I want to talk about the paintings and how they relate to public art as a whole. These painting in my opinion are perfect examples of public art and what public art should be. They do not show bias and just tell the story of how things were formed. In the First painting Development of Arts, it starts off with just cave paintings because that is the first thing we as humans created to share stories and document events which since then have been known as art. It is great to see how art as evolved from a way to document events like the Neanderthals did as well as the greeks and Egyptians to what happened in the middle ages where art was used to honor god and not show man, to again what the Renaissance did with showing what men are and document our culture and not a higher being as much. My favorite part of these paintings are the top two areas where they depict students learning the arts and then a place for modern art to show that we are indeed in a creation period of our own and we can continue to shape art from here at UO. (Maruska)

The Development of Sciences is a little different but mostly the same. It starts in the stone age and moves to the iron age where the tools were made to survive, to the early Egyptian age where tools were made to make building monuments and structures, the greeks who started making tools to think about stuff outside of this world, The Renaissance shows the creation of the printing press as well as some science such as calculus and the expansion of physics, The Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the industrial revolution and the creation of lightbulbs, followed by the modern scientist such as Einstein and Curie who expanded our modern knowledge of science immensely, the last box is again filled with students because I think it is a representation of what we can accomplish. All the previous discoveries have only given us a foundation of what we can accomplish so we should see it as a challenge to add another row to the painting. (Maruska)

This example of public art to me is great because there is no bias about what happened, there is only the facts on here of how science and art have developed over time. This made me think about the reading and how public art is viewed. I do not think it is right to change how a person was seen in there memorial purely based on the fact that you want to please everyone. The FDR memorial is a controversy because of all the changes that had to be made. “Yet this public sculpture was deemed inadequate by disability activists, who insisted that Roosevelt’s memorial more blatantly commemorate their own interests.” (Doss 7) this is proof that because someone didn’t like how he was portrayed he should be changed. Roosevelt did not want to be known for his disability and thats why he never showed that he had it, he wanted to be seen by more than just his disability and the memorial now depicts him as a frail man in a wheelchair instead of the powerful man he portrayed himself as. I think that if you are creating a memorial for someone you have to show the world who they are not what they didn’t share. History can not be changed to please someone else and neither can historical people. Jefferson’s memorial is placed with him staring at the white house because he had a mistrust in the presidency, it seems weird that if this is how Jefferson is portrayed and not for what he did to transform this country, FDR should be shown for what he did and not for his disability.

Doss, E. (2006, October). Public art controversy: Cultural expression and civic debate. Retrieved from http://www.americansforthearts.org/pdf/networks/pan/doss_controversy.pdf

 

Maruska, B. (2013). A response to the runquist murals. Retrieved from http://blogs.uoregon.edu/runquistmurals/

 

I watched both the TedTalk and the mashup of the Beatles and Jay-Z video. I think that copyright laws make music like that mashup impossible. I do agree that copyright laws are better for creative processes because it incentivizes people to create something new and profit off of their creation. Like any invention, people want to be recognized for what they have done so copyright and paten laws are in place for a reason. At the same time, as Larry Lessig was saying in his TedTalk video “Laws that choke creativity” the laws that prohibit the use of copy-written material in a non competitive way is bad because it destroys the creative process’ of some young adults in our society. Also as Lessig says about the young children of today, we and them are formed by television, by technology and we use other peoples thought process’ to form our own and in some cases change their’s in a way to discover our own technology. I think that copyright laws should be limited because I think people’s creativity comes from observing current works, and that some people have a talent of mixing music together like the Beatles and Jay-Z music video, music that would never be created without someone breaking the rules.

I define spirituality as the ability to see yourself and how you grow in relation to the world. That is spirituality is being able to see who you really are, not what people see you and judge you for, but rather how you truly see yourself and if you are actually growing or standing still. It is the inner being within you that only you can feel and whether you want to portray who that really is, is up to the person.

I believe that spirituality and religion are different things. Religion is a belief in a higher being that you want to please in order to have a good afterlife, and spirituality is the belief in your true self. I think that religion pushes spirituality because they know that in order to truly be one with god or the higher being you have to have a connection with your true self. Spirituality can allow you to view religion differently if your true self has come out and you identify your true self as someone close to the higher being.

I define creativity as the ability to create something the is new and original. It can be art, music, food, or a new invention. I think that creativity is a process in which you have an idea in your head and the way that you portray that thought is new and original. It definitely comes from within our selves but at the same time you see what other people have done and alter it in a way that makes more sense to you and can be useful for your idea.

To me the source of creativity comes from multiple areas. First is a persons spirituality because it is their true self and in order to be creative you have to trust it in your heart. Second I believe there are two types of people in this world, the art type and the analytical type. The art type have a brain that can see the image of what they want in their head and can translate that into the activity that they are doing. An analytical brain (like me) need to work harder at in and requires a lot of trial and error with some modifications every time. And lastly like I said in the previous paragraph, I think our creativity comes from observing other peoples creativity and expanding on it or modifying a process of it.

To me spirituality is discovering your true self, being accepting of the transformations that you and the world go through. This can be with the help of religion or not whichever makes more sense for the individual. So when I watched the movie I thought it was very interesting how each of them expressed their spirituality. I am going to focus on two of the four artists, John Feodorov and Shahzia Sikander because I find that they come from religious backgrounds but have two different views on it. John Feodorov is of Navajo decent so his work has to deal with the spirituality of the Navajo tribe. But he is not serious when it comes to it, he almost makes fun of it. When he talks about the totem bears he sells and that he makes them not enhance peoples spirituality but almost to mock it because he rigs the game. I think he has found his spirituality in other forms, because when he talks about painting he says that it is a struggle and he hates it but at the same time loves the struggle itself. So I think that his spirituality comes out in that struggle and what he puts on the paper is his true self, not the totem bears that he makes.

Next is Shahzia Sikander, she grew up Hindu in Pakistan, a primarily large muslim country. And her spirituality comes from her religious upbringing, the detail that both her miniature paintings have as well as her large paintings shows that she doesn’t want to mess up and portray the religion badly. She finds peace in the fact that everything has to be perfect, and in that peace she is able to meditate and therefore find her spirituality. Spirituality comes from within so sometimes it is hard to see it with someone but I believe that an artists spirituality comes out when the paint or draw or write because in the struggle or in the detail, the true artist comes out.

Im not a horror film guy, I prefer happy movies because I don’t like to be scared so my interpretations could be a little different that everyone else’s. First is a non-diagetic sound, my example is right when they are getting their voices taken away from them the music was very eire and set the tone of what was happening. Since all the voices were being taken away it was an evil plot being made so the music was diabolical in a sense. My diagetic sound is also around the same scene but a little before hand. To me whenever I hear a clock in a horror film I can always tell something bad is about to happen, it is almost foreshadowing the events that are about to happen. But the clocks inter workings always have a devious sound to them. And lastly is the Mise-en-scene is when the two guys cannot use their voices in the elevator to gain access to the base. This is a very suspenseful scene to me because you dont know entirely what is going on but you are assuming nothing good and when you see the gas coming out me as an audience member gets very nervous and scared for them.

 

Adornment to me is the best way to portray yourself to someone. Like our assignment this week when we were supposed to make insights about people based on their appearance, I feel like in order to portray how I view myself to people I need to dress like it. And that is not to say that I dress in order to impress people, but rather I dress in a way that shows people who I am and how I feel about myself.

 

How I would describe my style would be in three categories; comfort, brand and stylish. I say them in this order because this is the order in which they are important to me. First comfort, I like to be comfortable in what I wear not only the material that I like to wear but what I feel comfortable wearing. Next is brand name, I pretty much only wear 3 brands; Lululemon, J Crew and Nike. I really like these brands and what they put out as well as how comfortable they are. The last category for me is style. I like stylish clothing, but what I think is stylish not what other people think is stylish. So my closet is not as full as my roommates and that is because I am extremely picky when it comes to the clothes that I wear around. I do not have any tattoos or piercings on my body mainly because I don’t want them but also because my parents disapprove of those things and since they are paying for my education at the moment I will listen to them and not cross them. The last thing that makes my adornment is my hair. I like to put gel in my hair because I feel more confident in myself if my hair is done correctly. That is my style based on my clothing and body art.

 

Now onto the choices that I make, which stem from two groups as everyone’s do: my family and my social group. First off with my family, they have preached to me since I was young to make my own decisions and not worry about what they thought of me because they will love me no matter what happens. This is hard for me to do though because I like pleasing people and showing people that I care so I like to make my parents and siblings happy by making choices that will please them, thankfully those choices are always in my best interest so it works out in the end. I come from a family where there is a lot of pressure put on ourselves to succeed, since both my parents are doctors I cant very well take over for my dad without doing a lot of schooling first. So because of this we are forced to try and succeed in our own areas of choice, mine being math and economics. My parents and family view this as a good choice for me because they see how talented I am at math and how truly passionate about it. So overall my family influences me more than anything but not because of the expectation they put on me but because of the expectation I put on myself to be as good or better than them. You can see how my family influences my dress or adornment by me trying to be comfortable in my own skin.

 

I am the baby of the family so my friend group or social group tends to be on the older side. I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with my brother’s friends because I feel like I fit in better. As well as being the baby I am also old for my grade so I got to do everything before my friends did. Because of these two things I have learned that true friends are hard to come by and that once you find them you should appreciate them. This is expressed through my dress by the comfort aspect; if I’m comfortable with you then I will dress like it and let you see me in my “natural habitat”. This is to say I wont always wear what I think is stylish around you or I wont do my hair sometimes. My dress and body adornment are very important to me, not because of what other people think of me but more because of what I think of myself and want to portray to people. If I do not accomplish that then well at least I like what I look like.