayed by the media. Each artist exploited a different topic within war. Some used positive ideas as shown by Phil Collins' dancing room. These artists use their art to "cause turbulance" whether positive or negative. Art is often thought of what is visible. I believe that it is important not to forget that music, too, is a form of this "art propaganda". Artists, ranging from Eminem to Stravinsky, push the envelope which ensues in conflict between the public and in most cases the FCC. War does not have to be militaristic. This is something that became quite clear while visiting this exhibit. All I could hear radiating from the works is..."All art is propaganda".

Grindhouse

Lat night I went and vidied Grindhouse the action packs double feature of the 21st century. If you guys have not seen it is an extremely well done flick. I admired the most was how in Planet terror how often times, like a composer would compose music to set up a scene in the movie or backup emotional events and adding color, the visual effects were composed much in the same way. I found that many time certain color blotches or "Film artifacts" accented the plot or helped convey a particular emotion or feel. You would have to see it to see what I mean. Another thing I liked was that not necessarily did the film take from certain movies but rather it exploited styles. Some of which, especially in the editing style, were things that in the past were sort of uncontrollable physical things that came with wear and tear on the film i.e. missing reels, bad splices, scratchy appearance, color blobs etc, have now been reproduced digitally. I just thought this film would be good for some discussion so please if anybody has seen it give us your impressions!