Art+and+Literature

= Art and Literature =

Your wiki blog must clearly explain the process you took to research their __topic__. Each entry also explains the creation of the visual aid/activity, which must be posted on this site the day after the party, May 4th. __Students__ should write their first name and last initial as their "username" (LisaS) and include the date in each entry. Each week your entry should look like the following:

LisaS - April 12, 2012

Paragraph One - Full Sentences with proper grammar and spelling. Answer the questions below.

Paragraph Two - Full Sentences with proper grammar and spelling. Answer the questions below.

Answer the following questions in 2 paragraphs per week for each __student__ in the group:
 * 1) What books/websites did you use for research?
 * 2) How to do you know that they are reputable __sites__?
 * 3) What are your goals for the week? Did you complete each goal?
 * 4) What specific tasks do you have to complete as a part of your group?
 * 5) What difficulties have you encountered? How did you solve the problems?
 * 6) What is your favorite/least favorite part of the project this week?
 * 7) Self evaluation - How did you __work__ individually and/or with your group?
 * 8) Do you think you contributed as much as the other members of your group?
 * 9) What are your goals for next week?
 * 10) Other information you think is relevant and significant to include.

BEGIN STUDENT ENTRIES- WEEK ONE: **Gillian Pfeiffer: April 13, 2012** I unfortunately missed the first session due to other agendas, but I already knew what I wanted to research about 1960's pop culture. It was movies. During the 60's there were several ground breaking films that swept the nation. Some were unforgettable, outgoing, visually striking, and some were downright controversial. Nevertheless, the films of the 60's are still idolized today and had a great impact on our culture. For example, Stanley Kubrick's science fiction masterpiece, //**2001: A Space Odyssey**// was one of the most memorable films of the 1960s because of its culture impact on young audiences and also the space race as well. I will be researching a number of films that are considered the most memorable ones of the decade. I will look for famous screenshots and various clips of movies to give an example of what cinema was like back then.

I will be looking on several websites like Wikipedia and IMDb.com for information on 1960's movies. I have also seen a great amount of 60's films myself. I know there were a lot of famous movie actors and actresses, so I will research a few celebrities as well. Since there were so many great movies in that era, I'm going to narrow it down by choosing the top 10-20 films that __best__ represented movies in the 60's. They will all be a different genre of film and will not be inappropriate choices, seeing as some movies were highly controversial during that time period. I will send the pictures and clips to our online presentation once I have chosen the films. I hope to show everyone how movies changed in the 60's and how we still love them in todays world.

JakeS - April 12, 2012

Since I was just starting today, I decided to use good ol' google to find some good websites. My task for the group is researching artists of the 1960s. I am researching Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. For this week, I hope to get a grasp of what kinds of art each artist specialized in. For Andy Warhol, I found that Warhol.org was quite helpful for getting a sense of what kinds of art he did. From what I have grasped thus far, he enjoyed doing a technique called "Pop-Art". I know this site is reliable and accurate because it is an official site for the Andy Warhol Museum. For Jasper Johns, I discovered the website Jasperjohns.com was quite helpful because it showed a lot of his artwork. From what I picked up, Jasper Johns liked doing abstract work. He is quoted as saying "My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing." I know this website is not an official website because it states so, but for today I just wanted to grasp what kind of art he did, and I checked to make sure the information was accurate, and it was. For Roy Lichtenstein, I found that Lichtensteinfoundation.org was a very helpful website, because it showed much of his work. Like Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein enjoyed creating "Pop-Art" also. He did many comic book style pieces. The website is an official website for Roy Lichtenstein, so I know it is reliable.

So far, I have not had any difficulties. Today I was just trying to get a feel for the style of art these artists created. I think I did quite well for today, since I did reach the goal I gave myself. I didn't have a least favorite part of the project this week, because I really didn't have to do much tedious work. Even with these journals, I don't really mind, because I like writing when it can be a bit more conversational and a bit less structured. I think I contributed quite well to my fellow group members. Next week, I hope to pin down my favorite artwork by each artist, and write a short personal interpretation for each. I hope to have at least two pieces of art per artist.

LeoBN 4-12-12

Instead of researching plays from the 60s I have decided to look at television from the 60s. So far my source is Wikipedia. I have chosen six shows (Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Mission Impossible, The Flinstones, Lassie, and Bewitched) but I might narrow it down some. I would like to learn more about these shows and get clips for the party. My mom might have some Flinstone episodes. Next week I think I will narrow down my list and then start researching the shows.

The group is small and we keep to our selves so I work very well with them. I have just started so I haven't gotten much information. I think this is going to be a fun project.

P.S. I have just crossed of Mission Impossible and Lassie.

MarinaN 4/12/12 Today my group had decided what parts of art and literature they had wanted to research, and I had decided to research poetry and poets that were famous in the 1960s. With that in mind, I searched for any kinds of poets that stood out in that time, which brought me into the group known as the Beat Poets: a rebellious-like group of artists/poets who thought that art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals. It was there I decided on the two particular poets I’ve decided to focus on; Allen Ginsburg, and Lawrence Ferlingetti.

Allen Ginsburg I had found out had written many types of poems, and books full of them, along with arguably one of his most famous works from the 1960s, //Kaddish.// During the 1960s, he had also became a big symbol of rebelling movements because of his drug abuse and views on free speech and gay rights. Lawrence Ferlingetti was a poet who had carried his political philosophies and social criticisms into experimental plays, like whit his 1960 poem, //Her.// Which was an autobiographical, experimental work that focuses on the narrator’s pursuit of a woman.

That was all I had found out today. I personally hope to discover more in due time.

Owen Sproat OwenS 4-12-12 Today I researched different art scenes that were happening in the 1960s such as, op art, minimalism, pop art, and fluxus. For research I used wikipedia, and this other cool website called artsconnected.org. The website is legit because it was set up by the walker art center which is a museum you can visit. Here is the link to the page, its pretty cool. http://artsconnected.org/collection/118487/art-in-the-1960s#%281%29. One of the artists I found was Tony Smith who was a minimal artist. Minimalism is a 1950s and 60s trend in art that used simple, typically massive, forms. A lot of minimalist work can be seen outside as sculptures in Philadelphia. Also I researched op art which is pretty much the complete opposite of minimalism. Op art really catches your eyes, its one of my favorite types of art. The Merriam Webster definition of op art is, "Optical art is nonobjective art characterized by the use of straight or curved lines or geometric patterns often for an illusory effect." Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely are its most famous exponents.

For this project I worked mostly by myself really because there's not much work to do with a group on this topic. I actually enjoyed working alone for this because it allowed me to research deeper into things. I really learned a lot about 60s culture with just an hour of research. The nice thing about this project is that its easy, and its fun to do, especially since I can go on facebook and listen to music while I work. Writing on the wiki is the only less enjoyable thing about it. Next week I hope to find my favorite paintings by each artist and research psychedelic art of the later 1960s. Yay!

===For the 1960's project, I have been given the task of finding information about popular authors at the time. Many of the authors I chose where either in mid carer or had recently become popular. The athors I have chosen are Mario Puzo, Roald Dahl, Dr.Seus, J.R.R Tolken and Pierrie Boulle. I used a multitude of sites to find and begin researching teh authors. The majoraty of the sites are not undoubtably legitimate. They all had the same information and a few of them are confermed to be legitimate by other legitimate sites. My favorate part of this project so far is discovering that so many popular names where around in the 1960's. My goal for this week has been to find authors and begin researching them. My ghoal for next week is to find more information about the authors I have chosen.===

www.goodreads.com, www.wikipedia.com, www.codlibrary.com,www.redravine.wordpress.com, www.s9.com, www.biography.com.
Jack Oswald 4|12|12


 * Today we did a ton of productive things. First we reshared brief info on 60’s Music and dances. We found a lot of material real fast, using mostly google and wikipedia. Us “Music” People” then created a Playlist of 60’s music to play during the party while the dance people working on something. At some point we had the idea to have a rock band and perform at the party. We looked at our playlist and picked out songs that would be fun to play live and made a setlist. **
 * Our goals for right now are to learn how to play out set, figure out a way to play the other music for the party (we’re thinking something youtube), and figure out how we're going to organize our powerpoint and everything else. **

** STUDENT ENTRIES ** ** WEEK TWO - 4/17/12 **

JakeS - April 17, 2012

Today, my goal was to work solely on Prezi.com. I spent most of my time gathering images, and some information from other students. I accidentally forgot to source my pictures, so I had to re-google everything. After I did that, things went smoother. I primarily got the images by googling them. Then, to make sure the images were accurate, and not remakes of originals, I googled the pictures I found and matched them up with official websites for the creators of the images.

I went through all the artists today, and got started on TV Shows. I will be working with Leo, a fellow group member in charge of the TV section, the next time we meet. Today I think I made a lot of progress. I worked out the order of the sections (Artists, TV Shows, Literature, Movies, Poetry), and I finished the first section of the Prezi. Next week, I hope to finish the TV show section, and get started on the literature section, which I think will occupy the most time. The literature section is a very large section, so I may have to trim some of the information. I really enjoy making the presentation, because I like creating things with computer graphics and such.

LeoBN One of my shows is the Flintstones (1960-66). It's an animated sitcom about a stone age family that live a stone age version of modern (60s) life (complete with foot powered cars and pet dinosaurs.) Many of the challenges they face are also based off of modern (60s) challenges (hard marriages, annoying neighbors). It was the first animation that had a long (half hour) story line and traces of it can still be found today (cereal) (http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=flintstones). My mom has some dvds that I plan to bring in and show at the party (need to get all the tech ready).

The next show is Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69). It is a si-fi show about a group of explorers working for Starfleet Comand that search space for new life and civilizations during the 23rd century in the space ship USS Enterprise. It aired during the 60s so some of the 'incredible' technology in the show is now actually possible although some of it isn't (http://www.startrek.com/page/star-trek-the-original-series).

Then there is Bewitched (1964-72), a fantasy sitcom about a married couple, and the wife is literally a witch although she is not evil. She //tries//to keep the magic to a minimum for the sake of her safety and her husband's sanity. When she does slip there is trouble as they try to cover the truth from the public. There is also trouble with the in-laws. Apparently witches don't like it when one of there own marries a mortal as the magical mother in law continuously reminds them of (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057733/).

Lastly there is The Twilight Zone (1959-64). It is a collection of stories about unnatural/supernatural events like time travel or hauntings happening to everyday people. It was full of unexpected twists and turns which made it very interesting (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052520/).

I think I did a lot of good work today. Next week I might add the first season of Flying Circus to the list.


 * Gillian Pfeiffer, April 17, 2012**

 I am going to look for screenshots for the list of the top 10 films of the 1960’s. I will search for one screenshot that best represents the movie. I am going to look on several websites for background information on the films I chose. I am going to send these pictures to the powerpoint presentation we are doing. I am keeping track of the sources I use for the pictures I chose. I found 10 screenshots from different films and sent them to Jake to put in the presentation. Each image is a scene that is either iconic or easily recognizable to people.

When we present our slides, I am going to talk about each of the ten films I chose and what they are about. I will also explain why I chose that particular screenshot to represent that film. My descriptions will be short but will give people a simple idea of what the movie is about if they have not seen it. I will also explain who or what is in the screenshot.

MarinaN Tues. 4-16-12 Today I had decided to take the first step into researching my poets by looking up the accomplishments they did in the 1960s. For Allen Ginsberg, I found;

“During the 1960s, Ginsberg had also traveled to many different states such as South America, Europe, Morocco, and India with his partner Peter Orlovsky, while continuing to experiment with psychedelic stimulants to create visionary poetry. When he did, he had learned the ways of meditation and Buddhism from holy men in India, and later discovered that medication, not drugs, were the things to help his road in enlightenment. As such, when he returned to North America in 1963, he had adapted a different mindset mainly focused on the ideal of using non-violent means to make the world into a much more accepting place.”

For Lawrence Ferlinghetti, I had discovered; “Lawrence Ferlinghetti had been a friend of Allen Ginsberg; publishing some of his poems and even joining the Beat Generation poets Ginsberg was also in. In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light Publishing, a book-publishing venture. City Lights became known as the heart of the "Beat" movement, which included writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. (www.poets.org)” I hope to discover more in due time.

Owen Sproat, April 17, 2012

Today I looked at art work by the artists I researched last week. I looked at Tony Smith’s minimalist sculptures which are very cool, but a little boring sometimes. Thats just my opinion though. There was one of his sculptures in Philadelphia called “We Lost” but it was moved somewhere else. I also looked at Bridget Riley’s op art, which made me sorta dizzy. I really liked this picture by her... [] It sort of reminds me of Christie's art work. I found my favorite works by these two artists and sent them to Jake to be put in the the prezi.

This project is very easy and enjoyable to do, and I haven’t really had any difficulties so far, except for when the wiki deleted my 2 paragraphs for some reason, but I found them and reposted them. Next week I hope to see what the prezi looks like, and see if it needs any revisions or anything like that. As far as my contributions, I feel like I could’ve maybe done a little more work, but its not that I didn’t do anything, I just like to take my time.

Khaseem 4-17-12

My goal for this week was to find information on the authors I chose. I Googled the authors one by one and attempted to find reliable websites that contained accurate information. The websites I found were, as far as I could tell, reliable. These are the sites I used: [|http://ca.palibrary.org], [|www.biography.com] and [|www.puffin.co.uk]. If I was not sure whether the website was reliable or not I made sure to ask. I found more information than I would have time to present, so I was forced to remove and author. (Pierre Boulle: known for “Planet Of The Apes”) I have yet to decide how to organize the information I find and how I will present it, but I plan to do so next week.

** STUDENT ENTRIES ** ** WEEK THREE - 4/24/12 ** **Gillian Pfeiffer, 4/24/12**Today, I am working on writing descriptions for the movies I picked out to present. Each one will briefly describe the basic plot of the film without going on too long. I already found the screenshots for the 10 movies I chose. The reason I didn’t do clips was because there are too many scenes from each movie to chose from. Images are much easier and will take up less time. Now that I’ve found the movies and descriptions, I am going to look up more about movies in the 1960’s and how cinema was changed during that decade.

 For this week's assignment, I will look up information about how the quality of movies changed. For example, the prices of movie tickets was dramatically different from today’s tickets. How many more colored movies came out in the 60’s than before? Did the picture quality improve? Were movies more racy and controversial in the 60’s? These are the questions that I will be answering by typing up a paper with the information I find about movies. I may do bullet points or a paragraph. This will be my guideline for when I present.

JakeS - April 24, 2012

Today I focused my attention of Prezi. I don't have any more research to do, so I can focus on making the Prezi more visually appealing. I am just waiting for the person in charge of literature to e-mail me their research. I just received the research from Leo, who is in charge of TV shows, and Marina, who is in charge of poetry, so now I am going to work to put that into the Prezi.

I finished putting the TV show information into the Prezi, and I also did the poetry. All that's left is the literature section, which is being e-mailed to me soon. So far, the Prezi is going very well. I have made it quite visually appealing, and I don't think people will get bored of it. Hopefully, that is. I have picked up Prezi quite quickly, and I think it is turning out really well. I hope to have a dry run next week for the whole group. Hopefully, we will go through the whole presentation and see if there are any aspects of it that I should change. For now, all I have left is the literature section.

Marina Neslen 4-24-12 For this day of preparing, I had decided now, out of all the poems Ginsberg has written, I chose to take an excerpt from arguably his most well-known poem, //Howl.// (The excerpt I’m using; “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night”) Because of how I’ve heard that it represents most of what the ‘60s was about, but the reason I’m only using an excerpt is because the actual poem is far too long for the party. However, I did print out the entire poem for Gena to have, so that she can make copies of it for those at the party who might be curious to read the entire poem after hearing the excerpt I used.  I had also been given the task to find pictures of the poets I had been finding information on these last couple weeks, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and send them to one of my classmates so we can have pictures of poets to represent out work. I managed to find very suitable pictures and then emailed them over for him after a slight bit of trial and error.  Overall, I feel quite good about all that I accomplished today, and I think now I feel more prepared for whatever we might be doing during our final day of preparation before the party.

LeoBNI have gotten much done today. I Emailed images and clips of the shows to the presentation and started to write my own presentation for the shows. Thank you youtube and flikr creative commons. I'm also planning a musical surprise. Thank you Lisa and Gina. The party is coming up soon so I am getting very nervous. Everything is coming together and I hope the party will go smoothly. Next week I think we are going to do a run through of our presentation and I hope it turns out okay. I'm not too good a tech so if there is a problem then I'm stuck. Even if the tech works the audience might not like my presentation. The surprise might not have the intended impact. Am I freaking out for no reason? All will be revealed at the party... I need to lay off the television. [|†] Owen Sproat This week I began researching what I would say about each artist I chose. For the research I mostly just used wikipedia and google to get some basic facts and ideas for what to say. Next week my goal will be to write down what I'm going to say and remember it. I'm sort of nervous about presenting but It should be fun and interesting to do.

So far this week I haven't run into any difficulties, this project is proving to be pretty easy. I think it'll be an easy way to bring up my horrid grade in history. I also still think I could be doing more work but jake seems to be fine with doing the presentation alone so its all good. Im getting excited for this party, I'm going to eat all the food.

**STUDENT ENTRIES -** **WEEK FOUR - 5/1/12** **DON'T FORGET TO POST YOUR FINAL PRESENTATIONS/ACTIVITY PICTURES BY FRIDAY!!!** __**Gillian Pfeiffer**__This was the last time our group met for the part planning. Today, we finished up our research for the powerpoint presentation. We did a few practice presentations in order to prepare for Thursday. Each person has around 5 minutes to present the topic that they researched. I finished my movie research and found all the information I needed. I printed out facts I looked up and typed to read from. I also made a list of the 10 films I chose with brief synopsis to explain what each film is about. I chose screenshots for each movie too.

 Since today is the last time we meet, we are going to rehearse the presentation for Thursday. We are presenting art and literature of the 1960’s. Everyone researched something different pertaining to art and literature. All of us are going to talk about what we researched. Some of us have pictures of famous people from that era and one person has video clips of 1960’s tv shows. We have a specific order in which we are presenting. We all have worked very hard and efficiently to make this powerpoint.

Marina Neslen 4-31-12 Today I had started my very first practice presentation for the 1960’s party on Thursday, where we would present our topics that we’ve been researching on these last couple of weeks. To be honest, I was quite nervous about how I would seem when presenting, especially since I had to come up with an intro almost on the fly for A and B block, but when I finally presented and read what I had, it turned out that it came out very well, and aside from better pronunciation and less stuttering, everything was just fine. That made me very relieved.

So now I feel a lot more calm and confident about myself and how I’ll do in the actual party, and hopefully I’ll fix up my speech when that time comes. But, I felt good about how I read Ginsberg’s snippet of his poem, so I’m also a tad excited. I hope it goes well and everyone enjoys it. It's been a fun thing to work on though.

LeoToday is the last day we have to work on the party (of course). It is therefore the perfect time to make changes to my piece of the presentation. I have added Beverly Hillbillies to the list of shows after doing some last minute research. Other than that all I have to do is practice my presentation. All in all I think that things are going well for the group. The prezi is almost done and ready to go and so is the group and so is the presentation.

Leo What an amazing party! The food was excellent and the activities were fun. It was very cool to learn what life was like in he 60s. The only downside was that some of my videos didn't work properly and one was left out all together! (It's all your fault Jake!) Other than that the party was very fun and the presentations were very interesting.