A Theory of Comedy

You really should read this priceless essay. Granted, we aren't specifically working on comedy, but the ideas hold quite true. Taflinger is seen as something of a genius in this area, and widely respected for his views on comedy. Sounds funny, doesn't it: making an academic study of comedy?

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/theory.html


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JB

Rehearsal vs. Exploration

One of the interesting things we are facing is the inevitable push to finalize things, rehearse them until they are performed well. The temptation to clean things up, turn them into a performance could be counterproductive. We want to make sure we continue exploring and not worry too much about 'performance' right now.

I'm blown away by how beautiful some of these past couple of sessions have been. If you haven't looked at the photos, go to our YahooGroups site, and click on the photo link at the top of the page to see Alyson's photos. The 'cell-phone ballet' is especially beautiful. It's going to be fun to project these images on the screen and play with them.





I'm feeling a very pleasant sort of settling in in this process and really look forward to our work sessions.

JB

Music Selections

The piece that sounded like a swarm of insects was called "Erin," and it was written and performed by Joan La Barbara.The piano piece was Partita #2 in C minor, BWV 826, by J. S. Bach.The piece with the soprano was the last movement of Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg.The piece with the male vocalist was the Air, "Flow My Tears," by John Dowland.The Fish song was by Mr. Scruff off a compilation called Funkungfusion. The tango and the other folksy guitar stuff and the accordian music (the waltz) were stuff I wrote.

Sara

Repeat a class to tape it

Monday (I think) 1/23/08 was the first time we used 219 and had instruments and a spectacular dance routine, but we did not tape it. It would probably be a great session to repeat with the three camera setup. Ideally Tanya could add some choreography to a setup wherein the dance routine could be recaptured dancing through the middle of musicians who would be center stage in the rear instead of on the sidelines.

Interesting Observations

What has been cool about this process so far has been the absolute riches of ideas that we have had to play with. In a strange way, I think that was one of the problems we began to face on 1/28. With so many video choices so easily available, there is a tendency to want to work through each of those effects, when what we really need to do is to stay with one video effect, for example, and really work through its possibilities.

With that understood, putting audio with our project was a lot of fun, though I think we've barely begun to scratch the surface of that medium.

Mostly, there were the absolutely eye popping, hypnotic and provocative images of the 'Hand Ballet', the cell phone video being captured by the camera, and the wonderful tango/romance performances. There was a piece of music that Sara brought that sounded like a swarm of insects and then veered off into all these interesting progressions and developments - it was my favorite piece of the session, although the tang was a close second.

We were using the Tango, of course, in a very playful manner, but in the context of telecommunication, alienation, humor, and trying to connect with people, it takes on a darker, maybe even sadder meaning.

I also love the sort of whip-sawing from one musical style to another.

Can't wait to see photos!