Notes on "Directors and Designers is There a Different Direction" Oddey pg. 25

This reading was about directors and designers in a theater setting and how their collaboration is very often uneasy.

-In 1988 at Riverside Studios The Society of British Theatre Designers organized a conference between designers and directors.

-Many directors didn't claim to have any trouble when it came to collaborating with designers

-Many of the designers didn't want to express their true beliefs for fear of not being able to get any work.

-Often when a director felt things were going well with the designer, the designer had taken the easiest way out in order to avoid conflict.

-The role of the stage director came from producers giving their responsibilities to others. They were charged with developing the producer's wish.

-The reading compares the early designer/director relationship to the classic master/servant relationship. This meant it was more of an illusion that the designer and director were collaborating, when the director was in charge and the designer was mostly assisting the director.

-Designers are meant to be architects of imagination, not merely a decorator of directional concepts.

Manifesto

Goals for this group:
- Get an A in this class. (Or at least a B. But really? An A.)
- Stay friendly. No drama.
- Learn from each other as well as from class.
- Bond (at least a little bit).
- Have fun.
- Try new things.
- Recycle more.
- Attend a play.
- Travel a bit.
- Go fishing.
- Go sailing.
- Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Hike the Grand Canyon.
- Beat the Elite Four.
- Found a new religion.
- Visit Mount Everest (climbing optional).
- Run for President.
- Found a new country.
- Save the world economy.
- Save the cheerleader.

Alex Schneider's collage


Click it to see the full image.


It is, for the most part, a progression of 3D models.

A Poet's Creed Notes

I would feel some form of betrayal to Borges if I wrote just bullet point notes on this piece -- I am not sure why. There is not much to be said of this reading, though. The focal point of the piece is that there is music in language. Much of it is nostalgic tidbits that he uses to relate his transition from reader to writer, his many literary discoveries whist growing up. He mentions that words were born as metaphors, but in order for any comprehension to occur one must see past the fact that they are metaphors. He speaks of the disguises people wear, his own being writing style, and how there is no need for such a thing. There is only the modern and the natural voice; he believes that falsely altering this voice does no good. Borges speaks also of believing in the stories he writes, that his stories are true to something deeper than mere fact. He closes with his approach to writing: "I try to forget all about myself. I forget about my personal circumstances ... I merely try to convey what the dream is" (119), and leaves us with a Spanish poem he wrote, the meaning of which, he notes, is unimportant, rather it is the music he wants us to hear, to feel.

The World On Stage Notes

- approach theater semiotically

• "all that is on the stage is a sign"

• anything deliberately put there for artistic purposes becomes a sign when it enters illusionary space and time

- approach theater phenomenologically

• signs achieve vitality
• being of the world
• power of sign not necessarily exhausted either by its illusionary or its referential character

- theater is a language whose words consist of an unusual degree of things that are what they seem to be
- art exists that one may recover the sensation of life, exists to make one feel things
- purpose of art is to impact the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known
- technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar", make forms difficult, increase difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself, must be prolonged
- art is a way to experience artfulness of an object, object is not important
- if art is a way of endowing the world with meaning, it is also a way of allowing the world to express itself
- unlike a sign, the image is unique and unreproducible, whereas the sign is of no value unless it repeats itself
- theater ingests the world of objects and signs only to bring images to life
- Nelson Goodman says that something may be a work of art on one occasion but not every occasion; when is art not what is art
- theater is a means of looking objectively at the subjective life of the race as something prepared for the community out of the substance of its own body

collage

I think this piece speaks for itself.

Amos Chu

Collage

So, I was looking through a National Geographic Magazine and found a lot of pictures of landscapes and animals. I thought it would be really cool if I tried to combine all the images into one full landscape. The left side is kind of dark and scary looking and as you move from the left to the right, it gets happier. The far right side has animals in a green pasture. The animals on the bottom of the collage are all moving to the right heading towards the green pasture (the happier place). The top of the collage is all sky, the middle is a mountain, and the bottom is the ground.

- Kevin Chan

(Sideways) Collage

I took a bunch of family pictures out of my album and mixed them with my collection of old movie ticket stubs and other memorabilia on a picture board my landlord had in his closet. I call it "Memories".

Hi!

Power to the Team! A Winner is You!