Field+Trip+MCA+Freedom+Spertus+Museum+Assignment



PERCEPTION ASSIGNMENT FIELD TRIP TO SPERTUS OR MCA MUSEUM

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 * **// True philosophy is to learn again to see the world //**//.// Maurice Merleau-Ponty


 * ASSIGNMENT DUE:**_

An important aspect of the creative process is to try and see things as we expect them to be. We need to develop the ability to see our world understanding the influence our perceptions have on our sensory encounter. Perception is the meanings we attach to our experiences, to our viewing and the goal here is to consider different perspectives. As described in chapter 3, the first of the three-step process in perception is //selection//, deciding what to pay attention to and what to ignore. The second step is //organization//, arranging the information from our experience in a way that it will make sense to us and the third step is //interpretation//, which is influenced by our past experiences, beliefs, value system, and cultural expectations.
 * Key Points: **
 * 1.  ****Read informational sheets. **
 * 2.  ****Visit one of the two museums either Thursday or Tuesday. **
 * 3.  ****Create a mind map of your notemaking upon your visit. **
 * 4.  ****Write minimum one page analysis. **
 * 5.  ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Turn in paper and mind map. **

|| SELECTION You can attend Spertus Museum or the Museum of Contemporary Art. Select which exhibit you would like to view. You may choose one exhibit or one piece within an exhibit or the building itself.
 * **<span style="color: #993366; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;">“We who pass the image – walking, traveling, but we are the active agent – we can look away, turn down the sound…” ** John Berger <span style="color: #0f243e; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">

|| OBSERVATION Make notes of your observations using a mind map. Bring an unlined sheet of paper and a variety of pens and markers, some in color to draw your mind map. Do this at the museum. Don’t wait to do it later. After attending the museum, if the MCA read the article about Martin and Rodin and if the Spertus, the explanation of its building design.
 * **<span style="color: #993366; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 8pt;">"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world within words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." ** [John Berger, **//Ways of Seeing//**. London: BBC 1972, p. 7

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 * **<span style="color: #993366; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 8pt;">Thus, from the beginning, words are a reduction of the image, an attempt to capture through language the essence of something that will inevitably elude that attempt. The visual also acts in a particular way to situate the viewer, both through the perspective of the image in question and through the cultural and historical context of that image. In the act of viewing, we situate ourselves in the image we view, thus taking on a special, ** **<span style="color: #993366; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 8pt;">perspectival relationship to the things viewed. "Perspective”[which is not a natural but a cultural phenomenon] makes the single eye the centre of the visible world. ** John Berger <span style="color: #0f243e; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 8pt;">

INTERPRETATION Write a paper that is at least one page analyzing your impressions of your observations, your interpretation of the sensations you experienced in other words your perceptions. In what way are your past experiences influencing this current encounter?

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[|//__Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary__//]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> - <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Per*ceive"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. [|__Perceived__]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">; p. pr. & vb. n. [|__Perceiving__]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">.] [OF. percevoir, perceveir, L. percipere, perceptum; per (see [|__Per-__]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">) + capere to take, receive. See [|__Capacious__]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">, and cf. [|__Perception__]<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">.]
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Perception **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">

1. To obtain knowledge of through the senses; to receive impressions from by means of the bodily organs; to take cognizance of the existence, character, or identity of, by means of the senses; to see, hear, or feel; as, to perceive a distant ship; to perceive a discord. --Reid. <span style="font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="color: #cc6600; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Perception is the process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world. **Sensation** usually refers to the immediate, relatively unprocessed result of stimulation of sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin. **Perception**, on the other hand, better describes one's ultimate experience of the world and typically involves further processing of sensory input. In practice, sensation and perception are virtually impossible to separate, because they are part of one continuous process. Thus, **perception in humans describes the process whereby sensory stimulation is translated into organized experience**. That experience, or percept, is the joint product of the stimulation and of the process itself. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;"> **<span style="color: #cc6600; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;">Text taken from ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Peter Lindsay & Donald A. Norman: //Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology//, 1977. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">
 * <span style="color: #cc6600; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">Definition of Perception **

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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Spertus Museum <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">610 S. Michigan Avenue <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">312.322.1700 <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">General admission: $7 (for special exhibits w/ very limited viewing times) Students and seniors: $5 (for special exhibits w/ very limited viewing times) Children under 5: Free Spertus members: Free • every Sunday - Thursday from 10 am-5 pm street level vestibule** <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Spertus Museum’s ingenious storage and display area houses and presents more than 1,500 objects from the museum’s outstanding 15,000-piece collection. This unique display reflects the different perspectives a collection can have: beauty and loss, history and its fragmentation, aesthetics and function. Visitors can examine cross-cultural influences on the development of Jewish objects, as well as ethical and historical issues surrounding the acquisition and display of culturally sensitive collections. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Spertus Museum Admission **
 * Free for everyone:

<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Façade: Architectural/Historical Significance
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">With few exceptions, the historic South Michigan Avenue streetwall is composed of buildings with private uses, so the public cannot easily enjoy the extraordinary views of Grant Park and Lake Michigan available from these buildings. By its transparency, the Spertus façade announces the accessible and public nature of Spertus. Furthering this is the manner in which the Spertus façade emerges from the solidity of the predominately masonry-faced buildings surrounding it. The façade creates an opening in the scale of the streetwall, beckoning visitors to enter and explore the rich variety of offerings within. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The new Spertus facility fills one of the last open spaces on this great street—directly facing Grant Park. Like the surrounding buildings, many constructed in the period of tremendous architectural innovation that followed the Chicago fire, this building is forward-looking in its design and use of materials, while maintaining respect for its important setting. The stone, brick, and terracotta grid of the streetwall will tightly frame the narrow glass façade, and it is this dynamic that compels the folding and movement of the glass. At the same time, the average size of each of the façade's individual panes of glass is consistent with the standard size of the windows in the buildings up and down Michigan Avenue. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">"Like the bays of its 19th- and 20th-century neighbors, the facets that create the façade's dynamic crystalline form allow light to extend into the narrow building, while expanding the views enjoyed from inside. Today's technology permits these triangulated glass facets to be more spatial than the bay windows of earlier periods. The composition of the Spertus façade will change depending on the sun’s position, with facets simultaneously transparent, reflective, translucent, and opaque. When panels reflect, they will mirror the building's magnificent setting of sky, sun, and the greenery of Grant Park. At night, the building's interior light will emit a warm glow," offered **<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Mark Sexton **, FAIA, who, with **<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Ronald Krueck **, FAIA, is principal of the award-winning Chicago firm, <span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Krueck & Sexton Architects <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The stunning ten-story faceted window wall that forms the façade of the new Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, designed by <span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Krueck & Sexton Architects <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">, will be a direct expression of the mission and values of this prestigious organization, offering a literal "window" into the world of Jewish learning and culture. The transparent façade, to be built from 726 windows in 556 different shapes, will be installed <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">

<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Why does the building look the way it does?
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Like the surrounding buildings, many constructed in the period of tremendous architectural innovation that followed the Chicago fire, the Spertus building is forward-looking in its design and use of materials while respectful of its important setting. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The role of light is central to the religious and intellectual traditions of Judaism, and has been incorporated into the design, which features a façade of folded glass that will optimize natural light throughout the building. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">By its transparency, this façade reveals the accessible and public nature of Spertus. Furthering this is the manner in which the façade emerges from the solidity of the predominately masonry-faced buildings surrounding it to create an opening in the streetwall, beckoning visitors to come inside and engage in the educational and cultural programming Spertus offers. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Modulating the scale of the building, the glass folds relate the Spertus façade to the numerous bays windows, cornices, and other projections found along South Michigan Avenue. The average size of each of the façade's individual panes of glass is consistent with the standard size of the windows in the neighboring buildings. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">A recessed entry space creates welcoming protection at the street level. Rather than a traditional cornice, the top of the Spertus façade extends skyward, representing that the pursuit of understanding is infinite. //<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Chicago Tribune //<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> architecture critic Blair Kamin called the design "boldly innovative" and "skillfully done" and wrote, "The building will strike a remarkable balance between respecting the row and making a powerful contemporary statement."

<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Will the building be environmentally responsible?
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The new Spertus facility is a model of environmental sustainability, applying energy-saving new technologies throughout. Specifically, the new Spertus is in compliance with the Silver Level of the <span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">[|U.S. Green Building Council's] <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System®, a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Environmental elements of the new facility include energy efficiency provided by the materials being used on the glass façade, a 6,659-square-foot green roof, a 425-square-foot open-air terrace, plus environmentally friendly building materials, HVAC, lighting systems, and water efficiency. <span style="color: black; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The conscientious and careful planning embodies the Jewish tenets of //<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Bal Tashchit // (not destroy or waste) and //<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Tikkun Olam // (repair of the world). <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;"> <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">Museum of Contemporary Art <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;"> 220 East Chicago Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611-2643

Monday || Closed || Tuesday || 10 am - 8 pm || Wednesday through Sunday || 10 am - 5 pm || Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day: Closed
 * <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">General Telephone: ** 312.280.2660 **<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Box Office Telephone: ** 312.397.4010
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">Museum Hours **<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">
 * Admission is FREE all day on Tuesdays** ||

Suggested General Admission || $12 || Students with ID and Senior Citizens || $ 7 || MCA Members and Children 12 and under, members of the military || Free ||
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">Admission Prices **<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 7.5pt;">

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">As part of its participation in the 3M Consortium Project with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the MCA has commissioned a work by the London-based American artist Daria Martin. Her elusive enigmatic films combine intense ritualistic performativity with a rigorous yet detached photographic approach. Her 16mm film, //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Minotaur //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">, runs approximately 10 minutes and pays tribute to the work of dancer Anna Halprin, one of the key pioneers of postmodern dance and movement along with Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer. Halprin's life and work has had a profound influence on Martin in the implicit sensuality of the protagonists in her films and in their demonstration of a heightened awareness of the body and its relationship to other objects and the surrounding space.
 * Daria Martin: Minotaur** October 3, 2009 - February 7, 2010

This film is centered on a Halprin dance based on the sculpture //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Minotaur //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> by Auguste Rodin from 1886 (also known as //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Faun and Nymph //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">), a work possessing intensely erotic content (it depicts the part-man/part-bull figure from Greek mythology with a naked young female figure in its grasp.) Martin's //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Minotaur //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> extends her interweaving of highly conceptualized and choreographed physical movement; complexly layered stagecraft provoking unconventional formal relationships; direct allusions to modernist art history; and editing and cinematographic techniques evoking a broad range of the histories of both mainstream and experimental filmmaking.

According to Martin: " //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Minotaur //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> combines three spaces of artistic production: the two-dimensional images of Rodin's //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Minotaur //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> sculpture in various books; the three-dimensional sculpture itself; and the four-dimensional dance choreographed by Anna Halprin based on the sculpture. It also features three spaces of context: Anna Halprin's face looking at the books; the dancer's souvenirs, objects and photographs (skeleton, clay objects, photographs of bodies); and the natural surroundings beyond Halprin's dance studio, including trees, burnt out trunks, etc. These six spaces are connected through formally inventive edits and physically inventive transitions. This project is curated by MCA Curator Dominic Molon.

Faun and Nymph / The Minotaur //(Faune et Nymphe / Minotaure)// (de Caso / Sanders 1977, p. 105-108, cat. no. 14; Elsen 2003, p. 510-512, cat. no. 157; Tancock, 1976, p. 270-273, cat. no. 41) <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">'The Minotaur' is one of the sculptures of Rodin often exhibited: it first recorded exhibition was in Munich (1896), thereafter it was shown in Vienna (1898), The Hague (1899), Paris (1900, 1910, 1917), Potsdam (1903), Düsseldorf (1904) and Barcelona (1907). The sculpture was exhibited under different titles like 'Faun and Woman', 'Satyr and Nymph' or 'Jupiter Taurus'. With the title 'Jupiter Taurus' the figure would show the transformation of the Head of the Gods into a bull, kidnapping Europa (Elsen 2003: 510; Tancock 1976: 270). <span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> Visit this website for a closer viewing of Rodin’s image. [] <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Rodin himself preferred the title 'The Minotaur', referring to mythology. After the wedding of Minos and Pasiphaë and her union with a bull, the Minotaur is born. Each year the Athens have to sacrifice him seven maids and seven young men until he is finally beaten by Theseus. With the title 'The Minotaur', the composition of Rodin shows the Minotaur with one of his sacrifice (Tancock 1976:270). <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">About the different titles and different interpretations Rodim himself said to Paul Gsell: “you must not attribute too much importance to the themes that you interpret. Without doubt, they have their value and help to charm the public; but the principal care of the artist should be to form living muscles.” (Gsell : 163f.; quoted after Tancock 1976: 270). And Rodin took as an example the group Pygmalion and Galatea, for which, he declared, the minotaur had been the first sketch (Alma 2001: 100). <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">But Rodin did not only illustrate the myth of the minotaur in his sculpture, he offered the opportunity of speculation about what may have happened before and could happen after the situation depicted. The figure shows no violent seduction and the nymph has no terrified look or frightened gesture. The minotaur is seated on a rock, staring open-mouthed at the nymph’s hair. His left hand is holding her elbow, while with his right hand he embraces her extended right thigh, where it met the left hand of the nymph. Although the nymph is raising her shoulder and with the whole body she is leaning against her left side, it seems, that she has no inclination to rebuff her horned seducer. Her right leg is slung over his, but with her foot pressing against the ground, she seems to avert his embrace. But her right hand is simply lying on her own thigh and her facial expression shows rather a frown than fear (Elsen 2003: 510). <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">A related figure to 'The Minotaur', represents 'Triton and Nereid', a terra-cotta version of which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this fragmental study the particular figures are closely connected with each other. Triton is successful in positioning a kiss on Nereid’s back, which makes allusions that they may have a love-relation. The fact that the figure of Triton is reduced to his lips - from the rest of the body only one of his hoofs is visible - reinforces the expression of sensual desire (Tancock 1976: 270). The close relation to 'The Minotaur', suggests a date of about 1886 for the formation of this group. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">'The Minotaur' points to Rodin’s inclination for the art of the eighteenth century which were also shared by several contemporaries. Perhaps for this reason the figure was one of the works most widely admired by early connoisseurs. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;">The original plaster of 13 ½ inches height was later enlarged - a plaster of 22 ½ inches is listed in the Grappe catalogue of 1929 and 1931, although this is omitted from later editions. A reference to a marble version of the figure is found in the catalogue of the 1918 exhibition in Basel. Probably it refers to the same figure which is now in the collection of the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Tancock 1976: 272). []

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