TED talks Mushrooms, Freeman explains Corporate Logos, Pentagon Memorial is frustrating.

Paul Stamets 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World


Freeman Explains Freemasonry Links To Corporate Symbols and Logos


DOD Pentagon Memorial Homepage

workshops

To be completely honest, I didn't find either of the workshops (there were only two as it turns out) to be stimulating in any way. Perhaps, had I been able to stay longer, my mind would have changed. We were told the workshops started at 2, and I had to leave at 4, but the workshops didnt start till 3, so I was only able to stay for about an hour. We all met upstairs together as they gave an overview of what was gonna be happening in each of the workshops. Then we the groups split up and began working.

The first workshop dealt with using images to tell a story. I joined this group at first thinking it would be interesting and I'd be able to learn something before I had to leave. Unfortunately to participate in the workshop we were first asked to go out and take pictures around Hollywood and meet back in an hour. At this point it was about 330 and my time was running out. I didnt want to spend it running around taking pictures on my own, I wouldnt get anything out of it. So i decided to see what the other group was up to.

When I got to the other group they still hadn't started. They were setting up a projector and seemed to be having technical difficulties. After a few more minutes they were ready and showed a "trailer" for a film they were working on. The trailer was about 5 min long, and i had no idea what it was about until the end when the title came up and it was about something called the Queer Criminals. Basically it was guys dressed in drag running around doing I don't even know what. The workshop was to contribute to their film. At this point I was a little glad I had to leave. I wasn't too interested in staying anymore, so I left.

Overall I just wish I had been able to stay longer, maybe then I would have been able to get something out of the first group.

Another Catastrophe

Ironically, the most fantastical aspect of our trip was when we tried to leave. As Ajia and I left, fully confident that we could be back in Valencia by three, as we needed to be, we walked in the direction of where our memories told us I had left my car. And as we checked each street between Highland and Cahuenga, Franklin and Hollywood, twice, it was obvious that something was not right. So we rechecked our memories and our steps again, feeling as if we had collectively gone crazy. Finally finding it at least an hour later, a block farther up a hill than we remembered, we left with a far more concrete fantastical catastrophic experience than is possible to ever concoct in film. That is not to say that the films in the exhibition were average or underwhelming, because they were very interesting and imaginative and entertaining, even if one of them was, in my opinion, more of an experiment in experimental animation than a cohesive short. But maybe that is how it was supposed to feel.

Fantastical Catastrophe

I don't often get to see many video works so watching the videos was a nice change for me. One thing I really wanted to have was a Q & A session. I thought that watching all the videos right after one and other was a bit too much. I think that breaking them up with a little bit of questions would have given me a chance to really let them sink in. The setting was nice, I felt comfortable in the space and liked that there was also some art for us to look at. I wish that the artists could have talked a little bit more about their work at the end, maybe they did and I missed it since I had to leave. Other than me missing out on the workshops I think it was a great field trip.

fieldtrip

Two workshops
1)Storytelling through imagery - was the photography workshop, in which we were shooting around Hollywood, digging up the plasticity of the city. Later everyone put their images together to make an archive in which we could all chose images, even those which did not belong to us in order to tell a story.
2)______(name?) - The other workshop was to contribute to a film who's trailer was presented downstairs. I saw the trailer but did not get to help much after getting caught up with photography workshop.

The third room by the stairs with the projector acting like a strobe light with a mirror in front of it, spinning a shape which was a black and white image was really well done although i would've love to have seen it in a bigger empty room to really appreciate it.

response to nature

video

owl

Field Trip Response

I got there late on Saturday around 5:oopm and the workshops were already finished. I met Frédéric Moffet and Amitis Motevalli who had started a project by assigning groups of people to take pictures on Hollywood Blvd. The theme was sex and the aim of the workshop was to create a narrative from the photos taken by those groups to tell a story by using the element of sex culture on Hollywood Blvd.
Many people had left and we got into a group of 4 and started brainstorming to see what we can do with those photos. They also told us that we didn't have time to edit them according to the schedual of the program. We decided just to present the photos and talk about them. Photos were taken from the people, signs (including the one with an X alphabet), objects and locations. Although we couldn't put up a story together, i found the subject matter pretty interesting because one had to deal with the representation of history through photographs while making a story out of them that is completely fictitious (and as if it had happend in another place). At 7:00pm they review some of the workshops held that day and 24 hour screening started. I only watched 3 of the videos and left the exhibition. All three were shot in black and white, had astrange narratives and were very powerful visually.