The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Today Winnie and I took a trip downtown to check out some art. It sounded simple enough, just take the CTA to the museum. Of course, it ended up being much more difficult.

I picked up Winnie and we started driving. The only problem was that neither of us could remember how to get to Midway. We have both been there many many times, but we never really pay attention. After spotting a plane in the sky, we drive to wear we think it took off from. It didn't take long and we had found the airport. We had to circle around it until we found the train station, plus we had to get lunch and figure out where to get 1-Day passes (they no longer sell them in the train station). Turns out the nearest Currency Exchanged (yes, exchanged) ran out.

Finally we got on the train and I thought all was well. Well, we forgot to pay for parking. When we arrived at Roosevelt to transfer we walked up to the nearest person with a suitcase. She was heading to Midway and offered to take our money and pay for the parking. She actually did, the car wasn't towed or ticketed! I love the kindness of strangers!

The MCA was fantastic as always. The main exhibit was work by Olafur Eliasson. Fantastic! One highlight was a hallway filled with orange lights. Since they are monochromatic, it turned everything black and white. I've never seen an effect like that, the world turned into black and white. Another highlight featured a fan and a rope. The fan was hanging from a rope and swinging in all sorts of directions.

The next stop on our art adventure was the Michigan Ave. Art Festival. What a disappointment! It was closer to an arts and crafts festival. The only redeeming feature was the free ice cream.

After meeting up with Lindsey, we headed over to our last stop: the Chicago Cultural Center. Main exhibit: Art From China. It's the second time I've seen the exhibit. There was a good mix of work, from sculpture to photography. The highlight was a video located at the entrance. It showed the coordinated exercises and chants employees perform before work. Hilarious! We watched it twice.

Experiencing Art

The island of Naoshima in Kagawa, Japan offers many surprises. Reached only by ferry, Naoshima's charm comes from its partial isolation and intimacy. The streets are lined with a mix of traditional and modern Japanese homes, emphasis on the traditional. As we walked through the small town, we received tickets to what they said would be 6 recreated Edo period homes. The first one we entered honestly bored me, but only because I didn't understand what I was looking at..

The next home had a wonderful Japanese garden in front. After admiring the nicely trimmed landscaping, we removed our shoes and entered a dark room. Once my eyes adjusted I realized the center of the room was missing the bamboo floor and instead had a giant black pool. In the pool were many one-digit digital displays producing a seemingly random progression on numbers and letters. I was mesmerized. It didn't take long to realize these recreated Edo homes we fused with contemporary art! It was no wonder the first home was so confusing!

My favorite of the buildings held an installation by James Turrell. No more than eight people could enter the large building at any one time. Each person is led into the building by assistants because inside it is pitch black (it's very scary not being able to see your hands in front of you). They sit you down on a bench after winding through the dark hallways. I sat staring into the darkness wondering what would come next. My eyes played tricks on me. Blobs of blacks floated around as my eyes attempted to cope with the darkness. After three minutes a gray rectangle suddenly appeared in the distance. Then we stood up very quietly and began to walk through the darkness to the faint light in the distance. The assistants stopped us a few feet from the box and proceed to tell us what we just experienced. The gray box had actually been on since we entered the room, but it was so faint it took multiple minutes for our eyes to adjust to seeing it. To top it off it really wasn't a gray rectangle it was a window into another giant room, lit too look like an even toned shade of gray.

From the experience I realized you don't always see what is right in front of you and when you do sometimes you can't understand the depth. I've never experienced art in such an all encompassing and profound way. By looking at light on a wall, I found a new appreciation for the world and how I see it.

(Source)

Embarrassing Photos

Embarrassing photos can manifest themselves in many forms. You could be captured in an awkward position, be seen with your eyes closed or tongue out, making a funny face, etc. The possibilities are endless. Recently, I have discovered a new way to take embarrassing photos.

During my senior year of high school I took a black and white photography class. I used my parents old Minolta SLR. Once the class was over, I decided to primarily use my digital SLR because of greater control in development. Normally I would say that black and white film in a dark room gives you the most control, but since I was out of the class I had a significant lack of dark room.

The old Minolta was left in a sparsely used compartment of my camera bag through the summer and into my first semester of college. Then, on one of my photo expeditions, I decided to shoot old school. I was in luck, the camera informed me of 17 remaining shots on this roll of film. I really wanted to make this roll count. Every picture I was going to take on this roll was really going to mean something to me.

Taking my time, I spent the rest of the year filling the roll with quality photographs. There was portraits, nature shots, landscapes, macro, a whole slew. Just this weekend I was coming to the end of the roll. Having not finished a roll since about a year ago, I couldn't remember if it would stop automatically at the end or if it would continue to double and triple expose the last photo. I took a few shots past the 24 limit and it kept going. I began to get worried about ruining my last photos so I rewound it and opened the case.

What I found behind the light-proof door was a surprise, to say the least. I found emptiness. Well, not emptiness, but a roll of embarrassing photos. I had spent half a year meticulously setting up and taking 17 photographs but to no avail. I can only hope that none of my portrait subjects ask for the results of my shots or that none of my friends will ask me what has become of my beloved roll. This is the ultimate form of embarrassment for me when it comes to photography. My friends know me as a pretty knowledgeable photographer and I like to keep my photography up to very high standards.

I had a similar incident happen to me in the field of baking. As I am with photography, I like to be precise and careful with my baking. I have make four layer cakes, scrumptious cookies, and other delicious treats for which I am proud of. But, upon trying a very difficult devil's food cake recipe I failed. This recipe, comes from a cookbook of mine which has some of the most difficult creations. Though they all take quite a bit of time, the outcome is always worth it. Since the book uses a nonstandard measurement systems I always have to check my measurements three of four times. I didn't check enough for the baking soda. They cakes were bitter. BITTER! I was so embarrassed, I swore my family to secrecy. My reputation was on the line. Well, after having gone through the same ordeal with photography, I have found there is something to learn from these situations and I should never forget about them. Though cliché, I have learned first hand to always be careful and never take things for granted.

Luckily, I will never have to worry about anyone seeing my embarrassing photos, but unfortunately, that is what makes embarrassing.

Music: An Appreciation

I like having hobbies. They keep me busy. But, the one hobby that is most important to me is music. Music encompasses so many parts of life, I truly feel it makes one a better person. I feel this way about all types of music but this is meant most towards music as an art and not music as entertainment. In other words, I'm talking about "classical" music.

Listening to music can be an emotional experience. Pieces of music can take you on far reaching journeys and tell detailed stories. Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathursta is a prime example of story telling. His tone poems are some of the best, telling the most colorful and expressive stories. Also Sprach Zarathursta is the story of the struggle between man and nature. The beginning of Einleitung starts with a perfect fifth (C-G-C) and then there is a booming C major chord quickly followed by a C minor chord. These two chords represent the morality and immorality in man good and bad. It shows the duality of man, both chords being C but both chords being completely different.

Throughout the piece their is a struggle between C and B and in the end neither one claims dominance. C and B as notes are really just a half step away from each other but as keys they are about as distant as you can get. They are almost on completely opposite ends of the circle of fifths. B has five sharps compared to zero sharps or flats in the key of C.

Also Sprach Zarathursta continues depicting the evolution of man. Each movement shows a different aspect of the development. It covers many specific parts of man's development following the ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche's book by the same name of the tone poem. I find the Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science) movement very interesting because of Strauss' use of a tone sequence fugue. It incorporates all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. The music is like an analysis and organization of nature in other words it is science! The twelve notes represent every tone in music (disregarding microtonality), in other words they represent nature.

Going deeper, you can look at Nietzsche's original text and find its relation to the music. Then you could go even deeper and look at the book's relationship with Zoroaster its original philosophy. Never will all the facets of this piece be understood. You can say this about any piece of music. This is what makes music so wonderful. Something new can always be found in music no matter how old or analyzed it is.

Playing music gives you an even deeper understanding of what is written while also challenging you physically and mentally. I can't play the piano very well. I took lessons for a few months when I was five. It didn't go well. But, I still enjoy finding a piece of music I like and working through it. Recently, I have been playing Debussy's Claire de lune (meaning moonlight). Though completely over played, it still has a lot of meaning for me. Practicing and playing through this piece makes me feel closer to the music and closer to Debussy. I like to imagine where he was when he was writing this and what he was thinking.

Music is challenging. It requires quite a bit of intellect with dedication but music is also very rewarding. A piece of music can stir up emotions and bring back memories. Unlike other forms of art it never takes a solid form. It is a movement through time, always changing. Just like music never sounds the same you also will never hear it the same way. If you listen to a song at different points in your life it will have different meanings to you and you will analyze it in different ways. Music is part of human nature and should never be underestimated.

Paint Reliever

I have been having a bad day today. Nothing very upsetting has happened so my affection remains a mystery. I slept through my Linear class, that was disappointing but not a day altering disappointment. I wore shoes without good support and my feet ended up aching, but again, not that big of a deal. I think it is better, in this situation, to focus on the cure rather than the cause.

Painting usually does the trick for my bad moods. I got out one of my larger canvasses, this large mood swing requires some massive artistic space. Next, I searched my leftover photos from my gallery for a decently easy subject. I found it, Tippecanoe State Park in fall (the picture in this post).

Before I take out the rest of my supplies I consult the book; my painting and drawing instructional manual. Painting just what feels natural can be nice but sometimes it is best to learn from others knowledge. The technique I chose to try was imprimatura. It involves tinting the canvass before you start your actual painting. I painted a blue background for the road, amber for the leafy boarders to the road, and green for the rest. I don't know if it actually made a difference in the outcome, but it was interesting to try it.

After about three and a half hours I called it quits. Surprisingly the painting is practically finished. Usually I obsess over a small portion and take about 5 months to finish it. It was hard to match some of the colors, especially the road. It is very blue in the photograph and if I were to recreate that blue in the painting I think it would look strange. The only part I can't decide is if I should paint the speed limit sign or not. Opinions?

When I finish a painting session I hate to waste the leftover paint. So, to get around this, I cover a sketchbook page in random doodles and experiments. Not having to worry about ruining a canvass makes it so much more enjoyable. Writing this account has also made me much more relaxed. When I finish the painting I will upload a photograph of it.