WEBSITE

http://students.smcm.edu/kbaier/index.html

Natalia Gonzalez Requena

              I had the pleasure of listening to Natalia talk about her art. She was energetic and humorous. She grew up outside of the U.S. as she had an accent. Her art was different then any art I have seen before. Mainly for what she focuses on. She focuses on experience through three main aspects; body, time, and space. I can tell she really enjoys what she does for a living in the way she becomes  immersed in her work. Her artwork captures movement is many forms. and how time can change your perception of a certain space that is occupied. She also likes focusing on the moment as it is filmed. She wanted to see how the orientation of different objects, particularly a string and a rock and how the shadows change due to time. She showed us a film she created capturing these moments of time and space. One was in a cave with the random placement of lights. Then she proceeded to create a pattern with the lights. The shadows created an interesting view on nature.  Most of her artwork deals with "recordings" and she says they are made mainly through formulation, removal, documentation, indexation  response, direction, alignment, projection, orientation, connection, reflection, and movement. She says she works with mostly environmental things because it allows her to connected on an aesthetically level. Some of the things she works with are; buckets, lights, cameras, sound, tape, chalk, hallways, walls, rooms, string, house, rocks, street, furniture, sand, and mirrors. She likes connecting with the art because artwork is not all about the work itself it is also about the impact the art makes upon people and the artist.
        I enjoyed her concepts about her work more then her artwork herself. Her videos were very disillusioning and not in a good way. I feel as though you need to be there in order to appreciate her artwork more. I like how she has three main aspects and really tries to grasp them. People do not really thing about space, time, and body as a thing that needs to be examined more. I would like to go to one of her galleries in the near future before I really get an understanding on her work. In addition, her exhibits are normally filmed because she feels that there is viewer, artwork bond that should be understood more. Another thing I really respected about Natalia was she was a girl from humble means that became successful because of her passion for trying to understand the unknown.

Assassins Creed

Outside Art lecture!

            I went to listen to a speaker speak about Assassins Creed and how they go about creating the game, unfortunately they stayed away from the creation of the graphics because it was a history professor discussing the game. Anyways, I learned some interesting information about this game and definitely have a lot more respect for the creation of it.

            Apparently they use historical background in the creation of the characters and battlegrounds, which is really neat. Since they didn’t discuss too much about the art ill just name some interesting facts about the creation of the game. They had this rule called “10 second rule” where the creators of the game had 10 seconds to search Google and whatever historical facts they found they felt they should put it in the game. Another thing we talked about was whether or not George Washington had a British or American accent in real life because in the game he was given an American one, but apparently some people think that it depended on whom he was with. He tended to use a British accent to impress important people.

            He was really secretive about a lot of things, which is understandable, but a little disappointing. All in all the graphics of a few clips they showed where so realistic that it was a bit scary. After learning about animation in class and realizing the level of difficulty I respect the art so much more, even if I don’t completely enjoy participating in those types of video games.