Last Class

Last week's class we had a guest artist come in to speak. I honestly don't remember his name, but his work honestly amazed me. His videos were made of different layers of objects in order to create one specific scene or representation of a work of art in which people could pop in and out of, walk through, and even move the objects around in order to strip the scene in which they were originally in. The whole process of his video and installation art was really interesting because I honestly just could not imagine my mind ever working the ways his did. I could never picture myself being able to build a scene made out of found objects, and place them as perfectly, as he did in order for my idea for work, which is the factor that made me truly admire him as an artist.

Following that, we started figuring out our final projects. Its been difficult to find instructional videos or even instructions at all for doing what I had planned on with an N64, most of them are geared towards the original Nintendo. I'd be willing to give the N64 my own try based on viewing videos for the original and figuring it out on my own. I feel bold and brave enough. The only concerns about this though involve safety being at risk or even having it not work at all. Another option for my project now is ROM hacking but, for some reason, it just doesn't seem interesting enough. Finally, another idea was to create a portable N64, which has multiple instructional videos all over the internet. I'll figure it out soon, I only have a couple of weeks left after all.

At the beginning of last class we talked about the negative effects of grades on students again. Statistically, students are more productive and creative with their schoolwork being graded. I can imagine art students even being a lot more daring with their projects if grades were not a concern. The next post will explain the details of Vanderkam's article "What Drives Us", about the excerpt from Daniel H. Pink's book "Drive, the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", in which Vanderkam and Pink examine the ignored issue.