Madama Butterfly Animation

This stop motion animation created a surreal experience using the plastic dolls with what appear to be clay faces and dreary painted backgrounds.   It starts out seeming like a fairly normal art piece, sexuality is displayed in a way to show the connection of the two characters.  The way it would have been done  the original opera may have been less graphic but it still appears to follow the same idea.  When the male leaves the female character is shown watching and waiting alone.

It is here that the animation really becomes surreal and shows that it is going for a much different way of showing the story's development.  The part when she flies her child like a kite with her umbilical cord made me have to watch again just to be sure that is what I actually saw.

After her child was taken away she leaves the set of the painted backgrounds into what looks like either someone's house or an art studio.  She proceeds to rip her face and body open to expose a metallic skeleton in way that I can only describe as some sort of dream like trance.  Then she completely disassembles herself and the pieces vanish across the table.

Maybe more knowledge of the original opera is needed to truly understand what occurred during this animation  but I think I can make an assumption.  It seems as if the loss of her child and her lover caused her to abandon all of her humanity represented by her complete deconstruction into a pile of materials.  Perhaps the end scene when she is shown again with the butterfly in her hair represents rebirth and change after her death.

The Birth and Life of Opera

In this video I learned much more about opera and how it is still going strong in this day and age.  I must admit that I previously had little knowledge of opera aside from a basic definition of what it is.  I had never seen an opera in person and nor had I heard of any of my friends or family having seen any actual opera in a theater.  Even during my stay in London while there were many musicals and plays being shown, I did not hear of any operas.  While I knew it was still being preformed it felt as if it was only being shown in small opera house reserved only for the wealthy and famous.

But this video proved me quite wrong.  In fact the theaters opera is preformed in are incredibly large with 4500 people in the audience all watching the same opera.  The popularity of what I had considered to be a lost art is truly astounding.  To be able to tell a story in such an impressive method is something that I now find myself fairly interested in.  Maybe I should try to track down a real opera house sometime.

Second Class

In class we summarized some of the many forms that art has taken throughout the years, although skipping over oriental art and digital arts.  The style that most appeals to me is the geometrical style of cubist paintings and sculptures.  I always found it a bit odd that I enjoy an art style so heavily influenced by simple shapes over the much more detailed baroque works and classical paintings.  As someone who has been drawing since I was a child I have mostly adapted a cartoon based style relying heavily on smooth lines, not geometrical figures.  Yet the pieces made by Picasso interest me very much.

To answer the question posed in class about what defines art I say art is everything.  From massive paintings that cover the ceiling of massive churches to a stick figure drawn on a subway wall.  Anything that people creates for the sole purpose of being seen should be considered art.  Buildings are art, streets are art, and food is art.  If someone can see it, whether they enjoy it or not, it is art.  Even if the only person who sees it is the very person who made it.

First Class

The first day of class showed me that I can expect a great deal of interesting things in the future.  I really enjoyed how it is very discussion based and how the class actively participates in it rather than simply watching.

The broken bust and clown head may have been my favorite pieces shown due to just how much perspective changes how they look.  As someone who once enjoyed puzzles quite a bit seeing artwork that needed to be rearranged by moving around it and looking at it in the right way really caught my attention.  But the paper stop motion was really captivating as well and is something I could really show to other people.  The amount of time and precision needed for that video is really mind blowing.  I have done some work with 2D and 3D animation and the time that it takes to arrange the props and frames in the proper way can be incredibly time consuming for only a small character movement and that is with the help of a computer.  Doing this entire thing with handmade cut-outs is a task I don't think I could do.

I am really excited to see what else we will be viewing and working on in the future of this course.  I expect to see many things I have never even thought of before.