The assignments page for this course has the phrase "insightful, interesting" several times. What do I mean by these words? Let's use an analogy to sports. People who are smart about a game see things when they watch it that people who aren't smart about it don't see. People who aren't smart about basketball watch the ball. They don't know or care whether the defense is playing zone or man-to-man. If the experts, the smart guys, point out that it's a zone defense, the people who aren't so smart don't know what it means. They don't "see" as much.

All intelligence begins in observation. The story of science is the story of closer and closer observations of nature. When scientists see things no one has ever seen before, things that don't even have names, then they're making progress. You could say that the whole process of being educated is the process of making finer and finer distinctions between things, that is, seeing more.

That's why I say the hardest part of this course is listening and watching. What do you hear? What do you see? The more insightful person sees more and hears more.

Evelyn Glennie teaches the world to listen.

Esref Armagan is a blind visual artist. If you can explain how the blind guy on the left below can paint the painting on the right without ever having seen Clinton or a picture of him, I might think that your explanation was interesting and insightful and I would probably think you were pretty intelligent for knowing how to explain that.

This version of the traditional Thousand Hands Dance is being performed by deaf people. How do they do that if they can't hear the beats? Do they listen to the person next to them like these starlings' murmuration?

Education is not passive. It is not something that I do, or fail to do, to you. Rather, like most other things in life, it is an opportunity that you may or may not take.

Observing is the first step. Next is knowing what to call what you see so that you can talk about it, for example, zone and man-to-man.

After you know what to call it, how do you organize your ideas so that you can communicate to someone? Remember those rhetorical modes in your writing classes?

You can talk about what it is, its characteristics and its parts -- see the table below. Describe it.

You can compare it to something else or rank order several related things. The key here is the "something else". How are they connected?

You can put it in a process and talk about that process. The process could be artistic, technical, physical, social, political, criminal, economic, psychological, etc. -- that is, all the other courses you're taking. It could be the process Esref Armagan uses to paint something he can't see.

You can talk about what caused it or what it effect it had on something else. Why it's important. What it means.

The rest of this web page is intended to give you the vocabulary you need to be able to talk about the arts on your wiki pages, during your oral presentations, in your reflections at the Blu Jaz Cafe, and in your final essay.

Connecting the arts: forms and techniques

Yes, this table has omissions and simplifications and it implies false distinctions in a blurred, overlapping reality. All I'm trying to do is get you started. I welcome suggestions for additions and changes. The links are all to Wikipedia entries.

plus techniques: what do they do? (processes)

==========

What's the difference between cutting to a new scene in a video and starting a new paragraph in a novel?

parallels among elements / parts

parallels of structure and composition

parallel ways audiences respond to art forms

uses and implications of similar terminology in differing art forms

augmentation

how the arts enrich each other, how one makes another better

synergy

how the arts connect to make wholes greater than the sum of the parts - see the course web's Criticism page section on Interrelationships between various forms of art

example of synergy, works that combine art forms:

oral presentations as theater

acting and singing/dancing - theater and musicals

acting and singing - opera

poetry readings and performance

performance art

If you watched the figure skating competition at the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics, you know that dance is integral to many sports, such as gymnastics, skating, and synchronized swimming

Example: In a video, cutting from one scene to another can have a number of different meanings, like placing two similar scenes together, following the beat of the song, creating a whole different scene, setting a mood for the video (cuts play a huge part in that), or maybe just following the lyrics.

European Renaissance painting

For this hands-on activity, we will analyze, that is, deconstruct or break down into its parts, a painting from the 1600's. How did Vermeer make his paintings?

In preparation, explore this website, Essential Vermeer, about Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, who lived in Delft from 1632 to 1675. Pay special attention to this page, Vermeer's Painting Technique, as well as to the five pages linked to it that explain the stages Vermeer went through to paint every one of his three dozen paintings.

• Choice and Preparation of the Support
• Dead-Coloring (underpainting)
• Inventing (drawing)
• Working-Up and Retouching (body painting and finishing)
• Glazing

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher: A Virtual Reconstruction

Wikipedia's Vermeer (1632-1675)

Girl With a Pearl Earring - 7. "Camera Obscura" 9. "Making Paint" ?? "Mixing Paint" - part 6, 2:20 - 3:30

Vermeer and the Camera Obscura

Wikipedia's Camera obscura

an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography.

BrightBytes' Wooden Box Camera Obscura

From egg tempera to oil

How the paints differ

Michelangelo’s Exaggerated Contrast: Cangiantismo (b/w to color slider)

Rembrandt's paints

comparison of three paintings by Jan van Eyck (1395–1441), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

Mother of Pearl
Interview with Tracy Chevalier

One day he told me they'd found their Griet at last. Scarlett Johansson was only 17 and not yet a household name, but experienced enough to handle the difficult role. And she resembled the painting. Then Colin Firth came on board, and it all quickly came together.

Though it had seemed like a long haul, suddenly I was on a plane to visit the set in Luxembourg. Luxembourg? That was one of many surprises about film-making. I'd thought of Delft, the Dutch town where the book is set, as very filmworthy. It still retains its seventeenth century layout, with cobbled streets, canals and bridges, gables and a market square with an eight-pointed star in the centre. If you ignore all the cars, bicycles and signs, it looks like a perfect set for a film.

But no. There was a pre-built set in Luxembourg which had been used for a film set in Venice, and with a change of window shape and brick replacing Venetian stone it looked quite Dutch. (If you look closely in the film you'll see some brick-filled windows with strangely Venetian Gothic arches at the top.) I found this choice hard to fathom until I spent a few days on the set and saw just how many factors are involved in getting the look of the film right. Director Peter Webber and cinematographer Eduardo Serra needed absolute control of the space and light they worked with - something they could never achieve by shutting down a busy Delft street for an hour or two.

Chinese calligraphy - Shu Fa

Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar, four basic skills and disciplines:

Hua -- painting

Qin -- string musical instrument

Qi -- strategic boardgame

Shu -- calligraphy

Four Treasures of the Study

ink brush

ink stick

paper

ink stone

Shu Fa

Written Chinese (text below from Wikipedia)

Written Chinese is not based predominantly on an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Instead, Chinese characters are glyphs whose components may depict objects or represent abstract notions. Occasionally, a character consists of only one component; more commonly, two or more components are combined, using a variety of different principles, to form more complex characters.

Pictographs, in which the character is a graphical depiction of the object it denotes.

Ideographs, in which the character represents an abstract notion.

Logical aggregates, in which two or more parts are used for their meaning. This yields a composite meaning, which is then applied to the new character.

Phonetic complexes, in which one part—often called the radical—indicates the general semantic category of the character (such as water-related or eye-related), and the other part is another character, used for its phonetic value.

The vast majority of Chinese characters (about 95 percent) are constructed as either logical aggregates or, more often, phonetic complexes.

How to Hold a Brush (very short video)

The Writing Brush Stroke

The 8 basic strokes (8 stroke shapes in 5 basic and compound strokes -- see image on right), extract from 永, "eternity".

the Diǎn 點, is a dot.

Filled from the top, to the bottom, traditionally made by "couching" the brush on the page.

the Héng 横, is horizontal.

Filled from left to right, the same way the Latin letters A, B,C,D are written.

the Shù 豎, is vertical-falling.

The brush begins by a dot on top, then falls downward.

 the Gōu 鉤, ending another stroke, is a sharp change of direction either down (after a Heng) or left (after a Shù).

the Tí 提, is a flick up and rightwards

the Wān 彎, follows a concave path on the left or on the right

the Piě 撇, is a falling leftwards (with a slight curve)

the Nà 捺, is falling rightwards (with an emphasis at the end of the stroke)

Stroke order

1. Write from top to bottom, and left to right.
2. Horizontal before vertical
3. Character-spanning strokes last
4. Diagonals right-to-left before diagonals left-to-right
5. Center before outside in vertically symmetrical characters
6. Enclosures before contents
7. Left vertical before enclosing
8. Bottom enclosures last
9. Dots and minor strokes last

Basic Stroke of Chinese Calligraphy Kai Shu: Left Diagonal

Model Books: tracing sheets and video

Latin Dancing

The popular dance styles in Latin America, by which I mean the Caribbean and Central and South America, present an array that we cannot deal with in one evening: the cha-cha-cha, rumba, samba, salsa, mambo, danza, merengue, tumba, bachata, bomba, plena and bolero. We are going to focus on three dance styles, one from Cuba and two from the Dominican Republic that were developed in the early 20th century and have since spread through Latin America.

The clave rhythmic pattern - wikipedia - video: The Clave and Basic Elements of Latin Rhythm

In the music you listen to every day, the clave is what holds the rhythm together. It puts the hop in hip-hop. In some songs it is more obvious. Here it is as the "Bo Diddley" beat, in the tune Little Darling and in Buddy Holly's Peggy Sue. Once you start listening for it, you'll hear it, often a little buried, in many many popular songs.

Salsa

Wikipedia's Salsa

Addicted2Salsa's Salsa Beginner Videos

How to dance salsa

Wikipedia's Salsa music

Merengue

Wikipedia's Merengue music

Sydney Hutchinson's Merengue: Popular Music of the Dominican Republic

Joe Baker's Merengue - basic steps

Bachata

Wikipedia's Bachata

The History of Bachata

Joe Baker's Learn to Dance Bachata - the 4 basic steps: basic step, half pivot, free spins, alternating turns

How to dance bachata

African drumming

Most sources seem to agree the drums are the oldest human musical instrument and also the most widespread. In every culture, people bang on things rhythmically.

The design of most commonly used drums has not changed for thousands of years. Talk about a mature technology!

Types

Djembe (left) - wikipedia - video: Djembe Master Seckou Keita

Conga - wikipedia - video: How to Play Conga Drums: Tumbao Latin Music Rhythms

Bongo - wikipedia - video: Samba Lesson for Bongo

Drum circle

drum circle - a group of people, facing each other, playing hand-drums and other percussion

Feel the Rhythm (video clip of network TV story on drum circles)

Mickey Hart, the drummer for the Grateful Dead, appeared before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging in 1991. He said:

People gather to drum in drum "circles" with others from the surrounding community. The drum circle offers equality because there is no head or tail. It includes people of all ages. The main objective is to share rhythm and get in tune with each other and themselves. To form a group consciousness. To entrain and resonate. By entrainment, I mean that a new voice, a collective voice, emerges from the group as they drum together.

ancient Eqyptian encaustics

using heat as the solvent for beeswax based pigmented wax paints

Encaustic.com's history of encaustic and how-to videos

extra-large version of this encaustic, a mummy portrait on wood - Fayum Egypt Roman Period 2nd Century CE. That's two thousand years ago.

Your instructor is Medaille's art professor, Mark Lavatelli. For several decades he has been using this technique for almost all of his own artwork. The pic on the left was taken in his personal studio. On his web site, he has information about encaustics:

Encaustic painting is an ancient and highly permanent technique in which the vehicle or binder is beeswax. Unlike linseed oil or synthetic resin (e.g. acrylic) binders which dry to harden, the beeswax is heated until molten, mixed with dry pigments to make paint, and, when applied to the painting, cools and hardens instantly. When the painting is completed, the entire surface is reheated to fuse the layers and bond them to the support. This is called burning-in, which is the literal meaning of encaustic.

Remember with the Renaissance painting, we used linseed (flax) oil as the binder. The oil was alread liquid. However, beeswax hardens in air, so it needs a heat source to make it liquid. The images on the right were made by students in this course last semester. At the beginning of the hour, each had a blank 6" x 8" panel and a very reasonable attitude based on personal experience: "I can't paint." "I can't draw." At the end of the hour, each student had an image like one of these four. I guess they learned a lot in an hour. So will you.

Formal Analysis

In this sense, formal does not mean the opposite of informal. A formal analysis of a piece of art is an analysis of its form. We are taking that in the broadest sense, its form in the sense of the raw materials it is made of, the tools and echniques used to make it, its parts and elements, and its physical locus.

The links here are mostly to the Wikipedia, which provides helpful vocabulary, overviews, and introductions to these topics. These key terms will enable you to search more efficiently. For you, the Wikipedia is a jumping off place, not a landing place.

Visual/Plastic Arts

images, things, objects, spaces

art

Vocabulary terms for all 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional objects, whether "art" or not: size, shape and form, space, position (relation to other elements), color, texture, line

Elements of art

Outline of painting

Art techniques and materials

Principles of design

architecture

Vocabulary terms for the physical parts of a building: Category: Architectural elements

... for buildings as a whole (for example, church, mansion): Category: Buildings and structures and List of building types

... for the functional parts of buildings(for example, kitchen, nave): Category: Rooms

... for the styles of buildings or architectural movements (for example, gothic, Bauhaus): Category: Architectural styles

... for building materials and construction methods (for example, thatch): Category: Building materials

Architectural sculpture

Architectural Glossary

Performance Arts

movements and sounds

music

Music is a way of organizing sound.

Humans can hear a range of frequencies that leaves room for an infinite number of audible tones. Compare it to color, which remains fixed even over long times. Blue paint today is still blue tomorrow and five hundred years from now. In contrast, music changes, often gradually, over very short periods of time. A tone "lasts" only as long as you can hear it, that is, while the air around you is changed by the tone, which isn't long at all.

A tone has a unique pitch, which is its frequency of vibration. That frequency has a duration and loudness that can be measured quantitatively. It also has a quality called timbre, which is our psychological perception of its qualities. Timbre is what distinguishes a tone produced by a stringed instrument from the same tone produced by a drum or human voice.

The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus ... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be.

Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez (my emphasis)

Being humans, when we hear more than one tone in succession, we listen for patterns of tones and repetition of tones. If you put several tones in a time sequence, you have a melody. Whether anyone wants to listen to it is another matter.

If you play two melodies together or thicken the melody with related tones, you have harmony.

Melodies are played over time, which is usually divided uniformly into equal and regular beats. Patterns of beats form rhythms, which like melodies, are often repeated, sometimes with slight variations.

So the fundamental properties of music are a series of tones played by an instrument according to a rhythmic structure. Put it all together, add in the influences of a specific culture over time, and you have a wide variety of music available today, which is but a fraction of the music that has been produced by humans through our history.

Tuning systems

Music and mathematics are deeply bound to each other. Part of the development of math was an attempt to understand music, especially stringed instruments.

Stretch three strings next to each other. The second string is exactly half the length of the first. The third string is a third the length of the first. When you pluck the first two strings at the same time, the tones have a similarity that is common to almost every musical system. In Western music, we call it an octave.

When you pluck the third string at the same time as the first two, you get another interval, called a third.

Why does that ______ music sound so weird? How can people even listen to that?

The Musical Scale is not one, not natural, not even founded necessarily on the laws of the constitution of musical sound, ... but very diverse, very artificial, and very capricious.

Alexander Ellis, 1885

How many of these diverse, artificial, capricious tuning systems are there? The one that we're used to is called twelve-tone equal temperament. The octave is divided into twelve equally spaced frequencies. Another half dozen systems are common around the world, and another dozen systems are used in specific places.

WolframTones: A New Kind of Music - generate a composition of your own

One system that we'll hear from Indonesia and Thailand doesn't use harmony, so its metalophones and xylophones sound very harsh to our ears.

A musical scale is the sequence of tones in ascending (toward higher frequencies) or descending order that is characteristic of that tuning system.

Many other musical traditions employ scales that include other intervals or a different number of pitches.

An octave divided into:

two, three, or four tones - prehistoric and some contemporary folk music

five tones (pentatonic) - common in E. Asian music, also E. African, Somali

six tones (hexatonic) and seven tones (heptatonic) - common throughout the world

eight tones (octatonic) - jazz and modern classical music

Other musical traditions that you might encounter in this course

South American music was imported from Europe, so much of it uses the same instruments and tonal systems, and basic rhythms and genres as music in Spain and Portugal.

Sub-Saharan African music emphasizes polyrhythms. A current popular genre is Afrobeat. Wikipedia's Polyrhythm.

Middle Eastern Hejaz aka Hijaz music from Egypt, Turkey, Israel, and Arabia (and even heard in Spanish gypsy music and flemenco music) uses the Phrygian dominant scale - some intervals of three semitones.

Arabic music may use quarter tone intervals as well as an octave divided into 24 equal tones.

Gamelan music from Indonesia uses the Pélog and Sléndro scales that are neither equally tempered nor harmonic intervals.

Classical Carnatic music and Hindustani music from India uses a moveable seven-note scale. Rāgas often employ intervals smaller than a semitone.

Japanese koto music uses a modified Western tuning system but the same 12-system that the Chinese use.

Musical form | language and notation | intruments (search for your country)

Glossary of musical terminology

List of folk/pop music traditions: Asia | South America | Sub-Saharan Africa | Africa | Mideast/North Africa

Musical traditions of: Asia | Africa | Mideast | Latin America

Jamaica - ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub

musical instruments

In addition to the human body (voice for melody, hands and feet for rhythm), there are three major kinds of instruments: woodwind, string, and percussion, that is, pipes, guitars, and drums.

Doktorski's taxonomy of musical instruments based on Hornbostel and Sachs (1914)

theater

genre, plot, character, visual elements, acting styles

dance

List of dances | List of ethnic, regional, and folk dances sorted by origin

glossaries of terms: partner dance | dance moves | ballet

dance notation

responding to music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_psychology

responding kinesthetically to music by dancing
musically by singing or humming or keeping time
emotionally by letting ourselves be moved from one emotional state to another
intellectually by recognizing melody, phrasing, harmony, tonality, rhythm, meter, danceability, BPM, etc.