Face 2 Face

For my final year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), I worked on my thesis film, “Face 2 Face,” which runs for 6 minutes and 22 seconds. My thesis film tells the story of a young man attending a Comic-Con convention who spends more time taking photos of what he sees in front of him for his social media page rather than living in the moment within his environment. This film was inspired by my experiences at conventions and on vacations, during which I devoted much of my energy to recording footage of unique events or taking photos of an unfamiliar area to the neglect of truly experiencing my environment. “Face 2 Face” is a comedic portrayal of similar experiences and frustrations in a setting with which I am familiar. I wanted to create a film focusing on a habit I found relatable and use it as the springboard for a comedic story. In terms of the main production, the film relies on hand-drawn animation and appears in full color. The animation was primarily completed in TVPaint with additional visual work done in Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. I also took advantage of outside help for animation and sound during film production, especially with regard to cleanup, coloring, voice acting, sound effects, and music. This paper describes the writing process for the film along with the film’s visual development. I also discuss various obstacles and accomplishments throughout the project

Beyond Rodin: Revisiting the Legacy of Camille Claudel

French sculptress Camille Claudel has gained recognition in the past 30 years due to a focus on her tragic life rather than her artistic talent. Despite critical acclaim and respect amongst her peers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, her affair with Auguste Rodin and her struggles with mental illness have cast a dark, dramatic shadow over modern interpretations of Claudel’s oeuvre. Considering how difficult it was for a woman to be working as an artist at this time, Claudel’s sculptures should not be outweighed by her personal life. In order to challenge the reader not to accept a simple biographical analysis of her oeuvre, I am looking at select works and considering how Claudel incorporated other art genres, daily life and literature references. Just as Claudel is often overlooked in a biography of Rodin, this investigation into Claudel’s inspirations does not simply accept him as the driving force behind her pieces, but instead chooses to go beyond Rodin in search of a renewed acclaim, and a new legacy, for Camille Claudel

James Joyce e o romance de formação: Um retrato do artista quando jovem

This article presents an interpretation of James Joyce’s A portrait of the artist as a young man based on the idea of Bildungs- and Künstlerroman. A short discussion about the concept of “apprenticeship novel” is exposed, trying to point out elements from Joyce’s novel that demonstrates its affinities with this literary gender pioneered by Goethe. It shows the young artist breakup with family, country and religion, his conversion to art and the principles that will guide him.Trata-se de uma interpretação de Um retrato do artista quando jovem, de James Joyce a partir da ideia de Bildungs- e Künstlerroman. Faz-se uma breve discussão sobre o conceito de “romance de formação” levantando elementos do romance joyceano que demonstram sua afinidade com esse gênero iniciado por Goethe. Aborda o rompimento do jovem artista com a família, a pátria e a religião, sua conversão à arte e os princípios que o nortearão

The Cowl - v.78 - n.17 - Mar 6, 2014

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 78 - No. 17 - March 6, 2014. 24 pages

August Strindberg: The Occult Diary

August Strindberg (1849–1912) kept a diary from February 1896 in Paris until the summer of 1908 in Stockholm. He referred to his diary from this period as his Occult Diary and used it to help him decipher the world as he experienced it. He read and reread his own notations, adding new interpretations, and deleting others. He also drew on the diary as material for creative expression, transforming isolated events and observations into groundbreaking works of literature. The Occult Diary is published here in its entirety in English translation for the first time, in a final revision by Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams and with an introduction by Per Stam. The Occult Diary is a key resource for international Strindberg scholars and theater professionals and more broadly for scholars focusing on drama, theater history, stage performance, and literary currents at the turn of the previous century. The diary initiates the reader into the writer’s inner world during a crucial transitional period in his personal and literary life. It documents his readings and observations and gives important clues and information about an ongoing process of artistic reorientation. Strindberg was exploring new ways of looking at, interpreting, and writing about nature, science, art, the occult, and his fellow human beings

The superhero afterlife subgenre and its hermeneutics for selfhood through character multiplicity

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityComic book superheroes venture frequently into the afterlife, to the extent that the recurring conventions of such tales constitute a superhero subgenre. These generic elements help ensure that the stories can be read normatively by their audience (e.g. one's soul continues separately to function after the death of the body, existence after death is its own reality and discernible from illusion). The new subgenre, however, can also be regarded as masking an alternate understanding of narrative character and suggesting an alternative model of selfhood to readers. Beginning with the genre theory work of Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, and Peter Coogan, this project applies their perceived linkage between generic character and audience models for selfhood to the concerns of Helene Tallon Russell, J. Hillis Miller, and Karin Kukkonen. This second set of theorists warns against narrative characters being understood as whole and unified a priori when the presumably counterfactual idea of a multiple self better matches with the goals of religious pluralism and healthful self-understanding. Through these combined sets of theoretical lenses, the project focuses on popular recent depictions of the afterlife in the word-and-image medium of top-selling comics titles such as Thor, Green Lantern, Fantastic Four, Planetary, and Promethea. The comics, with their dual sign systems and 'low-art' fringe status, provide a consideration of personal multiplicity more naturally than prose does alone. Jeffery Burton Russell and Andrew Delbanco recount modern Americans' declining investment in the afterlife, one steeped in traditionally Augustinian models of singular selfhood. As H.T. Russell champions in Irigaray and Kierkegaard: On the Construction of the Self, this model may serve more as a hindering relic than as a useful system for consideration of one's full selfhood. This superhero subgenre offers a hermeneutic for integrating multiplicity into religious practices and considerations of the afterlife

Arnold Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand: Artistic Self-Envisioning in the Early Modernist Era

Arnold Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand: Artistic Self-Envisioning in the Early Modernist Era: This thesis focuses on Arnold Schoenberg’s stage work Die glückliche Hand (1913), a major composition of Schoenberg’s early atonal period, but one that has been less extensively studied by scholars. It argues that this work sheds considerable light on Schoenberg’s self-envisioning as creative artist during a crucial phase of his development, and is best understood as a Künstleroper with strong autobiographical resonances. The first chapter seeks to situate the piece in relation to other notable Expressionist stage works of the period, demonstrating how it can be seen to constitute an Ich-Drama with strong resemblances in both conception and dramaturgical design to stage works by Wassily Kandinsky and August Strindberg. The second chapter attempts to explore the symbolism of its libretto, elucidating connections with the work of three noted contemporary writers—August Strindberg, Otto Weininger, and Stefan George—who exerted an appreciable influence on Schoenberg’s worldview and artistic self-concept. Intrinsic to this self-concept were fin-de-siècle constructs of the artist as tortured, embattled genius, in possession of higher spiritual truths but destined to remain the target of uncomprehending hostility and persecution. Particular attention will be given to Strindberg’s autobiographical prose work Inferno as a likely source of inspiration for Schoenberg, as well as George’s major collection of poems Der siebente Ring. The conclusion sketches how the paradigm of artistic self-envisioning in Die glückliche Hand arguably remained central to Schoenberg’s self-understanding in later life

August Strindberg: The Occult Diary

August Strindberg (1849–1912) kept a diary from February 1896 in Paris until the summer of 1908 in Stockholm. He referred to his diary from this period as his Occult Diary and used it to help him decipher the world as he experienced it. He read and reread his own notations, adding new interpretations, and deleting others. He also drew on the diary as material for creative expression, transforming isolated events and observations into groundbreaking works of literature. The Occult Diary is published here in its entirety in English translation for the first time, in a final revision by Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams and with an introduction by Per Stam. The Occult Diary is a key resource for international Strindberg scholars and theater professionals and more broadly for scholars focusing on drama, theater history, stage performance, and literary currents at the turn of the previous century. The diary initiates the reader into the writer’s inner world during a crucial transitional period in his personal and literary life. It documents his readings and observations and gives important clues and information about an ongoing process of artistic reorientation. Strindberg was exploring new ways of looking at, interpreting, and writing about nature, science, art, the occult, and his fellow human beings