Exhibition Screencaps

Here ya go:
http://s757.photobucket.com/albums/xx215/KivvaIvvey/screencaps%20part%20deux/

Exhibition!

Since I was mostly taking video, I was usually the one behind the camera.
But you can play a little game of Where's Waldo? below

L▲ JOLL▲ PL▲YHOUSE

"Ah, gotta gett upstaiirrss dwdd"

"So, what's the deal with airplane food?"

"Just setting up the sound guys"

Here's the rest:
http://s757.photobucket.com/albums/xx215/KivvaIvvey/school/

Internship Site Visits

"Survival"
* Where is your internship?
The Casbah, near Little Italy/Mission Hills

* How did you get there?
Got a ride

* How long did it take?
To get there? Like 20-ish minutes, but I was driving from Bonita. It takes less time to get there from South Park.

* What did you eat for breakfast?
I got coffee from Gelato Vera on my way to school after, not really "breakfast".

* What food, coffee, or other survival options are nearby?
Gelato Vera, Lucha Libre, Saffron, Subway, El Camino, and a bunch of stuff in Little Italy.

* What can you eat for lunch in a normal day at internship?
I dunno. Anything I listed above I suppose.

* Where will you sit, stand, be, or work when you are internship?
It depends on what day, and what I'm doing. But the probably the office at the Casbah.

* Where are the bathrooms?
They are in the back of the building on the right.

People
* Who is your mentor and what is he or she like?
My mentor is Tim. He's pretty cool.

* What stands out most or seems most interesting about your mentor?
I don't know

* Who are your other coworkers?
Not completely sure yet.

* What stands out most or seems most interesting about your future coworkers?
See above question.

Work
* What is your internship project likely to be?
Updating show information, and design stuff I guess.

* What skills will you use at your internship?
Design

* What are you likely to learn at internship?
Different things that go into running a venue/business.

* What will you create at your internship?
We'll see...

Thoughts
* What might present a challenge at internship?
Um...

* What is surprising about your internship?
I don't know, I'm familiar with it already so it's not that surprising.

* How will you stand out at your internship?
I'm a teenager...

* What will you do to make the most of this opportunity?
Put effort into the work I'm doing and do the best job I can do.

And...
* Create your own question and answer it here....

* What colour is the building you're interning at?
Red//Silver

Theater Work

The following are examples of how the separate sections of documentary footage may look like, not necessarily in content, but visually/aesthetically. (Titles, B-Roll, etc.)

The interview footage is just for example//filler and will be different footage relating to each subject.
Audio is missing, but the video would have audio from voiceovers via interview and other relevant footage.

Federal Theatre Project

The Federal Theatre Project was a project created during the Great Depression to fund live artistic work (like theatre), in the United States. It was established to help out-of-work artists find work and income, as well as entertain poor families during the depression.

The FTP was controversial for often criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court, the most notable example being in Triple-A Plowed Under, which attacked the Supreme Court for killing an aid agency for farmers.

(needs editing/more)

Theater Jobs - editing & revision

The current project I am working on is a video for our project's kickstarter page. The 2 minute video will be on the top of the page, above the project description. When somebody looks at our kickstarter page, the video will be the first thing they see, so the majority of people at the page will probably end up watching it. This means that the video must be good enough to convince people to give us their money.

At first it started out as a storyboard, seeming somewhat similar to how a trailer would look. However one thing that was missing was exactly what questions needed to be answered. I came up with multiple questions based on the two points that needed to be shown in the video, the first being what the project is, and the second being give us money.

Watching videos of successful kickstarter projects, it seemed apparent that the video didn't need to be too complicated. A lot of the successful projects had short videos describing their projects. This was good because in all honesty, with the small spaces of time given to do the video, trying to make something really detailed would probably end up looking horrible.

So Kevin Aceves and I got footage of a few students (two writers, project manager, and production manager) to explain different aspects of our project, why we need money, and how people can donate. Right now, it is towards the end of the editing stage, and it's looking like it'll be finished by tomorrow. I would post examples, however I don't have any screenshots at home.

Theater Job

Example One: Interview

Because I'm interviewing people

Example Two: Documentary

This one is obvious...

Example Three: Kickstarter
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078726644/project-891-theatre-company-presents-our-leading-l?ref=live

Our Class's Play

I guess the best parts of our classes play would be the plot. It seems like the the writers have a good idea of what the plot is going to be so far.

I dunno...

HMLT DGTL ESSAY

Digital Play

Blog Eleven: Digital Plays

For this mini project I am using my skills as a "documentarian" to make a mocumentary.

Our group decided to make a mockumentary about an awful theatre group trying to put on a version of Hamlet (I think)

I will be taking footage and editing it to look like a documentary, while other members of the group are acting as characters in the mockumentary.

I have no clue what this is. I appear to be on the ground?

Here I am an actor being "interviewed"

Here, the stage props are falling apart on the "actors" of the play.

Blog Ten

We have only been in school for about a month now, but so far the school year doesn't seem much different from previous years at HTHMA. The only thing that "stands out" is the actual mix of people in class, which is interestingly different from last year.

What stands out to me about my humanities is the amount of freedom we have. Right from the start, with the American Icons project, we had the opportunity to chose a topic that we thought was important for our writing. The next project seems like something that we will be able to put a lot of our own ideas in as well.

I've been reading Trainspotting, which has "made me think" (I guess). If you don't already know, a good portion of Trainspotting centers around a group of friends dealing with heroin addiction. Since I am not addicted to heroin or any psychoactive substances, I obviously would not have that type of understanding and perspective. But the gross, dark, weird stories inside Trainspotting make me think about the view on life that someone addicted to heroin has.

Blog Nine

(famous smartass Pauly Shore)

One thing that stood out was how much of a sarcastic smartass Hamlet can be. In Act 1 scene 2 he totally just ignored what Claudius said, when he replied to a small thing Gertrude said, after a million paragraphs of Claudius talking

Another thing I noticed was how in Act 1 scene 3, Laetres talks to Ophelia very differently than he does to Polonius, almost talking down to Ophelia.

Blog Eight: Icons Reflections

What stood out to me was how much it seemed like people put a lot of effort in to their pieces to tell you about something/someone they connect to. You got to see a side of someone that you might not see normally.

This was a cool project because we had the chance to write about something we cared about and a little bit of history behind what we were talking about. I think that this project taught me a lot about writing and I gained a lot of knowledge that will help improve future writing.

Now that we're getting closer to publishing the book... I actually haven't had many thoughts about the book really.

Blog Seven: Best Icons Work

Elements that I enjoyed in other students' projects were short stories or anecdotes that set up the rest of the story, but were not necessarily a focus or discussed the whole time.

In Adrian Gonzalez's Anonymous piece, part of his intro was "... as a child I thought I could actually be the 10,000th visitor on that website and win $1,000,000", which is something everyone can understand, since everybody has seen those ads online.

In Danielle Weiss' piece I Am Jewish, she discusses her continuum and how she is proud of her family's history and heritage very well, from her Grandparents' lives during the Holocaust, to her trip to Israel. This detail for the continuum is something I would have liked to do better in my own piece.

Blog Six: Final Product

Artifact

Kiva Ivey

I can still remember a time in my life when discovering music on the Internet wasn’t as simple as finding a music blog and downloading a .zip file or .mp3. Many artists who recorded by themselves in their homes as a “hobby” were never heard outside of a circle of friends, and other do-it-yourself musicians who did manage to be heard, like Daniel Johnston or R Stevie Moore were considered a novelty to many. Artists often had to have a commercially accessible appeal, be signed to a “major record label”, and deal with people like managers and producers to become popular with the masses. Musicians would work hard to get their sound tight and send their demos to labels in an attempt to get a “record deal”, a phrase that seems to lose relevance year after year. Now it is 2011, and music can be accessed with the click of a button.

A few years ago, a friend of mine suggested I listen to a band called Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. As I listened I was amazed and confused. What I heard sounded like something I might find on a cassette in a thrift store. But a cassette that someone had re-recorded on his or her Walkman and stretched the tape, and it was absolutely perfect; it felt incredibly human and real. After reading how much music he had available on the Internet, I was overwhelmed, his catalog seemed to outnumber any artist I had heard before, and it was all recorded in the comfort of his own home. I started to wonder what would drive someone to record everything themselves, instead of going to a fancy studio and recording with a producer. The first thing that came to mind was lack of money. But after listening more and more I realized that if Ariel Pink had recorded with a producer telling him what to do, all the bits and pieces of his songs wouldn’t be the same, and it wouldn’t be Ariel’s music anymore, he would have somebody else telling him what they thought sounded good and putting their own ideas in.

This realization sparked my interest in low fidelity recordings, and I dug up my old Tascam four-track cassette recorder and some blank cassettes and went to work. Often times when I was sitting in my room with nothing to do, I would sit down with the Tascam and record whatever came to mind. It was freeing to be able to just sit down and record without limits. With the instruments I had at my disposal; guitars, keyboard, drum machine, etc., I could sit down and make anything I wanted, whether it was a 30 second burst of energy, or a long drone consisting of few notes.

While discovering Ariel Pink was a catalyst to an obsession with recording, it also sparked an interest with finding other lo-fi/home recording artists, discovering many in this very city. Finding great local bands like Heavy Hawaii, Crocodiles, and Wavves gave me quite a bit of inspiration, and a sense of pride for living here that I didn’t have before. The best example would be local solo act Wavves who went from high school dropout, recording songs about being bored, or having no friends in his parents’ garage on GarageBand, to playing festivals in Europe within a matter of months. This is why I find it strange when I hear kids say things like “I want to start a band and become a rockstar”, because in the times we live in, if you have ideas for music, all you really have to do is record them using the vast amounts of technology available, and the internet will take notice if you make something meaningful.

Blog Five

Out of all the writing tips I think the one that I found most useful was "make meaning early". It is something that seems like a really simple idea but makes a significant difference when writing. When using it, it keeps everything interesting by telling you what happened right away, instead of a long sentence that is just taking up space. Also, It seems to take away that idea of "I have to do X amount of writing for this essay so I'll fill up space by rewording my sentences to be longer".

I'm not sure what I would want anyone to "focus on" while editing. I guess I would want an editor to be able to see anything that would need improvement, or suggest something I could add to make my writing better.

I would like to improve my writing by concentrating on one thing more. I feel like sometimes I have a lot of different, smaller ideas that I try to put in my writing, but it would be good to try and take less ideas and expand on them.

Blog Three: Icons, Info & Resources

Because I love music and play music, I wanted to cover the topic of DIY musicians and why I find them inspirational in my artist statement. These are some artists that are covered in my icon piece.

Ariel Pink:

The main icon I am focusing on and discuss throughout my artist statement is musician Ariel Pink. The ideas related to this icon that I plan on "pushing" focus on his growing popularity due to the internet, the way I feel inspired by how he records everything by himself, and why I think people like Ariel Pink are important to music today.

I think he is important to music today because I feel he paved the way for a lot of other home-recording artists to grow in popularity, and has influenced other people (like myself) to record music on their own and be creative.

1. Ariel Pink when asked how many songs he has recorded:

"Too many to count. And what exactly is a song anyway? I've got hundreds of recordings, varying in quality and content, not all songs, and not all accounted (there just isn't enough time to sift through every instant recording session I've made on the fly), and I also have many songs that I haven't yet recorded, but could call to mind if needed."

(Found at: http://www.angelfire.com/la3/zanna/press/identity.html)

2. Interview with Ariel Pink at MIDI Festival from 2006

In this interview Ariel goes in depth about his process of recording, why he records by himself, and what he gets from making music.

3. Interview with Ariel Pink and R Stevie Moore

This interview is a great piece of evidence, not only because Ariel Pink is interviewed, but home-recording artist R Stevie Moore is also interviewed. R Stevie Moore is another home recording artist who is further up in the "continuum" of home recording artists. If Ariel Pink were to write an artist statement like this, he probably would choose R Stevie Moore

Wavves:

Although not a major focus, I mention San Diego musician Nathan Williams and his recordings as Wavves. He is brought up when I mention local San Diego musicians who record by themselves that have gained notoriety, however there are many other artists from San Diego I could discuss in my artist statement.

The ideas related to this icon that I would want to "push" would be about him and other artists being from San Diego, giving me a sense of pride and hope for San Diego. Another idea would be him recording by himself without any producer or other musicians, making the music sound the way he wants it to. Also possibly discussing how somebody recording songs about "human" subjects (like being bored, hating where you live, and feeling negatively about yourself) is inspiring and easier to relate to than a lot of other popular music.

1. Excerpts from Prefix Magazine interview:

Prefix: You and a whole slew of up-and-coming artists utilize a no-fi sound that the Smell and Baltimore’s Wham City champion. Do you think this movement is just a continuation of earlier iterations, or does it stem from a particular reaction against modern over-production?

Nathan: Probably both. Personally, I had no money to go to a studio, so I did it myself with the stuff I had.

Prefix: How old is your equipment? What do you use besides Garage Band?

Nathan: I use Garage Band. The Tascam I used as well was from the ‘80s.

(Found at: http://www.prefixmag.com/features/wavves/interview-at-nme-awards-video/26971/)

2. Excerpts from Fur and Loathing interview:

F&L: So what prompted you to start Wavves?

Nathan: I quit my job at the time. I dropped out of college. I wasn’t really doing anything else.

F&L: You were “so bored”?

Nathan: Pretty much. So I decided to start recording.

(Found at: http://furandloathing.blogspot.com/2009/09/wavves-interview.html)

3. Interview with Wavves at SXSW 2009

Although brief, Nathan Williams discusses why he records music by himself and the impact it has had on his life

Other Resources:

Art Fag Recordings

A San Diego record label, consisting of many artists who record on their own.

Fader Magazine

Fader has written many pieces on Ariel Pink and Wavves, but they have also covered many other DIY artists that could be included in my artist statement.

Crocodiles

If I cover local music more in my artist statement, I could mention Crocodiles, who I am very inspired by. Their blog also has links to many other musicians blogs.

Blog Two: American Icon Ideas

Icon #1: Thurston Moore

My first idea for an "American Icon" was Thurston Moore, guitarist/vocalist for the band Sonic Youth.

To me, Thurston Moore represents major creativity and innovation in music. When Sonic Youth started in 1981, not many bands were taking the same risks as them. In Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore used his own guitar tunings, a wide variety of effects pedals, and unorthodox methods of playing guitar (like using drum sticks) to create loud, distorted, noise, which at points might not even be recognizable as a guitar. In my opinion, this was more innovative and "Punk Rock" than the bands associated with the Punk movement of the time. In addition to playing guitar for Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore founded DIY label "Ecstatic Peace!", which I find very inspirational, as I have always been drawn to DIY ethics when it comes to music and art.

Sonic Youth is very inspirational to me, and became important to me when I was a young child, being one of the first bands I remember hearing, and seeing live. They are also important to me because of their influence on other bands from my childhood, such as Dinosaur Jr., and innovative "shoegaze" band My Bloody Valentine, both known for their own creative ways of playing the electric guitar and defining genres.

Icon #2: Ariel Pink

My second icon idea was home-recording artist Ariel Pink.

I believe people like Ariel Pink represent how much the music "industry" has changed over the past decade. He is proof that really anybody can make music and put it out for the world to hear. 20 years ago, Ariel Pink would most likely be a name unknown to most, with his 4 track recordings heard only by friends of his. However this is not the case, as he has become widely known and accepted by many.

Although the internet has had some negative effects on music, it's hard not to be grateful for the amount of music I have had the pleasure of hearing over the past few years because of the internet. The first time I heard Ariel Pink, I thought it was inspiring to hear a person with no money who sits at home recording music buried under tape hiss, making drum noises with their mouth, record songs that are a hundred times better than a highly produced, teen pop star. This is inspiring to me because as someone who listens to, and plays music, it makes me happy to know that with patience it's possible to make good art with little resources, and that music is getting to (if not already at) the point where things like record labels, producers, etc. aren't needed to put music out for others to enjoy.

Icon #3: Sonic Boom/Spacemen 3

My third idea was Pete Kember, a.k.a. Sonic Boom.

As someone who enjoys music, I like to buy records from bands I like when I can. One of the rewards of buying vinyl is seeing the packaging, artwork, and album credits listed. On many records I have bought over the years, I would often see the names Sonic Boom or Spacemen 3 listed in thank you lists, or name-checked by musicians in interviews, I knew I had to find out what was so special about them. When I first listened to Spacemen 3 my thoughts on music started to change, I started to wonder how music that consisted of only two or three notes could be so engaging.

Spacemen 3 was a band notorious for the simplicity of their music. Often times their songs would consist of one or two chords used throughout the whole song, and would sometimes last as long as twenty minutes, however they filled their songs with feedback, distorted instruments, and drones, making the songs more of a listening experience that plays with your ears, as opposed to something with a catchy guitar riff you can tap your toe to. This mentality was brought in to Kember's solo projects Spectrum, and Sonic Boom.

My fascination with Sonic Boom is similar to why I thought of Thurston Moore for this. I think that Sonic Boom was another person willing to take risks with music, despite criticism from others. And although he isn't from America, Sonic Boom has influenced many musicians from the states like My Bloody Valentine, and Panda Bear, who also share a similar "less is more" attitude when it comes to their music.

Blog One

This year there are many things that seem exciting, but I think I am most excited for internships. I think that internships will be a great experience that will help me gain more perspective on what possibilities there are after high school. But as far as humanities goes, I am excited to learn more about American history, as well as some of the projects we will be doing this semester, like the American Icon project. It will be interesting to take a deep look at how someone else has significantly inspired or impacted me, even if it is someone that I might not know personally.