Surreal Writting

What Makes Rubik’s Cubes Surreal?

What is it basic definition of Surreal?

Surreal basically means bizarre and dream like. Sure there isn’t that much dreamlike or bizarre about the Rubik’s Cube when you first look at it all solved and everything, it simply lookes like 27 cubes stacked together atop one another to form one large, 6 colour-sidedd geometrical cube shape. But wjen you scramble it, it becomes interesting and then its transition into being bizarre begins when somebody picks up the cube and begins to solve it. And this is just the early, original model, the newer ones are way more original and dreamlike in theire appearence. When you look at the newer models they are bizarre even when they are solved. They don’t even need to be unscrambled and picked up by anyone to achieve the same effect the original does when being solved. When looking at one of these Rubik’s Cubes, they make you wonder “how do you solve it?” “How do you move the pieces?” and “how and who came up with this insane design?”

My Surreal Artist

While I was searching for a surreal visual artist to write about, I came across some really beautiful abstract paintings which led me to their creator. The painter who was responsible for these gorgeous masterpieces was Prince Asher. When I tried to do further research I found bubkis

Apperantly the artist is not well known because he is just a man who creates art as a mean for a hobby and now sells them online as a job. just like he said in his biography: “Abstract art is where my interest lies and I have now taken it on as my full time job.”

What I did find out about this artist is that he was born in Ghana (that’s in Africa) on February, 5th, 1977.  He obtained a diploma in painting, and in 1993, during his 2nd year in college he began  selling his artwork. It was the same year that he had his 1st exhibition at the Golden Tullip Hotel in Accra. He also mentions that he has been painting for 7 years and that he has had a total of 3 solo exhibitions and was partt of about 4 group exhibitions.

These are some of Prinnce Adher’s work:

Blue World (left), Raw Faces (canter), and my favourite Steps (right)

3 Quotes That Captured My Undivided Attention…

“Schizophrenic speech, no matter how disturbed and hypersymbolic, could be unravelled if you could understand the images in it.”

                                                                      – Adamson, Gil

“Recordism is not an entirely new way of eatting cheese. It is instead an entirely new way of eating leftover potato salad.”

                                                             - Davidson, William A.

“I will succeed at every poem, I know, if only I can sustain the state of perfect paranoia.”

                                                                – La Rocque, Lance

Poem Style: Haiku

A poem style that I found and researched is called Haiku. It is a Japanese poetry style that consists of three lines. Each line consists of a certain amount of syllables; the first line contains 5 syllables, the second had 7 syllables, and the third has 5 again. Most Haikus are said to be about nature. What I really like about these poems is that they don’t have to be serious and they don’t have to make sense. It’s almost as if this style of poem was made to have fun with! One Haiku poem I found that I really like is part of a larger poem, consisting of about 15 different Haikus, called “Mother Earth Heals” by Leora Leah:

howling mournfully

wind whistling and whirling by

monsoon is coming

My Top…#1 Interest Idea

The one thing that I love more than books or movies is a nice Rubik’s cube! It’s as colourful as it is entertaining and it is THE best cure for boredom ever! Well…at least for me and the rest of the nerd population

Now 5 things that I have found about Rubik’s cubes that I never knew about but do now and want to share with the rest of you are: 

1. It was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian sculptor and architectural professor Ernő Rubik. It was invented by him for the sole purpose of an easier way to explain 3-D geometry.
2. It was originally called “Magic Cube”
3. There is probably a 100 different Rubik’s cube models existing to this date!

             This is a picture of some of the Rubik’s cube models  that I own:

     4.    Aside from the regular speed-solving competitions there have been alternative competitions  too, such as: 

• Blindfolded solving
• Team Blindfold, where you solve the cube with one person blindfolded and the other person saying what moves to do
• Solving underwater in a single breath
• Solving using a single hand
• Solving with your feet

     5.    Cubaholics (such as myself ) are said to suffer from Rubik’s wrist or thub from playing with cube way too much!

My Unheardof Poet…

Though I do read a lot of books I don’t really take the time to read the time to read poetry so I have obviously never read, or ever heard of for that matter, of Donato Mancini until one of my days in writer’s craft. When our class had to read poetry and write about it, there were piles of book at every group for us to look through and the first book that I picked up to scheme through was a Donato Mancini book. And to be honest he had a very unique style. 

Mancini studied art and music at the University of Victoria from 1994 to 1999. After graduation he had focused his time and effort on collaborative writing with visual art. He has also published two poetry books entitled Ligatures (c. 2005) and Æthel (c. 2007).Aside from that, I found very little information about this poet. 

A poem that really caught both my eye and my attention was part of the Starfield Series from his book Ligatures:

Mustard (left), Rainfall (right)

Cymatics

 

This video I found on science and art of cymatics, is basically a process for making sound waves visible through a series of different beautiful designs. Apparently cymatics are also used for analyzing complex sounds like the noises made by dolphin, which is then used to understand their language and communicate with them better. I was totally impressed with the many different designs that could be created by sound alone. It made me wonder how they came up with that and how did they get the idea of even visualizing sounds? Did someone just wake up one morning and said “Hey! You know what? I’m gonna turn sound into pictures!”? This reminded me of the video with the moving flashing designs that keep transforming into new ones every second when you listen to music files using Windows Media Player. This video reminded me of the video we watched in class, but I actually found this one by accident and was not looking for it purposely. I would really like to try to do something like that to expand on my experience with different art Medias.

Cool Bird Sounds

I was originally looking for a sounds video about machine sounds, but accidentally stumbled on a video about bird sounds. The one that I found was a video on lyre birds; cute, plain, brown-grey, little birds with very beautiful and elegant tail feathers, who can imitate almost any sound! Personally, I was really amazed by the accuracy of its imitation and even the other birds it imitated were convinced it was one of their own. These birds mostly copy those within their surrounding environment and apparently they copy all the possible birds they can to sing the most complex song to attract females to themselves. I thought about how this reminded me greatly of peacocks – but they use only their tail feathers instead of their voice. This also reminded me of parrots and mocking birds, who also mimic, but the only difference is that you would usually need to train these birds and the sound they imitate is not as accurate as that of the lyre. I am dying to know how these birds are able to do this! I mean if only one bird could do something like this I would call it talent but what about all of them? It also made me wonder whether movie or cartoon production companies ever thought of using these feathered creatures for sound effects rather than using computers to produce the sounds they need. These little guys can even imitate the sounds of cameras, cameras with shutters, car alarms, and even chainsaws! Now this video kind of made me want to go and get myself one of these birds as a pet. Too bad there wild:’(

Investigation #2: Ami Yoshida

When I listened to “Thereness of a Voice” by Ami Yoshida and her two companions or fellow sound artists Amy Yamazaki and Miori Noritomi, I right away thought of a  rain forest setting. Most of the time Ami Yoshida sounded somewhat like an exotic bird. When I listened to the audio of the performance without the video, I realized that the voices didn’t even sound like they were produced by a human being. What I did as I listened was that  I tried to decipher the story that is hidden within these intriguing and unusual sounds. And what I came up with was something like; innocent nature and the harsh world collide. First it sounded like nature with all the strange forest noises, and then it’s as if something dark entered the atmosphere – like reality. When the girls began to create the exotic bird sounds it made it clear that the setting is most likely a tropical rain forest. All of a sudden you hear sounds that are very much like raindrops, so I thought of the forest’s clear weather becoming damp, dark, and wet. The rain  slowly begins to sound like chaos that causes the forest to become corrupt  and full of danger and fear. And at the very end when Yoshida make high-pitched sounds it sound as if a small seed, amongst the wreck, begins to grow and create a new beginning. It’s a weird but that’s what I thought and I am pretty weird so it’s okay. Oh, and I also believe that this sound artist is strongly influenced by nature.