Final Project

So here it is..my final project! I based this on myself and how i express myself. Because this was my aim I made every aspect of this as personal as possible. The beat of the whole song, that is prominent throughout is actually my heartbeat. It is my heartbeat after playing through this piece once, in order to make it more realistic. I then used this as the beat for the whole piece. I have always been particularly shy about playing in front of people, which is why i cut my face out of this video. As for the song i chose to play, it is my version of the solo from Bruce Springsteens' 'Jungleland', played by Clarence Clemons. He was the inspiration for me to start playing the saxophone back when I was 10 after seeing him play it live. I also chose to quietly accompany myself on the piano, as this was the original instrument i learnt, and is therefore the background to all the music i play today. Although i reached the complication of timing everything to my heartbeat i am happy with how this turned out!

Performance Art

So for my performance art piece i decided to try and give the public a soundtrack to what they were doing. I've always loved music, and i'm always listening to it, normally i fit it to my mood or what i'm doing. I followed joggers, walkers, people shopping, and people sitting! I chose songs i would imagine myself listening to doing these things. I had a lot of mixed reactions, sometimes people loved it! Sometimes people sped off away from me. But mostly, and most interestingly, people didnt react at all. I found this fascinating, a lot of the time I was very close, almost uncomfortable so (at least for an English person!) but yet they still did not react! People looked at me a lot, which is something you cannot necessarily see in the film, because they are careful not to turn their heads. I think this shows that people are either scared to react, because they don't know how to, or they simply are used to things like this. Nowadays increasing amounts of people walk around playing music off of their phones, so at times I felt like people were mainly reacting to the louder volume of mine. I got a few reactions also when I just played the 'soundtrack' to what i was doing.
I found this really interesting to do, and if i was to do it again I would perhaps target more runners. Also I would try to get the courage to do it on campus where I feel it might have been less ignored!

Colossal

I've been on colossal for a few hours now, it's definitely one of the best time wasters! and in searching performance i found this video http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/06/the-time-you-have-in-jelly-beans/

this is my favourite i've seen so far. I'm not completely sure why, probably just because its a really interesting way to display a really powerful message. There's something sort of eery about seeing your life in beans!

I just watched this interview about performance art with Marina Abramovic, i couldnt make it load using youtube, so heres the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_CMzjLGGaM
I found it very interesting. She talks about how she did not realize herself to be a performance artist to start with, she was a painter, then realised she was using her body in many ways, making her a performance artist. She then goes on to discus some of the things she has done and the messages of them, such as eating an Onion and discussing her dislikes, and making relevance of the layers.

So in my search for different performance art pieces I was looking at the work of Marina Abramovic, and stumbled upon her piece Balkan Erotic Epic. I made my roommate watch it with me..It was definitely something different. I mean I never actually finished watching it, mostly because we were either in shock or giggling too much. It was an interesting piece, especially some of the things she said the Balkans did, and it was definitely very memorable, but i don't think i'll be watching that one again!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIN8Cm5rYXY&bpctr=1384408228

Our Last Project

I am actually really happy with how my last project went, it turned out almost exactly how i'd planned, but even better. I had never made the link that my project would not even be able to exist without me holding it. I had the original link that the instrument did not play without me, but I did not make this deeper connection myself originally, this really connected it with the surrealist movement. This is how it turned out!

Not being sick would make my life so much easier..almost threw up in michaels..oops!