Tuesday, April 15, 2014

IMAGE CONNEX

Assignment

Take one of the images you wrote about on Thursday (or if you were not there--create a number of disconnected images to choose from... they can be descriptions of landscapes or dream images or of everyday objects)...

Transform that image into another image... how you do this is the journey of the assignment.... a character can move from one to the other, time can change one landscape into another, an event can transform one to another, a character in one setting can remember another or desire to be elsewhere... there is no limit to HOW you make the transformation happen--don't be limited by realism.

Here is some inspiration: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/11/headsgons-graphite-portraits-stefan-zsaitsits/

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

OUTSIDE IN- DUE APRIL 17th in CLASS

Write a critical assessment of:

1.) Your final project (as if it has been performed/presented already)

2.) Another piece of art you have made (your discretion)

3.) An imaginary piece of art you have yet to make/may never make (still--you are its creator)

4.) Your entire body of work from birth until death (in the form of an imagined obituary)

Your critical assessment may take the form of:

A.) A series of blurbs--try at least 6-- (examples found on the back of any book jacket)

B.) Reviews -- below are several sites in multiple genres to nose around in

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews

http://www.rogerebert.com

http://thinkingdance.net

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/george-bush-art-review_n_5105501.html

c.) As an informal (but professional) chat room conversation-- for those of you feeling of two-or-more-minds-- example here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_chat_room/2013/06/mad_men_season_6_finale_has_don_draper_finally_had_his_breakthrough.html

d.) THIS GOES WITH OPTION FOUR ABOVE-- an obituary-- examples:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/obituaries/

e.) an academic critique (think interpretation, high jargon, footnotes) or any other form you desire that keeps in the spirit of the assignment-- to look at your work as if from the outside-- speaking of yourself in the third person-- trying to engage that distance

These can be as serious, as humorous, as long, as aspirational, as detailed, as mockumentary as you's like. Due NEXT THURSDAY-- and I would like to collect these, thank you!

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

WORD AS MATERIAL

Assignment FOR THURSDAY APRIL 3rd:

1. Title your piece (poem, essay, meditation, story, musing) with a single word.
2. Go to www.oed.com on a St. Lawrence associated computer (let me know if you can't get on)
3. Research your word--its several meanings over times, the sample sentences from history, similar words that developed from the same root
4. Infect your piece with this new knowledge--make the word heavy with other ideas (than its singular "meaning"). Show how the word connects with tangentially related ideas/images/words.

TENTATIVE PIZZA AND SODA DATE--TUESDAY APRIL 29th 630-830 then head over to JAVA

Oh, and watch this for happiness: MAN'S 30-YEAR-OLD THEORY OF BIG BANG PROVED, HIS REACTION CAUGHT ON VIDEO

Happy April!

First lines of Eliot's The Waste Land and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales below:

The Waste Land (excerpt)

BY T. S. ELIOT

FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

MORE HERE

GENERAL PROLOGUE (excerpt)

from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

1   Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
When April with its sweet-smelling showers
2   The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
     Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
3   And bathed every veyne in swich licour
And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
4   Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
    By which power the flower is created;
5   Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
    When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
6   Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
    In every wood and field has breathed life into
7   The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
    The tender new leaves, and the young sun
8   Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
    Has run half its course in Aries,
9   And smale foweles maken melodye,
    And small fowls make melody,
10   That slepen al the nyght with open ye
    Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
11   (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
    (So Nature incites them in their hearts),
12   Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
    Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
13   And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
    And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,
14   To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
    To distant shrines, known in various lands;
15   And specially from every shires ende
    And specially from every shire's end
16   Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
    Of England to Canterbury they travel,
17   The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
    To seek the holy blessed martyr,
18   That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
    Who helped them when they were sick.

MORE HERE