Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Deconstructing Artists' Statements

Over the next two weeks, we're going to be working with artists' statements.  This serves a couple of purposes: it'll give you (I hope) insight into a real genre that you'll likely need to produce when you enter the professional "art world," and it'll give us additional practice working with a genre and its conventions (which is the foundation of this composition course).

For this week's assignment, I want you to deconstruct ("break down") three different artists' statements.  You can find these in a few places: online, in a book, from someone in town (ie, at an art boutique, perhaps), or maybe even a faculty member at Brooks.
Once you find a few, take a look at what textual "ingredients" make them up.  How have these things been put together?  What are the common features that they each have?  What are the patterns?  In other words, what makes an artist's statement an artist's statement?

I'd also like you to note any substantial differences you see.  What sets each of these artists' statements apart from each other?

Then, I'd like you to evaluate what you see.  What do you like?  Dislike?  Why?

Analyzing these artists' statements -- and seeing how your classmates have done their analysis -- will help you to produce a more thoughtful artist's statement the following week.

Confused About Your Blog Posts? Read This.

I wanted to shoot everybody a reminder about what I want you to post on your blogs.  There are only really two things:
  1. Your reaction to the weekly readings.
  2. Your assignments.
Some weeks -- where there's an asterisk (*) next to what's listed in "Writing Due" -- I also want you to post two ~150-word responses to your classmates' blogs.

That's all.  As I've mentioned in class a few times, your blog reactions (to the readings) are a chance for you to "write to learn" (as opposed to "learn to write.")  It's a chance for you to exercise some exploratory first-order thinking.  No sweat.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Horror Movies: More Practice with Genre and Conventions

Scenario: all of a sudden, you're sitting in the middle of a movie theater, watching a horror movie.  How do you know you're watching a horror movie?  What features/things about this movie make it a horror movie?

 After you jot down your predictions, let's put our hypotheses to the test!

The Shining



Psycho





Thinking About Genre Through Country Music

I wanted to post these videos to help you (re)consider the following questions which can, hopefully, help you to think about the relationship between genres and their conventions:
  • what's the "glue" that binds these songs together? 
  • what about them makes them fall into the “country music” category?
  • at what points do they bend/blend into other genres (such as folk, blues, and bluegrass)?


"Your Cheating Heart"


"Coal Miner’s Daughter"


"Whiskey River"



"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"




Friday, May 15, 2015

Our Syllabus

This is on the Brooks portal site under "Course Content" (I'm pretty sure it is, at least... I'm still getting used to it), but here's a link to our syllabus!

Thursday, May 14, 2015