Dada Manifesto Tzara

Tristan Tzara born Samuel Rosenstock, was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. He was active as a journalist, playwright, art critic, composer and film director. He was best known for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishmen Dada movement.

Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Dada was born in reaction to the horrors or World War I. The Origins of Dada are still unclear. 

In TRISTAN TZARA “Dada Manifesto 1918”, "The magic of a word—Dada—which has brought journalists to the gates of a world unforeseen, is of no importance to us."

He Explains; 

"Dada Means Nothing" 

The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory,theatre, and graphic design. It concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the existing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Dada was also anti-bourgeois. 

Grid Art

For this project I decided to take 640 push pins and post them onto cork board material base. Then I decided to pick a picture and paint it onto these push pins. The picture I chose was me and my moms new born foal, Josie. I thought this would be unique and special to paint. I did show my mom the project and she loved it! I never really painted much in my life and realized this was a challenge but fun at the same time.

PersuasiveGames.com

I visited this site and found it really fun to learn about these games. 
They explain there games as, "Games communicate differently than other media; they not only deliver messages, but also simulate experiences. Our games influence players to take action through gameplay. While often thought to be just a leisure activity, games can also become rhetorical tools."


The first game I clicked and learned about was Colorfall. It is explained as,  "Colorfall is a puzzle game promoting cognitive health and physical activity. It was created in partnership with Humana Games for Health." Colorfall looks very addictive! 

Video Game Revolution

Growing up I had many different video games. When I was really young I would play Nintendo 64 with my family, and I remember playing Mario Cart, and always falling off rainbow road. Then as I got older I had a Gameboy, and then time went on that they created Nintendo DS, Gamecube, Xbox, and Playstation. 

This 2 hour presentation of the examination of the past, present, and future video game revolution was really interesting. The home computer was partially designed to play games. 
The Video Game Revolution examines first the history of games, beginning with a 1950s engineer named Ralph Baer who suggested that televisions should have on-screen game playing. In 1972,  an ex-circus barker named Nolan Bushnell produced "Pong", a bouncing dot that one would have to keep going back and forth, and this blew up in the gaming industry. 
In this program we also see interviews with game-making creators, many of them still involved in game-creation, including Shigeru "Donkey Kong" Miyamoto, Jason "Crash Bandicoot" Rubin, Will "The Sims" Wright, Chris "Dungeon Siege" and Megan "Nancy Drew" Gaiser. What I thought was interesting in this program was how they talk about violence and it becomes an issue. I actually agree with this. Young kids shooting guns and hurting people in a video game may cause them to act out in real life. A lot of video games involve violence which I am not a huge fan of. I like how this issue was brought to attention. 

Most Gamers today use strictly gaming machines, like Xbox and Playstation for the television. These developers are huge in the gaming industry and involves a lot of money in this industry. It takes a lot of time and development to create these games and machines. It shows how technology has changed over time. People dedicate so many hours developing these amazing games and machines. The future holds so much in store for us. Everyday 
new things are arising and being worked on. This is exciting for gamers! 

Triumph of the Nerds 1,2,3

Before I watched Triumph of the Nerds, I had no idea what this was going to be about. I found this very interesting to watch and I learned a lot. 

Triumph of the Nerds is a 1996 three hour American PBS documentary film that explores the development of the personal computer in the United States from WWII to 1995. It was written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens) and based on his 1992 book, Accidental Empires. The documentary is made up of numerous interviews with important people connected with the computer, and helped shaping what technology is today. 

Part 1 is a history lesson by Cringley in the birth of the personal computer and those who brought it to us.
Part 1 starts out by Cringely saying, "Hi, I'm Bob Cringely - and I'm here to tell you the incredible story of how personal computers took over the world. Why am I telling you this at a basketball game? Well, I like the game - but mainly it's because of that guy down there. His name is Paul Allen and everything you see here belongs to him -- the Portland Trailblazer's basketball team, their arena, even the dancers." 
I thought this was a great intro because it goes to show that technology and computers are part of our everyday life. He talks about people such as, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Christine Comaford, Steve Ballmer, and Gordon Moore. These people are very significant in how they changed the culture of business, how they made history in the computer software world. 

Part 2 talks about IBM and how it was started by Tom Watson. It discusses how IBM had competitors such as Microsoft and Apple. It mentions how IBM did not buy Gate's OS. Part 2 ends by saying, "Eventually it because the OS and not the Hardware that drove the personal computer business and let Microsoft become one of the leaders of a one hundred billion dollar industry and IBM left in the dust."

Part 3 discusses the 1971 Xerox. It started in Palo Alto, Ca. at a place called PARC. The goal of PARC was to think of the future of computing and how to dominate the market. For years they developed and soon built a computer they called "Alto.", which cost them $10,000 to build and was never sold to the public. This computer was unique because it had a graphical user interface or GUI. One of the co-founders of Apple, Steve Jobs eventually took a tour of PARC and saw the Alto computer. It was after this viewing that he decided that a GUI on a computer was the way to go and the future of the personal computer and this inspired him to make a goal and create his envision of a computer. 

This viewing of the Triumph of the nerds really educated me on the history of computers and the people who influenced this industry. It gave me a better understanding of why technology is the way it is today. And without these people and creations where would we be today. 

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

The commencement speech made by Steve Jobs was very interesting to watch and I enjoyed it.
This  Commencement Speech delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, was said on June 12, 2005.
I thought this speech was very interesting in learning about Steve Jobs and how he became who he was. Finding out about Jobs's childhood was very interesting. He was put up for adoption because his parents wanted a girl, but the people who were going to adopt him found out that his biological parents never went to college, so they kept him and said one day he will go to college. At 17 he went to college but decided to drop out because he didn't see the value in it,  and said to himself everything will be okay. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UF8uR6Z6KLcA quote I really liked said by Steve is, "Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." 

He then discusses love and loss. He knew what he wanted to do early in life. He started creating Apple in his garage at 20 years old and this is when things began to take off and Apple became a 2 billion dollar company. 
He then talks about death. A quote that affected his life was, "
"If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." 

This stuck out to me because I love this outlook on life. Even though he was diagnosed with cancer he still remained positive and had a surgery and is fine now! He makes a point to only live your life a no one else's because time is limited. 

I love how he ended his speech with, "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.", which we should all remember to do!! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

The Mother of all Demos

When I was told we had to read an article about this topic I had no idea what I was looking into and how important it was. Now I have a clearer understanding. 

"The Mother of All Demos" is a name given to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, computer demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. This was a live demonstration that featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware—software system called the oN-Line System or also known as, NLS. This presentation demonstrated the "fundamental elements of modern personal computing: multiple windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor (collaborative work)." 

This demonstration showed what they had been working on for years and the hard work it took to get where we are today. This was life changing to the technology world. It was recently the 45 year anniversary of this public presentation and this was a big step for the advancement of computers and without this where would technology be today? 

Alan Turing

This article was a shock to me but interesting to understand the past and the unequal rights among citizens. It's interesting learning about Turing but very sad at the same time.

Turing was a young brilliant man, who was a WWII code breaker, mathematician, and founder of modern computers. What came a shock to me was that he was sent to chemical castration for being gay.  This was an innocent man who helped save our country and to be sentenced to death for just being gay makes me cringe. It goes to show how the world was back then and how we grow up in a different generation. I still don't understand how back then an innocent man can be sentenced to death for just having a preference in gender, and this is something I will never understand.
What I really liked about this article is that the magazine brings it to peoples attention that sexuality doesn't matter. Its what a human brings to the world, and clearly Turing was an amazing individual and a Hero!

MarkJStock.com

I really enjoyed browsing through Mark's artwork. Before I looked at the artwork I read about Mark's statement. He explains, "
My work involves still, video, real-time, and interactive installations with seamless interfaces featuring highly dynamic, detail-rich imagery. I eschew an over-reliance on hyper-realistic rendering in favor of detailed and convincing movements and inter-relationships. I am intrigued by the ability of decentralized collections of subjects to, when set in motion, self-organize into complex structures whose ensemble motion is greater than the sum of their original parts and which belie the simplicity of their algorithms. Themes present in my work include: emerging system dynamics, environmental adaptation, the concept of fluid as both material and motion, self-organized criticality of non-linear systems, tension between humanity and the natural world, and computation as a mediator between natural and virtual realities."

I thought this was important to read in order to understand him as an artist and to understand his work.

A piece that really stuck out to me even though looks plain and simple is Wave for Hokusai.

I love waves and for waves to be represented this way caught my eye because it is very unique and artsy. 

This work is a tribute to the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (1829-32). It is one of the most-recognized pieces of Japanese art and is also appreciated by researchers as an early representation of the "turbulent cascade" of energy from large to small scales. What I thought was interesting about this piece is that the algorithm used to create the piece was the result of five years of research into vortex sheet dynamics, and still represents the state-of-the-art six years later. 

Another interesting thing I learned about this piece is the tension between the computational and natural worlds became all the more relevant when, shortly after creating the piece, a powerful earthquake struck the ocean floor off the shores of Japan, sending a tsunami over numerous coastal seawalls and causing suffering to many Japanese citizens. 

Singing in the Rain in a Clockwork Orange

This scene in the film of Singing in the Rain, though highly twisted and controversial, proves many points.
In this scene, Alex sings and dances with singing in the rain while beating a husband and raping his wife. The use of art is what Alex and the others use to detach themselves from the violent acts done. With Alex using Singing in the Rain, the scene takes a turn, which is the fact he is so oblivious yet so involved in his actions makes this scene horrific. Alex is able to distance himself from the horrors he is doing rather than realizing the suffering he is putting onto his victims. The use of irony is used because this is a happy song with such a violent act being done. The louder he sings and the more into the song he gets, where the more Alex beats and hurts the couple. 
Though the scene is very violent and hard to watch, without the song this would not be the same. It is interesting to see how different songs, whether good or bad, can be placed into a movie and completely give it a different meaning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWvWyYz9ttk

NYC Broadway

Last weekend I went to New York City with my family. On Saturday night we went to go see Rock of Ages on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theater. The theater was the smallest theater I've ever been too out of the many NYC broadway plays I have seen.
There was a small stage at the back of the big stage, where a small band was set up for the whole show where all the music was being played. Rock of Ages was such a great show, from the characters, to the singing, to the stage set, and the whole story of rock in general. The show is about a young guy and girl chasing there dreams, plus also about how rock changed over the years. The two main roles were done so well. They sang so great and were really connected with the crowd. What I loved about this show was the cast went into the audience and was in with the audience singing and dancing. What I also loved about this show was that they had a narrator for the whole show. He connected with the audience but even with the other actors, he was also so funny.
My family and I enjoyed this broadway play so much!