Year 13 Solo Performance Research

1. What are the songs you've chosen to perform?

- For this year I have chosen to practice and eventually perform 2 songs. Which are; Love Rears Its Ugly Head by Living Colour and Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana.

2. Why did you choose this material?

- This year for my drum lessons with Joe, I am focusing on Grade Six. These songs are included in that grade level which is the reason why I chose these songs. It's also because I just really like these songs and I think I would be able to perform them with my personality as a drummer.

3. Who wrote and performed the pieces?

- Love Rears Its Ugly Head was written and composed by Living Colour's founder and guitarist Vernon Reid. The rock band Living Colour consists of 4 band members with different roles;

• Vernon Reid – lead guitar, guitar synthesizer, programming, laptop, backing vocals (1984–1995, 2000–present); lead vocals (1984–1985)
• Corey Glover – lead vocals, occasional rhythm guitar, occasional tambourine (1985–1995, 2000–present)
• Will Calhoun – drums, percussion, keyboards, samples, loops, programming, backing vocals (1986–1995, 2000–present)
• Doug Wimbish – bass, drums, guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–1995, 2000–present)

- Smells Like Teen Spirit is written by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and produced by Butch Vig. This song was performed by Cobain (guitarist, lead vocalist), Novoselic (bass guitar), Grohl (drummer).

4. What are the songs about?

- There are no resources to what Love Rears Its Ugly Head, but I will just write a personal interpretation of this song... the meaning of "rears its ugly head" according to google is "something would eventually appear after not occurring for a while. Well with the song, implies that Love can bring out the worst with someone especially if they're obsessed with their significant other.

- Believe it or not, the song Smells Like Teen Spirit, title was inspired by a deodorant that Kurt Cobain and his girlfriend at the time named "teen spirit". Some of the lyrics explore Cobain's hardship around drugs;

And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, was hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind

however, as a whole, the song was just Cobain's and the other writer's creativity and they did not intend on putting any meaning to the song as they intended to. 

5. What is happening in the story at the time of your piece. What is happening to your character? Add your set, costume, and prop ideas.

- With the band's album "Time's Up" which was released in 1990. According to sources and articles, this was Living Colour's best album. This album was a genre-bending album with the fact that it features a wide range of songs (hip-hop, jazz, funk and even heavy metal). This album also includes cameos from other artists. Another cool fact with Love Rears Its Ugly Head is that it used a sample from a song called Lush Life which serves as the intro for the song. As a drummer, set, costumes or props is not a priority. But I can embody a personality while I'm playing the song as this song is very catchy and has a "16th feel" to it.

- As a character with Smells Like Teen Spirit, it is apparent that this song is a hard rock, if possible I can headbang whilst playing the piece if possible. 

6. What will be challenging with your pieces?

- With Love Rears Its Ugly Head, I only struggle with the last part but that can be improved by practising more.

- With Smells Like Teen Spirit, I struggle with the bass drum which also can be improved by practising more and focusing on my feet.

Year 13 Group Performance - IT'S OUR FINAL PERFORMANCES!!!!

This year we, the whole year 13 music class, have to perform 2 songs as a group. We had a couple of ideas but in the end, we chose two songs that everyone agreed on doing. Those songs are Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō / Don't Forget Your Roots by Six60 and Reach Out by Savage, and for the past few days, we had been able to decide who's going to do what. 

For the song Don't Forget Your Roots, I'm in charge to play and learn the drum part. Which personally is easy to do by myself. Since I'm one of the instrumentalists, I am focused on working on my own parts. Right now I'm struggling with getting the kick/bass part of the song but with more practice, I'm sure I'll be done with it soon.

However, the main challenge for this assessment is the fact that we have to work as a group. Even though everyone is focused on their instruments while we are playing, we have to be mindful of our surroundings with our timings, etc when playing in a group. What's special with this assessment is we will perform this song at an event happening at school, which showcases Māori songs and performances. Along with singers and instrumentalists from Year 13, we also thought about including the Kapa Haka group and do like a "flash mob" entrance for them to join us and sing.  This is event is going to take place soon, but I'm sure our group will have this song sussed-out before the event! So exciting!! I wish I could perform the Haka with the performers but that's quite impossible while playing the drums😂

Don't Forget Your Roots - Here's a live performance of Six60!

For my second group performance, I have a choice whether I'll sing in Reach Out by Savage or do a performance with Voices With Soul as a drummer performing a medley of Hamilton songs. I'm also still undecided what I should do but I'm sure both choices would be awesome!

Year 12 Design

 This year I first chose to do my board about climate change, but I decided to change it to branding a band. Making them logos, band t-shirts, as well as poster tours. I came up with the name Beyond Berlin

Beyond Berlin is a psychedelic rock and pop band from Berlin. Band members all grew up in Berlin and they all have the hopes and dreams to be famous around the globe and not just in Berlin, hence the name beyond berlin. 

I've thought about doing a sort of wall to one of the logos. Because when we think about berlin, we immediately incorporate the Berlin Wall to it. I made the logo like it was graffiti on the wall

Logos in the circular shapes were just me playing around with lines and shapes.

Group Performance

Who are you working with?
For this standard, I'm working with Cameron, who mainly plays the piano. Rapture as well, who mainly plays, drums, bass and he also sings. I could say that our group is very flexible and versatile, as we can play different instruments.

What song are you doing?
We are doing the song Who You Say I Am. This song is under the umbrella of the gospel and worship genre.

What is the song about?
According to an interview, where they also performed the song, Ben Fielding who wrote the song is inspired by the Bible scripture from John 8. Which is about, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. 

Who is it by?
Who You Say I Am is a song by Christian music praise & worship Hillsong Worship (previously known as Hillsong Live)

Who is doing what?
Alyana - Sing & Guitar
Cameron - Piano
Rapture - Bass

what is the biggest challenge going to be?
The biggest challenge for us is probably playing the right chords. As we're not quite familiar with the chords. But I'm pretty sure we'll get it once we practise the song over and over again.

Album cover of the record

Who You Say I Am - Hillsong Worship

12Design Overview: Mood Board, Theme, and Subject Matter/s

This is what I'm considering to follow for this year:

I did Level 1 art last year, and as of now my mood board kind of reflects what I did and the artworks I've produced from last year. This mood board looks somewhat similar from my last years' Level 1 Art Folio is because I used the same colour palette and, the theme of climate change, politics and, feminism. My artists last year were Barbara Kruger and Shepard Fairey. Nevertheless, this year even though I'm using the same colours, and themes, I'm intending to branch out and create more artworks that I would never think I could make. Or in other words, I do not intend to copy my artworks in any form from last year so I could put something on my board.

My Level 1 Art Board

Current theme and subject matter:

Theme: Feminism(equality), Activism, Youth discrimination in politics, Save the Environment

Subject matter: Greta Thunberg, New Zealand Youth Parliament.

As of now, my biggest inspiration for my board is Paula Scher, and the business/program I'm looking at branding/designing is going to be an activism program/protest (eg. SchoolStrike4Climate and Fridays For Future which surrounds my theme). 

Wrapping Up Art (NCEA Level 1)

After long days and long nights. I have finally finished my artboard for 2019! It's quite a rollercoaster ride not going to lie.  I started the school year with an enthusiastic attitude, I was looking forward to an artboard that mirrors my beliefs and opinion about the world.

In term 1, I was thinking about doing an artboard that tackles the topic of feminism.

These were the kind of ideas I was producing while brainstorming in term 1

But when Mrs Clemence made us watch about figuring out what could be our why.

Why we chose art as our subject in the first place?

Why do we want to to produce these kinds of artworks?

- I wanted to produce these as a channel or way to say what I wanted. Artworks that symbolises my opinions. Artworks that no one would ever know I did them, not because they're very good artworks but instead the message it's trying to convey is the things that I don't share that much to anyone.

With this picture, I sketched at the start of the year what my board would look like
at the end of the year. From what I remember,
I mainly based this folio plan from the NZQA website
Visual Exemplar that got excellence.

Before the school year has even started, I already had heaps of ideas regarding topics like social issues that need to be talked about more. Topics and issues such as climate change, feminism, politics, education system, and more.
At first, I could not choose which topic should I focus on my board. But I started the year with feminism as my main subject.

I remember taking these pictures during our holidays in 2018. I thought about including these old works on my board. I used my DSLR and sat down on my bed where the sun is hitting it. I used the sun as my main source of light and played with shadows.

These pictures built like the first leg what the main message of my board at the start of the These artworks are inspired by my art history artist Barbara Kruger. Barbara Kruger as an artist tackles the same topic which is feminism. She creates artworks that make people question their decisions She creates these textboxes in colour red with her iconic font Futura. I did these artworks using photoshop, which I learned using on my own time during the holidays before the school started. I edited the photo into black and white and added the text boxes.
(you should see my other blog where I specifically talked about her artworks). 

I continued to play with photoshop with more photos that I took, but this time I played with different hues of blue. I remember taking these photos with a movie CD that created the circular shape on my face. I was experimenting with different orientations of the CD which produced different sun rays, which also produced different shadows.
These artworks were like thermal imaging that we see at airports. For my board, this thermal imaging symbolise how our climate changes over time.

Since I have started my board with dry media, I decided to experiment with wet media for my next artworks. I tried producing new artworks that are also connected to climate change.
I'm not really good at painting and drawing face features such as the nose and lips. I tried what I could during the time, but not my best :p

These three artworks connect with the pieces above, continuing the topic of climate change through thermal imaging paintings.

.


Next, I tried producing some digital artworks. My next artist inspiration in my artboard Shepard Fairey. As an artist, Shepard Fairey started his career rather unique and uncommon. Fairey shared his artworks illegally on the street by doing graffitis, once of his most famous work earlier in his career is his logo artwork for famous brand Obey.

As you can see, Fairey is now focused more on propaganda and politics type of artworks.
Shepard Fairey is known as "the guy who did the HOPE Poster for Obama's Presidency".
This poster inspired me to do my own version of the poster. So I decided to do a poster of Vladimir Putin and Greta Thunberg (I have dedicated a separate blog talking about these posters, please check them).

I was originally planning to also put a text like HOPE on both these posters. With Putin being NOPE and Thunberg as being HOPE. The message I want to symbolise through them is that Putin is a politician with such high power. However, even though he has that, he prefers to not do anything regarding Climate change. Compared to those people who are like Thunberg that even though they don't have high powers like Putin, they choose to care and do something. As you can see with the artworks, the two have opposite backgrounds that symbolise their two different sides.
I was also considering using Trump instead of Putin, but I just really can't stare at the mans' face for a long period of time, so I didn't do it.

 In order to continue the propaganda, politics, climate change, feminism and colour red themes going. I decided to do another poster, but this time it talks about the urgency of climate change.

Earlier in the year, bees were reported one of the species that could be endangered once the effect of climate change worsens. As pollinators, bees support the growth of trees, flower and plants that serves as food for us. In other words, they're one of the most important species in our ecosystem.

*I was inspired by this picture when I saw it while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed.

I have tried different colour schemes with this artwork. I did the first version of the poster by using colour yellow as the background. However, this version didn't end up saving properly and I wasn't able to retrieve the document. So I re-made another one but with different colour schemes.

I did this artwork whilst playing and experimenting around
with Photoshop at home. I wasn't able to record my
progress as I finished this in an hour

This poster continues my climate change and colour red theme that has been going on my board.

**The circles behind the bee was supposed to connect with the circles next to it on the picture above. But in the end, I did not use the circle cropped artworks, where I'll put the HOPE posters originally. But I tried copping the posters, it pretty much cropped a big portion of the artwork and I did not like that. So I did not use it.

The next artwork I produced was once again connected with the theme politics. This time decided to go local, therefore used the Beehive in Wellington. Which ironically connects with my bee poster.
This poster is once again inspired by Shepard Fairey.  I tried to achieve this kind of style by Shepard Fairey on my poster.
- The ripped pieces of paper
- Colour schemes

I HAD A TOTAL OF 10 DRAFTS OF THIS ARTWORK

I continually did some refinements to this artwork every day. I drew the beehive by hand, and when I finished it, I had to think about what I wanted to do with it. When I finally got the idea, I figured this artwork symbolises how the system/government can be broken or injustice. This connects to the idea of climate change and political posters where politicians with high powers do not care about what's currently happening, which makes the system "broken". The glitching effect symbolises this. I got most of the text by going through the stacked newspapers and magazines in the art room. I used Photoshop for this artwork.

This is not the best thumbnail sketch but all I was trying
to draw here was a kid that was raising her hands. Kid raising her
hand symbolises how much she's free and happy.
But in reality, the kid's future is going to be polluted
and hard. Due to the fact that we didn't bother about
climate change in the earlier years where we can still reverse
its effects.

Also here are some thumbnail sketches regarding the circle
cropped political posters. The eyes were supposed to be in
my board but I end up not doing it as I really can't connect
it with anything apart from the black n' white posters for feminism.

Since I have started using cut-outs from newspapers and magazines. My teacher suggested to use a draft from the beehive poster and make another artwork out of it.
A really good idea snapped in my head when tried laying out in my head every piece of artwork I have created.

I wanted to connect this new artwork with Greta Thunberg and what was happening locally in Aotearoa. Which was at the time was about the Youth Parliament **please check a separate blog post regarding the YP**

At the time I was seeing some negative comments online about Greta Thunberg, saying she's just trying to make a show with what she's doing. I have a really opinionated side regarding this topic, that's why I chose to do this artwork.

I chose to rip the artwork to make meanings. The black n' white version of the piece
symbolises how this shell or outer layer of politics is so negative when it comes to young people.
As politicians see the youth as too naive and wouldn't be able to make adequate decisions.
But in reality, it is not true because if it was, why is Greta Thunberg had to do what
she had--which was starting a movement--when all of the "adults" in the government have all things in "control".
  Then the colourful inner part of the politics is covered/curtained which the youth can be a part of.

HERE IS MY FINAL ARTBOARD!!!
The rest of my artworks are now inspired by Barbara Kruger. Those 3 little pieces of artworks--beside
the Beehive refined--are originally her artworks,. Instead of copying it completely, I added some climate
change commentary on with the texts. 

I miraculously got through this board. Not going to lie, there were some times where I didn't really feel inspired and do any art. And that shortened the amount of time where I could work on my board, so I felt somewhat rushed when we started Term 4. I'm really proud of this artboard, all my passion through art was poured into this board. All of the stress and mental breakdowns are all worth it, I guess?

I'm hoping that it would get excellence but I don't want to get hopes up too high. What was more important was I got some really good experiences and life lessons from this years' art, and I hope that I could apply it somewhat in my life really soon.

L1 Unfamiliar Texts: Non-Fiction Activities

1. Vocabulary Work

• Scooter

- Lightweight, two-wheeled motor vehicle, that has a resting floorboard.

• Intricate

- Very complicated and detailed.

• Fete

- An organised outdoor entertainment that is mainly held for charity.

• Incomprehensible

- Not able to understand or to follow

• Estimated 

- Rough calculation or approximation

• Recruited

- To sign up, enlist

• Invaluable

- Extremely useful, irreplaceable

• Denied

- Refused, Declined, Rejected

• Campaign

- 1. a series of military operations that aims for a certain goal
- 2. working in an organised way, towards a particular goal

I predict the story is going to be about some who wants to enlist in the military since he/she was a kid
because of the words, recruited, denied, and campaign were used in this short non-fiction story.

Write down two memories you have for the time when you were ten
a. I remember singing to Avril Lavigne's songs that are probably waaaay to inappropriate for my age
b. At this age, this is probably where I discovered my big fascination with space

What ideas do you think this piece might include
This piece might include something with military
This piece might include something about how different children spend their time as a kid.

What things would you expect to be a concern of to a sixteen-years-old student?
It depends on what kind of upbringing the child was raised. But for me as an example of a sixteen-year-old student, I am mostly concern about how we treat our planet with all our waste and rubbish that can have a long term effect on humanity.

Thinking about the title and your predictions above, what do you think might be the main purpose of the speech?
The purpose of this text could be about how a ten-year-old spends his/her childhood that the sixteen-year-old is trying to tell.

First Impressions

Write down one thing we are being encouraged to do as a result of hearing this message
The speaker wants us to make us aware, realise and informed on how other ten-year-olds spend their childhood.

In this task, we want to look at each paragraph and summarise the idea
Paragraph 1; Memories  of things the narrator did as a child, list of what Juliet lost at the age of 10
Paragraph 2; A memory/flashback of the narrator face painting experience at the local fete, and compared her experiences to Juliet's kind of face painting
Paragraph 3; The narrator compares his/her thought of music compared to Juliet which was used for war instead of having fun like the narrator.
Paragraph 4; List of the narrator's happy experience of play fighting, list of Juliet's experiences of war
Paragraph 5; The narrator wants us to realise that not all children are blessed with a normal life like Juliet.
Paragraph 6; The narrator wants to raise awareness that not every kid have the same privileges and chances in life to live a normal life.
Paragraph 7; The narrator summarises his/her feelings and thought about what Juliet and other children are going through, she also mentioned about donating to Child Soldiers International to give them a second chance to live like a normal 10-year-old.

Summarise
In no more than 3 sentences write what this piece is about
The piece is about a child named Juliet who is, unfortunately, has been recruited as a child soldier in countries like Congo and Afghanistan to fight in wars. The narrator of this piece talks about her experiences as a normal child and compared it to Juliet's experiences while she's at war. The narrator's main message here is to raise awareness with what child soldiers are currently experiencing and invites the readers to donate to Child Soldiers International.

The writer/narrator wanted us to teach about child soldiers because she wants to increase the awareness of people about them, and encourages to donate to these important causes. 


Explain the purpose of the technique (listing)
To make an impact. To tell the audience what are the things that are affected abduction of child soldiers. Also to show how unfair what people are doing to these children.

Evidence from the text
"At ten years old Juliet was taken against her will, from her family, from her friends, her education, school and community"

Explain the effect
This makes the audience feel empathetic towards the children, because of the long list of examples.


Explain how this and/or other language features help you understand the speaker's attitude towards child soldiers. You might consider:
1. what the overall purpose  of the speech is

The speaker's overall purpose in this piece to inform people that child slavery is still relevant in our current time. The author's attitude towards the topic was she determined. We see this attitude when the speaker uses the technique of personal pronoun when she says "I will also leave you with a challenge"