Pentathalon Semester 1

Pentathalon Semester 2

Electric Bugaloo

Arts Scholars Game Night

Febuary 6, 2021

This week I attended the Arts Scholars Game Night event, and we discussed various topics while playing a few games such as Telestrations and Among Us. I found the event to be relaxing and a way to connect with other Arts Scholars outside of class and workshops, an opportunity that's been limited due to the ongoing pandemic. Even though the Telestration rounds took a long time due to the number of people, seeing everyone's different interpretations of a phrase or picture and how it affected the theme/object being passed along was really interesting. For example, one person's use of the letter m to denote umd's beloved testudo gradually evolved into McDonald's signature m logo, while the turtle image was wholly preserved. It reminded me of how an artist's original intent, if not expressed explicitly, can easily be lost or taken in a different way: which is something that isn't entirely bad, but results in a lost in the translation situation.

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As for the two rounds of Among Us I was able to play, playing with a different group of people than I did normally was a relatively new experience. For people I've played with before, I can usually look for small tells/patterns that become apparent after playing a lot of rounds. With a new group (and by extension, strangers in public lobbies), you end up relying on different information. Overall, what you know and don't know can affect how things play out, and whether or you become a ghost in Electrical.

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#Presentation

Art Project: Three 20 Minute Bursts

Febuary 27, 2021

​For this pentathlon I decided to a small art project, based on an Arts Scholars provided link. The art itself was done digitally, and in total took 1 hour (or 60 minutes) to complete. The first 20 minute burst concerned just drawing the overall shapes and shadows, which I actually did pretty quickly; which then led to using the remaining time to refine those lines over and over again until it looked more like an actual sketch than a casual gesture drawing. The 2nd phase, color, took longer, and consisted of paint tools and lots of fancy blurring. With the last phase of just taking a break, thinking about what I want to add, and then adding it, I ended up not doing too much to polish the final result.

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Overall, I enjoyed following the instructions for the project idea, even if my personal pace didn't match the equal division of time. I think it just goes to show how artists create on their own time, and there is no official schedule or real rules as to creating a piece of work; someone could take 5 mins to sketch out a beautiful outline, and someone else could take 10, but both are completely fine approaches.

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As for what the actual subject of my art is: this bottle of paper flowers was a gift from my aunt as a kid.

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#Visual Art

Dapper Street's Dope Jazz Music Series

March 3, 2021

For this week's Pentathlon, I was able to catch the live stream featuring Jullian Park and The D'wayne Jordan Music Collective. Generally speaking, listening to featured renditions of Black Coffee and People Make the World Go Round was a new experience as someone who isn't really an expert in Jazz but I really enjoyed the music. Something that interested me was how Jazz would feature different solos/lead instruments, especially with how the instruments cooperated rather than matched each other. At times it felt almost discordant with how different each instrument was playing, but the music never actually reached that point.

​On another note, the difference between watching live from a stream and watching in-person really shows in how you experience the show. On a screen, what you notice is what the camera decides to show, and what the internet decides the quality should be. But being able to turn the sound up (or down) to better listen to the music is a nice positive to online viewing, letting the viewer adjust their experience to better appreciate the show. But overall, this experience was pretty much learning more about a genre I don't typically listen to, with all it's different quirks and traditions that make it so distinct from different types of music. Am I going to listen to more of this? Damn right I will.

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#Music

 Lecture Recital: An Analysis of Debussy's Proses Lyriques

April 10, 2021

​This week I was able to attend Isabella Cadirola's virtual recital of Proses Lyriques, a lesser known music cycle by Claude Debussy. To start with, the analysis of the piece was interesting to learn, especially how every note was important in shaping the piece, from key to rhythm. One detail that stood out to me was Debussy's interpretation of flowers, where the composer looked beyond the surface beauty and saw not innocence but a deceitful mask hiding thorns. The fact that this was translated directly into how the piece moved was fascinating, and really demonstrated how much of a work of art is intentional, something that often gets glossed over in a more casual viewing.

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Of course the music by itself was hauntingly beautiful, but knowing the meaning behind it and the imagery it's intended to invoke added a lot more layer to it. In a way, it's like how any piece of art/media can be a simple, enjoyable act but what makes it impactful is the meaning it carries, whether it's what the creator intends, or what the audience interprets from it. Overall, the recital was both entertaining and informative, and I gained a lot more appreciation for the careful crafting that goes into making wonderfully complex music and art.

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#Music #Presentation

The Poetic Address to the Nation

April 22, 2021

Something I learned about this event was that USDAC sponsored event was not just poetry, it was poetic. Phrases and verses were accompanied by music and chorus, dancing figures and full on visual productions. In a way, it helped present poetry as something that can be enjoyed in ways other than reading, and also redefined what poetry was. Though, to be fair, the stream was also enjoyable to listen to in itself.

On a more specific note, my favorite part was the poetic address itself, as well as the story circles. It was just something different from what I usually think of when I hear poetry reading, especially with the added visual elements.

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The focus on global issues such as Covid-19 was also really impactful, delivering the message in a way that captivated the audience and illustrated certain parts through flashes of movement and musical beats. Along with the Earth day statement, the overall performance was basically Arts activism in practice. While I'm still not entirely sure what the process is for the submitted works being accepted and featured, I can tell that there was a lot of thought and effort put into each production and there was an overall narrative that tied everything together.

#Poetry

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