Performance

Well done to the Jasonites – worked out fuckin fantastic. Even my over harsh mates thought it was fuckin good and not full of "arty wank".

Heard the Medeaists thing went well , would have gone but i went back to bed – anyway the use of my least two favourtie D words in their performance would have made me judge it too much , im safe in the knowledge ours was good and how it could have been better , if i thought the other was worse it would have given me an ego so im safe thinking it was probably equal to ours, just a different approach that i wouldnt have favoured. (Hey, at least im honest! No offence intended to the other group)

Anyway – have a nice Easter everyone! I shall be sleeping,drinking and contributing to some shreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed guitar to a mass power metal project currently involving 15 bands, should be awesome! \m/

: 11 Mar 2005 20:23 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Group Ideas , our diection etc

Session 1: 17th February

Today was the first session of our new module : Counter classical performance with the ever so wondeful Hugh Dennard (whos comment on the coolness of my new facial hair layout didnt go un noiteced and set me up for being very excited about this whole shindig)

We began today by having a discussion about Euripides' Medea. The discussion was to argue (i dont think debates are possible with some certain people in the Theatre camp) whether we felt more sympathy towards Jason or Medea. At the end of a rather circular arguement there was about a perfect split between the Jasonites and the Medeaists (i think theyre good pet names). My allegience was with the Jasonites , not to say that i thought Jason was a top bloke – just that killing your own children to get back at your husband is, well, slightly insane, uncalled for and generally just a bit sickening.

Following the discussion the Jasonites and Medeaists stayed seperate (good call) and these became our groups for our assessed performance. As our group is full of very agreeable people we all decided to go into different aspects of the project that we felt we were particuarly skilled or interested in.
Owens mention of doing some film related exploration or our ideas sounded very appealing.film. Myself , Ricardo , Owen and the Rothalite headed to the libary to do some reserahc. The most useful book we found was Kenneth Mackinnon's 'Greek Tragedy Into Film' (Worcester, 1986) IThe book gave info regarding a film of Medea which we then watched after retning it from the SRC

The film was in Greek, but thankfully subtitled, managed to give us some ideas about how we could shoot some scenes ideas. Most of the shots were long wit only a few profile shots used. To quote Owen this seemed a " deliberate attempt by Pasolini (director) to keep the authenticity of the Greek theatre by showing the whole of the body as the movement of the body (especially in the chorus) is a keystone to the whole medium of Greek Theatre. Pasolini also modified the idea of not showing the murdering, by employing a Hitchcock style approach. He would, for example show a knife moving downwards in a stabbing action however no penetration was ever shown. These are handy techniques, especially as we will have a low budget for our production and it'd be hard to show murder in an effective way."

When we'd completed our various bits of research, we got together as a group to share our thoughts, ideas and discuss what exactly we would do for the performance. There were some really interesting and insightful bits of info that we all shared.
For example : myth has it that Jason and Medea had 14 children (7 girls and 7 boys) and 13 of the children were killed by the Corinthians after they heard that Medea had slaughtered Jason's new prospective wife. . And as a result of this myth the Corinthians hired Euripides to rewrite the story , shifting the blame onto Medea so that the Corinithians seemed a bit nicer.

The overall ideas was that the performance would require several stations and that the audience could see,hear and watch different events in the form of an exhibition. It was at this point that Jack was talkin about his reserach : going out and asking people about there ideas on Medea and Greek theatre in geneal. Being a bit of a geek musician with an A Levl in Music Tech i thought my skills would be better suited to creating an effective musical backing for the piece. And so the group divided off into the following sub groups

• Tableaux
• Collage
• Sound
• Performance
• Film

Our unifying concept as previously mentioned was that each sub group would have their own section of the performance space and the audiecne would be free to see whatever they anted to – giving each person a seperate more personal sense of our performance.
There were a few holes left with regards to actual staging and performance that we endevaoured to resolve once we had started in earnest on our seperate parts.

This is by far the most exciting project i have embarked on this year , i think this is in essence truely down to our group : we all know our own strengths and we all projected that to each othwer with no ego and so now we are all working on an aspects where we have excellent knowledge and expertise . The use of all of these different mediums and the hard working ntaure of our group has made me very excited about this project!

Now after some deliberation abotu how all this was going to come together we had a bit of a frenzy on the flip chart….and this is what weve figured out

: 08 Mar 2005 12:00 |  Tags: Medea General |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Joys of Audio and Video

The Joys of Audio production All the following audio & video mentioned can be found here.

You may be wondering why there appears to be nothing written here for a while . this is because, being the geek i am, i have been glued to my computer with jack moulded to my chair working our nuts off on our sound montage/story/backing/what ever you want to call it.
Basically using Cubase (music production programme) we have done the following : Taken the various interviews that Jack ,Sarah and Zoe did and recorded them staright onto my computer through my sound card .

We did a rough version of this today (Friday 18th) and the group seemed quite chuffed so we decided to press on (my girlfreind came up for a few days a remarked that me and jacks insistence on perfection and detial was very reminescent of long days and nights in the college studio )

Now because Jacks recordings werent designed to be used like this i.e recorded using an internal micorphone, now add that to an noisey and cavernous (in terms of acoustics) enviroment like the arts centre you get a few problems :

1) Peaking – Because jack et all were holding the MD player whilst asking the questions their voices are in extremely close proximity to the recording field meaning that their voices occasionally peak and distort.

2) Voice levels – No , im not going insane , this is something different! : because the interviewees are quite far away from the mic it was very hard to distinguish them from background noise and occasionally it sounded like they were whispering whilst jack sounded like he was screaming at them in comparison.

3) Background noise : It is the demon of the techie world! Usually its the monkey, sorry, drummer , complaining about something tedious but this time its the hustle and bustle of the arts centre – chinks of cups, footsteps , a general hum of people talking, announcements over the PA , and the usual white haired middle but wanting to appear upper class theatre critics repeating an opinion they read in the Times, Telegraph, Guardian arts suppliment as their own.

This is when things got challenging , for a start we had over 30 minutes of audio (recording it onto the hard disk was quite interesting as uncompressed audio is HUGE and me treating my comp like i did a £6000 200gb Carillon wasnt a good idea). For a start we had to cut various bit of speech up so we had the bits we wanted (in terms of poignancy and relevance). Then what you have is the big problem of unscripted question and awnsers – the UMMMMM syndrome – people use it way to much. The worst thing is is that when cutting up the audio if you dont hit the 10th of a second of pure silence between the word you want and the umm you get a terrible thud as that chunk of audio ends. As a result myself and jack are masters of looking at audio waves and being able to pick out an ummm form a proper word with the precision of a swiss watch maker.

Just to put my previous rambling into context what i did over the space of about 4 hours was to "clean" the audio. Basically applying filters and noise gates to cut out/minimise the unwanted noises and frequencies from the audio. And yes, it is a tedious and mind numbing as it sounds and probably proves i need a new hobby.

To make things a bit intersting (and jack knows when i say make interesting i mean make cheesey). I took a section where Sarah mentioned medea and cut it up just so she just said Medea , then created four or five seperate mono audio tracks , putting Medea at different time intervals , panned at opposing levels to create a ping pong effect around the L and R speaker, then added various effects (Reverb , Delay , Chorus , Metalizer , Robotizer) to spice things up, hence we have our begining.

After a lot of deliberating and mucking about the final story part of the vocal (in simple term goes like this). Medea…....Medea was the wife of Jason, found him on an island with a golden fleece, she helped him get the golden fleece , that was the start of the story…..then she turned out to be a bit of a psycho , killed his two kids….

There will be a link to the mp3's pf all of these soonish.

As this is a counter classical performance i decided a nice juxtaposition between the modern sound montage styleeee of our piece would be a nice bit of classical. Now, being a bit over enthusiastic i did set about writing a full score for our piece using Sibelius (you write music in Standard notation and its played through the MIDI of your soundcard) But due to the ammount of time it takes to make up, notate and tart up a score i decided it was best not to (plus the fact that General MIDI sounds like the music from the old Atari console!) . So whilst i was going through my music i found a piece that i thought would work tremendously well ; an orechestral instrumental track by Rob Dougan (of Matrix fame). I insertred the track in a stereo channel to make sure it didnt interfere wiotht he pan and generally was just complimented within the stereo field. It turned out ot work perfectly and added a real sense of atmosphere to the piece. So now we have is 2:20 of pure andulterated musical stress!!

Audio project number II : The misrepresentation of peoples views

To take things up a level we also decided to make a second piece which would relate the story of Medea to current / more recent perceptions of feminism, a mothers role and the universal themes inherent in the story. This task didnt invovle the problems of the previous audio – i.e it was well recorded. How did we get these contemporary refferences? Well using the joys of the t'interent we found the following sites /clips :

The Ashbrook Centre Audio File Index :

This is a site that catalogues recordings of important political speeches – being an American site we didnt really know what would be relevant before we listened to every single one. BUT then a rare thing happened – we were saved by Maggie Thatcher!! There was a speech by here that we consequently chopped up and used (in particular refferences to feminism and her role as a feminist icon)

We also found some readings of a modern feminist book called Manifesta : Young Women and the Future.
We downloaded the two excerpts and (in the style of Sun journalists) took quite a few sections out of context to create the idea of a male/female oposition 9(i.r "men cant be trusted with young children" was so amazingly out of context we had a giggle about it for about 20 minutes)

The Centre for Bio Ethical Reform
may not seem a likely place to find relevant audio clips – but it was!! A few fanatical Christain American anti abortion types (like Greg Cunnigham…...isnt that the pedo character from Donnie Darko??!!!)having a rant at womens rights fitted in perfectly! (If you follow this link be careful not to click on the anti abortion video – it really is sick)

The Beeb

(BBC for those who dont know) was also very useful with its recordings of three Radio 4 programmes about the 1970's. Some general quotes from the presenter and a bit more of Maggie (and some people who are never introduced) were used from here.

Jack also had a fantastic idea of using part of a song by The Future Heads that had the line " An alpha male is better than a female, a female is better than a male male".

With this track we felt it was going to be more interesting if we took a different approach and make the piece a bit more chaotic (like the play). What we did was to lay down our background music first (Apehx Twins Little Lord Faulteroy mix of Come to Daddy). This music is best described as low fi atmospheric weird elctronica (what a genre!!) and a gave the whole piece a really sinister vibe (espically with the subtle ramblings of children in the background). We used all our various quotes and then inserted some left over bits of Jacks original discussion. Nopw to begin with we just threw all the tracks down just for the sake of speed – this meant when i accidently hit play we heard this amazingly cool amalgimation of speeches songs and general chat. What we did was to copy and paste this so that later in the piece (i.e the end) the listener is hit with a huge mixtue of everything theyve heard previously – it sounds PHAT!!!.

Ian & Rhys' Video Project

As me and Jack had fihish all we could really do without being repetitive we broke our working relatioship …sniff…and started work on new projects.
Myself and Rhys took up the challenge of creating the final scene of the video project – we all said we wanted some kind of representation of children that we could project onto the screen then onto Medea and Jason as they "get down" under the sheet that we projected onto. This was going to show the themes of children in relation to Medea as well as the inner child of Medea and Jason being expressed (i.e theyre actions in the play are childish).

To start with me n Rhys headed off to the library to try and find some footage of some children in playgrounds (we were going to try and film ata local school but thought it would be very hassleto organise logistically and morally). Our searches came up with nothing apart from websites that showed un downloadable previews of library clips and then a link to buy the whole thing for $399. NOOOOOOOO i dont think so.

So having been defeated at our first obstacle we headed to the joys of University House where we searched the interent in earnest untill we found a jem. A website full of early 40's,50's and 60's American educational films. (Im trying to find the link!!!)
Oh which we downloaded three or four clips that were entitled "How to settle disputes" & "Children Playing" amongst others.
We took a few clips and cut them up untill we had the following sections (im not sure what the correct terminology is so lets call them shots)

1st shot – How to settle disputes – in text
2nd shot – a short section of a young boy and girl arguing over the use of a tricycle – it ends up getting a bit violent.
3rd shot – Compromise
4th shot – some more footage of the boy in girl in shot 2
5th shot – In a similliar fashion to the first shot some text appears proclaiming "Play by the Rules"
6th shot – some footage of a young family , happy and cuddley.
7th shot – Childrens Productions presnets "Playing Together"
8th Shot – a repeat of the 2nd shot
9th shot – genreal footage of children playing together.
10th shot- slow mo of the 2nd shot , then fast, then slow again.
11th shot – a short black screen before a still image of the family in the 6th shot is shown.

When Rhys had edited all the video to what we wanted i undetok the task of putting some new audio to the piece….dont worry its very simple compared to my previous ramblings!!
Basically as this was the final part of our piece i decided to bring it full circle and use the same Rob Dougan track that id used in our introduction. I also felt it would be cool to add some voice to the piece – for this i used a text to speech emulator (basically sounds like steven hawking). When there are the shots with the text the voice acts as a narrative i.e saying "compromise" etc. In the final few shots i made up and stole some material to write this:

"The playful violence of our children surely mirror our own inner child. Although we make think we are beyond the intelliegence of children our animal instincts surface in love, violenve, passion and affection, with more ferocity thatn ever before

The destruction of loved ones is a bitter circle (Up to here is all mine)

We are not enemies but friends , we must not be enemies
Although passion may have strained it most not break out bonds of affection.
The mystic chords will swell when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of out nature. (The poem from the end of American History X)

Many are the fates in which Zeus in Olympus dispenses. Many matters the gods bring to strange ends. The things we thought would happen do not happen , the unexpected god makes possible…and such is the conclusion of this story…..who began this feud? Only the gods know."

(A chorus part at the end of Medea)

What i tried to do here was to show the link between all these video clips , the story of Medea and our agreed final scene of our Jason and Medea being intimate and then being wrapped in the a big sheet. The first part of speech is meant to relate to Hughs idea of the "inner children" of Jason and Medea. The American History X quote seemed poignant in relation to Jason and Medeas feud (anyones whos seen the film will know that the poem is spoken by a Neo Nazi teen who swears off racism before being shot by a black kid in his school- the rifts bear a certain resembelance).
The final bit of text seemed to be very poignant and i thought using some of the actual text would compliment the action, the final line works really well as just as it happens a slow fade to a still of the family happens…class.

More to come soon…..........i

: 07 Mar 2005 20:18 |  Tags: Medea Film And Sound |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Group Log on a Blog

Session 1: 17th February

Today was the first session of our new module : Counter classical performance with the ever so wondeful Hugh Dennard (whos comment on the coolness of my new facial hair layout didnt go un noiteced and set me up for being very excited about this whole shindig)

We began today by having a discussion about Euripides' Medea. The discussion was to argue (i dont think debates are possible with some certain people in the Theatre camp) whether we felt more sympathy towards Jason or Medea. At the end of a rather circular arguement there was about a perfect split between the Jasonites and the Medeaists (i think theyre good pet names). My allegience was with the Jasonites , not to say that i thought Jason was a top bloke – just that killing your own children to get back at your husband is, well, slightly insane, uncalled for and generally just a bit sickening.

Following the discussion the Jasonites and Medeaists stayed seperate (good call) and these became our groups for our assessed performance. As our group is full of very agreeable people we all decided to go into different aspects of the project that we felt we were particuarly skilled or interested in.
Owens mention of doing some film related exploration or our ideas sounded very appealing.film. Myself , Ricardo , Owen and the Rothalite headed to the libary to do some reserahc. The most useful book we found was Kenneth Mackinnon's 'Greek Tragedy Into Film' (Worcester, 1986) IThe book gave info regarding a film of Medea which we then watched after retning it from the SRC

The film was in Greek, but thankfully subtitled, managed to give us some ideas about how we could shoot some scenes ideas. Most of the shots were long wit only a few profile shots used. To quote Owen this seemed a " deliberate attempt by Pasolini (director) to keep the authenticity of the Greek theatre by showing the whole of the body as the movement of the body (especially in the chorus) is a keystone to the whole medium of Greek Theatre. Pasolini also modified the idea of not showing the murdering, by employing a Hitchcock style approach. He would, for example show a knife moving downwards in a stabbing action however no penetration was ever shown. These are handy techniques, especially as we will have a low budget for our production and it'd be hard to show murder in an effective way."

When we'd completed our various bits of research, we got together as a group to share our thoughts, ideas and discuss what exactly we would do for the performance. There were some really interesting and insightful bits of info that we all shared.
For example : myth has it that Jason and Medea had 14 children (7 girls and 7 boys) and 13 of the children were killed by the Corinthians after they heard that Medea had slaughtered Jason's new prospective wife. . And as a result of this myth the Corinthians hired Euripides to rewrite the story , shifting the blame onto Medea so that the Corinithians seemed a bit nicer.

The overall ideas was that the performance would require several stations and that the audience could see,hear and watch different events in the form of an exhibition. It was at this point that Jack was talkin about his reserach : going out and asking people about there ideas on Medea and Greek theatre in geneal. Being a bit of a geek musician with an A Levl in Music Tech i thought my skills would be better suited to creating an effective musical backing for the piece. And so the group divided off into the following sub groups

• Tableaux
• Collage
• Sound
• Performance
• Film

Our unifying concept as previously mentioned was that each sub group would have their own section of the performance space and the audiecne would be free to see whatever they anted to – giving each person a seperate more personal sense of our performance.
There were a few holes left with regards to actual staging and performance that we endevaoured to resolve once we had started in earnest on our seperate parts.

This is by far the most exciting project i have embarked on this year , i think this is in essence truely down to our group : we all know our own strengths and we all projected that to each othwer with no ego and so now we are all working on an aspects where we have excellent knowledge and expertise . The use of all of these different mediums and the hard working ntaure of our group has made me very excited about this project!

Had a chat about our staging ideas using the flip board – see the pic here (stolen from ricardo)

: 06 Mar 2005 17:09 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How much you rule

Yes it is true , you guys are the most brilliant bunch if people, i love you all

Me , Holly & Ricardo were discussing how we need a TS social every now and again – would you guys be up for it? Would be brilliant coz we we only really see most peeps in drunken passing at the union and we all get on so well its a bit of a waste reallly!

Anyway – all of you take care and have yourselves a bluddy fantastic Christmas, will miss you all loads :'(

Will maybe see you all on the wednsday lecture depending on what time my flight gets in – but regardless i will be missing you on my hols where i shall return bronzed and shiney mwah mwah haaaaa

Welll i am a bit tired now at 03:20 – goodnight you crazee kids , would be wiked if i could get you guys on msn so add me dammit (heresy4@hotmail.com)

Looooooooooooooads o love

Ian, Beardy, Evil Guy from Beauty & the Beast, Optimus Prime, That Guy, and whatever else i get called behind my back that im not aware of!!

xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
xXxXXxXx
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: 03 Dec 2004 03:28 |  Tags: Ramblings |  Comments (10) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

They Stole Christmas!!!

Being fans of all things cheesey and ridiculous, good old Cryfield 2 Kitchen 4 put up some xmas decorations to bring some festivity to the prison in which we live.

Brilliant!! I hear you cry…...not so, let me explian:

Our cleaner, Patsy says they look great and she doesnt mind them being up as long as we tidy ti up before we go "no probs" say we collectivley.

Friday – bout a week since they went up ,our warden comes in and says hes been told that we have to take them down! But not all of them…..just the snow spray on the windows. We ask why and he quite politely says its not him (he quite likes it) but a cleaning supervisor from Rootes came over and went mental – apprently ITS A FIRE RISK!!! Now i may not be a scientist but i think that 1) if a flame could travel the 12 feet from the oven to the window we'd all be a bit buggered anyway…....and 2) even more buggered if the fire was so bad that the windows caught alight!!!

We kindly ignore what we'd been told ( Our warden not really careing what we did) but today weve been told if we dont get it off by tomorrow we will ALL be fined £20…..now £20×25 peopl in the kitchen…is thate enough money to hire a supervisor with more than one GCSE and some common sense?

: 29 Nov 2004 13:13 |  Tags: Ramblings |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Beard Voting

Having one of my yearly beard harvests has deffi done wonders : but it feels so weird!! Smooth cheeks and nothing to tug on when i get bored (or get melted cheese on when i have toasties or a pizza!)

But it is the general concensous of the cryfield massif that its for the better – is this feeling shared? Im havin trouble deciding if it looks better – i almost went totally clean (shock horror!!)

Vote now

*
*

Is it all about the length…...or maybe your more of a girth person?

: 25 Nov 2004 19:39 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Halloween Ball – Optimis Prime, Transformers and Lots of photos

Just a big shout out to everyone i met/hugged/high fived/had photos taken with last night – Yes i was Optimus Prime!!!

Its amazing what you can do with 6 hours , 8 boxes, 2 rolls of selotape, 4 rolls of wrapping paper, some blue tack and a load of string /patience.

If anyone has any pictures can you blog them so i can steal them ? I know there was a lot (i started counting mid way through the night and i got to 20)

Cheers!!

btw heres a pic if u missed out!!

: 31 Oct 2004 15:02 |  Tags: Ramblings |  Comments (15) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My Frogs Related hangover

Well i did get drunk….but reading the Frogs didnt really happen…..but holly threw up, i walked people home ….my gf called + was a bit angry that i couldnt create sentences…..then i threw up and im cleaning it up right now and it REAAAAAAAAAAAKS!!!!!!!

So all in all a good nite – shame on you who didnt cum to james'!!!

Hmmmmm lecture in half an hour and then one this afternoon AND a trip to bristol on a coach isnt seeming very appealing right now!!!

:)

: 25 Oct 2004 10:25 |  Tags: Ramblings |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Frescos

Using Roman Wall Paintings (frescos) as 'Evidence' for Traditions of Staging in Greece.

1. Consider the depictions of mythological scenes:

i What are the main similarities and main differences between the way in which the death of Pentheus is depicted in this fresco and in Euripides' Bakkhai? (Use an online text of the Bakkhai if you do not have your copy to hand.)

In Euripides Bakkhai the messenger describes how pentheus was "set astride a top limb" of a tree and how the madenads, being told by Dionysus "dug at the roots hoping to fell the big fir". The madeanads then then "tore the tree from the earth" upon which "pentheus smashed into the hard black ground….Pntheus ripped away his false hair ..to show his mother who he was"

Here is the death of Pentheus as depictd in the Fresco:

As you can see , Pentheus is clearly fallen from his tree (that isnt actually depicted at all in the image) . Assuming that the figure to his left is his mother (her blue dress makes her stand out from the rest of the characters) we can say that Pentheus is appealing to his mother (to quote the text : "STOP! Mother, i am Pentheus , your son! Born to Echion! Let me live!"). Yet there is no evidence of him removing or having rmoved his disguise that we hear in the text.

ii. Compare and contrast the way in which the death of Iphigenia is depicted in this fresco with how it is recounted in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and/or in Euripdes' play Iphigenia at Aulis.

In this Fresco we see Iphigenia being dragged away (presumably to her death) appealing to the sky (perhaps to the two gods overhead). Her displays of flesh perhaps trying to illustarte her virginity/innocence?
The figure on the left is probably Clytemenstra – holding her head in her hands and the figure on the right is logically Agamemnon , looking quite thoughtful (or guilty?).

The chorus describes the death of Iphegnia in the Orestia in a way that would suggest Agamemnon 's lack of compassion or intervension in Iphigenias death , as well as Iphigenia's horror and emotional pleas to her father : "Her shrillings beseechings her cries Papa Papa Iphigeneia a virgin a virgin , whats a virgin to hawks and war lords?"
The actual emotions are presentend very accuuratley between the text and this fresco – the actual description of her killing : "she bends herself double wraps her clothes around her…hoisted like a god to the godstone…a gag in her mouth ….her garments stream groundwards…." isnt evident in this fresco.

iii. Why do you think the similarities and differences which you have identified may exist?

Simillarities exist between in the frescos because these are the main details of the myth that are undisputed or unchnaged through each different text or interpretation. Differences exist because of the variations that existed in the myths after many years of being passed down through the generations : no doubt some of the frescos were an artist interprtation – not an actual depiction of a scene.

iv. On reviewing your responses to the above questions, how useful do you find these Roman frescos to be as evidence for traditions of tragic performance in 5th-century Athens?

_2. Examine this mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompei. _

i. What different types of masks can you see?

There are three lrage full face masks complete with beards and hair, one mask which appears to sit on top the top of the head as well as a "normal" mask with what appears to be two pipes (presumably for amplification or voice or to act as some kind of musical instrument).

_
ii. What do you think is going on in this scene?_

3. Look at the masks in these frescos depicting actors, and those in the Pronomos Vase.

i. What differences can you discern between the 'tragic' masks depicted in the frescos and the vase?

ii. Why might the masks be different?

_iii. Why do you think the ancient artists (and viewers) might have been so interested in depictions of actors and masks?

_

4. Consider this painting from the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.

i. Is it similar or different in subject to the vases considered in Q.3 above?
ii. What do you think the purpose of such paintings might have been?

: 22 Oct 2004 11:30 |  Tags: Sst1 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem