Laura learns about art

Reflecting on the past semester

2009-05-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

I just want to end this blog with a short post about my thought on the semester.

In the end, I'm incredibly glad I took this class. A few semesters ago I took Fundamentals of Music, precisely because I knew absolutely nothing about music. (I mean, I didn't even know what a chord was.) It was a really satisfying experience, because even though most of the stuff I learned didn't really stick (it's impossible to actually memorize scales unless you're playing an instrument and using them all the time), I definitely gained an appreciation for music that I never would have expected.

I feel very similarly about this class. I wasn't planning on taking it originally- but I needed one more theater class and this was the one that fit into my schedule. (Sorry, I know that no teacher wants to hear that, but that's what happened!) I was a little hesitant at first, but now I'm really glad I ended up here. I gained an equivalent appreciation for art that I never would have thought possible. During my music class we had to listen to some pieces from an opera, and I absolutely hated them. I lamented to a friend that after all that, I still didn't "get" opera. She told me that she was a music major and she hated opera. You don't have to "get" the traditional stuff, or the stuff that snobby people like to analyze to pretend to be smart, and it's okay to think that some stuff is just plain stupid (of course, while remaining respectful of others' opinions). I've found the same to be true with art now that I've taken this class. I can still honestly think that Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series is just plain stupid and have no idea why it's so famous and at the same time find some details of his work that really fascinates me and helps me even express myself.

I loved getting some experience just working with charcoal and paint and models and everything (and especially the Photoshop, as you know!). While it obviously wasn't enough to really develop the skill, I now understand a little more about those things and don't feel nearly as intimidated by them as I was before. Art, like music, is no longer some scary, inaccessible thing.

A few days ago I went to the Dance Troupe performance. I sort of noticed (without really noticing, or thinking too carefully about it) that the light design of a particular piece was really good- it reinforced and complemented what was being evoked by the movement of the dancers on the stage. It was the sort of thing that I never would have remembered except that all of a sudden the lighting changed, and I cringed- "Ugh, that is definitely not the color choice I would have made for that transition."

I can absolutely guarantee you that thought would never have occurred to me before taking this class.

Today's presentation and these journal entries are the very last things I need to do this semester. I think I'll be forever amused that the deciding moment in convincing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that I deserve a degree in mechanical engineering was the presentation of a set design portfolio...but at the same time, sometimes I think I learned more from the humanities requirement than my engineering courses. Sometimes you learn best when you're least expecting to.

Big Love: model attempt #2

2009-05-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to say that I think I progressed steadily in confidence and ability throughout the course of the semester in this course. I really wasn't very happy with my first attempt at set design- the Waiting for Godot model didn't really work out the way I had envisioned. I really enjoyed Big Love and had some experience designing for the space as well as the aesthetics, and had some good ideas, but got a little hung up on the implementation. I really enjoyed the work I did on 3 Penny Opera, because I put more thought into the groundplans and the importance of the physical space than before. So after the success of that project, I was ready to go back and try my hand at Big Love for the second time.

I completely started over.

First, I took some more photos of my white model and picked one that had a clearer, larger image of the whole space.

This of course meant that I had to do everything over from the beginning, but considering that I wasn't really happy with even the minor details, that worked out fine.

I knew I wanted the scene to look like it was taking place on a patio set into a cliff- but I had some trouble showing the perspective properly. I looked around for some decorative railings that might give some indication of the boundaries of the space.

When I found one with grapes, I knew I had to use it. It it Italy, after all.

Even now that I know about color selection, removing objects from their surrounding pixels takes approximately forever.

I was never able to quite find the perfect picture of the ocean, but I did find one I liked much better than my previous image. There's some architecture in the background, so you know it's not completely isolated.

Then I started looking for some patio furniture.

I was trying to find something sleek and "futuristic" looking, to contrast with the old-fashionedness of the rest of the set. The furniture I found was okay, but then I had the idea that I could add another surprising element- instead of just futuristic looking table and chairs, what about a futuristic looking cocktail bar? Obviously there's nothing new about alcohol, but I find it hard to picture a home bar on a truly old-fashioned Italian terrace.

The last image was perfect. It exactly fit my goal of making the space look old, but all the stuff in it looking like it came from a spaceship.

Instead of just cutting and pasting a whole house into the image and hoping it remotely meshed with the rest of the picture, I sort of constructed my own, with some patio doors, an old-fashioned, very Italian window, and generous use of the clone stamp tool.

I had a really, really hard time finding the texture I wanted for the floor. None of the dozens of red bricks and terra cotta I found really fit the mental image I had. It finally turned out that the best picture came from the picture of...well, what appears to be someone's laundry room floor.

I used those tiles and had them in the image for weeks and was never totally satisfied- until the final touch of adjusting the color balance more towards red did the trick, and transformed them into very nearly the exact bricks I had in mind.

Sticking with the theme of "pictures from random people's basements," this staircase was the most useful of all the images I found:

Again, adjusting towards the red made the stairs blend in pretty well with the tiles, even though the images are of vastly different materials.

And one of my personal favorite touches on the whole thing: the sudden strike of inspiration about the piano.

In FAO Schwarz in New York City (an enormous toy store for absurdly rich people), there's a giant keyboard on the floor that actually plays music as you step on the keys.

In a play as physical as Big Love, I can't think a better way for the characters to play the piano than to jump and dance around on it. It fits in so seemlessly with the rest of the action.

For ideas of how it might look, or just to keep yourself entertained for a few minutes, check out some truly awesome YouTube clips:

In the end, I didn't really have time to add as much "stuff" (props, lighting, etc) as I wanted, but I definitely accomplished my main goal, a classical, traditional, very Italian scene

full of all kinds of surprising stuff that tips you off to just how crazy the whole play is

And, just to refresh your memory as to how far the model came in the intervening time when I learned how to use Photoshop:

I'm so happy with the outcome of this project- making such visible progress on a skill is incredibly satisfying.

3 Penny: Reflections

2009-05-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

The 3 Penny project represented a chance to incorporate a new element into our design process: collaboration. At first I was a little skeptical, but ultimately I was able to incorporate my artist's style pretty easily into my own ideas.

Partly I think this was easy because the two (my original idea and my artist's style) were pretty compatible. But also I think it's easy to accomplish this sort of meshing when you stop and think about how many different elements there are to something like an artist's work or a set designer's scenery. Ultimately, I designed the set exactly the way I wanted to and just used my artist's painting style to "color in the lines." Even if my original idea had been very different than it was, this method probably would have still worked. (Maybe not as well, but I'm sure it would have been possible.) You can look at an artist's color palate, medium of choice, message or theme, or a million other things. After hearing my classmates present and discuss how they fused their ideas with those of their chosen artist, I realized we all just picked the element which was most beneficial to us. I was most interested in making a basic, 2D, painted set- so I chose my artist's style of brushstrokes to fill in the blanks. Dan chose his artist's medium (collage) and color palate to give his own original ideas the desired "flavor" of the collaborator.

Of course, that's not to say that it's completely easy to just slap any two things together and have it work well. Careful thought must be given to the important elements, and ultimately the final design should make sense and hopefully be coherent. Also, it would probably have been easy to be overtaken by the artist's style if we hadn't come up with our own ideas first. This provided a strong base to start with. Again, looking at my classmates' work, I think we all built the structure ourselves and used our artist to paint it. In my case that's literally how I formed the model, but I think the analogy works well in general. In fact, the order doesn't really matter either. I think Mia, for example, used her artist to create the structure and then painted that structure with her own brush.

When working in different media with a lot of complexity, it isn't hard to find elements even from two very different bodies of work and mix them together in a coherent (and ultimately more interesting) way.

3 Penny: Final model

2009-05-14T19:28:00.002-07:00

After doing some research into my artist, I had a pretty clear idea about how to create my model (and even better, it was going to be really easy).

First, I made some basic sketches of the important scenes in the play: the jail, the brothel, the stable, and Peachum's Emporium. I kept them very flat and minimal- only essential pieces of furniture and architectural elements. I designed the groundplans while taking the action of the play into consideration.

The jail:

The jail cell isn't even really a jail cell- McHeath can easily just walk out from behind the bars. I wanted to give the impression of "fake isolation," so the cell isn't really secure, but it also seems to be in the middle of nowhere. The other side of the scene is left intentionally empty- his visitors just appear.

The brothel:

All of the indoor sets are shown from this direction- the audience looking from the back of the room towards the front door. In this way the flats can actually be set up a few feet from the back wall of the theater, and the street can actually be shown through the windows. Likewise, the flats can be just turned around when a street scene is needed, showing the inside of the brothel through the other side of the windows if desired.

The stable:

Peachum's Emporium:

"The back" of the shop is actually completely visible to the audience. I decided to take Bretch's idea of showing the "insides" of things in this respect. When Peachum disappears to find a newer, more pathetic outfit for one of his customers to wear, the audience can actually still see him and exactly what he's doing, and where that prop comes from.

The next step was to color in these sketches in a Diebenkorn-like way. I was all set to break out the paint until Sara suggested the brilliant idea of just making color copies of some of his images and making collages out of them. Brilliant, and infinitely easier. I flipped through the book again, looking for appropriate color palates. To my surprise, I found the images I didn't particularly like at first glance to be most useful. They provided large swatches of color, and some of them really evoke the idea of a stable, or a jail.

Finally, I made some color copies, cut them up, and pasted them into the sketches from above. None of them is really complete, they just show some important color choices and demonstrate how the concept would be expanded to the whole set.

The brothel:

Because it can't be a brothel without a red well, obviously.

The stable:

Lots of yellows and browns, mostly taken from one of the "Ocean Park" series I scoffed at originally. =)

Peachum's Emporium:

3 Penny: Artist Research

2009-05-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

The next step in the design process for the 3 Penny project was to choose an artist at random. I chose Richard Diebenkorn- and Sara mentioned that it would be a good match with the design path I was already on, as he was very "painterly."

But after doing a few quick online searches, I was a little skeptical. Some of his most famous works are from the "Ocean Park" series, huge canvases with geometric swatches of color that in my book fall squarely into the category of "modern art that even I could produce, so why is it famous"?

Luckily, I found good book in the Rotch library that showcased a good selection of his works, including a lot of the less famous ones which would be more useful for my project. (Apologies for the reproductions- most of them are photographs of the book, so they aren't exactly square). Things started looking up from there.

It turns out Sara was right- these images did fit in really nicely with the flat, 2D image I had of the 3 Penny set.

I particularly like this one image (although I can't quite say for sure what about it appeals to me):

I took special note of his paintings which showed ordinary objects or landscapes, since those would be most useful in creating my "middle school drama club set."

I also started to notice that some of his figure drawings especially had really cool textures- he often mixes colors in a very subtle way- for example, there's actually quite a bit of blue in the woman's hair below, but you almost don't notice:

Most "solid color" sections of his paintings actually have more than one color, and some surprisingly messy brushstrokes. I eventually decided that this was the most interesting and perhaps even the most characteristic element of his works. Which was great news- it would be really easy to incorporate this into my own ideas.

3 Penny: Preliminary media research

2009-05-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

After reading 3 Penny Opera, I wasn't quite sure what direction to take things in. I generally enjoyed reading the play, but it didn't leave a particularly strong impression in one way or another- in the sense that I couldn't point at any one theme that I knew I could use to start designing the set.

Brecth is apparently really good at portraying his own ideas about the process of theater, even when the issue isn't directly addressed in the script. As I was reading the play, I knew nothing about Bretch's ideology, but I couldn't picture the play taking place anywhere but on a stage. When I read Waiting for Godot, I imagined the country road. When I read Big Love, I imagined the big Italian terrace. When reading 3 Penny Opera, I imagined a middle school drama club set.

To that end, I started searching for images- but instead of looking for any sort of image, I limited myself to paintings and drawings. I felt that the set should be very "flat," so that, for example, if there were an awning on the outside of a storefront, it would probably just be a backdrop painted to look like there was an awning right there. At the very most it might be a few sheets of plywood painted to look as if they were made out of fabric.

I focused on images of streets, since that seemed like an important element of the play.

I also looked for some images that reminded me of the actual setting of the play- London about a hundred years ago or earlier. I found some great images that really captured the two sides of the city: the glamour and the squalor.

Finally, I found a few images of workshops. I pictured Peachum's Beggar's Emporium to be just like an old fashioned cobbler's- an old man working with his hands out front, right where his customers will see him when they come in.

While I wasn't sure that these images would translate very closely into the actual set, I liked the very 2D nature of them and knew that I could at least use them for inspiration.

Big Love: model attempt #1

2009-05-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

My first attempt at creating a model for the Big Love set was...well, let's just call it a learning experience.

I started out with a photograph of my white model...

I really wanted to play with "levels." There's just so much physical action in this play that I wanted to give the actors some space to really roll around in. I liked the idea of the entrance to the house being up above- characters who are living or staying in the house can poke their heads out the window and yell down below. And the characters who come from the direction of the ocean have their own space to play with- the platforms to the right seem like a perfect space for the girls, and later the guys, to throw themselves to the ground over and over again. I even picture Bella dropping her tomatoes off the top ledge- just setting her table down right outside the door to the house and giving those poor tomatoes a long, long way to splat.

Then I found an image online of cliffs dropping off into the ocean....

And well, I just sort of hacked the two things together. My white model was great, but the photo of it wasn't the best- I'm not quite sure why...just the angle or the point of view just wasn't really working. Also, I wasn't great at using Photoshop just yet, so the back wall of KLT ended up looking a little funky...I just wasn't able to give it the perspective that it needed. I did, however, manage to suceed in making "Little Kresge" look absolutely enormous.

I also needed to make it look as if the house were present on stage. So, I found a picture of a house.

And I needed to make it look like it was remotely possible to get from the house to the stairs, so I stuck some stairs in there too. Altogether, it was a very hasty cut-and-paste job. The final product wasn't bad or wrong, but didn't really look the way I wanted it to. I was *trying* to make the set look realistic, but wasn't quite succeeding.

One great success was finding the perfect "futuristic" bathtub:

And here it is, attempt number 1:

Like I said, not the worst, but I was determined to do better. I really loved this play and had a lot of great ideas about it, so I decided to keep working on it and use it as the set to present at the end of the semester.

Big Love: preliminary media research

2009-05-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

The play makes me think of the "ideal house" I described in my Italian 1 class. You know what the first year of a language class is like, everyone practices the exact same sentences in pairs, just translated into any of the million different languages of the world. When I asked to describe my ideal house in my limited Italian, I certainly made sure to include "una terazza" in the house one the oceanside in Spain. But Italy is cool too. Really, all that's required is the ocean.

Whenever you read something, you create the set in your mind. Well, that's not what happened this time. I imagined this play taking place in the set I'd already created a year and a half ago, in Italian class.

I very much think that the play takes place in the real world. The characters are ridiucluous and over-the-top, but they're just reacting in extremes to the world as they see it. There's also something wild about it, which I associate with warmth- both the temperature and the colors.

It took me awhile, but I was able to come up with some songs that remind me of the play for one reason or another.

A Man, by Alanis Morrisette

The lyrics are a pretty interesting twist on the usual Alanis bitterness- the feminist takes on the voice of a male who is angry about the stereotypes used against him. Exploring sexism from the male point of view doesn't happen very often, which makes this song resonate pretty strongly with Constantine's speech.

I'm Just a Girl, by No Doubt

And for the flip side- the more common look at gender roles from the female point of view. (The lyrics can be found here.)

Non Siamo Soli, by Eros Ramazzotti and Ricky Martin

At first I think this song only reminded me of the play because it's in Italian, but some of the lyrics somehow work for me- they talk about "reading life's instructions in a book that will never be written," which just reminds me of the young characters of the play and how mostly they just can't figure out how to deal with the world around them.

Mozart and Madness, by Savatage

(Apologies, but the only version I could find of the song happened to be of some random people playing it in their living room...)

This song is from the rock opera by Savatage (who eventually spun off into the TransSiberian Orchestra), so their mix of heavy rock and classical music, in this piece especially, reminds me of the high contrast found all throughout the play. It's both calm and frantic, and frantic within the classical context really reminds me of the play.

Although I didn't find any really *great* images that I loved, I found quite a few that were pretty good. I've picked out some of the best below.

I love this photo. The terra cotta is just the texture I'm looking for, and the colors are so vivid.

I especially like this one- again, it mixes the old and new. The cliff looks ancient, but the building on it looks very modern.

I identified quite a few "futuristic" bathtubs (by using those exact words in Google's image search, actually) that I think are pretty fantastic.

This image really strikes me for some reason. It's actually a photo I took during my spring break trip to California. I didn't even think of Big Love at the time, but something about it just interested me, so I snapped the photo (which unfortunately didn't even come out too clearly), and lo and behold, it became a really central part of the inspiration. (Comparing it to my final production is pretty interesting!)

The Set of Endgame

2009-05-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here it is, for your enjoyment: the paper I wrote about the set of Endgame, which we saw as a class at a theater in Harvard Square. It's not half bad, except I always hate writing conclusion paragraphs (and you can probably tell).

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Endgame is a very uncomfortable play, and the production we saw in Harvard Square was uncomfortable to watch. Using confined spaces, harsh lighting, and gloomy colors, the set not only gave a gloomy appearance matching the themes of the play, but also induced the associated feelings in the audience.

The aspect of the set which struck me most strongly as soon as the curtain was raised was its location and lighting. The single room in which all of the play takes place was harshly lit and at first glance appeared to be floating. The floor of the room was located several feet above the location where the audience expected the stage floor to be based on the proportions of the theater. The room was brightly lit but the area around it was in utter darkness. It was completely impossible to see any detail in the surrounding area, leading to the impressing that the set was floating in a complete abyss. It took me several uncomfortable minutes to adjust to this disorienting configuration.

The characters play out their lives in an ambiguous world which cannot be completely identified. The viewer cannot be sure if the play is taking place in the past, present or future. In fact, the viewer cannot even be sure if the play is taking place on Earth, or perhaps in some supernatural other dimension. The characters are completely isolated from the outside world, but more than that, the outside world may not even exist. The text of the play imposes such a harsh feeling of isolation that the reader (or viewer) is left wondering if the world simply ends at the edge of the scene which Clov can see from the windows. In light of this, the appearance of "floating" that is giving by the set construction was particularly appropriate, as it enhanced the idea that the play is taking place, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. The simplicity and bareness of the set left the audience with no distractions, and forced them to focus intently on the uncomfortable scene for the entirety of the play.

The construction of a room with three walls created a physical space which was very constrictive and induced an impressive feeling of claustrophobia. It emphasized the fact that the characters were not able to move very much (in both a figurative and more metaphorical sense). The way the trash bins were sunk below the level of the floor made them even more stationary: where Hamm could be moved around the room by Clov, Nagg and Nell were not afforded even that luxury. This created a hierarchy among the characters. All were trapped in an unpleasant world, but not all were equally doomed to stay there. There was no hope that Nagg or Nell could improve their lives by leaving the room or even the house. Hamm was in a slightly better position, as he could move with the help of Clov; however Clov was in the best position, being able to move more freely than any of the others. In a way this made him the most powerful character in the play. Although Hamm appeared most powerful at first glance, in reality he was powerless to stop Clov from leaving. In fact, I envied Clov for being able to know another location besides this solitary room. He, unlike the audience, was at least able to move to the kitchen for short periods of time. Also, the colors in the room were completely bland and gloomy, which certainly added to the effect. The absence of greens and blues was particularly noticeable, especially when the characters talked about how there was no nature left in the outside world.

The final movement of the set at the end of the play was the one detriment to an otherwise well-designed set. It was a distracting occurrence, and confused the message of the play. In the text, Clov doesn't actually leave; however, in this production the edges of the room move away from Hamm, taking Clov with them. This represents the introduction of a powerful force which alters the meaning of the play, and it's not clear that the fundamental relationship between Clov and Hamm, which is an important aspect of the play, survives this change.

Overall, the set portrayed the desperation of the play by inflicting the physical constraints and discomforts of the location on the audience as well as the characters. The small and confined room appeared in the middle of a completely blank space, which induced both disorientation and claustrophobia. The result was a captivating image from which neither the audience nor the characters could escape.

Big Love: first impressions

2009-03-17T23:53:00.001-07:00

The thing that struck me most about this play was the use of contrasts and the unexpected.

First is the mix of old and new. The scene is described in quite a bit of detail, and gives a strong impression of "old" Italy. Combined with the plot line about arranged marriage, which seems quite old fashioned to us, makes all the references to Oil of Olay anti-aging creams and Ken and Barbie and pornography on the internet all seem very out of place. Nikos lists all the reasons he likes Lydia, which include the facts that she is "funny and warm and passionate and good at volleyball." The characters talk in an odd kind of verse, even when they're using colloquial speech, inserting "like" gratuitously in the middle of sentences, or describing completely nonsensical dream sequences in the middle of an otherwise serious conversation. These contrasts really stand out for me as an important element of the play, which might be interesting to incorporate into the set design.

Another important aspect is the somewhat circular or repetitive nature of the plot, in the sense that the grooms repeat the dramatic action of the brides- throwing themselves to the floor while ranting about the flaws of the opposite sex. It will be important to keep in mind that the action will be played out on the set twice, in perhaps complementary ways. Considering how the space will draw out the similarities and differences of those two scenes will be important to clarifying the theme of tension between the sexes that defines the play.

Waiting for Godot: the final touches

2009-03-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

Last night I spend quite a few hours finally putting everything together for my Waiting for Godot model.

First, I painted some foamcore white to get started on making my wall.

While I waited for that to dry, I drew out the final version of my road and began to paint it. Mixing colors was a fun throwback to kindergarten, but I wasn't very good at it. In the end the road was more yellow than I had intended, so I went over it with some brighter orange.

Sara gave me a brilliant idea for the wall- instead of cutting out a million pieces for the wall and gluing them together, why not leave them all connected and only make it look like I'd cut them all out? Genius. It took me 1/10 of the time it would have otherwise.

Then I started working on the ground. This was again tricky, due to my rustiness at paint mixing. I mixed a whole bunch of samples, found several perfect colors, and then couldn't duplicate a single one of them. I probably should have written down what I did, or labeled them, or at least paid more attention. I finally gave up on getting the color exactly right and just started painting. After several layers of all kinds of ugly browns and yellows, I had something that didn't really look like I had envisioned it, but was passable. I took a deep breath and started adding some green- I wanted to give the impression that it was a field and there was grass, even if it was dead or dying. I only had one green and it was a very lively shade. Nothing I mixed it with changed that. So I just went for it- and to my surprise, it worked. I started getting excited- this was all starting to make sense.

The problem now was that of course the bright orange road now looked absolutely ridiculous next to the dark brown and green ground, and the bright white stones stood out horribly. I coated the road in some brown and the stones in some gray, at least hoping to make them look a little dirty.

I painted a sky that was far too blue and had to tone it down with some orange. The whole experience was one long lesson in paint mixing and color wheel exercises.

I whittled some twigs down on one side to make it look as if lightning had struck them. I was able to give the impression of a much larger tree having been cut in half by just shaving off a tiny bit of the bark on one side.

Putting it all together was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated, but it finally happened.

Check out the final product:

Reflections
Overall, I'm not very happy with this model. It's not objectively "bad" or "wrong," obviously, but it's not quite what I had in mind. Part of this is strictly due to the limits of my artistic abilities. For example, the impressionist style paintings came about because I'm not experienced with painting detail. The set I had envisioned was in fact much more realistic.

That said, this was the first time I ever attempted anything like this, so these types of challenges are to be expected. Overall I'm happy with the process I followed and the ideas I generated, which is really the important part. I just need a little practice bringing my ideas into the real world, so I'm looking forward to trying again in the next project.

Weekly Journal #4: Drafting

2009-03-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

Here's my attempt at a drafting sketch.

I'm not quite sure if I didn't do it right, or well, or if I just don't particularly like this idea or find it very useful. It provides an interesting glance at the type of action that occurs onstage, but while going through the stage directions I found that the type of information I found most important was impossible to record in this form: things like how quickly someone moved, where the characters were in relation to each other at any given point in time, etc.

I guess it does demonstrate the kind of repetitive back and forth action of this play, which is useful to know.

Waiting for Godot: in class work

2009-03-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday we worked on our models in class a bit. I didn't get much actual work done, but I have finalized most of my ideas for the final project.

I really like the idea of having a winding road, so I sketched a few tries before deciding on one which had just the right amount of twisty-turniness.

I sketched a few trees based off of some of the images I found last week. These weren't great, and were severely limited by my artistic skills. But I decided that I definitely want the tree to look very dead- even leaning to one side a little as if it's about to fall over. Suddenly the idea of having the tree look as though it had been struck by lightning came to me, and I really liked it. We'll see if I'm able to incorporate that into the model. I'm also leaning towards painting it white, because the contrast of the white trees against a dark backdrop in one of the images I found last week really stuck with me.

I really liked one image I found which showed an old farm and some stone fences. There were hints of civilization, but the whole thing still seemed kind of deserted. Something about the fences appealed to me, so I've decided to include a stone wall in my model, right in front of the tree. It will hint that maybe there used to be something more interesting at this place, like a house or a farm; however, it has since fallen into disrepair. Some of the stones at one end of the wall have fallen into a pile, creating the "mound" mentioned in the script.

So, putting it all together, I drew a final rough sketch showing how the road, wall and tree all fit together. I want the road to look sandy and orange. The ground will be some sort of dark brown or green, to demonstrate dead grass, or at least grass that has been burned and beaten down by the sun. The sky will be grey with some hopefully interesting clouds.

Throughout this whole process I haven't really given much thought to the moon. I haven't forgotten about it, I just haven't really found anything appealing or interesting about it. For me, the moon is just not a crucial part of the set. Obviously it can be important to others and I'm sure it was important to Beckett, but it doesn't stand out for me personally. So I think I'll just leave the moon very basic and nondescript. It does need to be there, but it won't be anything special or interesting, just a full moon hung simply in the sky.

Waiting for Godot: images

2009-03-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

Not knowing where to start in looking for photos that might serve as an inspiration for my Waiting for Godot set model, I just punched some likely search words into Flickr and Google Image Search: lonely tree, isolation, middle of nowhere.

The results were surprisingly useful. I saved a few dozen- anything that struck me as interesting. A few days later I pared it down, and organized the remaining photos based on which aspects of the design I thought they would be useful for.

I love the idea of having a winding road. This one, especially, winds around all over the place for absolutely no reason. Why? It ties in very nicely with the "what is the meaning of life/following all these rules?" theme in Godot.

This is sort of the typical image I feel comes to mind when you say, "a country road; a tree." I want my set to NOT look like this.

This image is so funny. I like how it implies that someone is making something of a comfortable home for themselves out there in the middle of nowhere.

I love the orange in these photos. The last one is particularly striking. Orange seems like such a fake, unnatural color, it really implies that nothing is growing anywhere out there.

These also have great colors that remind me of the themes of the play, but for quite the opposite reason. They're just completely lifeless, dull grays and browns. I'd like to figure out how to incorporate some "happy medium" of these two sets of images- maybe not quite as shocking as the bright organe, but neither quite as dull as these.

These two pictures stand out for me more because of their scope than their colors or elements. They really zoom out and show the emptiness of the landscape. This is in fact the more important element, so it's going to be important to try to keep the "big picture" in mind.

This particular picture strikes me because it shows loneliness and emptiness in a very different way than the others. Hints of civilization are all over the place, yet it still seems so empty. I think the sky has a lot to do with it, so I'll have to keep that in mind.

This is a picture of my own that I took. The previous picture above made me think about rocks as the perfect element of nature that demonstrates barrenness and infertility, so I found this one in my collection to have a different view of it.

These are just sort of typical, dead, lonely trees. They're not bad, but they're not great. I think I much prefer these:

Weekly Journal #3: Perspective

2009-03-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

Perspective drawings are hard. I was embarrassed to see that I wasn't quite as good at them as I remembered,

even with all those drafting classes through mechanical engineering.

I basically stayed up all night doing this, struggling for a few hours. By the time I finally got the hang of it, it was

probably 3 AM but I knew if I didn't plow through and finish it then, I'd wake up in the morning and have no idea

where I had left off.

It gets kind of hairy in the middle of one of these things:

Seriously, if you're not right in the middle of it, it's almost impossible to tell what's going on.

But then clean it up, and suddenly it all becomes clear:

First Readings of Waiting for Godot

2009-02-23T22:35:00.001-08:00

The assignment for tomorrow's class is to read Waiting for Godot twice: once just to get an initial reaction, and then a second time to develop a sound knowledge of the physical requirements of the set. I'll record both of those things here.

Reaction
Apparently, Samuel Beckett is really into creepily isolated and semi-fantastic or ambiguously-fantastic settings. Both Endgame and Waiting for Godot take place in vague locations, and the reader (or viewer) is never quite sure if it even really exists, or if it does, if it exists in this universe or this dimension.

When I read the play, I found it hard to really picture the set. Part of that, I think, was because I was also reading the stage directions. Sometimes I would imagine the actual scenery of the location- a huge, barren wasteland with a single tree. (It's actually almost the exact same mental image I have of the opening scene of Grapes of Wrath.) But then I would read the stage directions and be "taken out" of the scene. When I'd read something like "exit stage left" I'd just picture Little Kresge with one sad looking tree, just right of center. It's hard to imagine what "nothing" looks like when made into a set that can fit onto a predetermined size stage.

The biggest challenge I see in this play is the idea of space. The characters are supposed to run back and forth, away from each other and then back again, see people off in the distance that they can't quite identify, and so on. The set somehow has to give the impression of all of this space. It's not just nothing, it's a whole lot of nothing.

Physical Requirements
Descriptions
The location of the play is described in the stage directions as simply, "A country road. A tree. Evening." (Both acts take place at the same time.) Vladimir describes the location to Pozzo in Act II: "It's indescribable. It's like nothing. There's nothing. There's a tree."

Elements of the set

country road: Pozzo and Lucky may or may not be using the road (I don't think it's ever specifically mentioned.)
mound: where Estragon sits and takes off his boots
bog: the audience
ditch: mentioned as where Estragon sleeps, not necessarily onstage.
tree: is barren in Act I; suddenly has leaves in Act II; Estragon and Vladimir argue over whether it looks like a bush or a tree, and discuss hanging themselves from one of its branches
sun/moon: From the stage directions: "The light suddenly fails. In a moment it is night. The moon rises at the back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale light on the scene."

Action of the play
Below is a list of some actions which occur during the play. Some of them might influence the design of the set.
Characters enter and exit from both sides of the stage.
Lucky dances.
The characters fight physically (when Lucky is thinking).
Vladimir and Estragon "scrutinize the sunset."
In Act II, the characters fall and can't get up, and therefore spend a considerable amount of time rolling around on the floor.

Props
A large number of props are used.
Estragon: hat and boots
Vladimir: hat, miscellaneous "rubbish" in his pockets, lots of turnips, 1 carrot, 1 radish
Pozzo: whip, watch, glasses, pipe, matches, vaporizer, and handkerchief
Lucky: hat, rope (which becomes shorter in Act II), heavy bag (claimed by Pozzo to be filled with sand), folding stool, picnic basket (which contains pieces of chicken and a bottle of wine), Pozzo's coat

Field Trip: Endgame

2009-02-23T22:15:00.001-08:00

On Sunday our class went to a theater in Harvard Square and saw a production of the play Endgame. We were to watch it while paying careful attention to the set, since we'll be required to write a paper about how the physical layout affected the movement of the actors and how the visual impression of the set compared and contrasted with the text.

I did not like Endgame.

The production was fine, but the play itself was just really not my style. I am perfectly okay with this, considering the depressing themes of the play.

I do, however, have to admit that the set was excellent. The colors were completely bland and gloomy, which certainly added to the effect. The absence of greens and blues was particularly noticeable, especially when the characters talked about how there was no nature left in the outside world.

The physical space of the set was also very constrictive. This was clearly intentional. I think this was mainly accomplished by the side walls. Most sets I've seen are more or less a backdrop. There might be a door off to the side for characters to move through, but usually the edges of the room in which the acting takes place is somewhat blurred. In this case, the set was actually a full room, with 3 walls. This induced quite an impressive feeling of claustrophobia.

Not only that, but it seemed to me that the set was also raised a bit from where I expected the stage to be. The room was brightly lit but the areas around it were in utter darkness. Even after my eyes had adjusted to the lighting I couldn't see a single detail outside of that confined box, no matter how hard I strained. This made the whole set seem as if it were floating in a complete abyss- clearly tying in with a main theme of the play.

I won't go into detail, because I still have to write a paper about this, let's not forget. I'll have no material left. But in general, the set really worked. Even if I hated the play.

Invisible Cities Presentations

2009-02-23T21:59:00.000-08:00

I just found out there's a blog for this class, where you can see all of the final projects: Spring '09 Scenic Design.

For example, you can see the results of the "Invisible Cities" project, which were presented on Thursday. Ours was kind of awesome. =)

Each group was given the description of a city from the book Invisible Cities and told to create a physical representation of it. My group's city was pretty interesting- it was an abandoned city created by this culture that was constantly trying to create the perfect set of relationships. They would build their city and then run strings between the houses to symbolize the relationships of power among the citizens. When everything got too messy, they'd tear down everything except the frames and strings, and try again somewhere else, always hoping to get it perfect. Of course, none of them really seemed to have any idea what "perfect" was, so it's all just a tiny bit depressing.

For our project we drove a bunch of nails into a piece of plywood and ran yarn between them. A few interesting things came out of the design process.

As previously mentioned, I missed class the first time we talked about it because I was having a miserable experience at the dentist. So my group had already come up with the basic idea, and was explaining it to me. They explained that we'd get many different colors of yarn, and weave each color around in a different pattern. "Oh, so everyone can choose their own pattern?" I asked. Silence. That was not at all what they meant, but they all immediately liked the idea. The simple introduction of a fresh mind to the project made a big impact. The fact that each person designed their own rule became a pretty important part of the final product.

We found a piece of plywood, marked a fine grid onto it, and began hammering nails. Ho'o and Dan were great at it, and soon had a whole array of neatly aligned nails on their side of the board. Lei and I were...less skilled, and soon had a much smaller scattering of nails on our side of the board. We left at the end of class with plans to come back at some other time to finish the nailing- one nail for every single dot on the board.

This never happened. When Dan came in to finish working on it Thursday morning, he made a brilliant observation- it worked a lot better without all the nails. It was much less uniform, like a real city.

We got some paper and carefully crafted instructions in the most open-ended way possible. Then we made a list of "rules." Each member of our team wrote their rule down on the paper and then followed it. The only restriction is that each new rule had to be different from all of the previous ones. The rules ranged from "move only in diagonals" to "move in approximately curvy lines." During our presentation we had the other members of the class create their own rules and add them to the board.

And here's the final product:

(Photos courtesy of Sara Brown, our instructor.)

I think my favorite comment during the discussion about our project was, "I like how the nails aren't distributed uniformly. I can tell that it's intentional, but I can't tell what the pattern is."

What I actually look like

2009-02-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

So, remember those contour drawings from awhile ago? Well, you might have guessed that one of them was a self-portrait.

And that's just embarrassing, so I thought I'd show you some photos of the real life inspirations behind those drawings, so you can see how closely my sketches resemble the originals.

Ooh, a stapler. How artistic and inspired.

A pretty journal, given to me as a gift for my high school graduation. A little more artistically interesting than the stapler.

Yours truly. Obviously the most gorgeous of all the models, right?

Also, taking pictures of yourself in the mirror is totally a dorktastic thing to do. Not that I would know or anything.

Finding art you like

2009-02-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

The other day in class we looked at some different artwork online, which was sort of cool.

We looked at some stuff by Sol LeWitt, which demonstrates what I'll call "art by instruction." Basically the artist leaves instructions for others to follow while making the murals. In general I thought it was a cool idea, but just not quite open-ended enough. I loved the idea of each person bringing a different interpretation to the art before it was even made (in addition to after it's been completed), but most of the murals were very geometric. There just wasn't as much room for creativity as there could have been.

This made me think of this website some friends of mine stumbled upon a few years ago, songstowearpantsto.com. The basic concept is that people send in sometimes ridiculous requests for custom songs- for example, an upbeat catchy tune about how to survive a zombie apocalypse. It's Web 2.0 meets music- user generated art! I love that site, because people suggest really interesting and creative things that one person alone would never think of on his or her own in one lifetime. Yet all of the songs have a similar style, since they're produced by the same person. It's sort of the inverse of the Sol LeWitt art.

And the cool thing is, it's not something you would normally think of as "art." By the way, I know I'm using the word "art" in a super general sense. But I'm an engineer, okay? In general, creative pursuits all seem wishy-washy to me at first glance.

So I started to think of forms of art that I might like, or even be good at without realizing how much creativity they might entail.

I once started making a scrapbook in high school- I didn't get very far, I only completed a few pages before I stopped having free time to work on it. But the few pages that exist are seriously kickass. Creative headings, construction paper backings, stickers, string, buttons, the whole deal.

And I also like to think I've developed something of a sense of fashion over the past few years. Mostly this just involves buying tshirts with nerdy jokes on them, and plastic jewelry at Claires. (Yeah, I accessorize right along with the 10 year olds.) But I definitely have a distinct style, and love scouring the jewelry racks at various stores looking for the next perfect piece that will complete my collection of wacky earrings. I'm not sure exactly what the relationship is between creativity and style, but I'm sure cultivating my fashion sense (as...different from popular fashion as it may be) certainly can't hurt my creativity levels.

And besides, I totally stopped writing this blog entry in the middle for 15 minutes because writing it inspired me to try to make a bracelet out of duct tape. I totally figured out how to make the clasp out of paper clips within 10 minutes.

I guess the intersection of engineering and design isn't that hard to find after all.

Weekly Journal #2: breakdancing

2009-02-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

You know what sucks? The dentist.

I say this because in addition to their general, overall suckiness, I got stuck at the dentist's office the other morning and ended up missing class, which was very disappointing. I went in just for a simple x-ray and checkup, and it took two hours. Two hours. Then there was some mix-up where they wouldn't let me take the original x-rays even though the whole purpose of my being there was to get a set of x-rays to send off in my medical evaluation for my application to the Peace Corps.

Sigh.

Anyway, I missed class and it was very sad, because we did gesture drawing. I became even more sad when I discovered that the next journal assignment was to do some gesture drawings, and I had no idea how. Luckily Sara offered to meet with me a few minutes before the last class and give me a brief overview.

The assignment was simple: just go to somewhere there are people in motion and sketch for awhile.

Well, I am unnecessarily ambitious and went to my friend's breakdancing practice.

It was hard.

Seriously, those guys move fast. Also, I had never done this before. It did not start out well. Here are some of my first attempts.

But I gradually improved and learned to use longer, more abstract strokes. I discovered that adding more lines somehow makes the drawings considerably better. Now I understand why artists use charcoal, the mere fact that it leaves more material on the paper must make such a big difference. I stuck to drawing single figures for awhile, just while I got the hang of it.

Then I moved on to doing some actual gesture drawings. They aren't great, because I couldn't quite figure out how to capture the motion of the dancers without drawing more detailed sketches of each position. But there are a few that do seem to capture a tiny bit of the type of motion involved in breakdancing.

Overall, I'm happiest with some of my sketches of single and double poses. Some of them are pretty cool, I think.

This last one in particular I like a lot. It doesn't look like much, but if you've ever seen breakdancers perform, hopefully you'll agree that it captures a lot of the style. Well, better than my other attempts, anyway.

As dorky as I felt, sitting there drawing sometimes barely recognizable figures while everyone around me danced, this was a lot of fun. I kind of wish I had time to practice and get good at it, because I suspect that this could lead to some pretty cool artwork.

Weekly Journal #1: no really, why are you taking this class?

2009-02-08T16:38:00.000-08:00

This blog will consist of two distinct (but hopefully related) types of journal entries: "process" journal entries, which will describe my progress in the class as I strive to understand my own personal creative process, and "weekly" journals, where I will do some sketching and respond to a question or two posed by my instructor. This week's questions are as follows:

Think about what you would like to learn in this class and set a few goals for yourself. What would you like to be able to do by the end of the semester? Also, since many of you have majors and concentrations outside of theater, write about how your work in the theater (or scenic design specifically) connects with your primary area of study and what skills do they share in common.

Now that I've warmed up a bit to the level of "artsy" that's going to be involved in this class, I'm actually getting a little excited for it. A few semesters ago I took a course called "Fundamentals of Music" precisely because I knew nothing at all about music (I mean really, I didn't know what a chord was), and was tired of my ignorance. But I've come to learn that sometimes it's even better to learn new things that you didn't even know you wanted to learn. I mean, I was well aware of my lack of musical ability, and wanted to change that. I am equally aware of my lack of artistic ability, and didn't feel particularly moved to do anything about it. I registered for this class not understanding exactly what it would be about, and now I find myself on the path of learning about something new that I didn't even want to learn- and those are usually the things you need to learn the most. I hope that made any sense at all, but the point is, I've changed my mind- now I'm looking forward to learning a little about art and design. In a few days we'll be working on gesture drawing, and while part of my brain is rebelling against the very idea ("seriously? gesture drawing? who cares? also, that will not end well"), part of me is excited- it would be really cool to be able to draw even relatively well. I obviously don't think that an hour of drawing instruction is going to turn me into an artist, but I am currently limited to stick figures, so it shouldn't be hard to improve.

I'm also looking forward to earning an appreciation for art. After taking my one semester of music, I suddenly realized that music sounded different. Learning what a chord was made some subtle yet enormous difference in the way I listened to music. My mind was opened to new things- I even discovered a few pieces of classical music that I really liked. I therefore suspect that there might be types of art that I also like. (I spent a lot of time traveling in Europe over the past year, and have therefore seen more Renaissance paintings of Jesus than any one person should be subjected to in a lifetime, despite the fact that I knew I didn't really care for the style after the first 3 or so.) And I'm looking forward to finding them.

Bringing the topic a little closer to the actual purpose of the class (and away from the vague discussions of "art in general"), I'm looking forward to doing some theater from a different perspective. I really enjoyed acting classes but I've unfortunately never actually worked on a theatrical production- so my view of the process is very one-dimensional. It will be interesting to force myself to analyze a play from the point of view of someone who will not be standing on the stage the entire time.

So to summarize, my goals for this class (in increasing order of grandiose vagueness):
1. To acquire some basic artistic skills, like sketching and painting.
2. To acquire another way of looking at theater (specifically from the point of view of a designer).
3. To learn to appreciate art.

As for my life outside of theater, this class will definitely have a much more direct relationship to my primary major than all of my previous theater experiences. Acting classes are a lot of fun, but are only related to the infrequent presentations I'm required to give in mechanical engineering- it's hard to connect Shakespeare and control systems without really, really awful nerd jokes that are likely to lose you some friends. A design class is much more likely to come in handy- especially considering that as of right now, I'd like to focus on product design. In fact, now that I think about it, it strikes me as kind of odd that there isn't a required design course in mechanical engineering. There are plenty of classes about the product design process, but the subject of making a product visually appealing is only briefly addressed. Design considerations like color and proportion are really not all that different between theater and product design. Obviously the goals are quite different, but I suspect the underlying principles to be almost identical.
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In conjunction with these musings, I created 3 blind contour sketches. What's that, you ask? Maybe you don't care much, but I am most certainly going to explain it to you before I go ahead and post my drawings, because trust me, they require some justification. Here are the rules of blind contour sketching:
1. You must draw for 3 minutes.
2. Your pencil may never be lifted from the page.
3. You may not look at your paper. At all.

Now that we all appreciate the difficulty of the task at hand, I am proud (?) to present my first forays into the world of art:

Do you know what they are?

Introduction

2009-02-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

So as I sat down in 21M.733 the other day (that's MIT speak for the scenery design class I'm taking this semester), our professor was talking about the reflection essays that are due with each of our projects. With each final design we'll be required to submit a 2 page paper about the process we took in developing our project. In lieu of this, she told us that we can keep a semi-daily journal of our thoughts and ideas throughout the course of the semester. Someone asked how she preferred these journals- bound, stapled, woven together with llama wool, or whatever- and someone else blurted out "can we blog it?" She laughed and said she supposed so, and I thought...well seriously, how can I not?

So first let me address this question: why should you, as a random person who stumbled upon this page (like so many undoubtedly will) care? Because this will not be a normal blog about art. No, this will probably be a very sarcastic and bumbling blog about art. You see, I, my dear readers, am an engineer. A mechanical engineer at that. That's where the word engineer even comes from: engines. Thermodynamics, kinematics, control systems- these are the things I do. Not that I do them well, but I do them, at any rate. How did I end up in a scenery design class, of all places?

Well, all MIT undergraduates are required to take 8 semester of humanities, and create a concentration within one subject with 4 of those classes. I happen to be concentrating in Theater Arts (just filed the form this morning, in fact). Well, that might sound kind of artsy (notice the word "arts" in the title), but to date I have taken no less than 3 different acting classes. You might have gotten the impression from my writing style that as a rather loud and let's say "outgoing" personality, this was no great leap for me. People have been telling me about how dramatic I am for years. But now, in my last semester, having more or less exhausted the acting classes (which fit into my schedule around other, I apologize, more important requirements to be fulfilled before graduation in June, at least) I stumbled across 21M.733.

I'll be honest- at first I thought it would be interesting because we'd be building sets- I can wield a power drill as well as the next person, and the exact geometry needed to fulfill a certain movable compartment and the specifications of the hinges needed to hold the minimum weight are all things I can handle. But I soon discovered that we wouldn't actually be building sets- just designing them.

We'd make models- like out of foamcore. Well, okay, that's not so bad. Or drawings. Or watercolors. OK hang on a second...watercolors? I don't think so. Unless they're paint-by-numbers, this is so not happening for me. Next week a model is coming to class so we can work on gesture drawing. Um...what?

This has all the potential for disaster, hilarity, or both. I'm sticking with it, for better or for worse. Maybe I'll even learn something.

Stay tuned, it should be interesting.