Blue Sky Project 2010

Sneak Peek...

2010-08-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

We're almost there...
We've spent a lot of time in the Armory, but the focus for us this week has been the video and audio footage. We've been writing narrations and going into the recording studio, creating the audio for our final show, which will be coming out through spotlight speakers, which will make it sound like there are voices in your head! cool huh?

here's a sneak peek of some footage that will be on the houses. This is just my (Kristen's) section of the "home" videos:

What we've got so far... set up for our final week.

2010-08-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

So I haven't had time to blog this past week! I've been too busy fighting through the blood, sweat, and dirt in the ceiling of the Armory. No tears though, thankfully. Things are going fairly smooth. We have the 2 big houses up and moving and motored. The motors are working, but still need a little tinkering. The walls for both of the big houses are up. The wax paper was driving me slightly insane because I couldn't repair it very easily, since the wax would not stick with the iron anymore since it was covered in dirt. Here are some pictures!

Monday Week 7

2010-07-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

So begins our second to last week! We're almost there.

Question(s) of the day:
-What is your favorite kind of meat?
-Knee Socks or Footies?

We finished both of the 10x10 houses, disassembled them, and brought everything over to the armory. Our team work is amazing, because we've almost got one of the houses up in the ceiling in only ONE day! We are flyin and stylin:

The important weekend

2010-07-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

So during Saturday and Sunday, Michael and I worked on constructing the houses and the beams for over 20 hours! We did this at Rike so that we are able to make our mistakes in the air conditioning, disassemble everything, bring it over to the Armory, and then reassemble it on the floor and put it up in the ceiling. So Michael and I did a lot of bonding. :) We went shopping, ate burritos, drank a lot of coffee, listened to Nirvana (among many other bands), sawed things, drilled things, pounded things, lifted things, etc etc.
Here's a picture of Michael waiting for the hardware store lady to figure out how to process our tax exempt form:

Trimming some stuff. It's pretty:

Our first of two 10 x 10 houses up and hangin!

Our Group of the Week presentation was a success!

2010-07-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

We got a lot of great feedback and comments from our GOTW presentation on Thursday!

We spent the whole day setting things up, and it went very smoothly :)

We set up one of the houses in the other room and put on our question videos, along with the sound recording of "psychedelic" as people walked in.

We also had projections of birds all along the walls:

The sound stops and our "home videos" start to play on the house. Then begins a reflection narrative (written by all of us, put together and performed by nate), and I was improvising with him live on my electric violin. We were behind the wall in the other room and we were amplified and microphoned so that we could be heard and not seen. Here's a pic before the presentation doing sound check:

After we were finished, each of us came out through the closet door on the side of the room and talked about the following topics: Experience, Video, Audio, Maps/Model, and Construction.

After the Question and Answer session was over, we invited everyone to go around and check out the model of the armory that we have (finally) completed! Ta-da:

Group of the Week Presentation!!!

2010-07-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Shameless plug time!

Come to our Group of the Week presentation tomorrow, Thursday July 22 at 3:00 PM.
Important note: Our location is different from previous groups' presentations!
We will be in Room 206, Rike Creative Arts Building on UD's campus.
The presentation will start promptly at 3:00 and will go for about a half an hour.
See you there!
~~~~~~~
Tuesday question of the day: Carnivore or Herbivore?
Wednesday question of the day: Are we as a group controlled or operating under free will?

We are now a 9-legged group...

2010-07-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Thursday Week 5
Due to the situation and certain circumstances, Tim left our group last Thursday. :(
It was a very teary farewell (for me anyway), but it was his decision. As we sat around after having just lost a member of our group, we talked about the feelings that were going through us. We were sad to see him go and frustrated at the situation. However, through our loss the 9 of us became closer than ever before. We have become stronger and we know that there is still a lot of work to do! We are intensely working each and every day.

Question of the day: What is your religion?

Monday and Tuesday Week 6

So begins CONSTRUCTION WEEK! Time to whip out the power tools. A face everyone should make when using a nail gun:

We have prepared the ceiling of the Armory for us to work in, and we have begun building our pieces. There are a lot of pieces we need.

We have one 5x5 ft. house completed, we need to build two other 10x10 ft. houses. That means.... 1000 square feet of wax paper for the walls and roofs. Nate and I wiped out Dollar General of their wax paper and then went to get more at Kroger. To make it easier on our backs and our sanity, we constructed a frame to make the walls:

In order to hang the houses in the ceiling, we are creating boxes for the conduit to run through.
We need a lot more than shown here:

And we've also been doing even more work on the model of the Armory:

Other than all that, we are preparing for our Group of the Week presentation on Thursday! Unlike all the others, we will be presenting in Rike in one of our studios because for whatever reason, the Theater everyone else has been using is being used for something else on Thursday. :( This frustrates us a lot, but we're going to make it work.

Yay Week 6 <3

~Kristen

Week 5 Tuesday/Wednesday - Maps

2010-07-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

For the past two days we've been making abstract geographical representations from maps of where we live. We started out with small print-outs of selections of our neighborhood from mapquest. Then we played around with bigger abstractions of those images. And after that, we made huge abstractions of the abstractions!

Click here to check out our projects: Maps

In the morning we all enjoyed the view from inside the house:

Open-House! Thursday July 8 + Monday Week 5

2010-07-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Blue Sky 2010's Open House was a success! It was great to see everybody's projects in progress.

We got a lot of work done on Thursday scrambling for open house. We finished the frame, walls, and roof for one of our half-scale (5x5 ft) houses. Then we hung it up in one of our studios and projected silent video up onto the walls while we had our compositions playing on loop in the background. I hope the crazy voices didn't scare anyone away. We threw it all together really quickly, but we got a lot of great feedback and comments for our project idea!

Thursday's question of the day: What is your favorite word?

We were unfortunately so busy on Thursday that I forgot to get pictures of our display... maybe we'll come across some later!

Today we went to Yellowsprings and visited Michael's studio! It was magical and held a lot of dangerous tools that could cut through cold steel in less than a second. We also moved around a whole bunch of wood to and from several places, and we ate lunch at Ha Ha's Pizza. It was delicious, thanks Michael! :)

Today's question of the day (Monday July 12): What is your zodiac sign?

The Age of Aquarius is almost upon us....

Your favorite Aquarian,
Kristen <3

Wednesday Week 4

2010-07-07T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today we got a LOT of stuff done!
In the morning we shot the question videos:

Question of the Day: How many kids?

Then we spent the rest of the morning watching Victoria's videos of her neighborhood and house, and a couple interviews with her dad.

After lunch, we all worked on a lot of stuff in teams. We got so much done this way!

Building the Armory model
Andrew, Lesley, and Meriel worked on building the wooden boards for the ceiling of our small scale model of the Armory.

Building the model of the first house (half-scale 5 x 5 ft)
We left it to Ashia to start the small-scale model of the first house, which we started building today.

Making the projection screens
Kristen and Victoria started making the walls of the house, which will be projection screens made out of sheets of wax paper 61.5 x 43 inches. Since we had to iron together sheets of wax paper, it was difficult to keep our measurements exact. It took a few tries to get it exactly right...

Making the frame of the house
Michael, Nate, Alex, and Tim started making the frame of the house using electrical conduit. They had to bend it and measure it and connect it all together. We survived today with only one injury (Tim accidentally cut himself).

Tuesday Week 4

2010-07-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today's Question of the day was: Is life more about the destination or the ride?

The Ride had a overwhelming lead over Destination with only one vote. I'll leave it up to the viewers to guess who that one vote was. If any of our viewers can guess right we will give them a prize fit for kings... let the game begin. Next we watched the amazing life of Nate through his video depiction of his world in which he his king. We talked about some important point and feelings towards our final project and after lunch we finished and shared our soundscapes then started production on our first prototypes of our memory boxes.
~Nate

Check out some (a very small bit) of our audio equipment:

And the material we will be using for our projections: a bunch of wax paper ironed together. Here's what it looks like with a black and white video of a pen drawing ink (Ann Hamilton) projected onto it with the lights off and on:

Monday Week 4

2010-07-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel S. Crum here updating for our plethora of viewers on what UPACIPIABSDO has been up to the past two days.

Monday our Question of the day was: Sony or Nintendo? The answers were fairly even.

Afterwards we watched Kristen's account of the many places she lives and what made her, her. We broke for lunch early since the campus was closed so we had to go off campus to eat. After lunch we broke off into our groups to work on our soundscapes. Here are the finished products, which took about 3 days to complete.

Michael, Nate, Meriel, Victoria, and Ashia: Medical Office

Kristen, Tim, Alex, Lesley, and Andrew: Psychedelic

~Nate

P.S. Kristen says Happy Summer Days :)

Thursday Week 3

2010-07-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday and Thursday we started setting up all the audio equipment: mixers, midi keyboard, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, electric violin, a few different microphones (shotgun mic, SHURE-58, two USB mics), drum sticks, mbox, cymbals, and a humongous bunch of cables for various things...
We set up the really old surveillance cameras. As it turns out, they are extremely sensitive to light... they must have been used for night time surveillance. Those will be great for the ceiling, where we're going to be installing all of the houses. We split into two groups and started making recordings of soundscapes, one of a waiting room and one under the elusive and broad genre of psychedelic. We'll post those when we're done! Recording is a long and picky process...

So since we have to collect a lot of video and audio materials, we are starting a daily activity where we film our one-word responses to various questions...

Thursday Question of the Day: Elvis or The Beatles?

La Jetée

2010-06-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we watched a very powerful film from 1964 called La Jetée, the story of a post-apoctalyptic time traveler. It uses still photography and a complex soundtrack and narrative to tell the story.

Updated the Inspire Page

Man on Wire

2010-06-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

Week 3 MONDAY

Tim brought in his videos from where he lives and also shots from Victory Project. Good stuff. Deep conversations ensued. It's so interesting to see all the differences in everyone's personal space and how we each choose to present our lives on video. Some of us don't have a place to call our own. The sounds outside of the places we live are different everywhere you go. Sometimes the soundscape is buzzing with traffic, sometimes all you can hear are the birds and children playing. Sometimes there are lots of people, sometimes there isn't a soul around. Ashia has the Flip cam tonight!

Michael showed us the basics of SketchUp, a free software program used for 3D modeling and stuff. Here's a plan of the Armory:

It turns out Nate's free-standing project that we worked on from last week was so strong it could hold up a metal stool!

Mine was having trouble with the wobbly support...

In the afternoon we watched Man on Wire, the story about a man who had a passion for tight roping. He succeeded in sneaking his team and equipment into the towers to rig the setup. After a lot of planning and close calls, he finally succeeded in reaching his dream and tight roped between the two World Trade Center buildings in the 70's. Although he was arrested for trespassing and disorderly conduct, which was pretty funny in a way, his feat became famous. The story was really inspiring...

Speaking of inspiring, we just made an Inspiration Page (link to the right), or an Art Dump, or a Style Sheet, whatever you want to call it. It just got going, but its purpose is to show any and all of whatever it is that inspires us!

Week 2 Thursday

2010-06-24T19:56:00.000-07:00

Officially 25% finished with Blue Sky! Scary and exciting and a little stressful seeing as we haven't actually started making anything yet. We have been collecting videos (we watched Alex's today), and other tools and materials:

We got velum paper, gold leaf stuff, wax paper, surveillance cameras, projectors, little square mirrors, toxic sprays and paints, glue, glue remover, a giant mantel, sticks of wood, wires, tubing, more paper, and lots of sharp objects!

So we each began constructing an object (any object) out of paper, tape, glue, and wire. It has to be as tall as our heights and it has to be free standing and not taped to the floor or hung from the ceiling. Quite challenging... we're not completed with the objects, but we should be on monday. I'll make a page for it and post the pictures like I did for the media projects. :) Here's some in progress pics...

Week 2 Wednesday

2010-06-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the exhibition space: The Armory.

It's a big space! Our group will be installing everything in the space above the ceiling, above the actual floor space. Here's what it looks like from above below and above:

We then grouped together and began sketching our ideas for the houses/spaces that we will be constructing in the above space...

We left and stopped for ice cream and slushies. :) After lunch, the power went out due to an earthquake in Toronto and we were surrounded in a pitch black room with no windows! It was kind of exciting. When the electricity began to work again, we finished up some video editing. Yesterday Lesley took home the flip video camera and took footage of his house and neighborhood. We watched through his videos and gave comments. Tomorrow Alex will show us his footage!

Things are just beginning to roll and our brains have started churning!

'Till tomorrow <3 Kristen

Catch Up on Week 2

2010-06-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

We're almost there!

Monday Week 2:
We analyzed Michael's project outline. I would enter the outline here but it keeps changing so I think that would be pointless! We will update you. It'll keep us all afoot. Aside from the exciting changes that are sure to come, it's safe to say that "this project, Space and Place, is a way to open up our shared connection to the neighborhoods we inhabit, where we live our lives day in and day out. Working together, we will seek to define the communities we live in and those we wish to explore in our imaginations."

What will we be using to create our spaces and places?

-projection and lighting

-large format still photography

-video

-raw sound and vocal recording

-music

-mapping technologies

-an array of software programs

-AND BEYOND...

How to start?

Good question! First we started by brainstorming the rooms that make up our homes and the purposes of each rooms. The common rooms that we came up with were:
Kitchen, Living Room, Bedroom, Bathroom, Stairs, Hallways, Closet, Laundry Room, Garage, and Back/Front Yard

We then came up with emotions and feelings that we tend to associate with each room, and sorted them into positive, negative, and neutral (for example, "contemplation" could go both ways).

Lighting and Video

In the afternoon Michael worked with us on lighting and camera angle, what light set-ups are used when, and what camera angles are used when. So we set up the light fixtures in our studio trying to eliminate the shadow of the subject, and we each took turns standing in front of the wall saying a phrase, any phrase, with a different camera angle each time: medium, medium side, from above, from below, and close up face shot.

TUESDAY Week 2:

Quick lil' workshop with the video editing program called Isadora. We played with all the different effects with the sound and video: We turned Andrew into a blue man. We made my laugh sound like satan and then cut it down to .5 seconds and had it loop over and over again. We trimmed Nate's video and compiled three different camera angles to make one seamless video, and then added music. There are so many options with video editing!

The Media and You

2010-06-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to our media/self projects:
Check IT out(!)

Catch Up on Week 1

2010-06-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened from the start date of the project until the date now. What we did during week one:

-Lots of name games with everyone
-Took a visit to the Dayton Art Institute!
-Collaborative lunch:

-Sorted into individual groups.
Here are the links to the others' blogs!!

Joyce Lee: Team EVOL
Lenka Novakova: The Blue Sky Summer Dream
John Peña: Team Nature
Ari Tabei: Blue Sky Ari

When our group was united into one, we spent the first part of the week having discussions about the relevant topics and reflecting on the following questions:

Why are we here? Why Blue Sky? Why THIS project?
Why do we like art? What is it to us individually and as a group?

Art can be our voice
We can use art to empower us

We then moved into discussion on the media and its impact on ourselves...

How does the media depict us?
How does that influence us? How does it make us treat other people?
What are the consequences of judging someone by their appearance/behavior?

THEN we started a quick warm-up project using cutouts of magazine pictures and words to show how the media influences our personalities, our likes, dislikes, our stereotypes, pressure from the media... pictures to come

Meet the artists of Untitled Productions

2010-06-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Resident Artist: MICHAEL CASSELLI

Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
Current Residence: Yellow Springs, Ohio
Favorite Medium: Sound and mixed media
Favorite Color: Saffron
Movies: Breathless, Manchurian Candidate (original), Zoolander
Music: Joy Division, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains

Student Artist: KRISTEN MANCINI

Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio

Current Residence: Columbus, Ohio

School: The Ohio State University - violin performance

Favorite Medium: music, string instruments, sound

Favorite Color: Emerald

Movies: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Fountain, Babel, Quentin Tarantino movies

Music: Silversun Pickups, Death Cab for Cutie, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sigur Ros, Andrew Bird, Coldplay

TIM BROWN

Hometown: Portland, Oregon
School: Wright State University
Favorite Medium: Robotic Engineering
Favorite Color: Green and Blue
Movies: Pineapple Express, Beer Fest, Superbad
Music: Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney
NATE CRUM

Hometown: straight out of Compton
School: Sinclair Community College
Favorite Medium: Sound, video
Favorite Color: Rainbow
Movies: Goonies, Step Brothers, The Big Lebowski, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Music: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Ke$ha, Manchester Orchestra, The Doors, Bright Eyes
VICTORIA GAILLARD

Hometown: Xenia, Ohio
School: Fairborn High School
Favorite Medium: photography, ceramics
Favorite Color: Blood Red
Movies: Grease, The Covenant, Hercules
Music: The Rascal Flatts, Paramore, Brad Paisley, Coldplay, Yellowcard
MERIEL JAMES

Hometown: Dayton, Ohio
School: Miami Valley Career Technology Center
Favorite Medium: chalk pastel
Favorite Color: Royal Blue
Movies: Pretty Woman
Music: Drowning Pool, System of a Down, Rolling Stones, Disturbed, Urban Mystic [R&B, hip hop, techno, rap]
LESLEY JOHNSON

Hometown: Dayton, Ohio
School: Dayton Early College Academy (DECA)
Favorite Medium: clay, paint, pencil, charcoal
Favorite Color: Lime Green, Midnight Purple, Blue
Movies: Sicko, Fahrenheit 9/11, Scary Movie 1-4, American Pie
Music: Metallica, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Beethoven, The Beatles, Jimmi Hendrix, System of a Down
ASHIA KENNEDY

Hometown: Dayton, Ohio
School: Dayton Early College Academy (DECA)
Favorite Medium: pencil, charcoal
Favorite Color: Blue
Movies: Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, Ray, Constantine, A Scanner Darkly
Music: Everything but jazz
ANDREW LARK

Hometown: in the desert, Morocco
School: Stivers High School
Favorite Medium: ceramics
Favorite Color: Blue
Movies: The Hangover, The Sandlot, Benchwarmers
Music: Wiz Khalifa, Coldplay
ALEX MOSIER

Hometown: Weslaco, Texas
School: Stivers High School
Favorite Medium: mixed media
Favorite Color: Black
Movies: no favorite
Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Smash Mouth, Alice Cooper

Blog is featured by Untitled Productions, in association with Casselli Inc. due to the generous funding of A Program of Involvement Advocacy at......

2010-06-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

So we're a little late on getting the blog up, but here it is!

Who are we?

One of the 5 groups working collaboratively for the Blue Sky Project 2010 in Dayton, Ohio. We have 8 weeks to get a lot of work done, so come read our blog to keep track of our progress!

For more info about Blue Sky: http://www.blueskydayton.org/

Team Casselli is....

Resident Artist: Michael Casselli

Student Artist: Kristen Mancini

Group Members: Tim Brown, Nate Crum, Victoria Galliard, Meriel James, Lesley Johnson, Ashia Kennedy, Andrew Lark, and Alex Mosier