bau11: theory + analysis (synthesis) musik = finals

‘I’ve heard Jay Leno is the new Jok­er.’

Which in it­self leads to some in­ter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for a su­per­hero movie. We talk mo­tion pic­tures and mu­sic videos. So to­day is the last long form con­ver­sa­tion we’re go­ing to have. We’ve cov­ered a lot – only most rel­e­vant re­marks have been post­ed in this blog se­ries (sor­ta), the acts of su­per­heroes, grow­ing up in Oak­land, and food­ie talks are now in the ether. Now it’s time to see if every­thing worked. If the learn­ing hap­pened, if the fi­nals sync with the weeks of re­search, de­sign, pro­duc­tion and read­ing.

The due fi­nal projects are bro­ken into two as­sign­ments – giv­en three class­es ago:

9 Bauhaus PLAYLIST STUD­IES
De­velop 9 squares. Each square should re­flect a dif­fer­ent genre of mu­sic. What are you lis­ten­ing to while work­ing?

9 Bauhaus MAS­TERS STUD­IES
De­velop 9 squares. Each square should rep­re­sent a dif­fer­ent Bauhaus mas­ter. For a list, hit up wiki.

FOR BOTH PROJECTS, each square should rep­re­sent what was learned from each read­ing.

De­tails be­yond this haven’t been giv­en – it’s up to the stu­dents to wres­tle with size, con­tent, mes­sage – this free­dom al­lows them to build off where they’ve gone so far. It’s Vokurs and be­yond, and they un­der­stand that too. They also un­der­stand (his­tor­i­cal­ly) in the wrong en­vi­ron­ment, they could once have be killed for what they are do­ing – Nazis, So­vi­ets or … ??

I also leave pre­sen­ta­tion ap­proach­es up to them. I ba­si­cal­ly tell them that pre­sen­ta­tion is every­thing, I stress the im­por­tance of good crafts­man­ship (re­in­forced by the their Bauhaus stud­ies) and we note what works and what doesn’t in the fi­nal cri­tiques. And I teach mount­ing on black boards in an­oth­er class – the al­lure of them, how­ev­er, is­n’t lost:

‘Those black boards look GREAT,’ says Bad Chick­en. ‘I should’ve made black boards.’

prob­lems
A few things go wrong. Bad Chick­en doesn’t ap­ply the read­ings to his mu­sic stud­ies – so they all turn out look­ing the same. He takes a HUGE grade hit for this. As I point out, the read­ing is crit­i­cal be­cause they con­tain all the tech­niques you’re ex­pect­ed to know. This is a flaw in my own teach­ing: Re­ly­ing too much on the text­book – tho in this case, it only af­fects one of the stu­dent fi­nals this time out.

I Can’t Draw shows up with­out most of her work. She’s de­cid­ed it’s bet­ter to not have work at all in­stead of show­ing what she’s done. Be­cause, ‘It sucks.’

I have to go over how wrong this is (and I don’t even be­lieve in the con­cepts of right and wrong; I think they’re too lim­it­ing).

This is WRONG. The whole class chimes in – talk­ing about dead­lines and how all cre­ative in­dus­tries have ’em. We’ve dis­cuss this a lot. Since she’s a Film ma­jor I give her the best ex­am­ple I can think of: ‘You ever show up at the the­atre – open­ing day – and the screen is blank?

‘Ever open a mag­a­zine and the ad just isn’t there – a blank page in­stead – or the ar­ti­cle is un­fin­ished?

‘Dead­lines. They’re real. You’re here to learn what works and what doesn’t. Leav­ing your work at home be­cause you didn’t like it is not an op­tion. Ei­ther you recre­ate it NOW, or you’ve just failed my course.’

I Can’t Draw gets the mes­sage – and starts draw­ing. Doesn’t fin­ish every­thing, but is mak­ing work. Quick­ly. But dang, she can’t get away from sym­me­try and every­thing has to have a lit­er­al mean­ing in her world:

‘Mon­dri­an was not at the Bauhaus!’ Wal­dorf de­clares, even though he’s list­ed on the wiki page. One can­not trust every­thing they find on­line. Es­pe­cial­ly stu­dents who are tack­ling a Bauhaus Mas­ters project. We frown on any Mon­dri­an work that shows up.

the goods
Some of the stud­ies are tak­en to un­usu­al places – as long as they com­plete what is as­signed, oth­er ap­proach­es are open and wel­comed. It’s great to see work­ing be­yond as a process. We end up with squares, then 3D in­ter­pre­ta­tions, paint­ings and more.

This is their mu­sic:

This is their work:

 

 

 

‘The his­to­ry of the Bauhaus is a long sto­ry, an end­less one …’
Os­kar Schlem­mer

What’s next for most of these stu­dents is ty­pog­ra­phy – colour the­o­ry and be­yond. We have a long con­ver­sa­tion about the im­por­tance of what we’ve cov­ered as the frame­work for go­ing for­ward. And (most im­por­tant) ‘Once you get your grade, DO NOT for­get what you’ve learned!’

‘Yeah, we know that. Con­tin­u­al­ly im­prove, make bet­ter.’

the grad­u­ates
We start­ed with eight, end­ed with five. Only one dropped, the oth­ers – Star Wars and I’ll De­cide What Home­work – were not present for the fi­nal. No stu­dents, no work, no pass­ing grade.

Else­where, not a peep from the Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent – who I did see on Thurs­day in a heat­ed dis­cus­sion in my De­part­ment Chair’s of­fice.

But the con­ver­sa­tion had noth­ing to do with me or I’ll De­cide What Home­work – at least I found that out about six hours lat­er. I’m told, ‘You re­al­ly have to curb your para­noia, Mr. Mehal­lo.’

The Cam­pus Po­lice or Nazis don’t show up ei­ther. We’re done.

—steve mehal­lo

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.
 
 

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