Art and Technology

I chose to research the punk rock band, “The Sex Pistols”, who were very influential in the punk rock movement in London in 1975. The group did not have a long career, lasting only two and a half years, however it was one that left a large impact on pop culture. Their famous songs “Anarchy in the U.K., God Save The Queen, and Never mind the Bollocks”, are credited with being extremely significant in the transition to music today. In particularly the album Never Mind the Bollocks has regularly been credited with being one of the most influential records in rock history. The Sex pistols were not the first punk rock group, but they can be credited with the popularity and rise of the movement itself. Many other punk bands of their time such as The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Adverts, etc. recognize the pistols for the style and formation of punk itself. The attitude of the band was very unique for the time expressing “they don’t care what others think and they ...

My performance piece represents a routine activity in my everyday life, demonstrating the "art in the everyday" as discussed in class, which is taking out my dog. Much of my time is spent taking care of, walking, or playing with my dog since he is still young and has loads of energy. This video demonstrates a "simple, worry free dog life" and how just going outside and running around with a ball makes them happy and content, while being compared to humans who require so much more to feel this way in life.  While creating this piece I found adding music to the video was more difficult than I anticipated, trying to determine what beats would go best with or "match" each action occurring.However after playing around with the different song choices I found myself enjoying the process and the overall product that I created. After learning in this class how long of a process it would have been to create this short video in the past without the technological ad...

For my collage piece I printed out different photos of my face, hands, and butterflies. The idea of this piece was to try and make an image that was unusual and strange but still aesthetically pleasing. The top of the piece shows a normal face and as you move down it is supposed to have the affect that the face is almost "disintegrating" into a strange butterfly morphed face. I put the piece on the window which was supposed to create the illusion that it was floating or flying, to add to the realistic butterfly aspect. I captured different photos of the piece to show different perspective, where it is first light outside and you can see the outdoors as the background, and then where it is dark outside and it is more reflective of the inside of the room. I enjoyed making this piece, by just cutting out different pieces and assembling them as I went to create a larger piece. Overall the piece captured what I was aiming for and I am happy with the final product. 

My grid project was the image of a sunflower, I used photoshop to create a pixelated image of the flower. I then transferred the grid onto a piece of larger paper counting out each box individually. I found it difficult while doing this to keep each line perfectly straight with the ruler, which lead to some of the boxes being slightly different sized than the others. For the gray boxes I used pastel crayons. If I were to redo this I would change the technique I used for this part and shade in each of the gray boxes in the same direction so it would give off more of a cohesive look.I used colored pencils for the yellow, brown, and green of the flower. I didn't have many shades of the greens and yellows which retrospectively would have helped to differentiate between each box better. Overall I feel the image was not extremely readable as a sunflower but the concept was achieved.

Siobhain Nolan 1/9/19 FMX211 Opera Essay Assignment The opera Dido and Aeneas was written by Henry Percell in the 1680’s, and depicts the story of Dido; the Queen of Carthage’s love and despair for Aeneas; a Trojan hero. In the story Dido is distressed about her love for Aenneas, and is comforted by Belinda to who suggests the marriage of the two could be a solution to her grief. Dido accepts Aenneas’ marriage proposal, but is sabotaged by the sorcerer who constructs a plan that will lead Aenneas to sail to Italy. Aennaeas accepts the task from what he thinks are the gods, even though it means leaving Dido. When Dido learns of Aenneases plans for leaving her she is heartbroken. Even when he pleads that he will stay she is unable to bare the thought that he was capable of leaving her in the first place and rejects him. Aeneas then leaves Dido, ultimately causing Dido’s death in his absence.   The scenes in this opera were constructed with elaborate sets,...

My stop animation was a video of my dog and was trying to represent the story of "the toy wanting to play". This was supposed to be humorous in the fact that its typically the playful dog running around the house with the toy, but in this case the dog wanted nothing to do with it. Creating the actual stop motion animation was more difficult than I anticipated, and took multiple attempts trying to keep the dog still and not actually start playing with the toy.  However eventually I was able to capture the idea I was aiming for and was pretty surprised by how well it turned out. I found using the tripod while taking the photos was very helpful and made the process a lot easier.

In todays society having a smartphone is nothing out of the ordinary, in fact not having a smart phone would seem strange to most people. We rely on these phones to communicate, give us directions, take photos, answer questions, and much more. It’s hard to imagine a time before smart phones, but in reality, this time was not very long ago. The first smart phone available to consumers was not released until 1994, only 25 years ago. This first smartphone created by IBM was called the Simon personal communicator, and was equipped with a touch screen, email, fax, notes and calendars. At the time not many people could afford the high price of this phone, decreasing its popularity in the mainstream.   Then came the blackberry which had even more features than its predecessor including advanced security, music, full keyboard, and internet access. The blackberry was the leader in smartphones for a period of time, mainly targeting the business professional population. ...