Lab Assignment 4 - Animation

Blog Assignment 5B - Scene

Blog Assignment 5A - Reimagining Visual Framing

I chose to do this picture because I have always been a fan of Salvador Dalí, and I don't think I have ever seen this painting before this class. I also find that it has a good feeling of creepiness and uses space well, which I why I used it for some of the previous projects as well. The picture makes good use of lines. They draw the viewer's eye towards the eye, emphasizing it even further next to the empty space of the scenery. Dalí also makes use of depth by putting a mountain in the background to show that the eye is close. I zoomed in on the eye in the picture to make it into more of a close up of the floating eye rather than the wide shot that Salvador Dalí used, which gets rid of some of the space in the picture, as the original painting was the mostly empty space of the background. In the one I reframed, the eye is up close up, but there is still the deep space in picture. If you look at the original image and compare it to the reframed one, it looks like the eye has moved forward towards the camera, adding to the ominous feel. Dalí uses the Rule of Thirds and puts the eye and the mountain on the left side of the picture. I kept the mountain on the left side of the picture, but with my reframing I set the eye onto the right side to emphasize it more using the Rule of Thirds. I think the reason why he framed it how it was originally was to show the desolation of the landscape in the background, thus bringing the floating eye into the focus of the viewer and making it rather creepy.

Blog Assignment 4A - Brainwashed

The following paragraphs are relating to the article "Brainwashed" by Seth Godin, in which he talks about seven layers of reinventing yourself, that can be found here: http://changethis.com/.

In Acknowledging the Lizard, Seth Godin speaks of a prehistoric part of our brain that worries about safety and gets angry. Because of this portion of our brain, we can sometimes stifle our creativity in order to avoid criticism and punishment. Godin proposes that, instead of just listening to our "lizard brain" or just disregarding it, we should acknowledge it and hear what it has to say, but then still ignore it and go on and be creative regardless of the criticism we may receive from others, and only in acknowledging it can be successfully get past it.

In Make Art, Seth Godin talks about the importance of making art that is new and different rather than something that is formulaic and the same as what has come before. Doing something like that is taking a big risk because frankly in many cases it is no the new and different art that gets rewards monetarily, but instead the formulaic and generic stuff. On the other hand though, sometimes it does get rewarded by certain markets, and even if it doesn't make a lot of money I think it is better to make something truly good and interesting than to make something that isn't necessarily successful than to make something boring just to try to make a lot of money.

I think they do relate well to the blogs because through the blogs we have to create things and try to make them interesting, and it also puts us in positions that we would not otherwise be in. For example, many students may not be that interesting in audio production, but our previous work has been more related to that, and on the other side, people like me who have no interest in stuff like script writing have to anyway. Regardless of interests, we must, as Seth Godin says, acknowledge our lizard brains, and get the stuff done and learn from the experience.

Assignment 2 - Music/Song

3B - Soundscape Critiques

Soundscapes I commented on:

Nick Shega

Brendan Gilday

Brandon Reid

Blog 3A - Cover Songs

       The song I've chosen to do is Monkey Man originally recorded by Toots and the Maytals in 1969 and covered by Melt-Banana in 2002. The reason I chose this song and cover is because The Maytals and Melt-Banana are not only separated by over thirty years of time, but they are also two bands that play very different styles of music from very different parts of the world, with The Maytals being a Jamaican ska/rocksteady band and Melt-Banana a Japanese noise rock band.

        The lyrics in both versions are the almost the same, though there are some slight differences such as an added verse that Melt-Banana took from another cover of Monkey Man by The Specials, and the thick Japanese heavy accent makes some lines sound slightly different. For the most part, the melody is also very similar, and is carried by the vocals and the guitar, but, as one would probably expect, that is where the similarities end. One major difference is in the speed of the two versions. Melt-Banana plays the song almost twice as fast as The Maytals giving their cover a very frantic feel, as oppose to the relaxed feel of the original. The timbre of almost everything is also completely different. The guitar and bass in the original version are very clean while in the cover the guitar makes use of a variety of effect pedals, and the bass is slightly overdriven. The drums also have a different tone to them in the cover version as this during one of the times where Melt-Banana was using a drum machine in studio rather than a human drummer. Overall, the pitch in the Melt-Banana cover is higher than that in the Maytals version, but it still keeps the low end with the bass line like in the original. The difference in pitch is most evident in the vocals as they are far higher pitched in the Melt-Banana cover due the fact they have a female vocalist with a much higher voice.

        I personally really like both the original version and the Melt-Banana cover, but my favorite version of Monkey Man is definitely the Melt-Banana one. One of the main reasons why I like it better is the tone of the guitar. Ichirou Agata of Melt-Banana is one of my favorite guitarists because he has a masterful control of effects, and I love the sounds he gets out of his guitar using all the effect pedals he does. Noise rock is also one of my favorite musical genres and I find it to be a very good combination with ska though there are very few examples of such a combination with Melt-Banana's cover of Monkey Man being on of the only ones. They were able to take a song from a very different genre from what they normally play and adapt it into their own style making it a unique song of their own while still keeping many aspects of the style of the original song.

Toots & The Maytals (original)

Melt-Banana (cover)