What is art?

In the spirit of our discussion in class, I'm posting a very succinct answer from the venerable Mr. Andy Warhol:

Bravo Bravia

The short video I chose to analyze is a Sony Bravia commercial which chronicles a mass of bouncy balls traveling down the streets of San Francisco. It has been posted on youTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP5J4W5GQ3w, and along with two other Bravia commercials and one for Schwepps, it is a favorite of mine. The use of color is the main focus and point of the commercial, advertising televisions, comes across very clearly. There are several hundred neon colored bouncy balls featured in the film and they are launched down the hilly streets of San Francisco and the footage simply captures this. The slow, melancholy song that plays in the background, Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales, contrasts the fast action of what one would assume the actual scene looked like. The video is slowed down to fully appreciate the beauty of the orbs of color ricocheting down alleys and off of trashcans. At one point in the two and a half minute film a frog jumps out of a rain pipe and joins the bouncy balls in a slow hop down the street. The character of the vibrant city of San Francisco is shown in this short film with bystanders in awe and the trademark architecture in the background. The fact that this is a commercial works well for my continuing focus in class. This particular company uses a very artistic approaching to selling televisions, and the clay bunnies in New York and paint “fireworks” exemplify the message of “colour” that Bravia televisions apparently possess. Watching each of these advertisements I have wished I could have been there while the creative team was filming them. The use of time in each of them gives the viewer a sense of an almost magical occurrence, something of a dream world. Perhaps that’s what they were going for; dreams and dollar signs.

4D Works I Love

As a 4D novice I am particularly amazed with what artists can create with cameras. I have been particularly drawn to some awesome advertisements that ironically works well with my theme this semester (of consumerism and advertising). The advertisements were made with both stop animation and outstanding film editing. I am posting the videos below and my analysis of them are soon to come.


bouncy balls


clay bunnies in new york


paint fireworks



slow motion water balloons

Image Analysis

Advertising has become a central theme in today’s society. The business of selling bombards us in magazines, on television, and in this case on billboards. What we see here is a man working for, according to his t-shirt, “Made Ya Look, which can only be assumed is a billboard company, applying or smoothing out the picture of a young child’s forehead. The image of the child is in black and white while the man on the ladder appears to be the focus of the photo, in color. We cannot see what is being advertised on this billboard but we can gather what the photographer is trying to say, children look and are exposed to hundreds of advertisements a day.

This picture seems to have almost a “plus-sign” composition. The ladder is running straight down the middle of the picture while the eyes are evenly spaced on either side. The man on the ladder has both arms out and his body just about vertical, forming another cross. The bangs of the child fall vertically in this photo and the ladder, the eyelashes, the squeegee, and the man all line up. The eyes are the only linear feature of this photograph, making the stand out as the focus.

There is a sense of sadness in this photograph, expressed by the color and the fact that we can only see the eyes of the child. The eyes seem to have a glare or upset nature about them and the man on the ladder is ignoring the glance. The simple fact that these are child eyes makes it upsetting, even though we know it is just the image of a child and he very well may be acting within an advertisement.