Video & Article on Infographic Design

Infographic design.
visual storytelling in today's information, content-driven digital age.
http://vimeo.com/45905954
http://news.gestalten.com/event/infographic-thinking-singapore

Krystal Aguilar - UBU Week 12

UBU - Dance with Camera - Lumiere Brothers
Danse Serpentine: http://ubu.com/film/lumieres_danse-serpentine.html 

I was amazed to find out that films were recorded as early as 1896 and that the film industry was a competitive marketplace then too. I dug into who the Lumiere brothers were (August and Louis Lumiere) and what they did after watching Danse Serpentine, a visually beautiful capture of a woman dancing with her color-changing skirt. Although there isn't audio accompanying the 42 second long video, I think it just enhances the focus on the footage. When I first watched it I was perplexed trying to figure out how the dancer changes her skirt's color, "Maybe she flips a layer over like a magician?" Then I read the description and realized they hand painted the film. I can't imagine how much work that entailed. They were inspired to replicate Loie Fuller's well-known and entertaining dances where her skirts were illuminated by colored lights. Their patience, persistence and ingenuity are respectable. After watching the video it reminded me of a laundry detergent add I have seen and of traditional Mexican dances. 

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S20/76/79I12/?section=featured

From my research I learned that the Lumiere brothers made their mark in the photography and film business. Their technical training and creative minds invented the Etiquette Blue method, the cinématographe, cinemas and delved into the first color photography processes - the autochrome plate. They were smart for having patents outside of their home country of France, having private screenings of their inventions, and seeing opportunities in in their competitions' product's weaknesses. The cinématographe was smaller, lightweight, hand-cranked, more visibility, faster frames per second and needed less film compared to Thomas Edison's clunky kinetoscope.

http://www.earlycinema.com/pioneers/lumiere_bio.html 

Teresa Shannon UBU

The Rook

The film maker Ali Akbar Sadeghi is an Iranian born artist. He began his career as a painter and a teacher in the 1950s. In the mid 1960 he founded Atelier Seven, an avant grade artist group.  During his time as part of this group Ali Akbar Sadeghi began using his illustrations to making films. He has won around 15 awards for his films and exhibited his paintings in countless show. After the Iranian Revolution Sadeghi began to focus solely on his painting and establishing a gallery in Iran that supported other Iranian painters.
I was drawn to this video because it shows a fun side of the Middle East that we do not get exposed to. I have a passion for middle eastern art, and Sedighi's work is some of the most fun and free Middle Eastern art I have seen.  Because of religious restrictions it is quite unusual to see figures in their artwork. Most of the artistic expression is done with line and calligraphy.  Sadighi not only breaks out of this mold he rose far past the restrictions to to make some of the most important Middle Eastern art work of the 20th century.



Ali Akbar-Sadeghi

Kristina Ricci - UBU Week 12

http://ubu.com/film/alchemists.html

Exploring the UBU website, I came across a BBC documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  The workshop was established in 1958 and served as a venue to create new sounds and effects to enhance the television and radio experience, in a cheap way.  The group used a method of recording individual sounds, later cut and spliced into new segments of magnetic tape. Then layered with other reels of sound, each with different tones or melodies.  This experimentation turned into a new and developing genre of music, which became the beginning of electronic music.

I chose this video because it broke down the history of electronic music, as well as the group that revolutionized the way sound effects were made.  Within the BBC documentary I also discovered other artists that I did more research on.  Delia Derbyshire and John Baker stuck out to me the most because of their unique sounds. 

http://ubu.com/sound/derbyshire.html - link to more of Delia Derbyshire’s music

Catch Up Part two

Stop motion animation: The Mysterious Stranger

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This video was made to be part of a claymation movie called the Adventures of Mark Twain which follows Twain and the characters of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher as they explore several of Mark Twain's stories. This piece was adapted from Twain's final novel, The Mysterious Stranger. As seen in the video, the three children meet an "angel" named Satan whose face continually changed shape. They then construct a small village and people from clay which is then animated and ultimately destroyed by the mysterious stranger.
This video is a great example of stop motion animation because it shows how clay can be used to do things that are otherwise very difficult if not impossible. They clay also adds to the entire feel of the video.

MotMI: Pawel Wojtasik

Pawel Wojtasik is a film and photo artist living in Brooklyn. Although he only started making art in his fifties, his work is modern and relevant. In his artist's statement it says his videos are about facing fear. I love this idea of approaching fear from an abstract perspective. His videos are peaceful and yet disturbing. I find that the music and zoomed in camera angles of this piece give it an odd "horror movie" feel. He uses sound and interesting perspective in many of his videos to achieve this feeling of unease. 

The above video is called "the Aquarium", more videos can be found on his website: http://pawelwojtasik.com/

Just Something Interesting

I found this article and thought you girls might be interested.

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2013/10/women-should-ads