User:NicholasErickson

=Freshman Seminar=

Always Wanted To Schedule

 * Topic

Flying in a Hot Air Balloon
 * Research Component

I will research the history of Hot Air Balloons and Hot Air Ballooning and How they work.
 * week 1

Schedule a flight time
 * week 2

Start Hot Air Balloon research and go on the flight if the weather is right and take pictures.
 * week 3

Continue Hot Air Balloon research
 * week 4

Continue Research
 * week 5

Continue Research
 * week 6

Collaborate research and photos and make a slide show of my trip and Hot Air Ballooning in general.
 * week 7

Finish Presentation preperations
 * week 8

present

Midterm Assignment 1: Taste & Aesthetics
Nick Erickson November 2, 2009 Taste and Aesthetics

When I went to the Sculpture Park the sculpture I liked the least was Wandering Rocks by Tony Smith. I didn't like it because it seemed to me like the artist took left over pieces from his other sculpture Stinger and placed them randomly in a field. It didn't understand the purpose or possible message of the objects and they had little aesthetic value to me. When I researched him I found out that he was originally a student of Architecture and that his sculpture ended up being an extension of those Architectural pursuits. Tony Smith was Born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1912 and he went to the New Bauhaus Instituter of Design in Chicago for his Architecture studies but for his sculpture he was mostly self taught though he apprenticed Frank Lloyd Wright. After looking at some of his other works It is obvious to me that he has a passion and possibly an obsession for geometric shapes that he undoubtedly got from his love for architecture. All the sculpture work I saw of his were all sculptures made of steel painted black and it was always many Geometric shapes put together for one final object. Smoke was another sculpture I researched and it was a very large scale black metal shape made up of 43 connected geometric shapes. He seems to me to be obsessed with making these shapes because after research I learned that he makes each one individually as a separate object and then later he would incorporate it into a bigger work. Even in some of the quotes he said, I found that constant appreciation for the architectural aspect of things. One was “I saw some kites, towers and other things by Alexander Graham Bell. They were based on Tetrahedrons, regular four sided solids, all sides are equilateral triangles. It was very strong structurally...” with observations like that I understand now why all his works are based in shapes like that. In the case of Wandering Rocks his shapes were actually separate from one another, he made them separate but never put them together. This was in fact on purpose the random placement was also on purpose and was purposely random because I found out that it was heavily based off of Japanese zen gardens and how their rocks sit isolated and randomly in the decorated sand. Instead of rocks though Smith put his Geometric shapes. He liked how the objects and space between them interacted and how they were separate but still exist together, “space that is defined but not enclosed,” in the japanese gardens as well as stone dwelling at Mesa Verde and the ruins of Machu Picchu. He tried to recreate this phenomena in Wandering Rocks. Now I understand the concept behind Tony Smith's sculpture and I know more about what kind of art he pursued. I still don't really like Wandering Rocks much though mostly because I do not have the fascination for architecture or geometric shapes that he has. I also don't appreciate Wandering Rocks as much as I do the Zen Gardens because the Zen Gardens use natural objects found in nature like rocks and sand to complete its related composition. It is to me an arrangement of nature to best make an environment for aesthetic appreciation of nature and for relaxing state of mind because they were used a lot for meditation. I do not get the same effect from Tony Smith's work because it is black metal in a foreign environment and I just feel like that the metal doesn't belong there which is the opposite of how I feel about a zen garden. I also think the Wandering Rocks loses something in not having a blank surface to lie on like the sand for the rocks in the zen garden because the shapes in Wandering Rocks are simple shapes that are very smooth and plain in how it was painted and I think the surrounding area, especially in this work where this space is just as important as the objects, should complement the shapes. So in conclusion I understand the sculpture more but I do not really like it anymore than I already did.

New Angeles on Art. National Gallery of Art, 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009. .

The Collection Tony Smith. National Gallery of Art. 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009. .

Vogel, Carol. "Monumental Gesture at Renovated Museum." Inside Art. The New York Times, 1 Feb. 2008. Web. 2 Nov. 2009. .

Midterm Assignment 2: Manipulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAXpJSvW5mA

Levi's O'Pioneers commercial seems like an example of the Glittering Generality because it has a positive connotation of youthful pioneers being associated with Levi jeans by showing young people doing the things related to the O'pioneers poem, which is meanwhile being recited by the narrator, while they are wearing the Levi jeans even though the Levi has nothing to do with pioneering anything in reality.

My other example is an example of proof by example. It was in a conversation me and my friends were having when at one point a friend of mine said that I can not travel to places that are outside of the region where I live without a detailed map or directions. He said this because of previous occasions I've had where I did get lost; both using directions and not using directions. This is a fallacy because it is not necessarily true that I could not go somewhere without getting lost. I have been successful in this scenario at reaching my destination but it is true that I have a poor success record.

Midterm Assignment 3: Always Wanted To Progress Report (100 words or so)
I have already successfully done what I always wanted to do. I took flight in a hot air balloon on week three of the assignment and I was told by the pilot that I was lucky because the group that I went with and I went on what was probably the last flight of the year because of the upcoming weather conditions but we managed to get a nice day to go. I took photos while taking off and many of the landscape I saw from the balloon. I also had pictures taken of me in the balloon at take off so I can prove it was me. I planned ahead of time to have visual presentable material for later in the project. I learned about the history of ballooning both from the pilot himself and from the internet. What I will need to do next is to do the research of different materials so I have more than just online research. I will have to put time aside to make a trip to the Seattle library so I can finish the research portion. Other than that, the project is going very swimmingly and I am ready to get started on getting the presentation ready.

Final Presentation

 * Topic (10%)

Flying In a Hot Air Balloon


 * Research (20%)

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 * 1) Internet site:

Nilson, Hanna. "Hot Air Balloons History." Hot Air Balloons. Google, 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. .


 * 2) Book:

Niccoli, Riccardo. History of Flight. Vercelli, Italia: White Star Publications, 2002. Print.


 * 3) Scholarly Journal:

Kim, Hy. "Ballooning Interest in Science." The Science Teacher 59.4 (April 1992): 18-22. Print.


 * 4) Other (interview, TV show,etc):

Woodward, Jay. "Balloon History on Flight Day." Hot Air Balloon Flight. Washinton, Snohomish. 24th Oct. 2009. Speech.


 * Your accomplishment (20%)

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 * Project Review (50%)
 * 1)What went well
 * 2)What went poorly
 * 3)Future strategies

Self-Assessment
For me this class was more interesting than I would have originally expected there are a lot of things in this class that we talked about that I will use and remember in everyday of my life probably. I enjoyed the class the assignments went well going to class was fun and the only problems I had were because of my bad memory or some other error of my own. I liked the assignments especially the Always wanted to assignment and they were all helpful in meaningful ways for the most part. I did not expect a class called General Education to be as enjoyable as it was.