January 2, 2012
Jo-ha-kyū is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to ‘beginning, break, rapid,’ it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. This concept is applied to elements of the Japanese tea ceremony, kendō and other martial arts, dramatic structure in Japanese theater and film, and traditional collaborative linked verse forms. The concept originated in court music, specifically in the ways in which elements of the music could be distinguished and described. Though eventually incorporated into a number of disciplines, it was most famously adapted, and thoroughly analyzed and discussed by the great playwright Zeami, who viewed it as a universal concept applying to the patterns of movement of all things.
Zeami described the first act as ‘Love’; the play opens auspiciously, using gentle themes and pleasant music to draw in the attention of the audience. The second act is described as ‘Warriors and Battles.’ Though it need not contain actual battle, it is generally typified by heightened tempo and intensity of plot. The third act, the climax of the entire play, is typified by pathos and tragedy. The plot achieves its dramatic climax. The fourth is a michiyuki (journey), which eases out of the intense drama of the climactic act, and often consists primarily of song and dance rather than dialogue and plot. The fifth act, then, is a rapid conclusion. All loose ends are tied up, and the play returns to an auspicious setting.
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January 2, 2012
The Three-Act Structure is a model used in writing and evaluating modern storytelling which divides a screenplay into a three parts called the ‘Setup,’ ‘Confrontation,’ and ‘Resolution.’ The first act is used to establish the main characters, their relationships and the normal world they live in.
Early in the first act, a dynamic, on-screen incident occurs to the main character (the protagonist), whose response leads to a second and more dramatic situation, known as the first ‘turning point,’ which (a) signals the end of the first act, (b) ensures life will never be the same again for the protagonist, and (c) raises a dramatic question that will be answered in the climax of the film.
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January 2, 2012
Act structure explains how a plot of a film story is composed. Just like plays (Staged drama) have ‘Acts,’ critics and screenwriters tend to divide films into acts; though films don’t require to be physically broken down as such in reality.
Whereas plays are actual performances that need ‘breaks’ in the middle for change of set, costume, or for the artists’ rest; films are recorded performances shown mechanically and therefore don’t need actual breaks. Still they are divided into acts for reasons that are in aesthetic and structural conformation with the original idea of Act in theater.
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January 2, 2012
Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his ‘Poetics’ (c. 335 BCE). In ‘Poetics,’ Aristotle put forth the idea that ‘A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.’ This three-part view of a plot structure (with a beginning, middle, and end – technically, the protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe) prevailed until the Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5-act structure in his ‘Ars Poetica.’ After falling into disuse, renaissance dramatists revived the use of the 5-act structure.
Gustav Freytag’s analysis of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama is canonical. Although Freytag’s description of dramatic structure is based on five-act plays, it can be applied (sometimes in a modified manner) to short stories and novels as well. Nonetheless it does not always translate well, especially in modern plays such as Alfred Uhry’s ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ which is actually divided into 25 scenes without concrete acts.
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January 2, 2012
When the presentation of information in fiction becomes wordy, it is sometimes referred to as an ‘information dump.’ It is expressed by characters in dialogue or monologue and sometimes referred to as ‘idiot lectures.’ They are sometimes placed at the beginning of stories as a means of establishing the premise of the plot.
They also appear in science fiction, but it is considered poor writing when characters explain things to each other that they would already know. For example, if you need to call someone, you don’t stop to explain to a colleague that you are now going to use a device controlled with digital circuits to use radio waves to transmit your voice. Why? Because your contemporaries already know how cellular radio telephones work.
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January 2, 2012
Show, don’t tell is an admonition to fiction writers to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character’s action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator’s exposition, summarization, and description. The advice is not to be heavy-handed, or to drown the reader in adjectives, but to allow issues to emerge from the text instead.
The advice applies equally to fiction and nonfiction, but the approach should not be applied to all incidents in the story. According to author James Scott Bell, ‘Sometimes a writer tells as a shortcut, to move quickly to the meaty part of the story or scene. Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won’t, and your readers will get exhausted.’
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January 1, 2012
Ubiquitous [yoo-bik-wi-tuhs] gaze, also referred to as pursuing eyes, is an art term for the effect created by certain portraits, such as the ‘Mona Lisa,’ which give the impression that the subject’s eyes are following the viewer.
When such a painting is viewed from any angle, the subject’s eyes still appear to be looking straight into the viewer’s. This is an effect of perspective and may be deliberate or not. Ubiquitous gaze is a common technique of the trompe-l’œil school of painting, and can be seen in numerous works.
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January 1, 2012
Trompe l’oeil [trawmp loy], French for ‘deceive the eye’, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions. Although the phrase has its origin in the Baroque period, when it refers to perspectival illusionism, use of trompe-l’œil dates back much further. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical trompe-l’œil mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room.
A version of an oft-told ancient Greek story concerns a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis (born around 464 BCE) produced a still life painting so convincing, that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. He then asked his rival, Parrhasius, to pull back a pair of very tattered curtains in order to judge the painting behind them. Parrhasius won the contest, as his painting was of the curtains themselves.
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January 1, 2012
The Singing Ringing Tree is a wind powered sound sculpture resembling a tree set in the landscape of the Pennine mountain range overlooking Burnley, in Lancashire, England. Completed in 2006, it is part of the series of four sculptures within the Panopticons arts and regeneration project created by the East Lancashire Environmental Arts Network (ELEAN). The project was set up to erect a series of 21st-century landmarks, or Panopticons (structures providing a comprehensive view), across East Lancashire as symbols of the renaissance of the area.
Designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu, the Singing Ringing Tree is a 3 meter tall construction comprising pipes of galvanised steel which harness the energy of the wind to produce a slightly discordant and penetrating choral sound covering a range of several octaves. Some of the pipes are primarily structural and aesthetic elements, while others have been cut across their width enabling the sound. The harmonic and singing qualities of the tree were produced by tuning the pipes according to their length by adding holes to the underside of each.
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January 1, 2012
Michel Waisvisz [whyz-vizz] (1949 – 2008) was a Dutch composer, performer and inventor of experimental electronic musical instruments. He became the artistic director of STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam from 1981, where he collaborated with musicians and artists from all over the world. His involvement with STEIM goes back until 1969, when it had been co-founded by his mentor and friend Dick Raaymakers.
Waisvisz had a passionate dedication to a physical, bodily approach to electronic music which he has expressed in the use and presentation of his many developments of hardware and software instruments. From his point of view electronic music is created in direct musical interaction with individual technology, allowing for instant travels into sound through improvisation.
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January 1, 2012
STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) is a center for research and development of new musical instruments in the electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam. Electronic music in STEIM’s context is always strongly related to the physical and direct actions of a musician. In this tradition, STEIM supports artists in residence such as composers and performers, but also multimedia and video artists to develop setups which allow for improvisation and performance with individually designed technology. STEIM was founded in 1969 by a s group of Dutch composers seeking the reformation of Amsterdam’s feudal music structures; they enforced the first public fundings for experimental and improvised electronic music in Holland. Its premises include three studios, a concert hall, hardware and software workshops, offices, and a guesthouse for artists in residence.
For most of STEIM’s instrumental developments ‘Touch is crucial in communicating with the new electronic performance art technologies.’ As with traditional musical instruments, the physical touch of a musician contains essential aesthetic factors. These qualities tend to get lost in the non-realtime use of studio technology, in which the process of music production is distant and abstract. The Touch philosophy — which can be considered as STEIM’s interpretation of the widely used term interactivity — theoretically subsumes several stages of STEIM’s developments, from the analog touchable ‘Crackle’ surfaces in the 70s to today’s experimental Gestural MIDI Interfaces.
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January 1, 2012
The Kraakdoos (or Cracklebox) is a custom made battery-powered noise-making device. It is a small box with six metal contacts on top, which when pressed by fingers generate all manner of unusual sounds and tones. The human body becomes a part of the circuit and determines the range of sounds possible — different people will generate different results.
The concept was first conceived by Michel Waisvisz and Geert Hamelberg in the 1960s, and developed further in the 1970s when Waisvisz joined STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. The kraakdoos is a simple device, based around a single operational amplifier (one of the earliest models to be produced) and a few transistors, and can be easily constructed by someone with a basic understanding of electronics.
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