Design requires research. Often times you will need to find an expert on a subject and crystalize their unique perspective with images and words. This requires an open dialogue. You can either approach this work like a journalist or as an oral history project(The latter is much more difficult and requires some training see http://www.doingoralhistory.org/Workshop/Trans_wshop.htm) Talk with you group and decide on subject you would like to find out more about. Perhaps this will require a discussion of the subject of your final projects. There is an example on my blog Pile of Dirt. It is an interview I conducted via email with fashion designer Jade Chiu. I met her on a plane a few years ago and I thought she would be and interesting subject. Come up with about 10 questions based on what you already know about your subject and record their responses through transcription, audio, or video. Post the work (the documentation of your process, the photos, and your interview ) on your blog. This is going to take a lot of planning and coordination so start as soon as you all can.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Designers of the 19th and 20th century: description and image
Edward Gordon Craig: modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, producer, director and scenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings.
sketch by Edward Gordon Craig
Jo Mielziner: American theatrical scenic, costume, and
lighting designer, born in Paris, France
rendering for scene that was cut “Top Banana” 1951
Caspar Neher: Brecht’s designer
Mother courage
Jocelyn Herbert: stage designer, sculptor,
drawings, paintings
Aldophe Appia: Wagner’s Opera, rhythmic spaces,
electricity invention & stage lighting
(modern stage design)
sketch by Aldophe Appia
Joseph Svoboda: artist in light, shade and projections,
he reinvented the stage for drama and opera
Current Designers: brief description and image
George Tsypin: stage designer, sculptor, and architect
known for elaborate use of glass, steel, and fire
known for elaborate use of glass, steel, and fire
Innovative design for “Valkyrie” by George Tsypin
Ming Cho Lee: set designer, assistant to Jo Mielziner
MAKING A SCENE The Bruce exhibition includes a set model for“A Moon for the Misbegotten,” designed by Ming Cho Lee.
Julie Taymor: stage and screen designer (Lion King, Frida)
Eiko Ishioka: costume designer for stage and screen
(the costumes are the sets)
advertising, print
Achim Freyer: set and costume designer, stage director and painter
“Das Rheingold” in a new production by Los Angeles OperaEric Wonder: mixing contrasting visual styles
Guillaume Tell at the Bastille:Andre Acquart: Architectural influence: enormous pivoting, folding structure suggesting both the tents of the Greek camp and the walls and gates of Troy
Robert Wilson: signature use of light, stage and furniture design
“Fables”Richard Foreman: American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer,
founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Richard Foreman MachineSanto Loquasto: scenic designer and costume designer for stage and film
Met Opera setFriday, April 17, 2009
Midterm Paper Guidelines
Midterm Paper Guidelines
TA10 – Spring 09: MIDTERM assignment, dues date: May 5th at the beginning of class.
Submit hardcopy in class, and email electronic copy as an attached word.doc
subject line MUST read midterm and mt_lastname_firstname.doc
attachment MUST also be saved as mt_lastname_firstname.doc
Midterm overview and guidelines
Describe one of your dreams in good prose writing. Pick a designer from the list or your favorite if you have one. Make an argument for the appropriateness of the designer for designing your dream as a stage play or film. MAKE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FORM AND FEELING in your argument. Use 3 of readings on eres to support your argument. You must insert images of the designers work into the word.doc(see instructions below) and you must insert, into your word.doc, your illustrations of your dream (you can make either drawings or a collage. Again see instructions below.)
page 1 thesis w/ description of your dream(100-150 words)
page 2 illustration: parts of the dream (sets and costumes)
page 3 biographical info on the designer (see choices below)
page 4 critical analysis - one of the designers works
page 5 photo of the designer's work you critically analyzed
page 6 describe how your dream scenes would be best suited by this designer.
Current Designers:
George Tsypin
Ming Cho Lee
Julie Taymor
Eiko Ishioka
Achim Freyer
Eric Wonder
Andre Acquart
Robert Wilson
Richard Foreman
Santo Loquasto
Designers of the 19th and 20th century:
Jo Mielziner
Caspar Neher
Jocelyn Herbert
Aldophe Appia
Edward Gordon Craig
Joseph Svoboda
Other professionals: Information on the following designers will be harder to find but its still worth checking them out.
Dipu gupta scenic/architect Santa Fe
Lap-Chi Chu www.lapchichu.com lighting designer NYC
Christopher Barreca designhead CalArts
David Zinn costume /scenic NYC
Melpomene Katakalos www.melpomenekatakalos.com UCSD
Kim A. Tolman scenic design SFBAY
Emily Pepper costume design San Deigo
Emily Greene emilygreenedesigns.com costume
Formatting:
Formatting for the paper is MLA with notes. This means double spaced, 12 pt. Times. You will need to cite three of the articles from our reading.
Here are some links for MLA formatting and notes. The library also has resources.
MLA formatting:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/ If you are not sure about MLA formatting - start with this link to Owl at Purdue (fantastic resource)
Notes:
http://virtual.parkland.edu/walker102/mla.htm : MLA Notes
http://www.docstyles.com/mlacrib.htm :
http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm : color coded examples of how to cite resources
Plagiarism:
http://www.acts.twu.ca/lbr/plagiarism.swf (if you have any doubts about what defines plagiarism - this is a super resource)
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Lessons of Darkness
Manifesto is an assignment that initiates the dialogue between inside and out. It starts the conversation with your own definition of what it is you're doing in design, art, social practices, or theater. It keeps the topic from wandering in directions unproductive to your cause. A manifesto is both political and personal; public and private. Any other content is up to the group. Lots of forms are possible: poetical forms, confessions, dream analysis, situationsist practices, rants, dialogues, interviews, screeds, incendiary tracts, position papers, blogs, photo blogs, video blogs. See Werner Herzog's manifesto or his documentary "Lessons of Darkness" below.
NEWS
Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema
"LESSONS OF DARKNESS"
1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.
2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.
3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.
5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.
6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.
7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."
9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.
10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn´t call, doesn´t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life.
11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.
12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999
Werner Herzog
source: http://www.wernerherzog.com/main/de/html/news/Minnesota_Declaration.htm
Other manifesto resources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ymyiRXCszc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI3f5-Vdi7g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYiNNeESu94
Manifesto
Manifesto of Surrealism.
Movement launched in Paris in 1924 by French poet André Breton with publication of his manifesto of Surrealism. Breton was strongly influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud identified a deep layer of the human mind where memories and our most basic instincts are stored. He called this the unconscious, since most of the time we are not aware of it. The aim of Surrealism was to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life. The Surrealists did this in literarature as well as art. Surrealism also aimed at social and political revolution and for a time was affiliated to the Communist party. There was no single style of Surrealist art but two broad types can be seen. These are the oneiric (dream-like) work of DalÃ, early Ernst, and Magritte, and the automatism of later Ernst and Miró. Freud believed that dreams revealed the workings of the unconscious, and his famous book The Interpretation of Dreams was central to Surrealism. Automatism was the Surrealist term for Freud's technique of free association, which he also used to reveal the unconscious mind of his patients. Surrealism had a huge influence on art, literature and the cinema as well as on social attitudes and behavior.
source: http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=292
other resources:
http://www.screensite.org/courses/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm
Group URLs
Here are the first of the URLs ...be sure to follow each others blogs.
Nice work!
Al
The Mad Hatters (9 members)
The GE Show (13 members)
Team Venture (11 members)
The Pink Pansies (12 members)
Leaps and Bounds (14 members)
The Right Angles (10 members)
The Fourth Wall
Buffet Productions
http://buffetproductions.blogspot.com
Where's Sofie? (7 members)
http://ifucamy.blogspot.com
Team Redundancy Team Wednesday Rainbow Department Ninja Force Guild 7
http://trtwrdnfg7go.blogspot.com
http://buffetproductions.blogspot.com
Where's Sofie? (7 members)
http://ifucamy.blogspot.com
Team Redundancy Team Wednesday Rainbow Department Ninja Force Guild 7
http://trtwrdnfg7go.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Syllabus/Schedule
Syllabus
TA 10: Intro to Design
Tues. & Thurs. 10a-11:45a Theater Arts Second Stage
Instructor: Alan Tollefson
Office: A101 Phone: 459-4096 email: abtollef@ucsc.edu
Office hours T,W,TH 12:30-2
Office hours by appointment
Class Objective: In an interdisciplinary framework, facilitate the student's collaborative effort to produce designs that communicate abstract ideas with concrete physical forms. Teach the process of working on a design team where each member has specific responsibilities. Teach analysis of writing, the presentation of a design proposal & the documentation of work. Teach visual communication like a foreign language using drawing exercises that develop visual thinking in the student. The format will consist of 1/2 lecture 1/2 demonstration.
Structure: 8-10 Students will form approximately 10 modules for group projects and reading/study groups. Everyone in the group has a specific job for which they are responsible. I.e. Director, Manager, Writer, Documenter, Artist, etc.
Group projects: Statement of Purpose; Stage designs; Live design; Interviews; Environmental designs and proposal; Documentation.
Individual assignments: 1) 5 page Mid-Term paper; 2) 10 questions 3) Script Analysis
Final Exam: There will be a short answer final based on lectures and the reading
Required Reading: Articles and chapters on ERES Password: doubleimage
"Poet's Creed" Borges
"Metapatterns" Volk
Pamela Howard: "Directors and Designers is There a Different Direction" Oddey
"Behind the Screen Door" Aronson
"Can Theater and Media Speak the same language" Aronson
"Metaphor" Borges
"World on Stage" States
"The Stage as Dangerous Machine" Aronson
"Richard Foreman as Sceneographer" Aronson
"Stage as Machine" Christopher Baugh
Suggested Texts: (in bold)
Metapatterns by Tyler Volk
Looking into the Abyss by Arnold Aronson and
What is Scenography by Pamela Howard
Great Reckonings in Little Rooms by Bert O. States
Theater Performance and Technology by Christopher Baugh,
The Potentials of Spaces by Alison Oddey
This Craft of Verse By George Luis Borges.
Attendance: Since your notes and any hand-outs form the basis of the final exam. It should be clear that attendance is crucial to your success in this class. If you miss three (3) classes I will ask you to meet with me and discuss if you should continue the class or not. If you know in advance that you cannot make a class you must let me know via phone or email at least one day in advance. It is your responsibility to find out what you missed.
Late work is not accepted. End of discussion.
Sections: Arrange times with instructor and TA to facilitate your reading group, notes on the reading are due before the class discussion of the reading.
Supplies needed: Sketchbooks, news print, drawing pencils 6b,4b,2b,HB, graphite stick, vine charcoal, kneaded eraser, onion skin, repros and photos, glue stick.
Midterm Paper: 5 pages, MLA, with citations to three of the readings. DUE: Tuesday May 5th
Schedule:
1)
Tuesday March 31
Introduction, Metapatterns, Groups
Thursday April 2
DUE: Questions
Lecture: Poetics
Assignment: Statement
Reading discussed: "Poet's Creed" Borges p.97
2)
Tuesday April 7
DUE: Manifesto
Exercise: Light and Shadow
Supplies needed: Sketchbooks, Drawing Pencils 6b,4b,2b,HB graphite, kneaded eraser
Thursday April 9
DUE: Blog
Lecture: Scenography (Robert Wilson, Julie Taymor)
Reading Discussed: Pamela Howard: "Directors and Designers is There a Different Direction" Oddey p. 25
3)
Tuesday April 14
Exercise: The Graphic Image
Supplies needed: prints, cut out type-lettering, text, photos, glue stick, marker, and illustration board
Thursday April 16
Lecture: Theater Space / Architecture
Designers Discussed: Adolphe Appia Josef Svoboda
Reading discussed: "Behind the Screen Door" Aronson p.52
4)
Tuesday April 21
IIPP: Saftey Training for theater arts facilities (mandatory)
Thursday April 23
Lecture: Scene as Shifting Frame
Designers Discussed: Jo Mielziner, Ming Cho Lee, Santo Loquasto
Reading discussed: "World on Stage" States P.19
5)
Tuesday April 28
TBA
Thursday April 30
Lecture: Media Onstage
Designers Discussed: Eiko Ishioka, Erich Wonder, Achim Freyer
Reading discussed: "Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language" Aronson p.87
6)
Tuesday May 5
DUE: Midterm Paper
Exercise: Sections/Perspective/Projections
Supplies needed: Sketchbooks, Drawing Pencils 6b,4b,2b,HB graphite, kneaded eraser, ruler
Thursday May 7
DUE: Environmental Design Proposals
Lecture: Metaphor and Image
Designer Discussed: Foreman
Reading Discussed: "Metaphor" Borges p. 21;
"Richard Foreman as Sceneographer" Aronson P. 46
7)
Tuesday May 12
DUE: Interviews
TBA
Thursday May 14
DUE: Script Analysis
Lecture: Synesthesia
Designer Discussed: George Tsypin
Reading discussed: "Stage as Dangerous Machine" Aronson p.206
Lottery for presentation slots
8)
Tuesday May 19
Presentations: Stage Designs
Thursday May 21
Presentations: Stage Designs
9)
Tuesday May 26
Presentations: Environmental Designs
Thursday May 28
Presentations: Environmental Designs
10)
Tuesday June 2
Presentations: Live designs
Thursday June 4
Presentations: Live designs
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