canvstheuniverse

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Musical Themes

The album I’ve composed has the central idea of “Natural Disasters”. I consider myself a pretty diversified listener of music, so it wasn’t too difficult to go across genres to find songs that relate to each other. These are actually all songs that I enjoy and listen to in my daily rotation.

1. Floods (PanterA): Rock: Floods is one of my favorite rock songs of all time, and I might even say it’s one of my favorite songs of all time in general. The song is set up like a storm, the intro is the build up to calamity, Dimebag Darrel’s legendary guitar solo in the middle is the storm itself, and the beautifully composed outro is the calm after the storm.

2. Tsunami (DVBBS): EDM/Club Music: another really impressive track that is structured like the storm in the title. The synth buildup at the beginning is representative of water stirring, the beat drop on “TSUNAMI” has hard bass come in, literally shaking the floor like a tsunami rushing through an entire city.

3. Earthquake (Lil Wayne): Old School Rap: this is one of the tracks where the lyrics don’t necessarily reference the natural disaster track is named after, but fear not, all it takes to find a connection is a little more digging. The term “earthquake” is a nod to Wayne’s witty lyricism and how it figurative “breaks the ground” (its ground breaking like an earthquake)

4. Hurricane (Kanye West and The Weeknd): R&B: Despite the problematic nature of Kanye West, I still enjoy this song quite a bit (I like The Weeknd’s verse more anyways). The Weeknd opens the song with “all lights out for me, lightning strikes the beach” then follows it up with “eighty degrees, warm it up for me” and a couple lines later states “I can walk on water, thousand miles from shore, I can float on the water”. I believe these are all figures of speech referencing how hurricanes originate over the water as a result of varying temperatures and how they bring lightning ashore when they arrive.

5. Hurricane [again] (Luke Combs): Country: This is the genre I listen to the least, but I still think this song is very good and fits my central theme well. Combs states in the song that “the moon went hidin, stars quit shinin, rain was drivin, thunder, lightning, you wrecked my world when you came”. These lyrics serve to compare a woman Combs was involved with to a hurricane in how she tore his world apart. Very moving.

6. Wildfire (John Mayer): Experimental: To close this album off. I chose Wildfire by John Mayer, who is an idol of mine as a guitarist. Mayer states that “you and me been catchin on like wildfire”, comparing how well he’s catching on to a prospective partner, similar to how a wildfire catches on to everything around it once it starts up.

[canvstheuniverse]

Let your Passions Burn, a Manifesto

Without passion and love, life is meaningless.

People who live without things to love, things that are worth coming back to every single day are doomed to live unfulfilling lives.

Every single post of this blog is the result of the blanket topic of passion.

Whether it's my love for my cat Andy and his creative hiding spots, my love for music and how it is conveyed through my favorite movie Whiplash, my love for the home I've lived in for the past 6 years or my love for the Lely Estates where I grew up, every post has been about things I hold near and dear to my heart.

And with that, I extend to you the offer to live a more fulfilling life.

Do not be afraid to stand by the things you love, for it makes you a happier person.

Social media has become this convoluted place of "how can I display myself as happier than everyone around me, even though I'm probably not?"

I'll tell you how.

Post about how your silly cat hides in the fridge when it starts raining and how it reminds you of home.

Post about how examining the architectural nuances of your home reminds you of all those hiding spots your cat has and how that makes you appreciate all the memories you have made while living there more deeply.

Post about the sculptures you drove past every single day on the way to school as a kid when you used to live in the Lely estates. The sculptures that your late neighbor fought to have completed before he passed away and rejoice with those memories of him teaching you all the state capitals when you were in 3rd grade.

Post about the memories you made the first time you took humanities almost a year ago and how you still remember everything about your favorite discussion and how it ended up helping you respond to a prompt in your second attempt of your class.

Post about how an abstract painting reminds you of a city in your favorite anime or cartoon and remember all the good memories you had watching it.

Stand by the things you love and why you love them with pride.

Because it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about you or your interests.

What truly matters is that you get to look back on all the memories you've created in your life and can truly say you are happy.

Because showing off to other people that you're doing more than them, isn't being happy.

And to those who say "I have no good memories to look back on",

I say "try harder".

Because all that tells me is that you don't have any good memories you think other people would approve of.

But deep down somewhere you have a well of joy that is made up of your own experiences and you can always look to pull a bit of water up from that well in the form of a memory to turn even the darkest days into light ones.

So go forth, delete everything you've posted on social media with the intention of creating the illusion that you're having fun, go out, have some fun for real, and go tell that story without shame.

Because I think we as a collective of human beings have lost sight of what it truly means to be happy, to be passionate, and to love what we do with our lives because we are simply too wrapped up in proving to people who genuinely don't care that we're doing well.

[canvstheuniverse]

Ekphrasis

I am doing my Ekphrasis on Picasso's Guernica.

An homage to the bombing of Guernica in 1937, Picasso's Guernica captivates the viewer's visual sensa with incredible figurative imagery with a deeper meaning than what meets the eye.

The lightbulb in the upper left quarter of the painting is symbolic of the flame that tore apart the sky when the bomb went off.

The horse pierced by the arrow represents the people of Spain and the suffering they have endured as a result of the bombings.

The bull with humanoid eyes is representative of the Spanish Nationalist and Totalitarian regimes since the national animal of Spain is a bull.

The faded dove that almost appears to have been unsuccessfully erased from the painting is symbolic of the fading away of peace in Guernica that disappeared as a resulting of the war and the bombing by drawing a parallel between the literal fading of the dove from the painting and the symbolic disappearance of peace.

With this painting, Picasso somewhat broke his promise not to use his art for political purposes. His justification for breaking his rule was that the painting was symbolic as a petition for peace.

I made the choices I did because when I first took this class in person two semesters ago and had it cut short by the hurricane, this piece was the one I remembered discussing in class most vividly. I remember every explanation that was given by my classmates, as well as the affirmations from our instructor about whether we were right or wrong, which is the basis for all my claims. Guernica is one of my favorite symbolic pieces as it is, which is why I chose it for this assignment.

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Abstract Images

I've chosen to do this assignment on The Village (Fernand Leger)

The way this image appeals to the sensa is by using a multitude of colors that seem to almost pop out of the painting. Paired with this is the use of many incredibly deliberate straight lines that come to form geometric shapes that are simple when standing alone, but when put together with each other, creating this very nice looking top view of a city or village that appears to be very, very claustrophobically arranged, which adds another layer to the painting. Even the curved lines have this sense of urgency to them, almost as if the artist was wishing there was a way to make curved lines perfectly straight.

The use of all these overlapping shapes creates a visual appeal of clustering, which causes the eye to wander and form connections of it's own between the buildings.

Another thing I noticed upon initially examining this photo is that not a single one of the geometric shapes making up the houses is colored in all the way. Every piece seems half finished in the way it was colored, which seems to imply that this city or village may have been abandoned for some time and that the lack of consistency in the coloring is meant to show that the buildings are deteriorating.

What initially drew me to this image was that it reminded me so much of the village within the walls from my favorite anime, Attack on Titan. I've included a picture below for comparison

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Photographer's Eye

The topic of this album I have compiled is "Interesting Hiding Spots My Cat Andy has Chosen for when it Rains"

Ever since Hurricane Irma, my cat Andy has been deathly scared of loud gusts of wind, thunder, and primarily rain hitting on our roof. As a result of this, he has created a multitude of hiding spots around the house. A common characteristic of his hiding spots is that they are usually entirely enclosed, like a closet, cover his entire body, such as a walmart bag, or have some sort of cover over him because he thinks the rain is gonna somehow get to him even though he's inside the house. Although it's kind of a little sad that even years later my cat is still traumatized from the events of a hurricane that happened years ago, it has created a couple opportunities for me to gather a couple silly pictures of him in places where he most definitely SHOULDN'T be under normal circumstances. I look at these pictures a lot when I'm away from home because thinking of Andy and all the spots he hides in helps me get over homesickness.

This first picture is of Andy hiding underneath the lowest shelf in our fridge. I don't exactly know who was responsible for leaving the fridge door open long enough for him to slip in there, but it definitely made for a good laugh.

This second image is of when I was going on a trip to Atlanta, Georgia, and it started raining while I was packing and I left the room to get some water. I came back into the room to see Andy sitting in my suitcase. He even spent some time trying to close it for "extra protection".

This third image is of Andy sitting on top of my computer with my desk over him. It was raining particularly hard this day, and our sheet metal roof makes a lot of noise when that happens, so he came here to find peace.

This fourth images is of Andy hiding in a tipped over laundry basket, once again to avoid the sound of rain and the hypothetical threat of the rain "coming in to get him". I didn't want to be the one to tell him this, but I don't think a laundry basket with so many square shaped holes is going to do a very good job of protecting him in the very unlikely event that any water gets inside.

This last picture is of Andy hiding in a basket in my sister's closet. This is by far his favorite place to hide, which is why I saved it for last. This also happens to be the first place he hid when he realized he had this fear of rain. Whenever he seems to be upset, whether or not it's because of the rain, he always comes here.

None of these images are very high in quality. In fact, I would go as far as to say some of them are actually very poor when it comes to quality. But that in itself helps stress the fact that pictures don't necessarily need to be "perfect" in terms of quality to convey an interesting story.

[canvstheuniverse]

Anatomy of a Scene

The two movies I've selected to use for this assignment are Whiplash (Drama) and 21 Jump Street (Comedy).

The movie I will NOT be analyzing is 21 Jump Street, so I have provided the following synopsis.

Two cops, Schmidt and Jenko, played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum (respectively) are assigned by their higher-ups to be a part of the department's secret "Jump Street" program and pose as high schoolers to bust a drug ring inside of the school. The pair dress up like high schoolers and plant themselves in the school. They quickly realize that school is incredibly different from how it was when they were enrolled, but also that there was a lot in their past as students that they would have to confront again during this assignment.

The movie is incredibly funny, but there isn't much of an emphasis in artisanal film making due to the fact that the film is more focused on making it's audience laugh than it is about sophisticated shots.

The movie that I WILL be analyzing is Whiplash. Whiplash is one of my favorite movies of all time, I've seen it 7 times and the first time I watched it was with my father, one of the only people in my life that I truly believe shares my love for music. Here is my synopsis.

Whiplash is a film about a music student at Schaffer Conservatory named Andrew Neyman, (played by Miles Teller). He is struggling to find himself an ensemble to play Jazz drum set for. As the viewer, we later find out that Neyman has been struggling to make a name for himself in music when he sits down at the dinner table at a family dinner and has to listen to his brother speak about his own success. This has it's significance in the film because we realize why Neyman is so eager to prove himself and how far he will really go to succeed, even if it means turning his back on his own mental and eventually physical health. One day when he is practicing a drumming technique called "double-time swing" (commonly used in 2/4 measure pieces to drive and keep time), he is approached by the revered Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the director of the top ensemble at Schaffer. He has Neyman do an impromptu audition for him. Despite being visibly unimpressed, he lets Neyman in as the alternate drummer for his ensemble. This is where the psychological torment begins for Neyman. The rest of the movie follows him as the entire objective of his life shifts to impressing Fletcher, despite frequent verbal and psychological abuse, that eventually almost becomes physical when Fletcher hurls a chair at Neyman for playing the wrong tempo in the Jazz chart "Whiplash". He even breaks up with his girlfriend Nicole because he is so insistent on putting all his time into "becoming the best".

The specific scene I want to focus on is the one I mentioned before about where Neyman is trying to match Fletcher's tempo at the rehearsal while practicing "Whiplash". Before I get into my explanation, I would like to point out something interesting. As someone who has been listening to, playing, performing, and genuinely studying music for the last 7-8 years, I realize when I listen closely to Neyman's playing, he is perfectly in time. Fletcher made a mistake and told him he was rushing, but instead of owning up to it, he crushed Neyman in front of the entire rest of the ensemble, making him play it over and over and over until he eventually throws a chair at Neyman and dismisses the entire ensemble besides the two drummers, Neyman and the guy he ended up replacing. Fletcher makes them take turns playing it for hours until Neyman finally "plays it correctly". The entire scene perfectly displays Fletcher bending Neyman to his will by pressing on him until he literally cannot take it anymore.

As for the visual effects that really making this scene "pop", there's a couple things. The entire film has this yellow tint over it, and it is something I recognized immediately. That yellow tint is incredibly similar to a light that I am very familiar with. When sitting on stage at a performance, I would always notice of how the lights on the stage made everything in the dimly lit venue look almost entirely yellow. I believe this tint is symbolic of the essence of anxiety going through someone's mind as they take the stage. The chair scene in specific uses a lot of close-ups on Neyman's face, showing him nearly trembling with fear and violation as he's being repeatedly slapped by Fletcher. Another effect that makes this scene almost give off the feeling that the viewer is IN the room is the fact that the entire scene is silence besides the drumming and Fletcher's commentary to Neyman and Neyman's responses. It feels so awkward that I still cringe a little watching it after all this time out of my sympathy for Neyman.

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Not Seen On TV

Upon watching all 5 of the videos listed under this assignment, I realized they all had something in common.

Typically, we are used to seeing heavily produced TV programing that is almost always created with the intention of conveying a story. All of these videos differ from that concept in the same way. The videos we watched were not very concerned with telling a story, but were more concerned with using video effects with the intention of creating art.

The video I've chosen to talk about is Three Transitions by Peter Campus. In this video, he displays himself with his back turned to the camera, appearing to make an incision on the wall in front of him, but somehow magically making the incision on his back, then reaching forward, but confusingly, his hands come out of the incision in his back. He then proceeds to lean forward into the wall, and his head and upper torso poke out of the incision on his back. He then continues to cut, and passes through the incision entirely, causing there to be an artificially displayed overlay of the man on what I would assume is the other side of the wall, both literally and figuratively.

This video does not follow a particular storyline. The only purpose it serves is to appease the visual sensa, by displaying intriguing overlays to create illusions that wouldn't be possible without the use of video editing.

I think this type of media is entirely different from conventional TV and film because it serves an entirely different purpose. They are both forms of entertainment, but I am more inclined to call the types of videos we studied for this assignment "true art".

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Architectural Interiors

For this topic I am choosing to write about my house.

It is a two story home originally built in 1982 in Marco Island, Florida. Technically, If you were to count the garage as a floor, it would be three stories. When you open the garage door, you are greeted by a pretty spacious garage that can fit two cars if you try really hard. On your left, there is a set of stairs that lead to the door that leads into the house from the garage.

The first room you enter when you open that door is the laundry room, which isn't too small, considering the fact that it's just a laundry room. There is enough space to move freely within the room without trouble. To exit the laundry room, you go up another small set of stairs (only 2) to get to the main space of the house.

Directly on your left is an office space that as re-purposed when we moved in and now serves as my sister's room. In my opinion, it is the most unique part of the house from a structural standpoint. The room has no roof, and instead of a conventional door, there are two very old doors with small windows in them that resemble the front doors to a house.

To your right, you'll see my dad's work desk that takes up most of the space in this branch of the house. Once you walk past it, you'll see our weirdly small and cramped kitchen that can barely fit two people working at once inside it. Compared to the rest of the house it seems very out of place. The rest of the house is very open and spacious.

Standing where you were that put the kitchen on your left, if you look to your right, you'll see the main door, which is part of the sub-lower half of the house, separated by three stairs. Before those stairs however, you have the main set of stairs that takes you to the second story of the house.

Directly on your left once you reach the top of the stairs, you'll see my little brother's room, which is identical to my bedroom, which is right next to it, in every way except for what we chose to put inside the rooms. We both have TV's wall mounted to the wall that separates our rooms and we have pretty similar beds, too. The only difference is that the rooms are mirrored. At the end of our hallway, there is a pretty conventional bathroom that has a decent amount of space for a bathroom.

If you go back down the stairs, directly in front of you (separated by the same 3 steps that separate the main door from the kitchen area) will be the living room, which is very open and has an abnormally high ceiling that extends and becomes larger exponentially from the garage entrance. If you walk through the living room all the way to the other side of the house, you'll find the master bedroom (my parent's room), which is naturally the largest room in the house. They have a bed and a vanity with a mirror across from it. Their room has it's own bathroom inside of it with a conventional master bathroom layout.

The house has served it's purpose of putting a roof over my family's head for the better part of the last 7 years and I would argue it my favorite place to be out of most of the places I've been. Despite it's size, it is a very homey space and it gives off a welcoming energy.

As for the second part of this assignment, I've chosen my local library on Marco Island. It's a simple structure, but it is somewhere I go when I need a peaceful environment to get work done for my classes. The space's general function is mainly to house books, but there are also study rooms located towards the back where you can reserve them for certain periods of time to study in groups or by yourself and you won't be bothered.

The structure doesn't necessarily serve the same purpose as my house, but they both make me feel the same way, even though one place is my home and the other is a house for books.

[canvstheuniverse]

Public Art

I chose to do this assignment on the Lely Freedom Horses sculpted by Veryl Goodnight in 1991, located right outside of the Lely Estates neighborhoods that houses the FSW Collier Campus.

The subjects of the sculpture are the 5 one-thousand pound bronze theatrically arranged mustang horses. All 5 horses are high-relief. The sculpture wasn't necessarily created to convey an explicit meaning other than freedom. There is a spot to park your cars and walkways intertwined between the horses that you can actually walk around. I actually lived in the Lely Estates from age 3 to age age 9 and I remember driving past the horses almost every single day. To me, the sculptures represent strength within the community. I went to high school at Lely High inside of Lely Resort as well, and the horses have stood strong without ever faltering, even through a couple hurricanes.

I also have a pretty deep personal connection to these sculptures. When I was a kid, I was neighbors with Hal Ousley, the head community commissioner and the man responsible for putting the final 3 horses in place on the other side of the community, completing the displays before he passed away. The full exhibit, counting both the front and the back set of horses has a total of 8 sculptures across two exhibits on either side of the community.

Attached to this post, I have a picture of my Mustang parked next to the Mustang horse sculptures. :)

[canvstheuniverse]

Representative Work

When asked to think about a work that represents me as a person, one of the first things that came to mind was Lesser Ury's painting Reader with Magnifying Glass. The main parallel between myself and the man in this painting is my very persistent desire to look as deeply as I can into everything that intrigues me and my general thirst for knowledge. I would also like to draw a connection between the use of abstract brushstrokes as opposed to more fine and detailed lines, creating a layer of metaphorical haze around the work to juxtapose the inquisitive stature of the subject matter of the painting, the man with the magnifying glass. We as viewers cannot tell what the man is looking at, but I think there's even more beauty in not knowing because it promotes thought, just as I would assume the artist would have intended, turning the viewer into the man in the painting as they inspect the work. Another detail that I appreciate about this piece that I believe also adds a layer of sophistication to it is Ury's choice of colors for the background of the painting. A combination of very deep tones of green as well as some black and other dark shades, which causes me to almost cancel it out subconsciously, as if it wasn't there at all, drawing my focus and attention directly to the subject matter, a nod to how a magnifying glass enlarges small segments of text, leaving the surrounding words small, causing them to be ignored. Thematically speaking, I feel as though the work promotes and communicates themes of speculation and thoroughness. Although it may not be a very famous painting, I still find it to be very intriguing and it holds a special place in my heart.