ShenYun and Bon Iver

      We have just returned from our trip to Taiwan. The trip was filled with adventure, intrigue, and new found friends whom I will never forget. Our first week and a half of the journey was spent in Taichung, a city on the western coast of the island, and the last four days were spent in Taipei. While in the capitol city of Taipei, we saw a show called ShenYun.
      The show was a Chinese and French ballet collaboration. Some of the things that left an impression on me the most from the show was the lighting, the organic shapes of the set pieces and costumes, and the swift set changes. Throughout the entire performance I kept thinking how the show reminded me of a Bon Iver music video I once saw called Calgary.  I have attached the video below

      A picture is worth one-thousand words, so I have also attached a few sketches from my own observations and interpretations of the show.

          This image shows my observation of the sets many layers and how the actors interacted with those layers. It also shows the dramatic abstract lighting used.

This sketch reflects on part of the show that deeply interested me in the costume design. Dancers perform in the foreground while it appears an ameba transforms into a mermaid behind the translucent curtain.  

Island Etude

Last week we watched an artistic Taiwanese film called Island Etude. Our professor told us before watching the film that it had an illusive plot. While I agree that the plot seemed to lack a strong direction I believe that this was the point of making this type of movie.
      Island Etude reminds me of independent American films. In the United States the media typically puts films into two groups, mainstream and independent. Mainstream cinema are the big budget, popular films made in Hollywood, whereas independent films are made with a small budget and by a privately owned studio. Independent films seem to be more popular in smaller countries where their is not a huge movie industry. I used to only be familiar with mainstream cinema, but when I studied in Paris I was exposed to French new wave cinema and auteur, all of which are made by independent studios. These movies inadvertently made me discover more independent films in America, and now I watch them more often.
     In my opinion, it is odd that Island Etude was not selected as a nominee for the academy award best foreign film. This is possibly due to the films allusions to Buddhism. You could even call the main character Ming a Buddhist. The fact that the film has an illusive plot is quite common in independent cinema. Perhaps the real reason is the lack of foreigner's understanding of cultural motifs in the film.
 
 

Holcombe Topics

 It is hard to believe that we are half way through the semester this week. Only seven more weeks to go and I will be going to Taiwan! Although we have been focusing on the text for our class Holcombe: A History of East Asia since the beginning of the semester, I feel like I am just starting to wrap my head around the information now. One of the things I was most surprised by in this class is the scope of history that one needs to be versed in just to comprehend the basis of East Asian Civilization.
      The information that has stuck out most to me from Holcombe is that of the dynasties, particularly the Qin and Tang Dynasties. I have attached a timeline below that resembles the one in the book. I liked this photo because it represents the dynasty timeline colorfully and pictorially.

      

      Holcombe refers to the Tang dynasty as the Italian Renaissance of the western world. It is represented in the text as a colorful period of enlightenment and as a golden age. I was able to see some remnants of this dynasty's spirit when we went to the Carnegie last weekend. The pottery from the era was colorful, glazed, and beautiful. This era occurred from 600 to 900 B.C which is about one-hundred years longer than the European Renaissance lasted.    

   







      The dynasty that I found most captivating in Holcombe was the Qin. We learned very early on in our class of how unpopular the Qin emperor was in China. However, I find it fascinating that an empire that lasted only about eighty years could imprint onto China some of the extraordinary world wonders that it did. As a westerner one of the first things that come to my mind when I think of China is The Great Wall and the Terra-cotta army of soldiers. Ironically, both byproducts of the extremely short lived Qin Dynasty.

Taiwan through Film

      I first saw The Life of Pi about two months ago during my Christmas break. While I found the plot line to be a little far fetched that a human and a tiger could survive in a lifeboat together for months on end, I still found the story to be visually and emotionally captivating.  I am an aspiring film designer, so I find interest in not only American movies, but also films from other cultures. I knew that The Life of Pi had been filmed in a studio as well as some remote area, but I had no idea that it was filmed in Taichung Taiwan! My East Asian Studies professor, Dr. Kingsbury, sent our class a link to an insightful article on the film's director Ang Lee, why he chose to film in Taiwan, and interesting things that the cast and crew did while they were there. http://www.taiwaninsights.com/tag/3d-water-studio/ 
      one of the interesting parallels that I drew in the article was between Taichung and Pittsburgh as locations for films. Over the last several years Pittsburgh has been a hub for filmmaking due to the tax credits that films can get for shooting here. Therefore, we have had many big movies that have filmed here such as Batman, The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, and The Promised Land. The article intrigued me to find out more about Taichung's relation to the film industry in Taiwan and if other films have been shot in this particular city. Also, the article mentions the state of the art wave pool studio that was built for The Life of Pi. In addition to this studio I was wondering if the film makers used any outdoor locations in Taiwan, particularly near the city of Taichung.    

East Asian Artifacts at the Carnegie

Over the past weekend I took a trip with my East Asian Studies class to the Carnegie Museum. The Carnegie is in Oakland; a neighborhood of Pittsburgh where many of Pittsburgh's college universities are located. The Carnegie Museum has a wide assortment of artwork and historical pieces. The East Asian artifacts are in a gallery mixed with artifacts from other ancient cultures such as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian. One of the things that was the most astonishing to me about the pieces was their intricacy despite their age.
       The first glass encasement that we looked at contained artifacts predominantly from the Zhou dynasty. It is amazing to think that some of these articles were made more than 1,000 years B.C.. Before Western culture became fully developed, China was already a sprawling empire.

                   
      

                   
As we made our way through the exhibit the next pieces that really caught my eye were from the Ming Dynasty, approximately from 1279 to 1644 A.D. I was perplexed by how much one of the bowls reminded me of western culture, particularly art nouveaux. The colors on the bowl were glazed and the flower design was captivating. Although very beautiful, compared to the other ceramic pieces I saw this one seemed more casual, informal, and perhaps even modern.  I would be interested to know if the phenomenon of Parisian art nouveaux was a later result of Ming Dynasty ceramics. What do you think? 


 

My Identity in Pittsburgh

      As a senior in my last semester of college, I have spent my time at Chatham University majoring in interior architecture and minoring in French. I am originally from a small town called Elizabeth that is about an hour from Pittsburgh. It has always been a dream of mine to use my degree to work in the film industry as a production designer. In other words, I want to design sets for movies. In the fall of 2013 I applied to The American Film institute as well as New York University to further pursue a career in production design. In addition to my love of art and design I am also a musician. In my free time I enjoy singing, playing guitar, drawing, and horseback riding. Fun fact, I have two dogs named bear and Chloe whom I love dearly!

      

      Pittsburgh is a lively city in South Western Pennsylvania. It rests at the point between two rivers, the Allegheny River to the North, and the Monogahela River to the South. In the photo above I am sitting on the bank of the Allegheny River. The geography around Pittsburgh is very beautiful with the rolling hills of the Appalachian Mountains and lush vegetation in the summertime. 

     Each of the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh have their own distinct personalities. One of my favorite places is the neighborhood of East Liberty. East Liberty was recently revitalized and there are now many retail spaces, shops, and restaurants there. My favorite restaurant in East Liberty is called Paris 66. It is a little bistro where I can get French food. I like it because It reminds me of the time I spent in Paris studying French, and you can get great desserts there!