Heffel

When I went to Heffel they were having a two day preview of an auction that they were going to have later in the month. They had art from Alexander Colville, Sybil Andrews, the Group of Seven and much more. I went to this art gallery with my Dad and he also told me about it. 

The most interesting part of my visit of this gallery was my family's connection with some of the paintings that my Dad and I saw. When we saw the Sybil Andrews prints that was very exciting, because for the past decade my parents have become very interested in her work and started to collect some of her pieces. My dad didn't buy anything there but it was really cool to see some of them there. It was unexpected.

When my dad saw Alexander Colville's "Moon on Verandah," he remembered meeting Alexander when he was in University. That was definitely something to remember.

There was so much more to the gallery then what I described, it is a small building but it has many levels making it feel bigger. There was a lot of art done by so many different artists that it was too difficult to remember all of them. But because there was so much art, you left the gallery remembering the pieces you had the best connection with. You didn't remember which one was the most expensive or which one was the biggest painting, it was the one that connected you to it on a personal level.

Heffel is situated on Granville and 7th Avenue.

Generous Act Video

Here is the link to my Generous Act Video:
http://vimeo.com/17904652

Douglas Reynolds Gallery

This is a gallery that displays Native West Coast Art. When walking through the door, there is an amazing smell of cedar. Most of the art is carved out of red or yellow cedar, which explains the smell. There are many panels, a couple of small totem poles and paddles (for display purposes only). They also sell jewelry that have West Coast totem pole figures on them.

Marilyn S. Mylrea Art Gallery

This art gallery is situated on Granville and 7th Avenue (I believe...).

A lot of colour is used in these paintings and most of the paintings are of landscapes, actually spiritual landscapes.  Most of the landscapes are beaches or land and water. At the front of the gallery there are a couple of paintings of flowers in vases. Those are done by Marilyn S. Mylrea. The rest of the art is stored at the back which visitors can look at if they wish to do so.

My favourite paintings were of the flowers in the vases. I actually spent most of my time in the gallery looking at these two paintings. I liked how light was reflected and highlighted on the vase and that the flowers were not only coming out of the vase vertically but also horizontally. Painting the flowers this way filled up the canvas better.

I don't quite understand spiritual paintings and I am not really a fan of them but I did love the use of colour on most of them.

Realtime Art Manifesto

The description of the manifesto is kind of long so I took the key ideas thinking people would generally understand it. 

REALTIME ART MANIFESTO

Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn

Directors,  Tale of Tales,  ram@tale-of-tales.com

Gaming realities: the challenge of digital culture

mediaterra festival of Art and Technology

Athens, 2006

Abstract

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are new media artists who have embraced realtime 3D game technology as their artistic medium of choice. Realtime 3D is the most remarkable new creative technology since oil on canvas. It is much too important to be wasted on computer games alone. This manifesto is a call-to-arms for creative people (including, but not limited to, video game designers and fine artists) to embrace this new medium and start realizing its enormous potential. As well as a set of guidelines that express our own ideas and ideals about using the technology.

 1.  Realtime 3D is a medium for artistic expression.
 2.  Be an author.
 3.  Create a total experience.
 4.  Embed the user in the environment.
 5.  Reject dehumanisation: tell stories.
 6.  Interactivity wants to be free.
 7.  Don’t make modern art.
 8.  Reject conceptualism.
 9.  Embrace technology.
10. Develop a punk economy.

Keywords

realtime 3d
computer games
interactive storytelling
game design
artistry
non-linearity

Video Poem

Here's the link to my video poem:
http://vimeo.com/17626325

4 Effective strategies

1) When explaining something to a group of people it does not help if you are not loud enough. If you're not talking loud enough people will only catch bits of what you are saying-it will sound even more confusing for the audience. Do not be afraid to talk loudly and clearly.

2) When explaining something for the first time go through the basic stuff with the group and then help the audience fully understand it by using visual images or get some people from the group to perform it as a "trial run."

3) It is difficult to get up in front of people to explain something, so rehearse what you would say at home or in front of a few friends. This will get you thinking about what you could say in advance and your friends can give you some advice about what you could change to make it easier to understand. And not having to think about it on the spot.

4) Make sure that when explaining something that you sound interested in sharing it with everyone else. People can tell if you seem bored or not very excited about what you are explaining. They will then become bored and will lose interest.

Transformational VERBS

Choose an image and use FIVE transformation verbs: I chose ADD, TRANSPOSE, BY-PASS, DESTROY and SUPERIMPOSE.

The original image was the picture of the beach. The Eiffel Tower was SUPERIMPOSED and it is BY-PASSED by the slide. The message "Bon Voyage," was ADDED to the image, the Starbucks coffee cup DESTROYS the beach and the oil covered duck was TRANSPOSED.

Card Games

In the creative process class we had to create a card game of chance. We had to design the cards and could have as many cards as we want and have them as big as we want. The card game also had to involve getting people to move and not sitting down on the ground.
These are Clover's cards, she drew them herself. Her game was like charades: one person picks out a card and has to act out the movie within a time limit that is written on the card.
This project got us to think about how to get people moving, having fun with ourselves and others, and also being creative with making cards.

Overall thought on Creative Process

This class not only helps us see what is important to us but what is important to other people in the class and fortunately we get to share it. The beautiful and ugly objects didn't necessarily represent what is important to each of us but we got to express our opinion about what we thought was beautiful or ugly. The best part is there are no wrong or right answers to what is beautiful or ugly.

Unfortunately I missed most of the multiple objects performances but I did read up on some of the blogs that talked about them. Each group interpreted the project differently and had different outcomes. The best part about this project was that each performance was made from scratch because there weren't a lot of guidelines to follow or to obey, all of the ideas were our own and not assigned to us in class.

39 Steps

39 Steps is play based off of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film of the same name. This play is showing at the Stanley Park theatre on West 12th. I believe that the play has the same story line as the film but the play definitely makes fun of it more. This story is known as a thriller but the play is shown more as a comedy. The story is about Richard Hannay who travels from England to Scotland to unravel the secret of the 39 Steps.
I wasn't very excited to see it at first because I thought it was going to be a thriller and I don't like thrillers. Anyways my Dad told me it wasn't a thriller and that it was a comedy. This play is done very well with only a cast of four people. They had one man play the main character, Richard Hannay; they had two other men who played numerous characters that either aided Hannay's quest or were the antagonists; and there was one women who played numerous love interests to Richard Hannay. It was usually the two men who made things more comical most often by teasing Hannay. I would definitely recommend that everyone see this play, it is really well done and very funny!!

Museum of Anthropology

Over the weekend I went to the Museum of Anthropology on UBC campus. There was a huge display of totem poles that led to windows over-looking the mountains in the distance and a small body of water right in front. The totem poles were about 20 to 30 feet high with lots of light streaming in from the windows brightening up the room and the totem poles.
In the next exhibit there was a sculpture carved by Bill Reid of a clam with people inside it and Raven. It's based on a legend of how the Raven discovered people. The carving is set in the middle of the room with boards explaining its history and meaning on a wall behind it. There is a nice seating area all around the carving so you can enjoy every angle of the carving and the natural light shining above it. Bill Reid's carving is parallel to another person's interpretation of his carving. The other carving is much smaller and carved in a different material.
It was nice to have a seating area that covered every part of the carving. I could sit in different parts of the circle and enjoy one side at a time.
One thing that I enjoyed about the Museum of Anthropology was that there weren't too many exhibitions.

Beautiful and Ugly Performances

In Udval's performance she laid scrumpled up pieces of paper, like receipts and lists, around her forming a circle.  She rearranges the paper around her until it's perfect but then she rearranges the paper again. In the end she messes up the arrangement around her until the papers are all scattered on the floor. I liked how the arrangement of papers were around her and then they ended up all over the place. It was interesting that she had to arrange the pieces of paper a certain way, it seemed that she was trying to get something done to deal with the information that was on the paper. Maybe it symbolizes paying the bills and how frustrating it can be to look at proof of how you spent your money and being able to compensate for your spending.

In Noushin's performance she poured tea into a glass, then she took the other glass that was broken into different pieces and started to glue them back together with band-aids to form the same glass. When the pieces were taped together sufficiently enough she started to pour tea into the band-aid glass. After a couple of seconds of the band-aid holding it together, the tea started to leak out. I think that the broken glass is trying to have the same function as it did before it was broken. When the band-aids were applied to the broken glass it looked like it could perhaps hold liquid but of course we were fooled into thinking that the glass could hold it. I feel that through this performance that trying to being something your not is ugly.

Beautiful

Beauty is anything good-natured, anything that doesn't harm anything else or the environment because beauty should make people happy and not upset them. Because if the object upsets them it isn't really beautiful. But besides that, most objects are beautiful because you can usually find a beautiful side in anything. 

Ugly

To me ugly means harming the beautiful physically or mentally. And an ugly object for me is anything that harms or destroys the environment, like a plastic bag.