Surrealism-Automatic Writing

I was browsing for surrealist writing techniques and came across this one: Automatic Writing. “It is the process or production of writing material that proponents claim does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. Practitioners say that the writer’s hand forms the message, with the person being unaware of what will be written.”(Wikipedia)

I remember we did something like this in class , and I thought I would do it again. So I took my pen and paper and just wrote away without looking at my page. After I was done, I took a look at my sheet, and boy was the writing a disaster! I wrote about the color black since we had to write about “our topic”, and from what I understood of my chicken writing, I got something like black being an elegant color, how it has a psychological impact and makes chubby people look slim…and the rest…I dunno! Here are the pics of my sheet:

Surrealism- The Color Black

Where have I been living?! As far as I remember I have never heard of black flowers, but apparently they do exist.  As I was reading about them, they were people debating about the existence of it: Most of the people were saying that they do exist while the few that were disagreeing were saying that its just a really darker shade of purple which appears to be black. Well, if it appears to be black…then it is black right? I could be wrong.

I also learned that they are expensive and rare, obviously.Personally even though I like the color black, I don’t think I would like the idea of having black flowers in my backyard…it just doesn’t seem natural(kinda spooky), but I guess that’s what makes it surreal!

Salvador Dali

I was introduced to surrealism in my grade 11 Art class, and I remember that I loved it because of its uniqueness.

I typed “surrealism” into the google search bar for images and my eye caught this picture:

I remember being shown this picture in my Art class, and it really intrigued me. But since it has been two years I forgot about the artist himself as well as this painting. And so I did some research…

Salvador Dali was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork

And as for the painting above, The Persistence of Memory, was painten in 1931 and is known as his famous artwork. This painting introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and the other limp watches, shown being devoured by insects

Wow! Check out that moustache and the eccentric pose! Quite a surrealist when taking pictures as well!

Quotes I Liked

“The less I know what the hell I’m saying in a poem, the happier I am with it” – Gil Adamson

“The surreal exists for me totally, while walking down the streets of downtown Toronto to my job, when dancing wildly to the sounds of Sly and the Family Stone, when looking into the beloved’s eyes, when watching with amazement as my daughter builds her own world. Surrealism is what I know as truth; it has never failed me.” – Beatriz Hausner

“The lack of skull, the absence of the boundaries. The freedom to mine the should-be-possible.” – Stuart Ross

Investigation- Shape Poetry

I was looking around for some interesting styles of poetry, and boy are they so many! It was quite overwhelming. Anyhow, I came across Shape poetry! And I really like the idea of it. Its basically when a poem takes a shape of the subject of the poem. For example, if the subject of a poem were a rose, then the poem would be shaped like a rose.Cool huh?

Here is an example of a Shape poem:

My Body

                             my
                            body
                             is
                             a
                   walking representation
                 the outward visual caption
                      of what it means
             to                               be
                            me
                         from the
                          outside
                          looking
                            in
                  at times        I hide
                 from you         but  mostly
                what you          see  is
                what you          will get

Here is another cool example:
Broken Car

                 What can I do with
                a car that doesn't go
          Can I find some way to fix it
    How long will it be before I can go again
   Can the car even be fixed or is it hopeless
   I can't take a bus to work they aren't around
        Stranded                  No Money
         Damned                    Things 

I think thats pretty cool and interesting, and would probably be fun to do. I think this style would
also attract a persons attention towards the poem
just as it did for me:)

My Top Interest – The Colour Black

I have and always will love the color black. There’s something different about this color. It goes with everything, and never goes out of style! It makes fat people look thin, how cool is that!Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, which I tend to do a lot. If I have to buy a bag, I”ll say I want it in black. What about shoes? Black. Jacket? Black.Pants? Black. And the list goes on. I had never searched up the colour black, and so I did today, and I found some quite interesting facts about my buddy Black.

1. You know the famous black belt? the one that represents a mark of achievement and seniority in many martial arts. Well the reason why its called “black belt” is because in the Japanese culture, black symbolizes nobility, age, and experience.

2. One old wives’ tale claims that if a woman is buried wearing the color black, she’ll come back to haunt the family. Haha.

3.Nature of Black: Black is the absence of color. In clothing, black is visually slimming. Black, like other dark colors, can make a room appear to shrink in size and even a well-lit room looks dark with a lot of black(about.com). Now I knew about the slimming part, but didn’t know it had the same effect on a room!

4.Apparently wearing the color black has a psychological impact. It makes a person feel inconspicuous, a restfull emptiness, and a feeling of power and having a sense of potential and possibilities.Hmm…interesting, i always wear black, but I don’t think I always feel as stated above.

5.The color black is so widely regarded as sophisticated in fashion that the term “the new black” is often used to describe and give merit to a color trend.

Wow. Never thought there could be so much behind one colour!

Investigation On a Poet- Rhea Tregebov

Rhea Tregebov is a Canadian poet and children’s writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia, specializing in poetry and translation

I picked up one of her books called , Mapping The Chaos ,from class to look over during the long weekend. I must say I really enjoy her poems. I like how she makes ordinary things seem great through her amazing way of writing poems.I don’t really like poems that are so confusing , that I feel as though the writer just picked lines from anywhere and put them together.  I like things that actaully makes sense. Well, to see, what “makes sense” is different to everyone. I guess, I can say, I can realate to her poems and actaully understand what she talks about. I would like to share one of her poems I really like that I came across from the book :

Old love smells like old socks

after washing; keeping

something of  the body.

Wearing thin in the spots

where it rubs hardest;

holding, nonetheless,

together. Something of the body

pressed right into the fabric.

That lasts, maybe, as long as we do;

maybe longer

.

Joe Jones-Sound Artist

Joe Jones was an avant-garde musician who was associated with Fluxus, he was very well known for his creation of rhythmic music machines. In the late 1950s he began a short career as a jazz drummer. In the 1960s Jones began to study avant-garde experimental composition first with John Cage and then Earle Brown.  In 1962, Jones began experimenting with mechanical instruments which resulted in creating objects such as musical boats, solar music umbrellas and a pedaled vehicle that pulled handmade instruments on wheels called “The Longest Pull Toy in the World”.

Joe Jones musical style is quite different, and I must say its very interesting as well, I came across one of his pieces called Dracula, which at first made me feel uncomfortable due to the many odd sounds in the background. I felt that there was a conversation going on throughout the piece. Throughout the middle i got comfortable with it and actually found it pretty funny, like how he was calling out to dracula asking if he wanted his blood. But the piece still had its scary or rather uncomfortable sounds and feelings throughout. I think I would like to try something like this, especially the background voices.Actually I think it would be perfect to try something like that in the sound composition were going to be working with, especially since my friend and I are going for more of a scary sound composition.

Sound- The most annoying sound in the world!

I was looking around youtube for some interesting sounds to blog about when I came across a video about annoying sounds, which made me think about the annoying sounds in my life, and my ALARM CLOCK came to mind!

I don’t know anyone who loves the sound of their alarm clock… and I don’t think anyone does! I mean who would like the sound of something that brings them back to life, the sound that pushes us to leave the warmth of our blankets, and the sound that tells us to wake up to another new day at school or work…seriously, now who likes that? I don’t. I hate the sound of my alarm clock so much that i cant bear to hear it anytime during the day, even if I’m awake. This cringing feeling creeps inside of me, and all these emotions that I feel every morning arise in me if I hear the sound of my alarm clock anytime, anywhere, awake or asleep. Now you might wonder why I would have to listen to my alarm clock during the day, ask my little brother who likes to play around with the cell in which is the alarm clock, which he sometimes uses to annoy me by playing it over and over again. I remember I was once walking outside, and there was a woman walking ahead of me and her phone rang…and you can guess what her ring tune was! Yes, it was the same exact ring tune that  creates a cringing feeling inside of me and makes me wanna close my ears and run for shelter!

Anyhow, I realized at how amazing sound is, that the emotion you feel when hearing it kind of sticks with you every time you hear it again. Like a song you used to hear at a certain point in your life, and when hearing it again after a long time, all the memories and the emotions you felt way back then spring again.Its amazing how sound creates more than just a music to the ears. But yes, the sound of my alarm clock is still not that amazing, and I know it will never be!

Gaga gougou – Sound piece!

Jean-Claude Gagnon “À gaga gougou”

I listened to the above link ( well i listened to most of it *embarassed*…well what can I say it was too long!) When I listened to it, the first thing that came to my mind was one of the sound activities we did in class. The activity where  a  different alphabet was handed to all the students in the class, and we had to make any random sounds with that alphabet. So, when listening to this sound composition, I felt that the artist was playing around with the alphabet “g”, and it sounded alot like the person who was sitting beside me, who had a “j”. I also found this sound piece kind of funny, because the artist was making some pretty funny sounds, and at some points I also felt that the artist was having a conversation with someone.  And that reminded me of the sound artist that was introduced to us in class, where he made funny expressions and spoke in a differnt language (forgive me, I dont remember his name!).

Over all, I liked this sound piece…it brought back memories from the past week in class, and I’d like to try doing something similar on my own…(and oh did I mention, this sound piece is kinda stuck in my head?!)