casey hall

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Farewell Postcard

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Fifth Amazing Thing I Saw and Heard: Daredevil

Let me preface this by saying that Daredevil, and Marvel in general, is not perfect. Diversity is a big issue, as well as the treatment of Daredevil’s Asian characters, who at the moment are only being portrayed as two-dimensional villains. I also really think that the idea of the Hand (the evil group of Asians who are super mystical for no apparent reason other than that they’re Asian) really weakened the point of the show by a lot.

Now, with all that negativity out of the way, I can explain why Daredevil is amazing despite its flaws.

First, the basic idea of the show. Matt Murdock is a blind superhero. He’s a lawyer and a vigilante. He’s Catholic, but he’s called the Devil. So much juxtaposition of opposing ideas here, I love it so much. Something that was addressed more in the second season is Matt’s moral conflicts. Frank Castle, the Punisher, a supposed villain who ends up being sort of a protagonist (and incidentally now is going to have his own TV show, score a billion for white men), tells Matt at one point, “you’re one bad day away from being me,” and he’s not wrong really. Matt is toeing the line, and in the second season especially it isn’t clear who is good and who is evil. It’s great that the characters aren’t quite so cookie-cutter (excluding the ugly outlier, the Hand).

Second, the fight scenes. These fight scenes are beautiful and imaginative and creative. One of the more famous ones is the Hallway Fight Scene. It was filmed in one take (or so it appears to my untrained eye) and it takes place only in the hallway. Various characters are pulled from the adjacent rooms, and the camera moves up and down, but it’s continuous and fascinating. (Of course, one might wonder why it was necessary for Matt to even start the fight, but we’ll just put it down to the Devil he talks about with his priest). The fight scene was so well-received that in the second season there is a sort of homage to it. This fight scene has more than one take, but each take is still significantly longer than takes in more conventional fight scenes. This one starts in a hallway and is very reminiscent of the one from season one, then it moves to a staircase, with the film crew following behind the actors and stuntmen, spiraling around and around until reaching the ground floor.

Third, the lighting. It’s so symbolic and adds a lot to the mood of the show. When Matt Murdock is being lawyer-Matt the lighting is very white and natural. When he is Daredevil the lighting becomes vividly yellow, as a nod to the yellow costume from the comics. Sometimes (more noticeably in the second season) the lighting becomes a vivid red (also a nod to the costumes).

Lastly, something I love and hate about the show is that it isn’t stagnant. A lot of TV shows have the characters basically remaining the same the whole time, in an effort to increase the longevity of the show, but in Daredevil, each of the characters is in vastly different places than they were at the start. I love this because it keeps it interesting and it reflects reality a bit more, but I hate it because they killed my bromance and we didn’t even get enough bromantic moments. This is why there’s fanfiction though.

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Manifesto: Five Ideas Significant to Architecture

Image: Dan Price’s Hobbit House in Oregon

1.     Who: How to appease a client

This isn’t applicable to all architecture, so perhaps it is not entirely fitting for this to be included, but when designing a piece of architecture for a specific person or group of people, that person or group of people is pivotal to the outcome of all design ideas. The ideas are for the client, not for the architect, in cases where a client is involved at all. If an architect can’t handle deferring to the client in such cases, then perhaps he or she should stick to paper architecture.

2.     What: How to create something beautiful

The design process is one that is often not taught because most people do not understand that it is a process. People seem to think that creative ideas just grow on their own and become beautiful without much effort, but that is not the case. Much lateral thinking is involved. First, it is necessary to brainstorm, coming up with as many initial ideas as possible. Then the architect would consider the pros and cons of each idea, discarding the weakest ones in favor of the stronger ones. Next he or she would flesh out the remaining ideas, perhaps showing them to others for critiques. The architect would continue discarding weak ideas and strengthening the stronger ones with the help of others until one idea is left supreme.

3.     When: How to relate architecture to the time period

Just as architecture is very reliant on the client, it is also reliant on the time period in which it was imagined and created. Architecture, as a semi-permanent thing, is a landmark in the timeline of history. The older a building is, the more significant it seems. Thus the existence of historical societies meant to preserve such buildings. However, this must be taken with a grain of salt. Architecture is also significant in the impermanent too. In certain places buildings are put up and torn down quite swiftly, and some might think that that’s a waste and that building to last is more important. But architecture serves a purpose, and so having a building around for longer than it’s needed or wanted just doesn’t make sense. The changing of architecture reflects the changing of times. In previous eras, change was slow, but nowadays it’s fast, and architecture reflects this more and more.

4.     Where: How to relate architecture to the site

Architecture is client-specific and time-specific, so it stands to reason that it is also site-specific. Of course, this is not always the case, but it usually is. In paper architecture it is possible to create something entirely in a void, and sometimes, as in the Endless House, that gives it an extra dimension that site-specificity would take away, but in built architecture it is impossible to create something site-specific. The slope of the land, the size and shape of the area to be designed, the surroundings all contribute to the final design. Many times the site can even provide inspiration for a design. If an architect were designing in a void, he or she would have to make the design an entirely free-standing idea, but in a site the design can rely on its surroundings and take its shape from there (not always literally).

5.     Why: How to find meaning in architecture

Meaning in architecture isn’t some grand notion, as many people are inclined to think when thinking of art. Rather, meaning is found in the experience the architecture creates. Architecture, like art, fosters emotions. However, unlike art, it does so in a physical way. A building can create a feeling of closeness, even feeling stifling, or it can be open and airy, making the person feel as if they are about to float away. In art, these same ideas would only be manifested in the viewer’s mind, but in architecture it is tangible. Architecture can change people’s behaviors and thought patterns. Architecture influences culture and productivity. Architecture is powerful.

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Friedrichstrasse

This image shows a tall, pointy building viewed from street-level. The building’s pointy nature and the height of the surrounding buildings emphasizes a strong perspective view and the three dimensional nature of the image. The image is awash in yellow, but the two buildings framing the image and the street are black, further emphasizing three-dimensionality.

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Transmutations

Image: Jirí Kolár, Bez názvu, koláz, 1969

The lecture entitled The Gunslinger and the Pharmacist: Collage in the Poetry of Michael Ondaatje and Christian Hawkey is all about various forms of collage, covering collage of words and collage of images.

Collage of words can be made of purposeful mistranslations and imagined interviews mixed in with facts and correct translations to create fiction, a ghost story. One example was two different translations of the same piece of text; one was the direct translation, and the other was made up of lines from the Odyssey and the Iliad. Another example is when Christian Hawkey took Georg Trakl’s German words and wrote them in English based on the way they sound, leading to some whimsical ideas being created.

Collage of images is the more recognized kind of collage. The main example from this lecture was Jirí Kolár’s Cow Having Eaten Up Canaletto, in which Kolár takes Canaletto’s image of the Grand Canal in Venice, cuts it in the shape of a cow, while making the shapes of the Grand Canal correspond with the shape of the cow to bring out the cow’s presence more, and then places it in the setting a cow might be in.

I liked this lecture a lot because it explored various creative ideas that I had not previously thought of. I knew poems were supposed to be designed prose, but the idea of making words a collage in and of themselves is a more interesting kind of poetry to me. Also, before this lecture I was under the impression that all collages (and abstract art, if we’re being entirely honest) were arbitrarily made and ultimately meaningless (and much of it probably is). Seeing examples of good abstract art and collages explained definitely expands my vision of what constitutes art.

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Une Semaine de Bonté

This image shows a Greek/Roman woman hovering above a set of stairs with clouds surrounding both. Given the destruction evident in the fallen column, the clouds might probably be clouds of dust. The woman is curved into an upside down U, and with her tense arms and face she looks to be in pain.

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Fourth Amazing Thing I Saw and Heard: Hansel and Gretel Opera

It’s worth prefacing this by saying that the Honors people lied to me. They said to be at the Tennessee Theater by 6:30, but the show actually started at 7:30. Sure, I probably could have checked the ticket, but I blame them for my being an hour early. I’m not used to that. Thank goodness I brought a book (Dune, but that’s a talk for another time).

The Tennessee Theater is pretty amazing in itself. The lobby is like a smaller, darker, redder version of the Orpheum in Memphis, but then the house is much more spacious and more colorful. The spaciousness is probably due to its ellipse shape and lack of extra balconies; the Orpheum is more of a rounded cube compared to the Tennessee Theater. The color in the theater was surprising to me. In faux windows on the edges of the theater they used lights that change color throughout the performance. I loved how they made use of the entire theater as opposed to just limiting themselves to the space behind the proscenium arch; it pulled the audience into the story.

The colors they used for the side lights were quite whimsical and so they suited the story quite nicely.

Before the opera began a guy made a speech about the opera and the theater and all that jazz. He mentioned that most of the set was from one place, but two pieces in the forest scene were borrowed from a high school (if that’s wrong forgive my poor memory), and, yeah, there were two pieces of the set in the forest scene that clearly stood out as not fitting in. Two creepy trees that swiveled around and had blinking eyes were distractingly creepy. I could hear other people in the audience being creeped out, it was like a ripple of uneasiness washed over us.

Other than that, the set was quite nice, very whimsical and visually interesting.

The story is a fairly grim one, if you think about it, but it was told quite cheerfully overall. The least cheerful part was right before intermission when Hansel and Gretel were alone in the woods and trying to fall asleep. That was fairly melancholy. They had dancers for that part, but they seemed like a volunteer group from a high school, quite honestly. I was hoping for more professional dancers like the ones I’d seen in the only other opera I’ve seen – Dido and Aeneas.

The performers sang well. I thought the acting was a bit over the top, but then again that might be a typical characteristic of operas. At several points during the opera I wondered if the performers were using microphones; their voices seemed strong enough that they might not need them, and it didn’t really sound like they were, but I really couldn’t tell.

Plot hole though: why didn’t Hansel just not eat all the sweets the witch tried feeding him? Then the witch would never want to try to eat him.

Also, the two women who were Hansel and Gretel did an excellent and very believable job.

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Ronchamp Door Mural

This abstract image shows some hands centered around the middle, a star to the left, little diagonal dashes all around, and a squiggly shape in the bottom right. The dashes look like rain, and some blobs at the top look like clouds. The hands look like they’re warming themselves, and the squiggly bit looks like a road.

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Designing Data

Photo: Weather Portraits 2014, Nicholas Rougeux, 2015, http://www.c82.net/blog/?id=71

The idea of designing data and creating diagrams and collages out of quantitative information as opposed to qualitative is an uncommon one. Scientists and researchers unconsciously tend to separate themselves from designers and artists. The objective and subjective personalities are almost polar opposites, so it is not surprising that such a separation should exist. Yet this separation leaves a void in creativity. Scientists do not have the mind for aesthetics, and designers do not have mind for experiments and research. Left to their own devices scientists would create tables and charts without thought for presentation or beauty, only concerned that the information was there. Designers would only have the means to create imaginative works that are ultimately unconnected and meaningless to reality. By working together scientists and designers could create something relevant to everyone, rather than just the people who are mentally equipped to read their creations and appreciate them.

The above poster created by Nicholas Rougeux depicts the weather in 2014 in various cities in the United States. Each state is represented by a city, and I am quite pleased to say that Memphis represents Tennessee. As shown in the chart explaining the poster, the top half of each colorful circle represents the highest temperature, the lower half the lowest temperature, the size the range of temperatures, and the circle a day in the year. The line length represents the speed of the wind, and the line angle the source of the wind. All this data could be found elsewhere, in numbers in a table perhaps. It would be neatly laid out in black and white, but this is so much more interesting. Rougeux’s website details the process that he took to get to this design, and it is fascinating how many different ways other than a simple table of information he came up with to represent the same information. My favorites of his previous designs include Version 8, which looks like a bunch of mountains around a lake;

Version 11, which looks like a Jaw Breaker that’s been cut in half, or like a diagram of the layers of the Earth;

and Version 15, which is the closest of these three to his current version and the inspiration for the background color of the poster, since to him it looked like a diagram of the solar system.

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The Future of Architecture

This image shows a dilapidated, old-fashioned car in the foreground and a dilapidated high-rise in the background with another car between them. Nature encompasses the rest of the picture, with a large bird of prey lording over it all. The yellow sky and yellow lighting adds to a feeling of dilapidation and oldness.

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Twelfth Station

This image is comprised of black and off-white vertical sections. Hopefully, the artist had some intent in mind when creating this, but at first glance it seems quite plain and purposeless. Perhaps the image we are meant to see is subtle, and can only be found in the shadows, or perhaps it can be seen by turning the head to the side and seeing a far off skyline in the blobs.

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El Lissitzky

This abstract painting consists of various shapes - an axonometric rectangle, a gray trapezoid, a black, dominating circle, an upside down cross, and four lines. The two horizontal lines are tangents for the cross and the axon. The vertical line touches the corner of the trapezoid where diagonal meets horizontal, and it also intersects the axon’s horizontal line. The only diagonal line neatly bisects the circle and connects the two horizontal lines. The shapes are there for variety, and the lines are there for unity.

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Vogue Story

Her mind could not help but create a mini-colosseum as she read the story of the Roman gladiators. Vivid and dreamlike, the imagined colosseum was host to many other spectacles including fantastic creatures from all over the conquered territories of Rome. Featuring a live elephant and roaring lions, the arena grounds were not without excitement in the absence of gladiators. The majestic animals that were paraded around echoed the far off ideas of far off lands in the minds of the Roman audience, accustomed as they were to the temperate climes of the Mediterranean they could only imagine the torrid setting from which the animals came, the dry savannas and deserts. Rome was a lush, sculpture-strewn Garden of Eden in comparison.

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Visual Magnetism

Left: El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent; Right: Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth

Most composed images have a foreground, middle ground, and background. They might follow the rule of thirds, keeping the focus appropriately away from the edges and centers of the composition. Some paintings take it a step further though, using two-dimensionality to their advantage. The above paintings, El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent and Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, fall into the category of paintings that take it a step further. These such paintings have what I might call visual magnetism, because they draw the viewer’s gaze in like a magnet.

El Jaleo’s background takes up half the canvas. The flat plane serves to put the focus on the dancer’s movement and the musicians’ sounds. It shortens the room, thereby pulling the viewer into it and sweeping the viewer along with the dancer.

Christina’s World expresses two-dimensionality in a different way, though. Not in a plane, but rather in one small spot of the canvas. The barn at the top in the center is in elevation. Christina’s hand and the angle of her body direct our gaze across an empty expanse to the small buildings at the top of the canvas. The flatness of the barn in the center only makes it look farther away. Therefore, the viewer is pulled into the canvas along with Christina in an effort to get closer to the elusive barn and to bypass the empty middle ground.

These two paintings and others like them use two-dimensionality to create a three-dimensional world in which the viewer can become the participant.

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Third Amazing Thing I Saw and Heard: A Lesson Before Dying

The play starts out slow. There are seven characters and three settings on one set. It’s not big and showy like Titus Andronicus, but it meant more. It is about a black man, Jefferson, pronounced guilty by a white jury for a murder he didn’t commit; he is sentenced to death by the electric chair.

Throughout the play people are trying to help him in his last days.

The woman who raised him brings him food and clothes and convinces a priest and a school teacher to help him learn how to be a man before he dies. Her role is that of a catalyst.

The priest is motivated by his own relationship with God. He says he wants Jefferson to go to heaven when he dies. He is sure in his beliefs and judges others who don’t have the same beliefs and motivations. What he fails to realize is that not everyone needs God, and so his actions have an inherently selfish tone.

The sheriff is symbolic of the white community of the time. He doesn’t care whether or not Jefferson actually committed the murder. He just wants to get the execution over with in a way that doesn’t inconvenience him: in a storage room and far enough away from Easter so as not to spoil the holiday.

The deputy, Paul, doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to help Jefferson accept his upcoming death, but he empathizes with Jefferson deeply. He grows attached to him despite being told not to. While Paul didn’t try to offer Jefferson wisdom or final comforts, he did provide a friendly presence, and that probably made a lot of difference.

Initially, the school teacher didn’t want to visit Jefferson. He didn’t consider it his problem and didn’t know how he would help anyway. But his girlfriend convinced him otherwise. Her role, like the woman who raised Jefferson, is that of a catalyst. Not a lot of female representation in this play, but that isn’t the point.

The school teacher, Grant, is an interesting character. Eventually, he does teach Jefferson how to die like a man, but more importantly Jefferson teaches Grant how to appreciate his life and gives him a purpose. Grant has no idea what he’s doing. Jefferson teaches Grant how to live, and Grant teaches Jefferson how to die.

This play is about confronting our own mortality. We privileged young people tend to have a subconscious belief that we are invincible, that we are never going to die, that there’s no way anything bad could happen to us. This play shows otherwise, and it shows it in a way that makes it personal. It was terrifying to watch, quite honestly, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the end, quite literally. I heard about half of the audience sniffling and one sincere sob, while I was trying so hard not to let tears past the rims of my eyes that I got a headache. This play is a thought-provoking tear-jerker, do recommend.

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Appalachian Spring

Aaron Copland and the London Symphony Orchestra, Appalachian Spring: Very Slowly, 1944

This piece of music begins in a story-like fashion, continuing on in a conversational tone. The pace is calm and slow until the composer tries to shock the audience out of complacence. From there the piece is quick and cheerful, moving on in a light-hearted, adventurous way.

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Visual Arguments

Photo: https://astrologyandart.wordpress.com/tag/illustrations/

The quote quoted at the beginning of Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (“Why do we have a mind if not to get our way?” – Fyodor Dostoyevski) makes an excellent point. It might seem far too centered around the individual’s self, but since everybody is the center of their own universe it makes lots of sense. This mentality is the basis of all arguments, including visual ones.

The idea of visual arguments is practically unheard of these days; everyone uses words. Images are too sophisticated for them. No one even knows what I mean when I say “visual arguments.” I Googled “visual arguments” for an image to go with this post and I got absolutely nothing useful. It was a bunch of propaganda. Way too heavy-handed for this intellectual vibe I’m going for, so I actually had to get somewhat creative in my search for images. Thus, the above reference to the lecture from before spring break: St. Jerome in his study, but modified by a colorful galaxy. It’s like he is more connected to God now, as he translates the word of God from Latin, or his mind is expanding to encompass the whole universe as opposed to that one room. It’s an interesting dialogue between the old image and the new. I like how it explores St. Jerome’s experience instead of just saying that this moment in history is significant.

Visual arguments are made up of symbols that the viewer of the argument understands because society and the culture of the time make its meaning evident. These symbols can range from things as tangible as a skull, making the meaning obvious, to something as intangible as lighting and coloring, making the meaning subtler.

Voilá, visual arguments explained with words. Super ironic.