After the three projects we have been working on in this class, it was difficult for me to grasp the “lens” of the audience member and write based off of that lens. As the projects went on, I started to get this idea of writing for someone instead of just for a general audience. This idea really clicked with me when we were working on the craftscreen, exercise 4. I could really get a grasp on writing for someone who would be interested in hiring my quartet to perform somewhere. Writing on my genre was especially hard because I am not fully envolved in one “thing” or art form. I am a geography major, getting a theatre minor, education certificate and a GIS certificate. On top of that, I play frisbee for CU and sing in two choirs and a barbershop quartet. I love dipping my feet into different fields so when it came time to focus on one genre, it was hard because I wanted to relate my writing to everything I am envolved in. Some projects really made sense if I thought about it in terms of playing frisbee on the field with a team, but we had to relate it to our art form. On the flip side, these projects really forced me to think critically about the barbershop or theatre and those visual arts. Instead of relating my writing to anything I wanted, I had to follow guidelines that were hard for me to grasp. This part of the class really got me to think in depth and really unpack and learn so much about my art form. Although it was difficult along the way, I value how much I have learned about the visual art forms in my life.
Blog Entry (optional/make-up)
I really enjoyed Phoebe’s Virtual Interactive Space because I thought it was the most unique idea out of every ones in the class. The idea itself was really cool because I think it would be awesome going into a room where you could control the whether. It would be very interactive with the person in the room and I think this is why it would be so popular if it was real. This is exactly what I was trying to get from my project, this idea of audience interaction and I thought this was the best example of it. I could also clearly see how the site was intended for a producer or someone who would fund the project. This site itself was directed towards this person as if they were entering the room changing the whether. She set it up in a very neat way in how you would “enter the room” click the link and then start the process. I really enjoyed looking over Phoebe’s project.
Craftscreen (artist website)
Jesus Christ Superstar Review
Today I saw CU’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. I heard about this event because I am a theatre student and there has been lots of advertising for this show. One of the biggest ways this show was advertised was putting Andrew Lloyd Webber name along side of Jesus Christ Superstar. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of the most known musical composers of all time and his most famous work is The Phantom of the Opera. By putting his name on all of the advertising, people will recognize that name and would want to see the musical even more. Walking into the theatre, I was surrounded by the atmosphere of seeing a live performance and that immediately put me into the mindset of seeing a performance. There was lots of seating, lights, cameras, a stage and everything else they need to run a show. One thing that was different about this musical compared to others was that it was much more interactive with the audience. This surprised me because normally when I go see a show, I just sit there and be entertained by the performers. This show had sing along sections and they even put the lyrics up on the wall using a projector. I have never seen this before in a musical. They also incorporated film into the live performance by having a live feed hooked up to a projector so you could watch parts of the musical like a movie. These two aspects of the musical, the film and audience interaction, made this musical unique and more appealing to an audience in 2015. This musical was first produced in 1971 and has been a very popular piece by Webber. Having the live feed in the musical made it more appealing to an audience today because it used technology in the show. Although the music and story has always been the same, it was fun to see this musical because of all the freedom a director has and how he wants to stage the performance.
popular popular piece by Webber
Model to review
I chose to find a review on the musical The Phantom of the Opera, LINK, because I will be writing my review on the University of Colorado’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Response to classmates blog entry
Natalie talked about how when we find lost artifacts that are broken, we can put them back together, fix them, and re-create something that may have been lost forever. I think this is a cool idea because we have the ability to respect history and take care of it to the point of fixing an old vase and then putting it into a museum for the public to enjoy.
Artistic Inquery
Artistic inquery relates to a barbershop quartet because when we sing a song, we are interpreting the character of the song through our artistic and creative backgrounds. This creativity we use to sing a song allows us to interpret the song and give the audience a message through music. At first when we rehearse, we learn the notes, our part and memorize it. Once we have it memorized, then we begin to give the song a character and personality. To give a song these elements, we need to do lots of research in the barbershop field, have an understanding of the song, and be able to be creative with it. In other words we develop more artistic inquery the more we practice. When we perform, I believe that everyone in the space, performers and audience members, are all part of something greater. They can all enjoy a moment together and what they learn/take away from that “moment” has the potential to have a big impact on people and the world.
Rhetorical Analysis
I chose to do my rhetorical analysis an the website www.artsjournal.com
This is a website that pulls lots of different blogs, newspaper and magazine articles, and other websites based on arts and culture, from around the internet. The authors of all the articles do not actually blog or post anything to the arts journal website. Instead a crew of three people find lots of different publications about arts and culture and posts them on their website. This website is very easy to read and is organized very well. Based off of the amount of “mediums” they have on there website, the target audience would be people who are interested in the arts and culture; whether it be a “fun read” or you are doing a research paper. If you were doing a research paper on forms of dance, for example, this website would be helpful because you would be able to scroll through lots of different articles quickly. The articles are very brief, most of them only a few sentences from the original source, and are set up in this way:
You can see that each article on the website is very short and gives you an idea of what the article is about. If you want to read the full article, you can click on the original website where it originally came from. This aspect about this website, showing just a little clip of the website with the link to the full article, makes the website very easy to read and you can scroll through lots of different articles quickly. The website is also organized very well and you can navigate through the website easily. With only two headers, and a very simple color scheme, your eyes go right towards the articles and the headers. The simplicity of the website is intentional by the editors of the website because their main goal was to post lots of different articles about arts and culture. If the website was “messy,” had lots of colors popping out at you and if the articles weren’t centered on the page, it would be more difficult to read. Whats also interesting about the websites design, is it allows for multiple viewing displays. The reader can choose to display all the articles by category, text only, text by date and headlines only. These multiple viewing displays allows for the website to be adaptable to the reader, which will in return lead to more readers.
This website is updated multiple times every day which allows for the reader to have access to lots of different websites. The three articles shown in the picture above are all from today, March 13, 2015, and every other headline (Dance, Ideas, Issues, etc.) are all updated to the present as well. These constant updated articles, that link to websites, makes the arts journal website a good strategy for finding new websites that you may not have known existed before. With how much technology is out there, this website does all the hard work for us and filters out hundreds of websites to give us something that will relate to dance, ideas, issues, etc. It acts as a modern day newspaper that updates more often, gives us more information and saves paper.
Just like a newspaper, this website also has lots of advertisements on the side.
There are multiple job offerings, an ad for school, and even a picture with a link so you can post your own ads. All of these different ads open up the audiences even more, whether you are the one looking for a job or needing to hire more people. This website is a great example of how a website can be organized, appeal to the reader (by changing the view), and how to filter in so much of the world wide web.
Sharing websites
So far I have shared my websites with my family and the other people in my quartet. I decided to share this with my family so they know what I am up to in school and they know what im interested in. I have always been close to my family so when they are apart of my life, it makes me feel more confident. I decided to also share the websites with my other quartet members because they are apart of the art form too. And since we sing together, whatever I learn affects the whole group so its important for them to know about barbershop and performing.
Project 1 response
Our first project was really interesting because we had to make a few web pages about our research instead of typing up pages and posting them onto a word document. This forced me to think outside of the box about how I could present my data. Also I really liked how we could use pictures and/or videos to help with our research. I really enjoyed learning about my art form and the history of barbershop. It gave me a new respect for the art form and it was fun to see how far it has come over all the years.
Andy Cole 