Week 5

Video Part

Reflection of Homer 3D

This time, Homer gets out of his home which the two dimensional world he usually lives and jumps into the two deferent levels of 3 dimensional world. He acrosses the wall and goes into a 3D space which seems like 3d software window. Some cubes suspend in the air, they are not controlled by gravity. He has not enough time to expolre the new world because the grid-like ground was pierced by a sharp object. It likes a black hole with the extrordinary suction. Homer sucked in the hole and fell on the real world. 

There are two transitions in this short animation. One is from flat sences to 3D space and then to the real world. Every transtion is reasonable. It is parallel to his home with three dimentional world and vertical with real world. Personally, this relationship is a sort of like animation whatever 2D or 3D can be fantacy and they are settled in our mind yet we stand on the real ground. 

Reflection of 3 short animations

Dots, Norman McLaren (1940)

This is animation is more like a narrative story of dots which I think is the most interesting part. It also reminds me of Minimalism—a dot dances in the middle of the scene, and transits to another shapes or splits into several part. Viewers could concentrate with the movement of dots with completely no distractions. In addition, the movement and the audio track are very cohesive. I am not sure if Norman is the first person who combine the electronic sound track with animation but it matches images perfectly.

Object Conversation, Paul Glabicki (1984)

To be honest, I did not quite get the purpose of this short animation. Despite the fact that every footages flash, I still caught some continuity footages, such as arch and piano turned into lines and dropped on the bottom. All the elements are incongruity and not linear. The audio of rings, woman’s voice still on, but there is no images on the screen.

Creature Comforts, Nick Park (1989)

It is a funny short clay motion-stop animation. Nick uses a new perspective to describe the relationship of human and animals. Animals are interviews by us and tell their qualities of their new home. Literally, someone who is accept interview are all politics, famous stars and it is also a serious and solemn moment. But when it changes to animal, it becomes more funny and grounded. They act like real human. The lion, his gestures and complains what a small zoo it is. Kuala wears glasses and satisfied with living in the zoo, etc. For that moment, I feel like I stand their position which is very intriguing.

Week 4 Peacock Dance&3D Test

Live Performance 1:26'

Spin Test

Week 3 CONCEPT

Art mimics nature, human mimic birds

There is a dancer who dance on a leaf, she uses her hand as a peacock's comb. At the beginning, she stretches her body and mimic peacock's movement slowly. Then the camera move up until get a top view with the dancer. The dancer start to whirl. The leaf like an eye and her stage like an eyeball, then everything turns to black and white smoothly. She keep whirling and whirling, the eye becomes plaster and carves into the ball (earth) and the ball spins with an opposite direction with dancer. The ball starts to duplicates many others to surround itself (mirror effect). The ball turns to white, the music stops, everything slows down, the dancer appears with in a fetal position and curl in the middle of the circle.

REFLECTION of Mimesis Theory on Republic Book 10

Mimesis 

I have been reading this chapter for a week and here are my reflection. First, reading English version at the beginning is definitely not a good choice. The other thing worth to mention is that I feel like the artists are insulting by Plato but I cannot find a strong reason to refute him. 

In the book 10, there is a question, “who this imitator is?”

                                                made by God (only one of them that made by God is real)

  3 kinds of couches             made by carpenter      

                                                made by painter

                                             God – the creator of nature

    conclusion                      Carpenter – the craftsman of couch

                                              Painter – the imitator of couch

In my words, painter just mimic the image, the real objects won’t change their shape or forms when we look at it. We also can be considered these three kinds of people as users, inventors and imitators. But then Plato discussed about “the form of beauty” and “the form of good”, I didn't see the relationship between this concept. Plato take a flute musician as an example. Only the musicians who play the flute know if it is a good or bad flute. After that, they report back to the flute-maker to make sure the flute works functionally because users are the most experienced people. On the other hand, imitators neither know right opinion nor be aware with what they imitate.

The artist do imitate from nature, art mimic nature, they inspired from nature. However, it is not fair for artists to say “imitation, an ordinary thing having intercourse with what is ordinary, produces ordinary offspring.”(Plato, 286) Nowadays, artists, no matter poets, painters, directors etc. have higher social standers than the craftsmen. For example, an artist who exhibit his/her works in museum will receive more respect than a plumber or carpenter.

But if I take Brian Acton, the founder of WhatsApp, in general, he can be considered as craftsman, he also belongs to upper class and Facebook had to cost 19 billion to acquisition WhatsApp. I am so confused now. (This part just jumped on the top of my head, I repute myself eventually.)

This is my superficial reflection about Plato’s theory.