Brainwashed (4a)

Brainwashed 

Seth Godin goes into many realms which empathize the feelings of being brainwashed the power of modern society. Many of the theories Godin introduced to me were extremely relavent to me for which I am in the state in my life where I am reinventing myself and my social representation. The two methods that spoke to me the loudest are making art and failure. 

To make art Godin explains is the not the ability that can be taught to anyone, similar to being creative. It is the act of learning from others and interacting with one another to create something new that cannot be learned through a pamphlet or manuel. It is the method of risking the deep thoughts and ideas from the inside of your heart and brain together to create something that connects with others at an uncreated level of reinventing ones thoughts. 

The second theory of Godin was the act of failure. To fail is a necessity in the marketplace of ideas and nature of society today, to fail is to find the way not to do a certain method or subject. There is a need to fail because if a person never fails then how will they learn to succede? The growth from failure is success, to make art is to be at risk, to ship risks failure and failure leads to learning. The demand of failure is more in need than success, because if everyone did not fail then who would be successful. 

Much of what Godin explains what art is really relinquishes the thought of failure and attempt to everyday life. To apply the method of art in my life has exasperated my degrading thoughts of being the creative person I am. To live everyday for myself and not conforming to societies norms will give me the ability to express myself for the idealistic person I am. 

Especially with the aspect that I must have learn from my failures in my blog to understand how to succede in the media field. To practice failure in not applicable because I will never know what a failure is until I write about the situation in the creative process. I have failed myself in this class when I presented my song, I knew that the song was not my best work. When I presented it I realized that I should have put more work into the song because it represented who I am and what I can accomplish. Through failure learned from experience that I know I can push myself to create a better song and envelop my mind into a more creative process.
The past couple of weeks that I have been in MDIA 203, I have had many options to create art work that expresses myself. Throughout the creative process I have dug within myself where I have stimulated a part of myself where I can phase out into an essence of the mind which explores my own creative theories. Art is applying the act of creation from my imagination and throughout most of the MDIA class I have been able to apply and express my skills and imaginative ideals through song and soundscape. What I can see, hear, feel, smell and taste in mind I can express through different ways of art and give the audience a chance to feel like me.

MDIA Song and Critiques

MDIA Tonys Track would be my first musical track I have ever made to the public. Its a bit of a soundtrack for a techno feel, I used a couple synths and edgy guitars. I used Garageband to produce the Track and I hope you enjoy.
Also enjoy these other aspiring media students: Capri Cuilla, Nolan Alexander, and Becca Amato

3B Comments

This soundscape differs from many of the rest I have listened to, nearly because it mixes the piano balad with a light nature effect of the ocean. There in engaged the audience to become more inquisitive with thought process throughout the sequencing layers of the soundscape. The manipulation of space is relevant in the beginning of the track. As the piano ballad continues the waves in the background seem to become louder and louder as the track digs further and further into the mind of the listener. As a deep oceanic effects compliment the piano ballad the ballad gives off the essence of a horror film. The tension keeps building up yet nothing seems to occur because the piano just keeps playing as if there was nothing to happen in the first place. Gestalts principles are represented also through out the track through the similar grand piano structures that are used within the process, such as the illusion of a beach and gentleness of the quality of the sound. The piano and the waves do not contrast each other because each of the depicted sounds are soft and temperate sounds that do not give off strong emotional depictions in the soundscape.


Sissi Xiao's Blog


The use of Gestalts principles are relevant through out the fantastic soundscape, many of the layered effects bring the illusion of gratitude to the track. The nature effects brought the essence of a calm and relaxing environment, which I could use precise imagery to create a sense of emotion within my thoughts. Where I lost the sense of gratitude was when the guitar riffs came in. I seemed to gain a sense of intensity yet still kept the essence of the manipulation of mother natures affects on the soundscape. Manipulation through space was very thought out through the creative process of an audience and sporting. As the calm springs and the acoustical guitar riff were brought together, I seemed to understand the effects the producer was bringing the to table. Gratitude means to be thankful, which was manipulated very well with the audience effect as the golf shot was added in. Lastly I would like the comments on the combination of the layers of riffs and sound effects, when both were joined to one it complemented one another. The soundscape gave me a great sense of emotion and feeling throughout and it really stayed in touch with the emotion of gratitude.


Stephen Hicken's Blog


The use of sound manipulation was profound in Nick's soundscape. The ambient synths were applied with one another which gave off a heartbeat feel which gave the sense of ambiguity in the beginning of the track. Until the tempo changes is where the manipulation of sound becomes present within the track. The panning from left to right with each single beat gave the soundscape a proliferated the intense sense of imagery throughout. The use of Gestalts principles were not used as well as the manipulation of space yet the references of disaster and the dubbing gave characteristics of a club and bongos. An electronic guitar riff sounded as if the echo or reverb effect was added to give a more intense feeling to the track. The sudden ambient beats gave the emotion of ecstasy in which there was no exact moment where I knew what was coming next, in effect the use of surprise was used immensely. In fact the timing of each tempo and layered clip was in use with the effect of surprise simply through the dub-step references. What I really enjoyed about the soundscape was the complications of layering and the tension and release atributes the group used as they created the track.


Nick Moores Blog

Waka Flocka Flame acoustic cover

(Original) Waka Flocka Flame - "No Hands" ft. Wale and Roscoe Dash

(Cover) Danny Vola - Waka Flocka Flame - "No Hands"Acoustic Cover

Today, I hate to say it but there are an excessive amount of cover bands that roam the music industry. Many of the artists that have put out great cover songs rarely ever create their own perception of talent and orientation of themselves as an artist. I contradict myself when I give credit to my favorite cover artist "Danny Vola", he has created a new feel to the rap culture and social norms of acoustic impressions. The quality of his sound is eccentric and mind opening to the culture today. 

Waka Flocka's "No Hands" is a strong repetitive beat, the moderato rhythm gives the listeners comfort with the sound. The computer generated drum set gives off a moderately smooth feeling and does not change through out the song what so ever. The music’s lyrics are in which the complexity's of the basis derives from. From a lyrical standpoint, each verse has its own variation of speeds and tempos, the rappers keep their personas by creating a cluster of a lyrical combinations of adate, moderato and allegro rhythm. 

Danny Vola's rhythmic stand is nearly the same as Waka Flocka's upbeat tempo, he keeps a similar moderato beat throughout the song, yet he does differentiate his acoustic plucking pattern during the chorus of the track. Vola's voice is extremely different than the rappers he covers; he is more emotional and joyful. As a listener I can tell that he is putting more emphasis into each word and the lyrics become more inviting that Vola is trying to impress me. 

Waka Flocka and Danny Vola come together with the point that the timbre relates with one another. Each of the voices in the original track by Waka Flocka is a clear and precise with each word. In rap songs the voices usually are not dubbed well in the production side, yet each voice gives off a low and smooth crisp sound. Vola makes the rappers sound as if they are monotone, his timbre changes in pitch and intensity. Much of the intensity derives from the lyrics, yet his pitch gives off a happy feeling of enlightenment as if he is making all of the explicit terms sound as if they are normal. 

To focus entirely on the lyrics Waka Flocka is depicted as a man who pays his women to dance for him and how he gives a plot of what he did with his women. When Vola sings, his lyrics do not sound as if he is going through the same story of Waka Flocka because of his pitch and light intensity. The lyrics are depicted towards the standpoint of men in actuality, yet the men tell the girls that it is their song, which is reverse psychology for the girls to dance to his song. Also the lyrics give off a pulsating hypnotic feel in the original track. The synthetic production gives the solid comforting feel with associates itself with the variations of tempo in lyrics. 

Vola and Waka Flocka are innovating within themselves and produce music that roots from their innate passion for the art. As a guitarist I enjoy the cover that Danny Vola puts upon the rappers delightful taste in lyrics, yet as a artist I believe that Wacka Flocka Flame has created an original aura of himself. The work and energy has made him an artist I can rely on for the basis of his personality and passion will live on in the music world, therefore, I choose the original Waka Flocka Flame "No Hands".

Dj turn me up ladies dis yo jam "come on"
Imma sip mascato and you go loose dem pants
                                            --Waka Flocka Flame--

Soundscape - Emotions

Soundscape Project for Media in the Creative Process. Rage

Digging Deep within ourselves (Blog 2)

Jonathon Flaum goes into great detail of explaining how as human will never get out of every situation but dig deeper through the situation to understand ourselves. Finding your Howl goes through the story of Flaum of when he was a fifth grader in Mrs. Horowitz's class. As a young fifth grader he absolutely despise his teacher for being straight up evil. She hated her students and expected the most out of every student in the class no matter who they were.
Mrs. Horowitz gave the class a creative project where the students could write about anything they wanted, the catch was the story had to be five pages in length. The only student to reach five or more pages was Flaums's friend Nick Thompson which he received an A for. The story was compromised of a tiger and his cage which the tiger wanted to escape from. The tiger would plan a elaborate escape plan yet when the tiger jumped out of his cage with his amazing leaping abilities he would find himself in another cage at another zoo.
The tiger kept jumping from cage to cage, but never realized that the world is filled with cages and zoos. Every time the tiger would jump out of his cage he would jump into a new one, the only real way for the tiger to find out where he is going and who he is to examine every spec of his cage. From the ground up and even further if possible, the tiger must accept the fact that the cage is his home yet also his prison where he will stay no matter what the circumstances are.
The parable shows us that no matter what situation we are in, there is no way out, only to plow through the situation to find a new one that is possible. We must understand where we come from and dig deep inside of ourselves to understand the meaning of why we are in the situation that we placed ourselves into. To find our identity we must search where we come from, what we are native to and what will help us progress.

My verbal readings of Jonathon Flaums's "Finding you Howl"

Fascination, Immerse, Ambiguity

Ditkoff's explanation of fascination really digs deep into the origins of developing ideas as a creative person. Dikoff says, "Fascination, quit simply, is nature's way of getting our attention" which is a great point because fascination is illogical. Our thinking patterns, our mammalian brain, limbic system, and neo cortex cannot be explained through a mathematical formula or a physical law. Dikoff reverberates that fascination is an enchantment that grows inside of us to create and embed extravagant ideas, which we cannot explain. 

As a creative person fascination thrives inside of me, that is where questions develop and many answers that can only be answered for us are found. A immaculate conception is stride that I believe is too far to comprehend, the example is uses the Christian reference of giving birth to ideas that are not fathomable or able to be found until the time in which you give birth to the idea. Our imagination is developed as an individual; fascination helps the imagination develop where we create realistic ways of analyzing ideas. 

Being able to immerse an idea is an activity that only can be developed through passion and fascination. Dikoff gives a great example of immerse when he indicates that when a mother hen sits on an eggs she becomes enthralled with the idea of giving life to her baby chick. The hen not only sits on the egg but also mentally trains herself that the fascination of having a baby chick will give her the feelings, which can not be explained until experienced as Dikoff explained through fascination. 

            Many of the CEO’s and large corporate producers for film, advertising and almost any major business immerse themselves to the state of which there are no other possible options. When someone cannot immerse themselves in their life, their life becomes a job in which the person has hatred towards and is not truthfully passionate about their life. “Google gives their employees 20% of their work week to immerse themselves in their own projects that do no have to do with their day to day job”. What I find incredible about the point is that many of Google’s employees are some of the most talented and hard working individuals in the world. To be able to gives the individuals the time to immerse oneself to their love and passion, they could possibly become even a larger and mosre powerful company than now.

When a person fails at an activity or mentally quits, the failure needs to be looked at through a parallax. When looking at a failure of someone, it cannot always be looked at as failure yet as another way not completing a task and learning from his or her mistakes. To be able to fascinate and immerse oneself into a state of mind will give the person the ability to never accept failure. Ambiguity defines the world of the not yet understood, confusion. To be confused is not a bad thing, yet it explains the reason that the person is becoming fascinated with their thoughts and becoming to immerse the ideas. 

To be able to tolerate ambiguity is to be able to learn through a process and become enthralled with the idea. Ambiguity is necessary for humans to thrive from themselves and learn to learn from themselves. Where Dikoff touched on this subject was where he explained that it is a discovery process. 

            The activity I choose is the idea that has been bubbling on the brink breakthrough of my brain which is the act of creating a narrative cinematic film. The film would involve the nights of a college student in which the freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior students grow up in different areas around the United States. The only thing that is stopping me are the other activities I am immersed in at the time. Ambiguity is where many of my ideas fall apart because of the lack of faith in me with other workers. To understand ambiguity is to have faith in each other and yourself to tolerate it and beat it. To be able to stay with the process of starting, working and finishing the film is a tough process, yet when looking into the future it is all worth it. Confusion is temporary and success lives on forever, that is what drives me as a person. To be able to live for the next day is a gift that I have learned from experience, many others only can understand the concept when experienced. When I become confused I apply my knowledge and fascination skills to start to understand the ideas and where they come from.

Who influences me as a Creative Person. (Blog 1A)

Kanye West

"Welcome to the Good life" Kanye West. He has become one of my most influential artists throughout my life because of his struggles he has overcome. West also showed the music industry that just because he cannot sing does not mean he is not an artist of his own. Much of the music industry only saw West as a unique producer yet they were not ready for his auto tuned musical productions. West's objective was to generate a new sound for music; this is where Kanye West and I come together. As an individual artist I consciously strive to invent new styles of production, film, and any other kind of art I find to be interesting.  Kanye released his latest album "Dark Twisted Fantasy" with a plot line, which was called "Runaway". The short film was subjectively influenced by film noir in which is a genre of Hollywood crime drama. Kanye West is an innovator whom changes culture, the music industry, and business subconsciously everyday. My aspirations and goals are to develop an artistic mindset like Kanye West does with his subconscious creative skills.

Entourage

As a Media Arts and Studies major I have watched, analyzed and critiqued many television series over the past nineteen years in my life. Yet my interest had never come to a level that it was mandatory for me to watch the television show and learn from it. The HBO series Entourage had taken me back after viewing the pilot. In many years to come I plan on pursuing many career related jobs in the media/ business world in New York and or Hollywood. The narrative behind Entourage symbolizes the life of the executive producer of the series, Mark Wahlberg. The show becomes a reality/comedy/drama, which is very appealing to me because one of the careers in mind is screenwriting. Where Entourage and I come together is the basis of the fantastic writing style of Doug Ellin and his crew. The series is based upon the characters, which falls into Propps Theory of the plot relies on the characters. Much of the show becomes personal within each character and their lives affect one another. Due to that the characters are human beings and their moods are always changing, it gives the show misdirection in almost every episode. Each of the main characters represents one of Mark Wahlberg's best friends on their escapes through Hollywood. The show has influenced me in many different ways, production, screenwriting and the reality of the show. 

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened my mind and imagination to a new world when I first viewed the film. I could not articulate the film as thoroughly as I can today, but when I started to understand the film that it was make believe dinosaurs and there was a whole production side behind it I knew I had to become a producer in film. Many of the films I watched as a child were films Spielberg created in which fascinated me and nearly overwhelmed me with thoughts. I thought as a child I was crazy or gifted with the unordinary and creative ideas I was developing through the process of viewing film and television. Jurassic Park really opened my eyes because I did not understand the fact that people could develop virtual dinosaurs with a computer and an artist. Yet Spielberg does not only touch on the fact of films, he co-produces for video games, various animated television, and many animated films. His style is not to put all of his interest into one category of media, but to become a well rounded professional in all aspects of the media business. 

"Early in the morning risin' to the street" Sublime

Many will ask me why I choose a class at 8 am, the reason I am in the early lab was because I was forced into this class. My MDIA classes were not supposed to be grouped together this quarter but I decided that I should complete my basic MDIA classes before moving into my sophomore year. I initially was in Classical Athenian writing,  yet that class was only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and did not have a great 8 am starting time on Friday.  There was no better alternative to this class because all of the spots in the later lab sessions were taken, and I occasionally enjoy waking up at a descent time to get my day started. And yes, I took one of the last spots in this class due to my impulsive class schedule issues. I am not a morning person what so ever, it takes me about twenty-five minutes of rolling around in my bed to finally get on my feet in the morning. Other than the 8 am starting period for the lab, I am excited to explore the world of new media and how to use basic tools for my future career in Media Arts and Studies.