across the pond
So, I'm finally in London and not deliriously tired, so I figured it's time for a catch-up post before things here get rolling too fast. The last week or so in New York was very museum-y with lots of project work time put in as well. The project is... well... coming along. Kind of slowly. But hopefully we can get the loose ends tied up on everything pretty quickly and get the New York phase of it up and running.
I don't even know where to start on all the stuff we did that last week in New York. I apologize in advance for how jumpy this post is going to be. But here goes...
Last Tuesday we checked out some galleries in Chelsea. They are seriously all over the place. It amazes me that
there are enough people interested in buying art to keep them in business. My favorite piece (and I feel horrible for not knowing who the artist was) kind of reminded me of a combination of my first kindergarten show and tell projects because each week there was a different color for the theme. That doesn't sound like much of a compliment for this art, but it was really cool... just so much different stuff put together in a really interesting way. That afternoon we met with Alexis Bhagat and he took us to see/hear a couple sound art installations. The first one was pretty cool... a piece by Max Neuhaus consisting of a pure tone coming up from one of the subway grates in the middle of Times Square. I guess it's been going on for quite a few years and has some urban legends surrounding its source. The second, a place called Dream House, was cool in theory but a bit painful in reality. It was this room bathed in purple light that was really from red and blue spotlights pointed at two of the walls, and it contained a really loud sound, or I guess combination of sounds. And then there was also this really potent incense burning. It was interesting for the first few minutes, but then it just got really overwhelming for my senses. I guess it was a good experience, but I can say now that I'm not a huge fan of sound art.
Wednesday consisted of a trip to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we had a great guided tour of their exhibits on the history and process of filmmaking, television, and video games. It was really neat, especially after taking Intro to Media Studies last winter. Too bad that class couldn't make a field trip out to New York to see it then. Afterwards, we headed over to check out MOMA for a few hours. There were so many things there that I was familiar with, which made it very cool. There was an installation by Nam June Paik, Untitled, that consisted of a self-playing piano and video cameras and all these monitors playing the videos being taken and other crazy things. It was cool to finally see something by one of the artists I had read so much about over the summer. Wandering through the galleries upstairs, I kept stumbling across so many famous pieces that I had learned about in AP Art History back in my sophomore year of high school, which was also really neat. I guess they have to be displayed somewhere, and the MOMA is a large, famous museum, but it was still crazy to walk into a room and see van Gogh's Starry Starry Night or a room full of Picasso or Seurat.
Our last museum-ish experience was our visit to the ARChive for Contemporary Music, a collection of over a million records, two copies of each one they can obtain. Their goal is to archive music from the 1950's to the present and then make it available to the public. A very noble cause, and it seems like they have a lot of support from people in the music industry. I just wonder how much of this stuff is ever going to get used. I mean, they have some extraordinarly obscure records, and right now they're expanding into some crazy foreign music as well. I'm kind of skeptical about the value of preserving things just for the sake of preserving them... although I suppose it's kind of hypocritical to say that what the MOMA is doing is great, but not the ARChive. But I mean, it gets to the point where people are putting so much effort into saving everything, and it's like we're stuck in the past or something. I don't know.
My last couple days were spent wrapping up loose ends and helping some friends film stuff for their project. We talked to a bum in Central Park who was trying to give us acting tips because he had tried to be an actor (his only credits were his high school plays). He also told us that the key to acting was the walk, and that he could imitate anybody's walk, but he wanted us to pay him to demonstrate, which we didn't want to do. It was funny though. It's amazing how much people notice a few cameras in a public place.
The trip over here was looooong... my first voyage overseas. I officially hate flying overnight. They served us dinner... and then 3 hours later served us breakfast. Cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me.
After breakfast I did see a very cool sunrise though. I didn't actually see the sun come up, but it was starting to get light on the horizon, and for some reason, the light spread itself out into the whole spectrum, with this really deep red right on the horizon, and then all the way through to indigo at the top that blended into the midnight blue of the sky. Way cool. I took a picture, but it turned out really dark and didn't quite capture the amazingness. You can see the colors though, which is the part that was most surprising for me.
London is interesting so far. Very different. We're living in a place called the International Students House, although I haven't really seen any other students yet. The rooms are TINY (probably about 11 x 12 feet, with 3 bunk beds and 6 girls with tons of stuff) and there aren't any outlets anywhere. I'm currently in the pub (the cybercafe didn't have outlets... how weird is that?) and there's a creepy lady here smoking and reading a newspaper half-out loud in kind of a hissing voice. Everybody smokes here and it's really quite gross. I swear I'm going to get lung cancer. And I feel really lost all the time because I don't have a map yet and the streets aren't in a grid. I think we're going to walk over to the theater tonight, so maybe I'll be able to get my bearings a bit better. And buy a map. It sounds like I hate this place, but I really don't. It's just different.
I don't even know where to start on all the stuff we did that last week in New York. I apologize in advance for how jumpy this post is going to be. But here goes...
Last Tuesday we checked out some galleries in Chelsea. They are seriously all over the place. It amazes me that
there are enough people interested in buying art to keep them in business. My favorite piece (and I feel horrible for not knowing who the artist was) kind of reminded me of a combination of my first kindergarten show and tell projects because each week there was a different color for the theme. That doesn't sound like much of a compliment for this art, but it was really cool... just so much different stuff put together in a really interesting way. That afternoon we met with Alexis Bhagat and he took us to see/hear a couple sound art installations. The first one was pretty cool... a piece by Max Neuhaus consisting of a pure tone coming up from one of the subway grates in the middle of Times Square. I guess it's been going on for quite a few years and has some urban legends surrounding its source. The second, a place called Dream House, was cool in theory but a bit painful in reality. It was this room bathed in purple light that was really from red and blue spotlights pointed at two of the walls, and it contained a really loud sound, or I guess combination of sounds. And then there was also this really potent incense burning. It was interesting for the first few minutes, but then it just got really overwhelming for my senses. I guess it was a good experience, but I can say now that I'm not a huge fan of sound art.Wednesday consisted of a trip to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we had a great guided tour of their exhibits on the history and process of filmmaking, television, and video games. It was really neat, especially after taking Intro to Media Studies last winter. Too bad that class couldn't make a field trip out to New York to see it then. Afterwards, we headed over to check out MOMA for a few hours. There were so many things there that I was familiar with, which made it very cool. There was an installation by Nam June Paik, Untitled, that consisted of a self-playing piano and video cameras and all these monitors playing the videos being taken and other crazy things. It was cool to finally see something by one of the artists I had read so much about over the summer. Wandering through the galleries upstairs, I kept stumbling across so many famous pieces that I had learned about in AP Art History back in my sophomore year of high school, which was also really neat. I guess they have to be displayed somewhere, and the MOMA is a large, famous museum, but it was still crazy to walk into a room and see van Gogh's Starry Starry Night or a room full of Picasso or Seurat.
Our last museum-ish experience was our visit to the ARChive for Contemporary Music, a collection of over a million records, two copies of each one they can obtain. Their goal is to archive music from the 1950's to the present and then make it available to the public. A very noble cause, and it seems like they have a lot of support from people in the music industry. I just wonder how much of this stuff is ever going to get used. I mean, they have some extraordinarly obscure records, and right now they're expanding into some crazy foreign music as well. I'm kind of skeptical about the value of preserving things just for the sake of preserving them... although I suppose it's kind of hypocritical to say that what the MOMA is doing is great, but not the ARChive. But I mean, it gets to the point where people are putting so much effort into saving everything, and it's like we're stuck in the past or something. I don't know.
My last couple days were spent wrapping up loose ends and helping some friends film stuff for their project. We talked to a bum in Central Park who was trying to give us acting tips because he had tried to be an actor (his only credits were his high school plays). He also told us that the key to acting was the walk, and that he could imitate anybody's walk, but he wanted us to pay him to demonstrate, which we didn't want to do. It was funny though. It's amazing how much people notice a few cameras in a public place.
The trip over here was looooong... my first voyage overseas. I officially hate flying overnight. They served us dinner... and then 3 hours later served us breakfast. Cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me.
After breakfast I did see a very cool sunrise though. I didn't actually see the sun come up, but it was starting to get light on the horizon, and for some reason, the light spread itself out into the whole spectrum, with this really deep red right on the horizon, and then all the way through to indigo at the top that blended into the midnight blue of the sky. Way cool. I took a picture, but it turned out really dark and didn't quite capture the amazingness. You can see the colors though, which is the part that was most surprising for me.London is interesting so far. Very different. We're living in a place called the International Students House, although I haven't really seen any other students yet. The rooms are TINY (probably about 11 x 12 feet, with 3 bunk beds and 6 girls with tons of stuff) and there aren't any outlets anywhere. I'm currently in the pub (the cybercafe didn't have outlets... how weird is that?) and there's a creepy lady here smoking and reading a newspaper half-out loud in kind of a hissing voice. Everybody smokes here and it's really quite gross. I swear I'm going to get lung cancer. And I feel really lost all the time because I don't have a map yet and the streets aren't in a grid. I think we're going to walk over to the theater tonight, so maybe I'll be able to get my bearings a bit better. And buy a map. It sounds like I hate this place, but I really don't. It's just different.
