Katie Faulkner

 

Dr Yuanyuan Chen’s lecture on the history of animation was interesting as it showed me how animators can have their own individual styles that makes them very distinctive. Chen talked to us about the golden era of Chinese animation from 1950 to 1970. We then watched Te Wei’s short animation called ‘feeling of the mountain and water’. The ink drawings used in this were beautiful and as there was no dialogue it showed me how in this era of Chinese animation the story was not the priority, instead the feeling and emotion that you get from it is.Chen then moved on to talk about the second golden era of Chinese animation where we watched short animations by A Da such as ‘super soap’ and ‘the new doorbell’. More contemporary animators such as Bu Hua’s ‘savage growth’ were also shown. Overall I took from this lecture the lesson that animation can be both an art form and a medium to communicate a message, not just purely for films.

I found Shirley MacWilliam’s lecture on lens based art and sculpture to be very interesting and eye opening. In the past I had found it difficult to understand the meaning or purpose of some conceptual art. MacWilliam advised us to watch a BBC Documentary called ‘Who’s afraid of conceptual art?’. I watched this documentary and found it explained both the history of conceptual art and some of the most influential conceptual artists of today. It explained conceptual arts beginnings from Marcel Duchamp’s ‘fountain’ through to some of my favourite  contemporary conceptual artists such as Robert Montgomery and Katie Paterson. Overall Shirley Macwilliam’s lecture made me view conceptual art in a completely different way.