Good 100 - The Civic Samurai

I did the 100 questions. My numbers were typically ones and twos across the board. The questions required a lot of thought to one's inner self, and generally I wasn't very comfortable answering them, but I did so as truthfully as possible. Some of the questions were hard to answer in that they were a bit abstract.

Apparently I am a Civic Samurai. There's no explanation to any of the types of doers, so I'm assuming it has to do with enforcing local rules and customs. This is pretty much not at all what I am, but I'm guessing it just pulled an average, 'best of', so to speak, out of the range of low-scoring answers I gave.

Fantasy Project

Critique
The performances were quite varied as each of us tried to find some way to interact with each other while still staying in our own element.

The first group seemed to have the most success with interaction, movement, and noise in that it ended up mostly being an arena-style fighting match, and three of the performers had swords or staffs. I especially liked Jeff's balloon pop-when-stabbed costume, because it was well utilized during that one minute.

In the second group, I really liked how Sara acted blown in the wind and Libby joined in as a bird and was also affected by it.

The third group, which I participated in, had two weird guys and one scantily clad homeless girl, and ended up being a kind of dark and scary um...assault. My apologies to Whitney for that one. Nice job fighting back though!

In the fourth group, it ended up being some kind of graceful-ish ceremonial tribute with Ryan doing a dance in the middle and Sarah and Christine dancing in a circle around him.

Costume-wise, I felt that Libby and Whitney's costumes were the most impressive for the amount of time and/or commitment that was put into making and wearing them.


My Costume and Process
My costume was...errr. The intent was there somewhere. The original goal was to be a tribal outfit, but that got nixed somewhere in the process of creating it, and ended up being a comic book villain kind of outfit.

For noise, I cut plastic water bottles in half, put beans in each side, and sealed them up with duct tape. I also put screws and nuts into two large aluminum cans and wrapped it up in duct tape to help muffle the sound. I placed these on my legs, arms, and one on my head.

For the helmet, I went the Pepakura-Bondo route. Originally I was going to make a beast mask, which would merit this technique a bit better, but to cut the cost of time I went for a kind of helmet. Basically, I design the mask in a 3D program, unfold it using Pepakura software, print it out, cut it out, and glue it together. Then I Bondo'ed the exterior and painted it with some silver-gray auto paint I had laying around.

I cut, stapled, and duct-taped the fabric parts together. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if the costume would last during the performance, but duct-tape reinforcement goes a long ways. I was even able to walk the half mile to my car and drive it home while still wearing it.

Mint Museum Visit

I found the Mint Museum visit to be a pleasurable experience. The large yard/garden reminded me of some kind of Victorian Era garden that the gentry would walk through. The building itself had a bit of class to it, and I found the internal structure, while somewhat labyrinth-ish, to be fairly intuitive to walk through from one area to the next.

Wolf Mask, Mexico, Wood & Paint

The wolf mask was a far departure from the other masks in the room. Most of the other masks had human or demonic features. I found this one interesting because of that, and was also curious how it'd fit on a person's head. This feels less like a mask and more like a decoration. Its visual design is unique compared to the others as well, with the tribal painted markings that give it a more from-nature kind of feel, and the style and structure of the brow and mouth and ears are completely different from the human masks.

Mourning Dress, circa 1863

I found this mannequin with mourning dress to be the most visually striking from the rest of the arrangements in the room. The stark blacks and fine quality of the cloth contrast the pale face and hands and make her stand out even more. I think also, this was the only dress made to portray an emotion as much as anything else.

African Mask

I'm not really a big fan of African art, possibly because it's mostly chunky squashed angular people, or otherwise abstract shapes. For that reason, I found this one interesting because it wasn't chunky, squashed, or angular, and I can actually see this going on someone's head. I also like the physical form of it, especially the contour of the brow as it goes from middle to back.

Various Animal Effigy Spout Bottles

I found the South American art areas to be the most interesting, and my favorites were the animal effigy bottles that were in one section of that area. There was just something about how the features were made, the shape and contours of their 3D attributes to make that kind of style, that made me want to go home and create my own 3D digital art using that style.

Project 3: Ecology

The goal of the project was to take and present 20 photographs based on the theme of Ecology.

Proposals

• Life On The Road - Animals found on or around the streets. Typically roadkill
• Plants vs Concrete - Plants in cracks of odd places, in their struggle to survive
• Greenway Ecology - People, animals, and environment on the greenway by the campus

I decided to do the Life On The Road theme, since it felt fairly unique and allows me to present material to the viewers that they would otherwise (typically) be reluctant to get close to. Those small smears on the road were once animals, now just blobs of ick.

Process

The process was simple. Drive and look for roadkill. I only succeeded on roads that were two-lane, mostly country roads that had forestry on at least one side. Even then, it was fairly scarce. I think had I chosen this project during Spring or early Summer, I'd have gotten a lot more material to work with. It also didn't help that the weather was poor most of the week, so I had only a few select days to work with.

I tried to be as safe as possible, so I would park a distance away and walk to the subject, and make sure there wasn't any oncoming traffic while making myself as visible as possible while there was.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get more than 6-7 unique roadkill subjects, so I had to use multiple angles. Even then, I arrived at only 14 photographs to present.

Results