Tag: Art & Popular Culture

Interdependent Parts of the Whole: Edward Weston’s 1925 Studio Nudes Art History

Presenter: Laura Barton, Art History

Panel: Art & Popular Culture

Mentor: Kate Mondloch, Art History

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Location: Alsea Room

Photographer Edward Weston has long been hailed as one of the heroes of modern photography and has been praised for his stunning approach to landscapes, nudes, and still-lifes. This paper examines his treatment of the nude female form and examines the relationship that his photographs establish between the human body and the natural world. Through a series of in-depth visual and formal analyses of his early nudes and still-lifes, this paper shows that Weston un-animated the human body, while animating the vegetables, shells, and landscapes that he photographed. Thus, he created not a vertical hierarchy where humans are placed above the natural world, but instead created a horizontal plane where all natural forms are equalized. This approach differs from most of the pre-existing scholarship on Weston, which has long interpreted his work using either the biographical method or feminist theory, both of which serve primarily to either maintain or reject Weston’s heroic status; this paper attempts instead to explain how the photographs themselves serve to create meaning.

American Sign Language As a Choreographic Inspiration and Directive for Dance

Presenter: Alyssa Gentry, Dance

Panel: Art & Popular Culture

Mentor: Steven Chatfield, Dance

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Location: Alsea Room

American Sign Language for ‘journey’ has the dominant hand with the index and middle fingers slightly bent, moving forward from the signer in an ‘s’ shaped pathway. I have created a dance work exploring this concept of ‘journey’ that finds inspiration in the singular source of American Sign Language. ASL and Dance are intricately connected through their use of abstract movement as a means of communication and the strong influence of emotions on movement quality. This piece has been derived from ASL for the formations of the dancers, their pathways in space, their individual and group movement, and their emotional output.

To interpret and abstract sign movements to the full body and then to a larger group of dancers was challenging. Using improvisation, I explored the movement of signs like ‘journey,’ a wandering side to side pattern, that could be interpreted in an ‘s’ shaped pathway, a formation of dancers, or a movement contained within the body, like the ribs swaying from side to side. After finding movement, I built a piece where each dancer has a different pathway, coming together at certain moments and then parting, like the comings and goings in life. ASL mimics life, just as art mimics life, and this piece was given focus, opportunity, and a realism through its incorporation, which allows viewers to connect with the piece. Like the sum that is greater than its parts, this piece is more meaningful and cohesive through the incorporation of ASL.

Recent Developments in Canto-pop with YouTube – A Case Study of G.E.M. Tang

Presenter: Hei Ting Wong, Mathematics

Panel: Art & Popular Culture

Mentor: Mark Levy, Music

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Location: Alsea Room

Cantonese is a dialect of the Southeast region of China. Cantonese popular music (Canto-pop) is music with Cantonese lyrics, but most Canto-pop songs are produced in Hong Kong. Although Hong Kong is only a dot on the world map, Canto-pop can be found all over the world because of the migrated population and students who study overseas. With the development of the Internet, new media serves as an important channel in spreading recent as well as older Canto-pop songs all over the world. / G.E.M. Tang is the most successful new singer of Canto-pop in recent years. There are several reasons for her success, including promotion strategies which are different from those used by singers in previous generations. Her YouTube channel is her primary promotion medium. The content of her videos and the interactivity between her and her subscribers are attractive especially to the young generation – the main group of users of the Internet and the predominant audience for popular music. This project aims to investigate recent developments in Canto-pop. Canto-pop has been declining since the millennium due to the semi- withdrawal of the “four heavenly kings,” the four greatest male singers of the 1990’s, and problems of pirating. It is believed that the success of G.E.M. is based on a clearer understanding of the preferences of the current Canto-pop audience. This shows the industry a better way in promotion and music production, which hopefully to draw audience’s attention back to Canto-pop music.

All the Things It Was: Milton Babbitt and American Popular Culture

Presenter: Marissa Ochsner, Music

Panel: Art & Popular Culture

Mentor: Loren Kajikawa, Music

Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm

Location: Alsea Room

The recent death of the composer Milton Babbitt has inspired a number of articles recounting his life and works. These accounts typically present Babbitt as the pinnacle of academic modernism, praising his accomplishments in the realm of theory and “serious” music composition and emphasizing that his music is difficult and complex. Many of these accounts also include, usually as a matter of trivia, the paradoxical fact that Babbitt was an avid jazz fan who grew up listening to and performing popular music. In this paper, I use the writings of Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, Joseph Horowitz, Dwight Macdonald, and other contemporary intellectuals to argue that Babbitt’s love of pop tunes is not incongruous with his interest in “serious” music. Babbitt’s advocacy of “serious” music composition is related to several cultural innovations of the early twentieth century, including the rise of the phonograph and radio, which accelerated the shift from song-based music composition in the style of Tin Pan Alley to artist-based music marketing of “stars” like Arturo Toscanini, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. Babbitt’s love of pop tunes from the 20s and 30s and advocacy for “serious” music composition in the 1950s and beyond wasn’t just a funny quirk — it was a reflection of what Babbitt wanted for American music culture: a more active and engaged public with an appreciation for the act of music composition.