tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8958470734289148634.post519509442938106286..comments2023-04-24T08:40:40.277-07:00Comments on Neal's New Media Blog: Do you have to Do Something to Know it?neal callhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17285975416175230777noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8958470734289148634.post-22625564108610625232010-06-10T13:19:32.327-07:002010-06-10T13:19:32.327-07:00Narrating your process is useful even if it runs y...Narrating your process is useful even if it runs you into dead ends. The items you reported on that were not relevant to this project are in fact quite interesting. One of them is relevant to something I'm researching now, and how fortunate I am to have stumbled onto it. Good thing you didn't censor your dead ends.<br /><br />You are getting some great feedback from your peers, and you might consider those directions. I would say that the missing research field for you here is pedagogy. Much has been written on learning by doing, or on the "kinesthetic" style of learning that your painting fits into. You didn't need outside sources to make sense of your experiment. Obviously the activity of painting "colored" your understanding of depicting landscapes. Time well spent.<br /><br />I'm glad you acknowledge a distinction between landscape visual art (which is fixed) and motion pictures featuring landscapes. As I watched the clip from The Outlaw and His Wife I noticed three things that conditioned viewer response to the landscape that you did not mention. First, the music. This is complicated, of course, by the fact that this music was probably not chosen by the filmmaker. Silent films must have had vastly different reception based on the individual tastes and whims of the organ accompanist. Modern soundtracks have a whole grammar devoted to suggestion "the land is important" -- just think of how horns and broad phrases are invoked as analogs to visual vistas. <br /><br />The second thing that conditioned response to the landscape was the invocation of character viewpoint. In this case, one of the intertitles (around 1:22 in the clip) gave a very poetical description of how these mountain dwellers responded to their physical world -- and in this case a glacier -- linking it to love. So, for the next little while, the film's viewers take on the mindset of the characters and how they would see this world. That is a vast difference from how landscape paintings are experienced -- not usually channeled through someone's specific perspective. <br /><br />Finally, there are film grammars that indicate to the viewer "hey, time to see the background as the foreground, folks!" as when a low angle shot with stark contrasting light gives a sense of the visual sublime, as happens when the man shows the child the edge of the cliff (at about 2:05 in the clip). There are cues from composition, camera movement, angle, editing, etc. that move one's appreciation of the landscape from setting to something more representational.Gideon Burtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08282494104976426309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8958470734289148634.post-77402193929913148972010-06-09T10:30:54.700-07:002010-06-09T10:30:54.700-07:00Regarding "the difficulty of search terms&quo...Regarding "the difficulty of search terms": in my experience the solution to that problem is the ability to contact people online to ask questions and discuss. But I'm sure you are working on that.<br /><br />Also I think you are on to something regarding learning something by doing. I know it's made a huge difference for me with regards to music appreciation. And I think the application to film is really relevant today. A lot of people today have the hardware and software to experience filmmaking. Just check out some of the many homemade amateur YouTube Videos out there. A lot of young video-makers in particular, even when their videos are just silly, seem to be be developing excellent camera and editing skills and have a general knack for good composition. I'm interested in what this could mean for the future of cinema.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01436592468638755637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8958470734289148634.post-86483172957861280762010-06-09T00:07:41.517-07:002010-06-09T00:07:41.517-07:00To sort of bounce off Ben's suggestions in a d...To sort of bounce off Ben's suggestions in a different direction, I would also suggest talking to Dr. Burton on the topic of folksonomies. A few months ago, I was visiting the MOA and looked at a special exhibit called Types and Shadows. One of the pieces in the exhibit was Exchange No. 8 by Ron Richmond. Here is a link to the image: http://www.snow.edu/art/faculty/portfolios/rrichmond/exchange_no8.jpg.<br /><br />Accompanying this particular painting was a short audio featuring Dr. Burton discussing folksonomies and its role in individual interpretation. He discussed how accutely person experience plays into visual interpretation. If I remember correctly from the recording, he compared the large black square behind the two chairs to the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because of personal experience, his interpretation of the painting would be distinctly different from one without the same experience or emotional tie to science fiction movies. <br /><br />You appear, however, to be taking this interpretation to yet another level. Instead of tapping into personal assiciations and memories, you are experimenting also with specific, physical experience with the object in question. Not just tapping into your own folksonomies as you react to landscape, you are creating a separate understanding by creating landscape of your own. <br /><br />I respect going the distance on this one. Actually trying your hand to reach a new perspective.Allisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16621341539844983777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8958470734289148634.post-79315685685499362112010-06-08T22:00:42.479-07:002010-06-08T22:00:42.479-07:00This is fascinating. In response to your search f...This is fascinating. In response to your search for "a few art historians who would argue for experience with practicing a medium, and not just looking at it, being important for one to understand it," I would suggest looking at imitation pedagogy. During the Renaissance teachers would have students imitate great writers and rhetoricians to become good writers and speakers. Here's an article called "Double Translation in English Humanistic Education": http://www.jstor.org/pss/2857054. Dr. Burton would be a good person to talk to about this, too. I think it is one of his specialties. I found a Prezi show that Dr. Burton made that discusses imitation in Humanist education: http://prezi.com/pqbkkoeq0tgy/humanist-education-in-the-renaissance/<br />Here is another article about modern imitation pedagogy: http://www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/Text_articles/V15_I3_Minock.htm<br /><br />I hope this is at least related to what you're looking for.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17927826086644989784noreply@blogger.com