Tag Archive: COURSERA


EATING FROGS, PLACATING ZOMBIES AND LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
January 25, 2015

This post is the second of two assignments for the UC, San Diego ‘Learning How To Learn ‘ MOOC on Coursera presented with skill and enthusiasm by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terence Sejnowski.

If you are here as a peer assessor, be gentle with me.

If you are a casual reader, you are one of my target audience and I hope you learn something about learning how to learn from this post.

Learning to Learn

On the sound principle that you learn best by doing, and sharing, the task is to present three of the main points as if teaching them to others. Continue reading →

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ANDY WARHOL’S ELECTRIC CHAIR

Filed under: Modern Art, Photography — Leave a comment
May 25, 2014

The final peer-assessed assignment for Coursera MOOC on Andy Warhol run by Edinburgh University was to write between 650-750 words to describe, discuss and evaluate a piece of Warhol’s work. This is what I wrote:

Warhol Electric Chair 1964

Andy Warhol always struck the pose of an artist who chanced upon an image in much the same way that a child might discover a striking picture in a glossy magazine.

Yet a sparse and evocative photograph of an electric chair hardly seems to be a random choice. A real photograph carries a weight of fact, even though it can be deciphered in various ways.

Warhol’s image was adapted from a 1953 photograph taken at Sing-Sing Gaol in New York and produced in 1964. It was presented to the Tate Modern in London by Janet Wolfson de Botton in 1996. The medium is screen print and acrylic paint on a canvas sized 562 x 711 mm.

Warhol subsequently re-used the photo for a series of fourteen prints in different colour combinations but this particular one has a muddy, minimalistic colour scheme almost as if the picture has deteriorated with age. An unwitting viewer might therefore mistake it for a torture instrument from a bygone era rather than a killing machine which is still in use in many parts of the USA, albeit on a reduced scale. Continue reading →

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WISING UP TO MOOCS

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
October 13, 2013
John Covach captured questioning the value of mainstream pop in one of his MOOC lectures,

Prof. John Covach captured questioning the value of mainstream pop in one of his MOOC lectures on the History of Rock.

Interesting observations by University of Rochester professor John Corvach about his experience of preparing and presenting his History of Rock MOOC  which I am currently enrolled on via Coursera.

He sees these online courses as complementing rather than competing with the frontal lessons he gives to non-virtual classes.

He writes: “My experience has caused me to stop thinking of the MOOC as an alternative to the traditional college course. It is rather something like a very organized series of public lectures based on the structure of a college course.

Continue reading →

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HOWARD HAWKS: SCARRED AND SHAMELESS

Filed under: Movies — Leave a comment
October 3, 2013

SCARFACE : SHAME OF A NATION directed by Howard Hawks (USA, 1932)

 

The original, pre-Pacino, Scarface is included on the syllabus of the  The Language of Hollywood  Coursera MOOC to show how Howard Hawks’ daring and innovative use of screen sound and expressionistic symbolism was a revelation in the early 1930s.

To complain about the movie’s  relentless and gratuitous violence  is the miss the point.

Producer Howard Hughes set out to offend (and entertain) by making a gangster movie that celebrated the orchestrated killing sprees of rival gangs which is loosely based on the exploits of Al Capone in the prohibition era.

Hughes and director Hawks weren’t too concerned with drawing any  lessons from all this blood-letting.

The title card at the opening was a sop to the censors with a reference to “the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty”.

Paul Muni as Tony Camonte is a thug in a suit who shoots down everyone in his path, showing a softer side only for the glamorous moll Poppy (Karen Morley) and sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak).

Just like Brian De Palm’s remake, there is no moral agenda here; it is a cynical exploitation film pure and simple. It wins its notoriety and praise for the no holds barred portrayal of the criminal world who literally laugh in the face of police’s vain attempt to keep the peace.

The performances and the movie as a whole look crude and unsubtle now. While it’s easy to imagine how this was a sensation in its day, it’s not a film I have a great love for.

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SHTICKS, GAGS AND MONKEY BUSINESS

Filed under: Humour, Movies — 1 Comment
September 26, 2013

MONKEY BUSINESS directed by Norman Z.McLeod (USA, 1931)

After two movies based on vaudeville shows, Monkey Business was the first Marx Brothers film written specially for the big screen. It’s included on the syllabus of the  The Language of Hollywood  Coursera MOOC to show how, with the coming of sound, many films of the 1930s were not dependent on innovative auteurs but relied on the ability of the players to generate the entertainment.

Effectively, this means that the director’s job is reduced to simply pointing the camera and relying on the timing of the performers.

The Marx Brothers had honed their comic skills on Broadway and knew exactly what audiences wanted, as is proven by the huge success of this movie.

Theirs is the essence of situation comedy with the specific situations here being a ship, a high-class party and a barn. Most of the action takes place on board an ocean liner where the four brothers are stowaways. Continue reading →

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