The Real City

This is the city I love. Sure, midtown, times square and Broadway are all fabulous and bright, they are not where the real heart of the real people are. I've been going to the city once a week for another program which is on 42nd St, so I've walked down that area so many times I could probably remember most of the stores and signs. Also, you can really meet or even simply see any real new yorkers in that area: only tourists and business people- who are never looking too friendly. The few other times I've been to the city other than midtown I've incredibly enjoyed this included central park of course, Chinatown, I went uptown for my lifeguard classes at the 92nd St YMCA which similar to this trip in that we explored that area- for our lunch breaks-, and one distinct trip to Brooklyn with my friend to a thrift shop. This particular experience was extremely close to this STAC trip in that we had falafal and middle eastern food and in general ran into some crazy looking artistic people at this well-known thrift shop Beacon's Closet. We took the subway and figured out our own way just the same.

Anyway on to this particular trip. When we first arrived, I was brainstorming on what to take pictures of for physcogeography and in started almost randomly taking framing pictures of any objects I saw until I came across a chain for a lock on a door.

I suddenly thought of being chained to something and being restricted. So, I suggested the idea of capturing all the things in my surroundings that I deemed had to do with restrict and constraint. My favorite was this:

As the trip proceeded however, this concept was lost in well getting lost. In looking for the "spectacular" Bleeker St we took wrong turns and ended up walking to a place I don't even remember. Of course this was partly and mostly my fault in being so confident in my map reading skills, but this definitely brought a more interesting aspect to our physco-geography project: getting lost and furthermore the places and people we found when lost.

Our first awesome location which was the lowest of lostness in the trip was this cafe pastry shop called "Paradiso". I spoke to the owner who served us. At first I asked him what was his best hot drink. I honestly just wanted to have whatever he proclaimed as his finest and not just choose some random typical thing. He said, "for you, you look like you'd like a cappuccino." Without a breathe I agreed. Although I never even thought of having a cappuccino and would have probably stuck with a hot chocolate in a dunkin donuts for example, I feel it was necessary to try this new thing. I also pride myself for attempting my interaction with this man to find his nationality to be Argentinian, yet to be brutally honest after exchanging a few words did not find his Spanish to be very good.

 Next we found ourselves at a CVS with wants for a public restroom. However, the staff was quite rude and did not aide us with this dilemma, a nice old woman outside offered to help us find our way to Bleeker St. It was interesting to me how she took the imitative to simply offer her help. "Can I help you find anything?"





Once we got to Bleeker, I loved what I saw. It was calm yet busy. It was the people and shops not the lights and tall buildings that made the streets alive. We walked into a hat shop. To begin with owning a hat shop was an innovative thing, but just standing there and smiling as people threw on and off different hats was pretty cool for this woman to do.

I am proud of where we ate lunch -Raman Takumi. That's how out of the ordinary it was. I ate an amazing dish of beef I believe it was, and some sort of vegetables. -again out of the ordinary. And we had green tea ice cream that came in a dough ball. The meal was great and a success in the trying new things aspect.

Next the Pratt Gallery was also a hit. Although for me it really wasn't what I had expected. They were all cool exhibits but they didn't really go with what physco-geography had meant to me so far. I loved the interactive exhibit where one placed their scent and location on the map- that did seem to have physco geography as I know it. The jello exhibit was amazing but I didn't really see the physco-geography in it. Other than that some buildings jiggled more than others.



Welcome to the Rileys

Scott Bloom's visit to STAC today was a great success and one of the reasons that makes me love stac so much. I was genuinely astonished and absorbent of the information provided for me today. Primarily, I came into this not knowing what to expect except that Scott Bloom must have worked hard and is now a success because of simply accomplishing the feat of producing a movie that is now going to play in some theaters. It doesn't even matter if the film does well, just the mere existence of it is impressive, however, I do think the film should do well. I liked the modern day movie vibe to express potential real life people, with dramatic yet believable issues.

I was intrigued to learn about the role of a producer in that it is not simply about providing the money. Although, all the tasks he mentioned of doing pretty much attributed to the person who has the money. I did have a thought in the back of my mind that producers didn't have the hardest job because all they had to do was provide and let the directors, technical people, actors etc. create the art. However, this was proven wrong. The stress put upon the producer to choose these people correctly and oversee the decisions in order to ensure that the project is a success could be more stressful than any other position just because there is so much to take care of. Like a baby, there is so much more to think about than making sure the baby gets fed.

One thing that I now noticed was the title was never really explained with the story. "Welcome to the Rileys" implies that we are being introduced into this family setting that is actually juxtaposed by the fact that the family is really no longer a typical structure. In the family there is a father figure, accounted for, as well as the child accounted for but the mother is not. Or at least she was not spoken about in our discussion. After watching a preview of this movie and looking at the actors accounted for. The wife is actually very much active throughout the plot. It was interesting to me that we spent class time focused on the father daughter relationship. Perhaps Bloom particularly embraced this aspect of the film more or thought it was more relevant to us as high school kids with parents to connect to.

Busby and Patrick

This week in STAC art we worked on our Busby Berkley inspired circular drawings. I stuck with my tree theme and began to add shading. I did like some of the sections where I shaded from dark to light, left to right, however I am trying to improve the sections where there dark begins from the center and moves into a lighter shade as it goes outward. Also I found that I did not have perfectly symmetrical tracing, which causes a problem because it is difficult to shade in the same way. Then again, the small offsets add to the originality and credibility of it being human work. After all, Busby Berkley's dancers were not all the exact same person. Otherwise it would be like a computer created the symmetrical design.

This week's Prisoner episode, The General, roughly resembled this subject of computers and their power of knowing information. Alike computers making perfect, inhuman artwork, computers in this episode were able to produce answers that were precise and pre-rehearsed: very inhuman. The more obvious theme was that humans were fed information to memorize in history but they really could only answer specific questions asked in a specific context. Human knowledge and really understanding the idea is much different than simply memorizing. Moreover, computers that can only memorize data, can not truly apply it to human life and more philosophical ideas. In fact, at the end, when #6 asks the computer to answer the question "Why?" the computer malfunctioned and completely destroyed itself in confusion. This theme and moral of this episode showed such a different side of the Prisoner compared to that of the first episode. We now see the transition of #6 trying to escape to #6 simply messing with the system and now implying bigger concepts into the audience. Here it is that we as humans and therefore computers are not meant to know these psychological questions like why? or even how?

Here McGoohan expressed his own feelings on the idea of knowing everything. Many people devote their lives to discovering the "meaning of life" or why things happen the way they do, but McGoohan here gives his English audience the simple solution of just letting some things stay unknown.

Tree Branch

Today was my first plunge into STAC art. I actually haven't drawn in a class since the 8th grade. I always did well and did enjoy it so hopefully I will get back into the groove. We drew symmetrical shapes inside a circle with a theme to center it around in simple black and white. When I was watching the Busby Berkley autobiography film, one scene really caught my eye. The dancers were on a revolving platform through an aerial view with their legs sprawling in different triangular directions. I immediately saw with these thin white legs contrasting to the black background, tree branches. Then I decided I wanted to have a theme on trees. I wanted to mostly capture the branches that intertwined together. Then I drew in leaves in oval shapes to add to the theme. It was interesting when I took a look at my drawing and saw that the way I pictured it was different in my mind, mostly because I didn't have a certain image in my mind. However, I was still satisfied with how it turned out. I remember now that this is frequently what happens with art. You come into it with not a completely certain idea but with letting things simply happen in the end it will almost never be exactly what you expected but can still be good. I wonder how tomorrow will be with color, I was never very good with coloring things in...

First STAC Trip

Overall, I was more than satisfied with how the trip to the city to see Matisse at MoMa and La Cage au Folles. I found it gave me so much more development, appreciation and understanding to have the background knowledge on Matisse and his inspirations like Cezane, Gaudin and Signot. When first arriving at the gallery it is like seeing a familiar face in looking at the paintings. Yet, it was completely different to actually see the paintings than to read and see photographs about them. There is so much more detail, brush strokes, scratches, in the painting. I already had my thoughts that Matisse had started out so wanting to be a great painter and do amazingly accurate works of art, only to then later on in his career try to move backwards to have simpler work.

In this painting, one of many examples, shows the simplicity that Matisse wanted to portray. He already proved with his more early on and realistic pieces that he could paint. He could finish painting in all the empty spaces but he choose not to.

This reminded me so much of the prisoner and at first I didn't notice the circular painting on a wall behind this wheel. Then when I properly set up my camera I took this it reminded me more of the prisoner because it is just like episodes where the storyline ends up going in a circle.
Today's episode I found to be one of the best one's I have seen. I now am used to how the episodes are supposed to be and the general style of Patrick McGoohans acting. This prisoner episode had many unknowns at first but were later on all explained in. I really liked the mysteriousness at first and then things seeming more reasonable as opposed to the last Prisoner episode directed by Patrick McGoohan which was so out there.

The "Dan Lane" experiment was unique to our group and was really awesome. It was the ultimate improv acting experience that really proved how believable we could be. The one notable man who approached Elisa and I asking who it was we were genuinely screaming for was such satisfaction.