Response to “One of my favorite Parts of the Eleventh Grade” by Beena Raghavendran.
Beena inaccurately represents this file as a video of some students rehearsing to perform in a musical relating to Charlie Brown. But in fact, she is very very wrong. Indeed, this is a video of several students who spontaneously broke into song and dance on Beethoven day, a very arbitrarily chosen day celebrated on October 4th and set aside to explore and examine and celebrate all that is Beethoven, not the well lauded composer, but the troublesome yet lovable dog from all those 90s movies. Most students hate this day, but moments before this video was taken, five students who also just happened to be members of the MHS drama club, came upon each other and discovered their mutual love for the day and the lovably large dog who tends to mess things up. This masterpiece of musicality and dance is the result – incredibly excited about their mutual passion and no longer feeling alone in their interests in this momentous holiday, the group banded together and somehow each knew the required words, dance moves, and harmonies to fit together into a lovely song and dance routine that is truly inspired. Lucky that someone happened to be filming and captured this moment!
Response to “Old Rollover Animation” by Amanda Visconti
in her description of this web page, Amanda incorrectly interprets this website as an animated marionette version of James Joyce. Well, I suppose Amanda was half-right. But she neglected to tell the full story. This is in fact an artist’s interpretation of what happened when a bunch of English majors got together to punish James Joyce for writing “Ulysses,” a novel out of which all of them had been forced to try and make some sense. It was very unpleasant to watch, the english majors tied him to a marionette and made him read punctuation-less novel of Lorem ipsum text of the students’ own crafting, a rather symbolic gesture that can be expected of disgruntled English majors. The artist’s interpretation of the event occurred, of course, many years after the actual event occurred, because they did not have Internet during those time that James Joyce was alive. The colored beams of the marionette are artistic interpretation as well – the actual beams used by the angry students were of course brown wood. The discontented look on James Joyce’s face, however, is certainly authentic.
Kelsey, it does appear that these students were brainwashed into the nonsensical nature that is a commemoration of Beethoven’s birthday. However, that is far from the real truth. These students are not students at all, but marionnettes, mere humans turned into robotic puppets as part of an experiment by University of Maryland’s Digital Cultures and Creativity Honors Program. Notice their in sync (albeit sloppy) movements – their harmonizing – that superficial gleam of happiness in their eyes? All the work of master puppeteers at the program. Where are the strings, you ask? After all, it was Pinocchio who affirmed his freedom by singing that he had no strings to hold him down. No such luck for these six students; their “strings” are laser magnets programmed from Maryland to force them to dance in their awkward motions. The shakiness and blurriness of the camera stems from that problem, as well – DCC has formed a barrier around its puppeteering hubs that is so penetrating that it radiates light waves which are too tiny to be seen by the human eye but come out pixelated on camera. The singers do not sound at their best – possibly because DCC students may have been on their lunch break instead of manning the station, causing a bit of lag in the puppets’ normally solid and precise motions.