Friday's symposium focused on the liberal art majors: Creative Writing and Art History. For me, I wasn't really all that interested. These aren't major majors. They are minors or you could double major, but you have to submit a letter of intent to the program to even be considered. That was a surprise for me, but at least I learned something.

For the Creative Writing part, they had a teacher who teaches poetry. It was interesting the way he spoke of form and content and how they relate to each other. However, it had the same vibe as the painting symposium the week before and sort of bored me. But poetry and I never really clicked like that. I wish they had more than just him speak for the Creative Writing. He focused more on what they do in the department instead of the real world in a sense, trying to expand on form and content and words and colors.

The Art History part seemed interesting since history is interesting, to a point. They showed us appropriated pictures from now and explained the impact of the original photo and how art history has changed us. For me, I just can't tell when an art work is 'shocking' and changes everything the way artists explain it.

I hope the symposiums in the coming weeks are more entertaining in a sense and aren't 'elevated' in speech and make me sleepier than I began.

I can't wrap my mind around painting nowadays. To me, painting is putting something on a canvas. But from Friday, I realize it is not something I really want to get into. Painting from what I gathered is just making people think and go beyond that canvas and whatever kind of paint (if you're using that) to shock people. It felt too elated for me and had that faux artistic vibe. I felt like it was when Whole Foods sold asparagus water when it was just asparagus in water. Or when Kanye West sold a plain white tee shirt for a lot of money.

When I explained this to my friends who go to KU, they basically reasoned a painting major into a Psych Major. Everyone has one, but not everyone uses them. Being that in painting, you can use other mediums (animation, sculpture, printmaking, etc) and still be called a painter somehow without ever doing the traditional painting. It's so strange.

We're learning about values and how light affects subjects and were to find three pictures that represented chiaroscuro (light/dark). I chose one still from Nosferatu of the main man himself.

Friday we had another symposium. This time it was over Animation and how it's changing. I wanted to do animation to make video games when I was in middle school, choosing to go Olathe Northwest, but changed it once I realized how much time it took and how little patience I have for that. So it wasn't a surprise to hear about how much time and effort people put into animation in the 'real world.' It was also interesting seeing how the Iron Giant changed everything for the medium with 2D mixing with 3D so seamlessly. I have to find somewhere to watch that movie again. I remember crying a lot afterwards.

Moving from that, it felt like it mostly focused on eerie experimental animation.

https://vimeo.com/9465841

https://vimeo.com/31110838

I'm sure there are happier less creepy experimental animations out there, but the ones shown felt like something was going to pop out and I really don't like jump scares. If they did it again, I'm sure the second speaker would reopen the videos before their time and I would want them to speak more about video games and movies and shows and weird animations. It was interesting nonetheless to see the making of that one advert with the vibrant colors.

https://vimeo.com/85719094

https://vimeo.com/85725905

The lighting in the room was perfect for shadow puppets.

As a video student, I sort of had an understanding before hand on how music and film mixed together. Music adds texture to make the audience feel more invested with the story, which is why some people can't get into silent movies because most of the time what we see now are old movies with vintage happy music with it. I did learn new music words however, though it felt a bit at times that the music section and the art section didn't match up and were jammed into the presentation so UMKC students wouldn't get bored.

The dance section was interesting because it was mostly interpretive and a lot was going on. I could barely focus on one dance section without feeling like I was ignoring another part. It was interesting to learn that the cubism movement helped with opening dance up. I knew some of the dance words from my three years of ballet when I was fiveish. The dance moves/stretch was really nice and timed well because I thought I was going to fall asleep during the art section, but I couldn't do that since I was in the front and next to the CEO of the Nelson.

Overall, I learned how people taking risks in art helped others take that jump as well and change the norm and making the audience think about getting away from the traditional portraits and landscapes of the realism and mimic our reality.