Title for book chapter

The role of observation in philosophy

Creation of Adam

Dance

Let me preface this by saying I know as much about dance as a walrus knows about starting a land war in asia.

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was on the forefront of modern dance and is lived on through many dance companies in her name. She was also the first dancer to perform at the white house apparently.

Her dance is erratic, smooth, violent and calming all at once. Seemingly displaying a wide range of human emotions in every move. The difficulty is obviously far beyond anything I could ever hope to accomplish. I had trouble making it through slow dances at prom. Her work was a major break through for dance, it completely changed how people looked at dance. While I cant really critique her work outside of what is very obvious, I can certainly respect what she accomplished.

Twyla Tharp


Twyla Tharp is a modern dancer and choreographer who still produces work, she has won both Emmy and Tony awards for her work.

To me her dances dont seem as "modern" as other modern dancers. It seems to have a lot of classical ballet and other things I'm more familiar with seeing in a dance program. Her dances appear to be telling a story more then conveying a sort of emotion. Many dancers work together to move at once and keep the story going. It is all very smooth and blends together well. It is amazing to see so many people on one stage working together and making it a solid piece.

Mark Morris

Mak Morris is also a modern dancer and choreographer who is still curently producing work. He uses eclectic music and is widely appreciated by both the general public and dance afencionados.

While his dances dont seem as smooth as Tharp, they are very interesting in the complexity. Many dancers seemingly move in from the outside in rapidly and together in unison. The dancers give me a feeling more of friends dancing together then professionals. That is meant to be positive by the way. They always seem to be working together to acheive a succesful piece, which I guess is assumed for a dance piece consisting of more then 1 person. However it just radiated to me.

Artist Paragraphs

Paul Pfeiffer is a video artist from Hawaii that uses "found video". Working with many videos related to sports such as basketball and boxing he removes athletes from video. He describes his work as meditative. "Pfeiffer makes a show of removing his subjectivity while investing himself intensely in his work: It can take him four months to produce a scant two minutes of video."

Pauls work seems to be near impossible to find online, I only managed to find a quick bit of a piece in a interview. Honestly while his work seems very self rewarding I hardly see much of anything interesting in these videos outside of the time it took to create them. The found video turns me off from the work. The videos are fun quirky things but I'm just having trouble pulling anything meaningfull out of them. Really even the quality isn't the greatest, his editing of the videos is painfully obvious. I assume this is not his intention.

Vito Acconci is a architect, landscape artist and installation artist from New York. Known for inviting the audience to participate in many of his installations Vito has been an active artist since the 60s.

I cut the first paragraph kind of short because of the 2nd paragraph. I can safely say that I do not enjoy or get anything at all from any of this man's video pieces. Confusing imagery shot in grainy black and white with ter rible audio and dull situations. I see no commentary at all in any of these pieces and see just weird to be weird. However researching Vito I have found that I enjoy a lot of his other work, just not the video. Watching his videos make me feel like an idiot, me being an art student attending a respected art institute. I strain to fi nd anything usefull at all. I wish I could say anything other then what the fuck?

Alex Bag is a video artist who I can hardly find anything about at all on the vast internets. Video artists seem to have a terrible time of showing there work online. Most have still images that really dont help since the piece is a fucking video.

I'll finish this when I happen to be in New York and catch one of Alex's exhibits.

Flipbook Videoz Yo

Sketchbook Entry

http://www.itwillneverbethesame.com/

Minimalism to the extreme, this site features a simplistic game of holding the mouse button down and steering your pointer wherever you wish. The game has no point or end as far as I can tell however I spent a good 10 minutes just watching it and turning. Maybe its the drugs starting to take hold. I like the relaxing mood it gives off, maybe its because it reminds me off taking long drives which is something I really enjoy. This website has opened my eyes.

http://www.theircircularlife.it/frameset

This has to be the greatest idea for a flash/photo combination on the web in the history of flash/photo combinations on the web. Its like a circular flipbook online or something crazy. Also it would be great if everyone just used this method to document times and areas like this, like if security cameras just displayed this instead of video. Its a wonderful idea. I need to learn how to do this in Flash now.

http://www.matthewmahon.com/

I want a freaking portfolio like this online, what a splendid idea. It becomes a little hard to navigate sometimes when you just want to see the artists photo's but what a creative way to interact with something static like a photography portfolio. I'm stunned and intrigued by the now absolutely endless possibilities I have for a portfolio based around Flash. Oh man sweet, he has a freakin buisness card on here too like this and funny little quirky things. It reminds me of looking at photos spread out on a light table. Hooray.

Heart Circuitry