Playing Catch Up and Parting Words April.27.2004 :: 1630 So it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. I'm not quite sure why. It doesn't seem like that long when there's only one class in each week. My hypertext response is in the works and I have begun the construction of my final project for the video games page. I have been able to take one of the key concepts related to each week we've covered and apply it to the video game Earthbound for the Super Nintendo. Some of these are deal with the game's design and some are plot/story elements. You'll see. I'm stoked. Music: I loved the MDST322 Mix project as I'm sure I have stated in another blog entry. I felt it was a great way to experience collage first hand on a large scale and get most people involved. It helped us come up with something to talk about in class too. I felt it was necessary to have a music day separate from plunderphonics because they can take up a lot of time and shouldn't be rushed. Here's my take on music: music can be collage. I don't think that all music is collage because collage really implies appropriating certain things for effect. There has been perhaps a bit too much generalization about what collage "really is". It's hard to make the call on it though. Collage really depends on the medium. It's one of those things, I think, that you can just "sort of tell". Some things are obviously not collage and some things obviously are. Like I definitely feel like the Flaming Lips experience was collage (both performance and preconstructed). Kudos to Travis for bringing it in, sorry my speakers sucked. Film, Television, and Video: Another great class based on participation. I only wish we had more time to show videos and such. Since film is such a prevalent visual medium it was obviously going to facilitate the development of collage from the get-go. We saw this in the early example of Disney's The Three Caballeros. I had remembered being kinda tripped out by this when I was a kid and the showing confirmed that. This type of collage seems to be more like the cut-and-paste medium that most of us had preconceived notions of at the beginning of the semester. This is different from say the Clerks Animated Series clip that I showed which was a spoof on Japanimation/Anime. The collage aspect there was more about the pieces "collaged" being ideas rather than physical objects. All this talk about "the definition of collage" has made me wonder if what I showed really is collage or not. I'm gonna say yes for the time being. Installation and Conceptual Art: Heady. I feel this is the real progressive area of modern art (or would it be regressive considering art often used to be about processes way long ago?). Anyway, I think it's cool. I really enjoyed the McCoy stuff as well. It would be fun to make the "448 is Enough" and "How I Learned" exhibits more interactive. Like be able to just use a computer to point and click. I'm not sure why they though that the CD process would be easier to use than a mouse-computer interface. But I guess that's not really my place to critique. I wish I could see the "Every Anvil" exhibit showing all the anvils in Looney Toons cartoons of the 40s and 50s. Final Thoughts on Class: I'm glad that I had the chance to be in this class. Fortunately I got after the essay-test-wait-list thing. Not only did I learn a lot about the topic but I learned a lot on how the seminar format affects discussion. The open-source format also changed the learning experience for me. I may not have learned as many vocabulary words and names of theorists as I have in other classes but I definitely have a different notion of "how to learn" through interaction. Muchos gracias to all of the folks in the class for making my semester interesting and hopefully I'll get to join the lot of you as a Media Studies major next year assuming the wait-list thing works out. And remember, aloha means goodbye! SEACREST OUT! Read and Post Comments

April 2004

Playing Catch Up and Parting Words 04.27.2004 :: 1630 March 2004 Plunderphonics 03.29.2004 :: 1645 The Best of the Best 03.28.2004 :: 1920 So Much HTML It Makes Your Ass Hurt & Thoughts on Animation 03.24.2004 :: 2150 And They Say, "It's better than yours." 03.02.2004 :: 1500 February 2004 Video Games and Fan Fiction 02.17.04 :: 1610 Constantly Changing Definitions = A Fact of Life 02.03.04 :: 1700 January 2004 Some Responses To My Readings 01.27.04 :: 1600 Testing Out The Blogger 01.26.04 :: 2130