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ok its been a good year i hope to do quadruple what i did this year, next year. My back is killing me because i lifted up some heafty amplifier, but all is cool.

see you on the flip side XD.

Rhys Fagan

Dancing project

i am yet to embark on my dancing project. So far i am tinkering with video's of myself dancing. I am editing and manipulating the movies in final cut pro, which looks pretty good actually although i have not had a great deal of time to tinker fully to my harts content, but i am working on it.

Other plans involve a documentary about why dance is so important and what makes dance look effective. So stay tuned until i explore these deep depths of dance philosophy.

Performing in Glossop

Myself and Chuman performed a popping/locking/breaking routine for our classmates, it was extremely tiring and no one else did anything after that, but overall it was very fun. To be honest we had no idea what we were doing, but no one needs to know that XD

Insperation

on the second talk with Michael Howard he touched on something that i remembered; he was describing music or sound, he basically was saying without the spaces in between the notes we would not have music or something of that nature. This got me thinking, what if i was to repeat a phrase or a sound so much that it almost becomes silence. Its a bit of a strange idea, but when you think about it everything is supposed to vibrate, so either it is too small a vibration, or the fact that the vibration is so monotonous that our minds do not acknowledge it and therefore can no longer hear it.

The second thing that intrigued me was the techniques a poet used to acheive interesting sentences through newspaper cut outs. These words are read out at random, as if they made sense with a sencire voice. Some of it was random but sometimes you got things that kind of make sense. I found it an interesting technique in finding lyrics when you are having a hard time making up your own. This reminded me of Hazels creative practice lectures. so i decided to make note of it.

Proof that my kite did actually leave the ground (kind of fell dangerously milliseconds afterwards though)

Glossop Trip 25th March

A trip to commemorate the famous Ludwig Wittgenstein. We flew kits on the Moors, which was very fun although my kite had no dream of flying. It was a great day though, as it was incredibly windy and it was good seeing the entire year enjoying themselves. Michael Howard ran most of the trip and it was very fascinating to hear his knowledge on Wittgenstein. Me a and a few other friends were there till about 9 to listen to his more in depth lecture on him. Michael Howard has become one of my favorite lecturer, because for some reason i can just concentrate far easier when he is giving the lecture. Me and a few others even got to see his private art gallery, which was very nice. It was situated in a refurbished old building, it had all different kinds of furniture and was deadly cosy.

Wittgenstein himself was an interesting subject, a am yet to read the book that he wrote but the pictures of him supposedly sitting next to Hitler are very freaky.

U is the unbelievable, believing the believer

The second video to the John Hegly poem

America

just sent off my application to go to East Carolina University hopefully all should go well so fingers crossed and i will be there in Jan XD.

Other random note i might be teaching salsa twice a week XD so lets hope that goes well too

John Hegly Poem Animation

i have been asked to create an animation for a poet called John Hegly. The poem is based on the Alphabet and has sentences involving each letter, each person chose a line, so i chose two:
A is for your axe which is choppy like the ocean
U is for the unbelievable believing the believer

I really enjoyed getting to grips with 2D animation and i can only help to delve further into this fascinating art XD

London trip

London trip was really good, i really enjoyed the V and A, as it had huge artifacts in unexpected places. All the artworks were well crafted and made, as well as the V and A building itself, it was nice just being in there. One of the artifacts i remember is this really old bible that was really cool. There was also an exhibition called "Decode," which was fun to be in, as it had many interactive artworks such as sound responsive images and works that reacted to motion, we spent most of our time at one artwork, which recorded what you did for three seconds then repeated it very fast alongside other recorded images.

We later ventured to another gallery and some of my classmates said they bumped into Leonardo Di Caprio, which was pretty cool.

We also had some good times in the Generator hostel, Arnold not coming back on one of the nights made things a lot more interesting anyway.

Essay Analysis

i decided to do a quick review of my relatively recently completed essay on iconic images.
Although i do go through immense stress completing the essays i do find them very interesting. The essay i have chosen to write about is the "burning monk." Its basically a picture of a Vietnamese monk throwing gasoline over himself and setting himself on fire, in a peaceful sacrificial protest against the Diem government, who have been said to be mistreating Buddhist monks. The image that was taken by Malcolm Browne circulated through the American media, which ultimately resulted in the withdrawal of America from Vietnam and eventually brought down the Diem Government.

When starting the essay i believed the first thing to address was, what is an iconic image? an iconic image is an image(or object) that has a universal meaning and understanding to a mass of people, although through my research i came to understand that this was not entirely true.

I found that John Berger's "Ways of seeing," provided valuable research to essay, Berger states that due to reproduction an image can take on an infinite amount of representations and meaning, for example, the "original" often has a historical bond within a building or represents a certain place or time, When we remove this image and place it somewhere else, we can not think of it as the same, even the quality of the reproduction changes the images intended representation. To explain further why this is true, you have to imagine the picture of the "Mona Lisa" stuck on a boys room wall, right next to it is a topless picture of a girl. The images meaning has completely changed and since iconic images rely upon universal representation it becomes impossible to say that everyone is interpreting the same exact iconic image.

I really enjoyed this essay, and can only hope to get more wisdomful XD