Titles

Chapter title: Stuart Court Shuffle
Book title: The Ticking Hands of Time

video for class

This is my project based on Salvadore Dali's melting clocks. The first part is the clocks melting and the second part is when the ants drag the pocket watch off camera and back.

Mark Morris

Mark Morris is an American modern dancer, choreographer, and director. He is known for his craftmanship, ingenuity, humor, eclectic musical accompaniments, musicality, power of his dancing, and his amazing delicacy of movement. He out weighs most other dancers yet his technical and expressive abilities out do most other dancers. Mark Morris is popular among dance aficionados as well as main stream audiences. He works a lot on choreographing and directing for opera. He has worked on productions for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera House. Some of his well known works are "Gloria," "Championship Wrestling," "L'Allegro," "Penseroso ed Moderato," "Dido and Aeneas," "The Hard Nut," a campy version of "The Nut Cracker" set in the 1960's," The Office," "Greek to Me," ballet of "The Garden," and "Grand Duo."

Out of all the dancers I think I like him the best. His costumes aren't as bad and some of them are actually different and neat. I also like his style of dance a little bit more, it tends to be more graceful and fluent and not as prancy as the other dancers. His sets are also very dramatic and I feel they add a lot to the dance and create the mood better. Also besides that they are more ceative and fun to look at.

Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp was a leading American dancer and choreographer. She has won many awards for her dances including the Tony Award, Emmy Award, Astaire Award, Drama League Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award. She has also choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than 125 dances, five Hollywood movies, and choreographed and directed two Broadway Shows. One of them being "When We Were Very Young" which was her first Broadway Show. Her dances often use classical, jazz, and contemporary pop music. Twyla Tharp performed in "Singing in the Rain" which played at the Gershwin for 367 performances and held an extensive national tour. She along with Mikhail Baryshnikov created a program called "Cutting Up" which became one of contemporary dances most successful tours appearing in twenty eight cities over a two month period.

I am not really a big fan of her or her dances. I am sure they are pretty good though in the ballet world but I really don't think it really distinguishes itself from the rest of it. The dance moves are still based off of prancing about on the stage and the costumes seem really the norm for ballet. The sets usually don't seem to add anything to the dance either.

Martha Grahm

Martha Grahm is an American dancer and choreographer. She is one of the foremost pinoneers of modern dance doing it for over seventy years. She used dance to express passion, rage, and ecstasy. Martha Grahm's works are pretty infuential and phenomenal allowing her to be the first to perform dance in the White House, first to travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, allowed her to recieve a key to Paris, and the Imperial Order of the Precious Crown of Japan.Her breakthrough performance was "Heretic" where she appeared as the only dancer wearing white and faced a wall of opposing dancers dressed in black with a simple, stark piano song by Breton. Then in "Chronicle" Martha Grahm brought a new era in contemporary dancing by bringing in serious issues to the public, namely problems about the Great Depression, the Wall Street Crash, and the Spanish Civil War. This dance was very dramatic and focused on depression and isolation heavily expressed in the dark nature of the set and costumes.

I'm really not a big fan of dance. I respect that they can move like that though, I know I sure can't. The dances seemed very dramatic and intense though. Also the costumes and sets also seem to express that, which I find to be interesting and something that I like. A lot of dancing and ballet are too colorful and happy, springy for my liking. They seem to just be prancing about the stage. Her dancing though still seems to be too typical ballet to me though. I just really don't find it interesting to watch people prance about like that.

Alex Bag

Alex bag is a video artist. Her work often ties into popular art culture. She likes to satire a lot of other artist's work and make other artist laugh. In her C-prints "Crack Up" she went from parking garages to a Blockbuster store, from a psychiatrist's couch to McDonalds with her posed and costumed in each wearing big eye bulging orbs. Making points out of our culture today. In another one of her pieces she featured Art Club 2000 types and posed as a different drugged out zodiac in each one. Then each one of those signs was marked with an anarchy "A" in Bag's red lipstick.

From what I have seen of her work it seems alright. I don't think they are that interesting but they aren't that bad either. I definetly like the satire idea though. I think it is all the better that it is mostly about her peers as well.

Flash Animation

This is my flash animation. I couldn't get the player to show my entire animation so some of the parts get cut out. What happens though is that strange rocks appear in the sky and then rain falls from them allowing these plants to grow followed by which a deerman appears and cuts some of them down. He then wonders the landscape until it rains again causing him to cut down a tree and hide beneath it to shelter him from the rain.

Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci think of himself mainly as an architect, but he is an istalatio artist and also did some video stuff. Most of his video work used himself as the the key point. His work varys greatly, but some of his stuff can get a little strange like his blow up doll series. His one piece called "Seed bed" happens to be very strange. He had a ramp installed at the gallery and he hid underneath it and vocalize it so the people viewing the gallery could here him maturbate. Another one of his works "Dirt Wall" which is a wall built twenty four feet high out of glass and steel. Inside he filled it with volcanic rock, different sands, red dolomite, and topsoil.

Some of his work is interesting to me. I like some of his architectural pieces like the "Dirt Wall" I find it very interesting and think it looks very neat. It's just like a piece of the earth has been sliced out and lifted up so we can see it. His "City of Words" is also interesting a looks pretty neat and I love how your eye just flow through it. A lot of his work I find to be a little too strange for my likings though. I'm not a big fan at all of "Seed Bed" that is kind of disgusting and wrong to me. I'm not a big fan when artists start to do sexual provacitive pieces, I don't feel its really neccesary and I don't really want to see it but I guess some people do.

Paul Pfeiffer

Paul Pfeiffer is a video artist. He often uses lots of found footage and edits them to his liking. His work is very time consuming and meticulous. His work often take him a very long time to complete. In his work "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" he edited footage of a basketball game and cut out all the basketball players except for one. Then in " The Long Count" he edited out George Foreman and Muhammad Ali in thier fight. Another example of his work is "Live From Neverland" where he cut out Michael Jackson's voice in his press conferance about malesting children, with eighty children reciting his words.

I think the "Live From Neverland" idea was pretty funny by him. I really don't understand his other two popular pieces though. I don't think that taking out the other nine basketball players make it that interesting. I guess it may look a little strange in some shots but from the few I looked at it it actually looked pretty normal. In fact at first I just thought it was a normal picture of a basketball game. Then "The Long Count" really doesnt make sense to me. The whole purpose of that clip is to see the two fighters fighting and then he removes them. I don't think there would be too much left to see, I guess maybe the crowds reactions and I guess maybe the person telling you about the fight.

Transform!!!

This is Megatron transforming into a dragon in a card board city.

Losing Streak

A strange critter stuck in Einstein's theory of time continually repeating itself.