Today's Travels

Today made me focus on other aspects of composing that were more interesting to me personally. I got to explore how composition effects artists I admire such as Sally Mann and Richard Wagner which I found very intriguing.

Instead of going to my go-to search engine, Google, I hunted around with different search engines I found on the "Internet Tutorials" page. While they did not necessarily lead me to the articles I ended up using, they gave me the inspiration and ideas to explore what I ended up finding the most interesting. I ended up finding an article that included a story about a colorful rehearsal between Wagner and an orchestra. I also thought more about an artist whose work I greatly admire, Sally Mann. Her photography is very well composed and her process is intriguing. 

At one point in the reading, Manovich discusses the difference between old media and new media and brings up photography. I am by no means a professional photographer, but it is something I definitely enjoy in my free time. He says that even photographs can be divided into old media and new media. Photographs that have been printed and put in a book are classified as "old media" but the exact same photographs placed on a CD would be considered "new media". I'm not sure of my exact opinion on this, but its just something that I found intriguing and I'll have to think on it more the next time I photograph anything.

Manovich also discusses the five principles of new media. The one that I feel I could best employ in a still image photograph and in my own art form, music performance, would be Variability. No two images or performances are ever going to be exactly the same. I think it would be interesting to conduct a project where several performances of the same musical piece are sung/performed and then have them all play at the same time, or in a round. It would be a bit jarring to hear the cacophony of sound that would occur, but it would demonstrate variability very well. A photography project that could be done would be either  taking a time lapse image or a series of photographs taken in the exact same spot at the exact same time every day for a long period of time. In effect the set up would be exactly the same, but the images would vary. I've included a video where 12 pictures are taken every day for a year. Enjoy!