Art Event #2

Today I went to Leah Moreno's SMP (St. Mary's Project) Presentation, entitled "The Magic Flute Project". Leah Moreno did her SMP on Mozart's The Magic Flute and added various illustrations to the story. She also changed Mozart's version in several ways. She also created a website so "fans" can track her progress and see how the story is coming along. Overall, I was really interested in Leah Moreno's presentation and she did a great job of showing her work to the audience.

One specific change that Moreno made to the story is that she made the original main character, named Tamino, into a girl named Tamina. She explained her decision in that she did not like that in the original story Prince Tamino seemed above everyone else just because he was a man. It was really cool to see the changes in the story and understand why she made them. I believe that taking a very old story and changing it is really an interesting idea. I have learned that this process is how stories were told before we wrote them down, people would change and there would be many different versions of the same story.

Leah Moreno also explained her process of creating the illustrations. She explained how she would start out with rough sketches, just to show the lights and darks of the scene. Then she would move on to creating a sketch on the computer and finally she would use this digitalized image to paint with watercolors. I found it really interesting how she used a computer when her final product used watercolors. Also, after this past unit in digital art (Web Design) I couldn't help but to judge her webpage at least a little. I can tell that there is not much work up yet (just "The Beginning") but I like how there are tabs to show "The Project" and "The Process". Overall, the website design is really cool, but more information should be added (which is shown by the "under construction" notes on the pages). I really like Leah Moreno's SMP presentation!

Website Links

"We Color" Home Page

Get Lost Home Page

Natalia González Requena: Artist Lecture

I went to Natalia González Requena’s lecture about her work and it was really interesting. Natalia González Requena is from Bolivia and lives in Bolivia and Pittsburgh (and is also visiting St. Mary’s College of Maryland (wohoo)). She has a Master of Fine Arts, specifically in Studio Art and a Certificate in the Teaching of Art (from the Maryland Institute College of Art) and a licentiate in Fine Arts (from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile). She currently is a drawing instructor at “La Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra (UPSA) and has taught painting classes. She has been in many different exhibitions in many different places around the world.

Natalia González Requena spoke about her art and many different topics involving her artwork. She started out by talking about how time and space are both a continuum. She also talked about how she liked to emphasize moment in her artwork. This can be seen in her video where the wall moves to reveal two cameras looking at each other and also in her silent video of her putting together different cables. She definitely concentrated on placement in all of her artwork. Overall, in her artwork I see a lot of thought and taking everyday activities and everyday images and making them art.  

One of my favorite parts about her work is that she uses emptiness (or white space) as a big component of her work. Another part I liked about her work was how she spoke about “chance interruptions” and how something can be “imperfected”, but that makes it more artistic. I really like the videos and how they are silent which makes the audience focus in on the video and really think and enjoy the artwork. In her “Photo Essay of Light Recordings Installation” I really liked the video because it showed a slow progression of events that went on. Overall, I really like Natalia González Requena’s work. Due to the fact we are doing website design, I must point out that I really like her website design too. 

Collis Ta'eed- Web Designer

Overall, it was pretty hard to find biological information (such as birthday, family information and all that stuff) about Collis Ta’eed. I still wanted to blog about him because after looking at his sites I was intrigued. I found him listed as #1 on the “30 Most Influential People in Web Design” and wanted to learn more. Collis is known to be an entrepreneur, blogger and web designer. He lives in Hong Kong and travels all around the world. I could tell that he was very open to fans because of his mentioning of contacting him and he uses Twitter a lot. He created, and is now the CEO of Envato, a site that helps people learn online through courses, eBooks, videos and blogs. Envato has many different marketplaces, which are different memberships that you can buy to learn new things. For example, Tuts Premium helps people to learn web design, web apps, video design and many other things.

I really like the Envato site. It has a nice light green background with white bubbles, that is calming and not overwhelming. The top right corner then has numbers, where you can put your cursor on top of to find out what they mean (Marketplace Membership=2,594,764 and Combined Twitter and RSS Count for All Envato Web Properties=750,760). This shows that many people are using Envato, which leads us to believe it has reliable information. The mission is underneath these items and it is easy to read. I also like the changes from black to gray font because makes the headings stand out from the text. Then there are all of the different membership options with the name, a link to that page, a description and a screenshot of the next page. The screenshot helps for customers to be able to decide what they are looking for and the descriptions are very easy to understand. As you scroll, down the background stays the same and I find that pretty cool. Next come an about paragraph which is helpful and it is good that it is underneath the membership options because it is important, but not as important as the other information. Then the website goes on to list their team, where they featured and how to contact them or get support. All of the “subwebsites” are also very simple and easy to understand with great descriptions, ratings, titles and screenshots.

Overall, I think the size and layout of the website is very nice. The design is simple and does not require me to go to many different pages. Also there is an option to just skip down the page to go to different pieces, such as “Meet Our Websites”, “About Envato” and “Contact Us”. I am really interested in all of this web design stuff.

Website Flow Diagram!

This is my website flow diagram! The main home page has four different links in which you can go to one of these pages: products, contact us, about us or locations. The pages then separate, but there will always be a link to go back to the home page.

Public Space in a Private Time

I found Vito Acconci's "Public Space in a Private Time" very interesting. I really liked the different topics that he introduced, such as time, space, God, piazzas and he even brings in some geometry. I also really like the voice that he uses. The sentence, "Private space becomes public when the public wants it; public space becomes private when the public that has it won't give it up," shows a definition of how areas become private versus public spaces. I had never thought this way. It shows that we create public spaces when we want it, but then change them to private when we get too attached.

My favorite paragraph was definitely the first one. I really liked the ideas that were introduced. I have definitely noticed how we are really dependent on ourselves when it comes to knowing what time it is. If you do not have some way of knowing what time it is there is a very low chance that you will find out unless you ask another person (hoping they have some way of telling). I would like to add to Vito Acconci's opinion about "time being on your sleeve" that today it is more like time is in your pocket-on your cell phone. I see more people checking the time on their phone than on a watch. In fact, I would say the number of people who wear watches has definitely decreased. As a child, I wore a watch to tell the time, now I have my handy-iPhone! (Our dependence on fancy technology is terrible.) Another update that I would like to add to this "article" is when Vito Acconci said, "Time came cheap now". I have seen some super expensive watches out there. Public time is definitely dead.