(Baring in mind I may have been slightly hungover at this lecture... here are some thoughts...)
I understand that our “Rough Magic” is the practice we have chosen to become a part of... ie. Modelmaking, photography etc... even though the ‘Prospero’ reference did confuse me!
In the definition of ‘Media’, the word ‘Medium’ also pops up. I like the idea of being a ‘Medium’, not the ghost type, but being able to connect people’s emotions and their understanding through an object (a model in my case). That I can be part of the extension (Marshall McLuhan), of people minds.
The next two definitions of ‘History’ and ‘Culture’ are just two complicated as words, to note down there exact meaning as was stated in the lecture. The two culture’s of science and art overlap each other. For instance in the workshop down stairs, the machines such as the bandsaw’s and sander’s are there because science (technology) allowed them to be created and used for our purposes of making models. Actually thinking about it, it’s like a giant cycle... someone draws, makes a model and creates a machine, then that same machine helps to design and prototype and then build another machine. It’s a massive cycle!
I think as a modeler, special effects, or character person you kind of forget that animation as a practice has no relation to what we do. But it kind of does just thinking about it.
“Latin animare - to give life to”... we give life in way to models, making them exert emotions on people for instance. Or using electronics actually making them move in a life like fashion.
Georges Méliès stuff is fantastic I thought, just because it is very comical now in this present age, but back 100 years it must have been fascinating for people to watch.
Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), reminds me of the moon from The Mighty Boosh! Just thinking whether Noel Fielding watched this when researching for the show?!
The part on actual model...
...but models of the temples themselves
Models are products of a complex mind: a mind that can accept that this formed and shaped clay, baked, glazed, which is perhaps only one hundredth the size of the thing it depicts, somehow stands for the thing, and, can be used in place of it, or even can represent, validly, something which does
not, has not, will not and could not exist – a dream perhaps, a demon, a god, a desire, a
plan, a possibility, a feeling.
To me a model is a representation.
It can be just as toys are a representation of real people for example. There is just so much that can be represented.
Just one last thing, this lecture just reminded me, a couple of years ago when I was doing my A Levels, I went to see 150 Years of Greys Anatomy (did have a bit and Andreas Vesalius in there), exhibition at the Royal College of Surgeons museum. They had some of the books out and they are literally a work of art themselves. For anyone that might be interested in anatomy etc, I would say defiantly go and look in at the main space! Like the Japanese models of the womb and the foetus’ there are these series of jars and in them is a foetus at each stage of pregnancy. There is also a wide range of animals and skeletons etc. Good place to go and sit and make a few sketches etc.
