This Class was...

This class was a lot of fun...well the lab portion haha>>the lecture portion was a little rough to sit through just because the duration of the class period and how tiny the slides were projected on the board, but other for that this class was very informative and taught me a bunch of stuff about programs like photoshop and imoive that I never was too familiar with in the past...and cassie was the best TA! :)

The museum of the moving image-The cathedral

            Upon my visit to the Museum of the Moving Image I had the opportunity to see wild exhibits that were beyond trippy and so different than a lot of the things one would normally scout out in a regular art museum. The exhibition that grabbed my attention and caught my eye was the Real Virtuality installations. There were six different installations and all the artists responsible for them are either painters, filmmakers, video artists, or some kind of engineer and they all use similar modern technologies to create these images and visuals that are so crazy and immaculate. The software used to create these different processed images are used to develop “simulated worlds that extend, augment, or disrupt the physical environment of the museum space.” The specific exhibit I spent the most time analyzing was the, “Cathedral,” by artist, Marco Brambilla. This piece was a single-channeled video and is basically captured video and film footage that has been digitally processed and looped. It took over 150 hours of high definition footage captured by camcorders allocated through the Toronto Easton Centre megamall in 2007 during the Christmas shopping season. Brambilla utilized compositing and rotoscoping techniques to coalesce recorded images captured from different focal lengths, points of views and from multiple different angles into one kaleidoscopic video shot. The technique of compositing involves creating an image that appears to look as though it’s always just been a single piece but in reality it is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images. Rotoscoping is an animation technique that involved Brambilla tracing over live-action film movement frame by frame to create animated images.

Time is of the Essence: the time you spend at school is invaluable. The time allocated for your journey around the academic labyrinth is of the utmost importance because every second spent is a tick in the clock winding down the best years of your life.  

Yin-Yang

The Yin-Yang is a symbol in Chinese text which represents the notion of "everything," powered by opposites and ironically-breaking the mold of black-and-white views. The Yin <black> conveys the dark, passive, downward side of life, while The Yang <white> conveys the strong, active, upward side. The idea is that "...there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast." <Moby Dick- Ch. 11 By. Herman Melville> Further explanation goes to say that "truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more." <Herman Melville> Many people take for granted their situations-they never stop to think of their hardships as a 'glass-half-full' blessing to themselves. They don't appreciate how valuable it is to be exposed to all the shades of the palette of life; even the harsh greys and the hopeless blacks.