Media Arts: History and Theory

Week One of Lecture:     This week we learned about the renaissance era as paintings and development. Paintings in the Byzantine era started out flat with no dimension. This gave a non realistic impression, and little creativity. When it comes to the Renaissance era, the paintings are darker in color because they add black for depth (chiaroscuro). The paintings all are religious contexts, and they are more realistic because of Brunelleschi's theory on multi point perspectives, which allows the subjects of the paintings to have more movement. Additionally, other artists such as Ghiberti, made other rules of this era regarding sculptures, and splitting them into two to create more realistic sculptures. This era also had set up celebrity painters, such as Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Donatello, and Raphael, for lifelong (and posthumous) fame. Their work created the Renaissance era for what it was, and can still be viewed in places like the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre. Week Two ...

 GRQ 1. Portraiture 2. Window 3. Linear Perspective 4. Aerial Perspective 5. Masaccio 6. Brunelleschi 7. Jan van Eyck 8. Leonardo's 9. The School of Athens 10. Birth of Venus  11. Stonebreakers 12. David 13. Modern 14. Avant Garde 15. Autonomous 16. Kitsch Reading      The reading depicts art and architecture from The Renaissance Era. The reading, as well as what we studied in class, goes in depth about the progression of art during this era. While the paintings in the Byzantine era started out flat with no depth, the artists in the Renaissance era created depth to further advance their artwork.  Brunelleschi was the first artist to formulate laws about linear perspective. Brunelleschi created multi dimensional artwork by having the artwork all meet up at one point. Having more depth allowed the subject featured in the paintings to be more realistic and have more movement rather than flat.  Discussions     My group focused on Machiavelli. Mac...

 GRQ Sayre Brocket Hildy  Iliad and the Odyssey 1. Greeks 2. Homer 3. Iliad 4. Trojan War 5. Homeric Epic 6. Iliad, Odyssey 7. Gods 8. inductive reasoning 9. Socrates 10. Plato 11. Republic Treatise 12. Allegory of the Cave 13. Dionysis 14. Satyr Play 15. Greek Comedy 16. Tragedies 17. Death 18. Thespis, Thespian 19. Protagonist, Antagonist 20. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides 21. Dionysos 22. Plato 23. Catharsis 24. Golden Mean 25. Verisimiltude 26. Three Unities 27. Universality 28. Intermezzi 29. Opera 30. Nobility 31. Intermezzi 32. Modernism 33. Modernism 34. Wagner The Reading: One thing that fascinates me about learning different cultures is learning about the different stories that coincide with their culture. When we learned about the Native Americans during one of the first weeks of class, we learned that storytelling was one of their ways to pass down traditions and keep families united. I find that the case in this reading when learning about the Homeric Epics. Home...

 The lecture for this week is quite interesting to me. Back in high school, I visited Northern Italy, and was able to see some of the structures and art we learned about in person. The churches in Venice remind me of the Baroque architecture as there are many domes and arches embedded into the buildings. I also was reminded of my trip as the architecture of the Verona Arena I visited, which is similar to the Roman Colosseum. The Verona Arena was actually used for gladiator fights, which we learned about in class, as well as it is still used for opera shows. I remember learning in class about how the performers never really needed to use microphones, and while I never saw a performance at the arena, when I was stood up at the top (seen in the photo) the acoustics were amazing from the floor. This trip was really eye opening for me, as I took Latin and Theater in high school and many of the topics we're learning now, I also learned about in high school, and got to see firsthand what ...