Dani Feng
Arts Scholar
Pentathalon Semester 1
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
#1) The David C. Driskell Papers
#Visual Art
I wanted to look at the new online exhibition at the David C. Driskell Center website upon hearing about Driskell's passing away earlier in April. It saddened me because, as someone who is really into painting, I was looking forward to meeting him at some point. I think this online exhibition is a great way to pay tribute to him and his contributions to Black American art.
The exhibition is divided into this life during the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s/21st century. Each exhibition includes photos of him and his artwork during this time. I think this is a great way to truly honor him throughout the entirety of his artist career. Although it's not the same as a physical exhibition, we gotta do what we can. I really wish the website could at least present the images so that it fills up the whole screen instead of being bunched up on one side of the site. I feel like that would do Driskell more justice.
#2 Dancing: Sex and Social Dance
#Dance
Dancing: Sex and Social Dance is a 90s documentary reflecting on different cultures' dances and its impact with human relationships, gender roles, and societal change. The video explored the synchronous movements of ballroom dancing, the group dances of Cook Island, the shikhat dances of Morocco, and the twist that rocked 60s America.
I thought this was an interesting analysis of how dance and performance reflects culture. Male and female cultural dynamics are represented through their movements. Changing views and growing sexual freedom are reflected throughout how provocative the dance is.
To be fair I’m not sure how culturally accurate the documentary was. They seemed to paint Islamic culture in a more conservative, primitive light, compared to the other cultures represented. However, the video made an important point that culture, and subsequently the dances, changes generation to generation. I would have liked to see a few more examples of other cultures’ dancing, this is only a small sliver of what the world of social dance has to offer. It felt like a missed opportunity to showcase a type of dance from Asia or Latin America. It also would’ve been nice to showcase whatever dance style was relevant during the 90s (the time the documentary was made), to give a bit of perspective about how dance has evolved.
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#3 Zinemaking Workshop on Zoom by Maddi
#Literature
Maddi Rihn taught me and the Squad how to make zines from a single piece of paper. I made an Among Us-themed little zine out of posca pens. I was amazed by how a sheet of paper transformed into a booklet. The zine I made has a little green crewmate with fantastic buttcheeks, as shown in the image. It was cool to see what people could make within an hour, and that's about it.
#4 Songwriting and the Music Industry
#Music
I attended a 3-part music workshop hosted by mixer Mr. B (Nate Bogopolsky) and his long time friend and collaborator, Blake Lewis who beatboxes.
During the first week, the producers demonstrated how a basic rhythm and melody is made in a DAW (digital audio workstation) software (they used Ableton Live 10 Suite). Us viewers were allowed to choose the theme and mood of the track. In week 2, Blake polished the track and the viewers came up with lyrics for the song. We settled on an autumn theme, while amazing singer Jimmie Herod provided vocals for it. Finally, in week 3, the vocals and the instrumental track were compiled together and polished within the DAW. Blake shared tips about how to properly communicate with the people who mix and master your music. He defined a lot of helpful terminology such as “reverb” and “decay” to describe how the audio sounds.
As someone who didn’t touch an instrument in 8 years and has no music production knowledge, I found this workshop to be very enlightening. Music has been something I wanted to revisit and make on my own time, and now I have a more well-rounded idea of how I could get started. I’m very thankful for these industry professionals to share their process as that is rare to come across.
#5 IT GETS BETTER: MOMENTS OF HOPE from THET351
#Theater
The video starts off with a bunch of these theatre kids being thankful for things they have and appreciating how they’ve adapted during this tough time. This includes how it changed them, how they make use of this new perspective, and how it could get better. The whole video consists of low quality video calls to really capture the Zoom experience.
It’s impressive that these students made a whole hour long musical, isolated, with whatever budget equipment they had at home. They sang a variety of songs from other musicals to create a narrative of each other’s quarantine experience. Unfortunately, the video’s audio was inconsistent and ranged from loud to barely audible, which is a shame because everyone’s singing was impressive. I felt like some of them could’ve done more than just sing awkwardly in front of a camera in an empty room while staring into my soul for several minutes though. For example, I liked the one where there's like multiple people singing and going out of their house, with the video clips compiled together. I also liked the one guy who was trying to grow his plant while he sang.
Personally I felt the whole show was too much of inspirational porn as it just tells us things will be better instead of acknowledging the steps to get there. But I suppose that is the exact point.
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Pentathalon Semester 2
Follow along this semester as I document the finest dank memes of this semester.
#1 COMEDY CROSSING : The Animal Crossing Standup Comedy Show
February 5, 2021
Last Friday, I watched Comedy Crossing, an Animal Crossing-themed adult standup comedy show hosted by Jenny Yang. Apparently this is a recurring and very well-received event! There were about 470 people that joined. Some viewers joined in at 3am in their time zone! Upon some googling, there’s even a couple of articles documenting Jenny Yang’s work with this show. They host this show on the first Friday of each month, with new different comedians in each show. The show I attended was their 14th. They really have a thing going on!
The event starts off with a pre-show of warm-up introductions. A selected group of people are unmuted so we can hear their audible laughter. Jenny explains the context to the show and she is just so naturally hilarious. My favorite quote from her is “America is truly the Florida of all the countries.”
The show went on with comedians Kate Zasowski, Baron Vaughn, Ever Mainard, etc., taking turns. They mostly did bits about their own experiences in life (typically quarantine and politics).
What I got out of it was an enjoyable time of mild laughter, but more importantly, I found this interesting new medium of virtual comedy shows. Within the Zoom call, they would have a screen of Animal Crossing gameplay, and each speaker would have their own ACNH character inside the game. As each host took turns speaking, they would use in-game gestures, outfit changes, and expressions to match what they’re talking, and I just found that so creative!
#2 NextNow Festival Day 4 : Gamer Symphony Orchestra
February 25, 2021
After playing Fibbage 3 from Jackbox for about 30 minutes, the esteemed Gamer Symphony Orchestra held a workshop to teach us how they arrange video game music for orchestral performances.
They use a free program called MuseScore 3 to arrange the music onto a music sheet with all the instruments divided. Ciara Donegan, the host for the workshop, demonstrated how they use the program by assembling the first part of the Jackbox earwax lobby music as an example.
The original Jackbox Earwax theme mostly consisted of electronic sounds, so, when translating to orchestral music, they would add a lot of strings. Ciara proceeds to meticulously add every note of the song from what she hears.
Perfect pitch is very handy when transcribing what is heard from the original track. Then they turn down the speed of the song, breaking into chunks, and first start with transcribing the melody (the easiest thing to hear). The orchestra also has to consider time signature, keys, and notes. They use all8.com for detecting the tap for bpm.
The orchestra do sometimes view existing sheet music to make their work easier.
There is a difference between transcribing (the music you exactly hear) vs. arranging the music into orchestral structure. With arrangements the music is given its own orchestral spin to make it your own.
Apparently there’s a whole process of submitting orchestral arrangements (anyone can submit). Arrangements may take a week or a few months. They select between 13-16 arrangements. The rejected ones may be revisited and revised in a later semester. The orchestra often gives feedback for it. Some of the submissions run into practical problems (like, it’s impossible for them to play it) or the music wasn’t from a game (they mention people would come up with weird excuses to get them to play certain songs).
At the end of the workshop, they showed examples of their full concert.
Overall I found this super fun! I did not consider the fact that orchestral versions of existing music would need to go through the lengthy process of arrangement (I assume there’s always existing sheet music lying around that they could go off of). I missed the live Gamer Symphony Concert held during Fall 2019 (my first freshman semester) so I really hope I could get to see them live at some point. I asked the hosts if they would consider playing the Kahoot lobby theme, and they said that they would consider it if someone submitted an arrangement for it. Oh how I wish I had the talent to do that ...
#3 The Gift - Joe's Movement Emporium
March 19, 2021
The Gift is an interactive live theatre performance from Joe’s Movement Emporium. The event was run by Tavia Landers and Anne Davidson-Nguyen and hosted on the virtual event platform Hopin.
In the beginning, we had 20 minutes to preview videos and presentations in the “study materials” section, to give a sense of what this event will be. The study materials made it clear this event will be about tackling the roots of white supremacy and colonization, and how we must sustain an anti-racist lifestyle.
The performance followed a theme around people, particularly white folks, being infected with a virus called “PWR”, labeled as “the source of white supremacy culture”. The event tackles its complex subject matter by perceiving racist roots as a disease that has persisted throughout centuries. This was an interesting approach, especially in the context of our current pandemic. The symptoms of PWR include being visually insensitive to people with darker skin tones or facial features, and micro or macroaggressions.
The event was divided into 3 “phases”. The first two phases were broken down into different breakout rooms with reaffirming meditation sessions. The last phase talked about how this performance has changed since last summer of 2020. They eventually modified the performance to acknowledge that there is no end, there is only adapting and learning.
Overall, it was a very creative and engaging event, but I wish it was held in person. I feel that this kind of event works so much better in person due to the focus on physical community engagement and because there were some technical difficulties. The in-person event and staging would make the doctor roleplaying more believable, and I think physical breakout rooms instead of virtual ones would have helped me absorb the content better.
On the other hand, I did find it cool that a website such as Hopin exists (it's like Zoom but with rooms we can freely walk in and out of).
#4 Getting Creative with Memes - Vick Zhang
April 10, 2021
Vicki Zhang held a Zoom meeting dedicated to making memes. Unfortunately, me, Holly, and Erin were the only ones in the Zoom. I was so surprised by that, I thought more people would be interested in the memes. I suppose once people have already gotten Pentathlon credit from the earlier events, they won’t attend this one.
Vicki started off this brilliant meme event by presenting Google Slides about what you could do with memes. During the call, she played a specialized soundtrack, complete with Spongebob songs and Nyan Cat.
We learned the word meme was coined from the word “memetics”, the study of information and culture transmission. “Memes” was coined by Richard Dawkins, and they can be spread in the form of videos, audio, images, and captions.
During the event, we made memes out of themes such as quarantine. This made me realize that with every meme seen on the internet, someone had to have made it! I showered Vicki with a plethora of memes of my Cosmicals characters with photoshop filters.
I do agree with Vicki that the appeal of memes come from their chaotic energy. Memes are quite gratifying and a staple of internet culture. They provide a lot of joy in our generation.
However, while doing this meme-making activity, I felt the need to educate Vicki that memes simply cannot be manufactured. They must be organically grown and spread through the waves of social media. I cannot help but think that her taste in memes are outdated, as so many of her examples (ex: Grumpy Cat) felt like something out of 2012! Erin had mentioned her favorite current meme are the Sugar Crash videos. We also shared a collected interest towards the origin of a meme of Spongebob squatting, that we use as a Discord emote.
Even with the small meeting turnout, I hope Vicki was able to obtain enough content for her Capstone project because I can tell she is truly passionate about this topic.
#5 AAB Poetry Slam
April 6, 2021
Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the Poetry Slam event, even though I never had an interest in poetry. During this event, we started off with a fun Mad Libs group activity and then various AAB members would share works that they’ve made.
At the beginning, we were put into breakout rooms so we could do the Mad Libs activity. Reshma would ask us to choose a bunch of verbs, adjectives, nouns, places, and colors to create a Shakespeare sonnet. I was the one blurting out the most words at first (since everyone was kind of quiet). It got to the point where the rest of the group intentionally started coming up with words that were hard to spell, much to Reshma’s demise.
After each of the breakout rooms shared their absurd Mad Libs creation, various students started sharing their poems one after another. For example, Damien Singelmann wrote a very personal and chilling poem about life in Oklahoma. Reshma wrote a poem sharing her frustrations as a woman. I don’t remember Solomon’s poem but I do remember him spitting out rhymes and flow. Apparently he is a musician who goes by the name JSRC on song streaming platforms.
What I also liked was how after each poem, other students would compliment them and share feedback. There was some heartfelt discussion about certain themes from the poem.
Overall I had a lot more fun than I expected, and it made me consider doing poetry for the future. Poetry is an often overlooked art form that people think is pretentious. This made me remember about one of our classmates’ capstone projects where they wanted to show that poetry can be taken seriously.