one artapre meeting Ms.castro asked us to group together, then she gave us materials like manila papers, an illustration board, scotch tape, and a piece of paper. we were tasked to build a structure for the future. but its not just any structuure, it has to be the one written on the paper.
i had a similar activity during an art competition held at PLDT makati branch. my mother used to work there and she signed me up to the contest for the children of pldt employees.
the topic of the activity was to draw things from the future. the difference is we had to draw, in class we had to build. at that time i was just 8 years old. so i drew robots and flying buildings,we were asked to conceptualize what can something look like a hundred years from now. i can still remember other older kids art works. some drew something like mine, soome drew that humans would evolve into something else, while others just drew magnificent looking buildings. ofcourse i never won but the experience i had at the classroom activity made me remember this similar event when i was a child,envisioning my kind of a future city.

i really dont get the word building, why do they still call a finished and erected skyscraper a building? isn't it finished already? dont you agree that it should be called built and not building?? but kidding aside this entry of mine is all about architecture.!

I really enjoy watching a certain show in discovery channel, that show is entitled "Mega Structures" it shows viewers some pieces of architecture's thats still being planned and some that is already a work in progress. i even watch some of the shows where-in they give you're house a free make over and i enjoy watching it even if my brothers say its boring.
when i was a kid my fatherwould sometimes bring me to construction sites, it is because of his business as a network solutions company, i go with him sometimes when he is inspecting a building that is being built. there i was amazed at how they mix cement and how that small lump of cement could create such a nice building.
i also love going to other countries, i just love looking at their tall buildings, especially in hongkong i think the skyscrapers there are the best especially at night, they are real time works of art. from buildings that change colors by the hour wow.. everything was just so amazing, i just fall in love with the buildings everytime i vist there. one other place where i admire their architecture is in las vegas the pyramid hotel over there, the mgm grand, the bellagio, especially excalibur its a building that looks like a big castle.
having artapre as a class made me realize that alot of things that i used to do and still continue to do today is related to art, before i just take all these things for granted but now i can really appreciate the piece of art thats erected infront of me when i come there this december!

last week we discussed the architecture of malls and how its affecting our culture. well i took up kaspil1 and there we talked about the philippiines having this "Consumer Culture" well actualy on my opinion its bad that we have this kind of culture because we will never become rich as a country, we will always depend on other countries and would always be blinded by their products, this is also what we discussed during artapre and during that discussion i realized something, i realized that its not that filipinos does not want to buy filipino products its just that we really dont have that much products at all.

i believe filipinos wont grow up to be a great country if they will always be consumers, i say we make our own products and we should be the ones cashing in on other countries as well.

anyway, as we have discussed iin class i got amazed at how things really are when it comes to the structure, the wide open spaces, the box type structures, well i was at glorietta last saturaday and when i stepped in i was looking at it so differently i was staring at the wide open spaces and there i can see what the circular walking area is for and why it is made like that. awhile ago i also atended church in greenbelt, this is where i realized that yeah everything is mad efficient by integrating almost everything in one place.

it was real fun staring at these "mega structures" and having this kind of thinking thats not common to everyone, i myself would tell my dad stuff i learned at why things are like this in SM while its like this in glorietta. plus ever since before i have always thought that between these 2 kinds of malls the elite class and the mass class malls that there is something different but i never came uo with these questions of mine. but after learning these stuff in artapre i now know the answers to questions that was dwelling in my mind for years.

That morning we discussed nude paintings in class, I was late that morning, so when I arrived I started too stare at the blackboard were nude paintings were projected. I expected that we might discuss something like this in class so I was not that shocked when I entered the room.
Back When I was a kid I honestly never perceived nude paintings as art, I just saw them as tools that should feed my imagination as a child in a very sexual manner.
Its very embarrassing to say this but this is the truth I never really cared about where it came from, if it is from the western culture or from the eastern culture or what is the difference between the two and why they are naked. All I know is that they are there naked and they are posing so that I would be able to satisfy my manly needs.

So I sat back and listened to the discussion and I found out things about all of those nude paintings I used to only see as tools for the sexual satisfaction of man. Though one of my beliefs about them was true, that they are there to somehow to satisfy the male desires. I also learned the difference with western and an eastern nude, though they have some similar elements like the undressed woman but one of their differences is that the western nude’s pose is projected towards the direction of the spectator and not towards her partner, as compared to the eastern painting the woman projects towards her partner and showing love and attraction to his partner, completely ignoring the spectators of the painting.
When I got home I got a call from my auntie who lives in the US we talked about our visit there this December and she mentioned about taking us to museum’s and galleries since we’ve already been all over the place already. Well I said yes and told her that I have art class and that going to these museums would be good so that I can showcase to them what I have learned in my art subject.

We discussed one of the most popular painting in the world and that painting is the Mona Lisa. The painting with a very mysterious smile, in actuality everything in the painting is mysterious. From the un-even background up to her glowing skin, everything is covered with mystery that is yet to be solved.
We discussed Mona Lisa long enough, so that we could try to understand it
And not solve it, to understand better what is the fuss all about. With our discussions i
Figured out something that I was wondering about for a very long time and after discussing Mona Lisa I had found the answer that I was looking for.
I’ve always wondered why the friend of my friend would call her Mona Lisa,
I mean this guy called my friend Mona Lisa for reasons that we didn’t know. We had theories as to why this was so but that’s all we ever came up with, we didn’t even bother researching about it cause we never saw it as an important thing. But with the Mona Lisa being discussed in class I got the idea that maybe my friend was being called Monalisa cause of her aura of being mysterious, he associated Monalisa’s mysterious smile with my friend’s mysterious personality. Although up to now this is only a theory, because I never had the chance to ask him if this is really the reason. But its really nice that I was able to formulate this theory cause of some of the knowledge I picked up from art class.

i love dancing as much as i love music, watching people dance amazes me especialy street dancing. though cultural dances are ok also, i appreciate them as much as i would modern dances, its just that i get very bored with cultural dances maybe because of the repetitive movements and unatractive music, i just really dont enjoy watching these kind of dances.

maybe because street dances reflect more of my personality, the rythm and fast paced music the power moves that really would move the viewers, even the steps, although all of their moves are different they somehow blend together to showcase a really good performance. like me i dont like unchanging and redudundant things, for me unchanging things are boring things. i am also a very jolly person so maybe thats why the upbeat music of street dancing appeals to me so much.

i was disapointed with the show in william shaw thater, they could've showed more street dancing and explained more about it. the cultural dances could also use some more practice and more props, the dances could've turned out better especially with their kind of talent. but with this kid of perforance my love for dance didnt really go away. and watching their performance only made me realize how many cultural dances really are and if these dances were not to be passed down to the next generation of kids, all of these dances will all be wiped out, 1 or 2 generations from now.

it was a wednesday afternoon around 1pm, i was kinda excited because
i am the kind of person that loves music so much. may it be rock, classical, pop, OPM etc. i listen to them all. though right now i am crrently digging rock music i still also havent lost my heart for classical music.

i grew up with music, my father would always listen to some ballads and jazz music while i was small, on the other hand, my mom's side is a family of pianists so during my childhood music was already a really big part of me.

so unlike some of the students who was required to watch the performance i was pretty excited to view the performance. when i got there i sat up front, not just because there were no more seats available at the back but also because i wanted to see the instruments up close as close as i could get so that i could see how the musician would play the violin or how he would pluck his guitar.

all of the songs that they played was all very familiar to me, but amongst all of them my favorite is beethoven. i listend to their lecture as they showed how bad it was to the ears if one of the instruments were not tuned properly and if some musicians werent playing the same melody and on how it was so important for their instruments sounds to blend together so they would create wonderful music together. watching them also made me realize that teamwork is really important and that even though some of them were good musicians alone, they understood that together they can create something even better.

towards the end of the performance there was an open forum,where in they opened the floor for questions. for a short while no one was asking anything, until i saw my prof. stood up and asked a question that was really interesting. the question was something like, "boom tarat tarat is also repetitive, how is it any different from classical music in terms of repetitiveness?" something like that. one of them answered that the main difference is that boom tarat tarat although repetitive has only one tempo and it would not change, compared to classical music, classical music has various tempo's that would corresspond to the emotion being portrayed, like slowing it all down to portray sadness or speeding things up for happiness. his answer was sound and at first i thought it was something hard to answer.
after the show i walked away with a greater understanding of classical music, though i expected it to be longer. i hope that the succeding shows would be longer featuring more music for everyone to enjoy,and i ca definitely say that all of that was all worth my 80 pesos!