Event 2: Color, Art, Motion - Ann McCoy and someone's place in the world

 I was lucky enough to attend the lecture by Ann McCoy on the works of Otto Piene and his works with light and sculpture  and the influence of the zero movement on more present works. 


    I was particularly interested on this lecture because upon googling a little bit about Otto Piene and what he did I saw the influence of industrialization and how a lot of the artist's works seemed to come alive in three dimensions. And as Ms. McCoy's lecture went on, the concepts further enraptured my enthusiasm.  At first, when the lecture focused a little bit on the historical influences beside Mr.Piene's work, I got a little confused, especially with the first clip of the "Ballet Mechanique" because there seemed to not be a very conducting line between begginning middle and end of that clipt , and the sculptures I had seen while preparing to watch the event. But it was when the themes of stars, lights and the cosmos came up that my fascination started to increase. Myself, like many other children, have been fascinated with the night sky since I was a young child so my place among the stars has been something that I have always wondered.
     However, the concept from our classwork I thought I was going to talk about on my post quickly changed as I thought that the lecture's idea that many students now don't have the connection to their place in the world in a cosmological sense because of a lack of religiosity or mythological beliefs, a belief centered around the Big Bang Theory or just not reading classical works like Dante's Inferno is a little short sided.  In reality, I think, the connection betwen art, science and a person's sense of how they got here now simply is more unique, comes from both scientific, artistic and religious/mythological tradition, and is more multicultural from a society that increasingly does not have one conducting line or story that is widespread between a large swath of the population. Looking just at the UCLA undergraduate student body, there's no ethnicity that is common to more than 50% of students, and many people ascribe to themselves more than one ethnicity. Adding to this more than 10% of undergraduates being international students like myself, and it's impossible to think that everyone at UCLA will have had one common set of beliefs about themselves or their place in the world.[1] As more and more people have read different books, have parents who were raised under different traditions, and English, History and Science teachers and professors that choose to focus on certain aspects, works, and areas of these subjects; it's natural that these perspectives would change. Additionally, popular culture, movies and novels that update different ideas to a new generation are naturally more appealing to that generation. Using myself as an example. 
    I don't find myself particularly religious and I have never read Dante's Inferno. I was raised by one parent who was himself Catholic but never wanted to impose religion to his children, and another who was agnostic. So religion was never a part of my life in a strong way, even if I attended church during scouts. However, I read excerpts of the Illiad, Odessy and Eneiad in mythology coursework, and can identify how Dante himself referenced all of these works when he created the nine circles of hell in his own poem without having read any of those books to completition, as this was widely explained and dealt with during lecture.[2][3][4][5] In addition to this I have read Darwin, Kaynes, attended economics and science coursework, and can tie references to how the concept of atom was created from Greek Philosophers. My understanding of how people relate to each other, and how things are created is more diverse than a mythological depiction and is tied to many different areas. However, this doesn't mean that there aren't stories that have shown the same ideas showcased in classical works that I have actually read, and so have many people in my generation. One example is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"  by J.K. Rowling which has sold more than 500 million copies since it was published in 1997. [6]
    In the climax of the book, Harry, Ron and Hermione have to travel through an obstacle course that tests not only their magical abilities but their bravery, logical abilities and moral character, as shown by the videos below where the characters are shown playing Wizard's Chess, and both falling into a dark pit and chasing a golden key where they are expected to use their logical abilities and subjects that they learned in class to solve a problem.  People might not lean on their religious ideals to understand this book, but the same idea that the concepts you learn and good moral character allow you to advance through obstacles in life and will lead you to achieve your goals (be those salvation, or defeating Voldemort) is the message of both works. 

Wizard's Chess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgBgHWyA4ZY

Devil's Snare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYf0y6JZyU4


Golden Key: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22yxe2iyZM

           Refering to people who have not read classical works as not having the same understanding of their place in the world as previous generations, is similar to the idea by Walter Benjamin that reproducing a piece of art robs it of its place in time and its context. [7] There's such a thing as references and adaptations that showcase similar ideas to an audience that lives in a different way and its important that one recognizes this and appreciates it. People build on the knowledge of those who came before and adapt it to fit their own life experience. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Works Cited

[1] UCLA. “Facts & Figures.” UCLA, 2021, https://www.ucla.edu/about/facts-and-figures. Accessed 14 May 2022.

[2] Green, Hank. “The Problem of Evil: Crash Course Philosophy #13.” YouTube, 9 May 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AzNEG1GB-k. Accessed 14 May 2022.

[3] Green, John. “A Long and Difficult Journey, or The Odyssey: Crash Course Literature 201.” YouTube, 27 February 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4jk5kavy4. Accessed 14 May 2022.

[4] Marie, Sheila, and Tomás Pichardo. “Why should you read Dante's “Divine Comedy”? - Sheila Marie Orfano.” YouTube, 10 October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbCEWSip9pQ. Accessed 14 May 2022.

[5] Wizarding World. “500 million Harry Potter books have now been sold worldwide.” Wizarding World, 1 February 2018, https://www.wizardingworld.com/news/500-million-harry-potter-books-have-now-been-sold-worldwide. Accessed 14 May 2022.

[6] Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. A.A. Levine Books, 1998.

[7] Benjamin, Walter. " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936)








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