We started off by discussing how time was described in the past. I understood that:
- According to the Egyptian mythology, Ra, the ‘God of sun”, would drive the chariot till the sun, defeat Set, ‘God of chaos’ and that would lead to a new day.
- According to Greek mythology, time was driven by the ‘titans’.
- The current calendar is called the Gregorian calendar. For eg, Monday is called Magni, Thursday is called Thor, etc.
- We also compared the interpretation of passage of time to the famous painting,” The Persistence of Memory,”by artist Salvador Dali.
- Father Time is a significant personification of time.
- Lucifer actually has a positive meaning. It means,” bringer of light”, in Latin.
- I learnt the interesting representation of chaos and time in art. Both are represented using wheels and arrows but have evident differences.
- Nepotism was coined during the renaissance, it is a very old term.
- MEMEtics- triggers mutation and ideas.
- If you had to buy something from the renaissance, Italy period, what would it be- Gold, paintings, sculptures, canons,land,etc.
- Things that represent time-
- skull
- rose-withers quickly
From this class I understood that there are various contrasting ways to show death, life, time or any of these aspects.For example, death could be shown through a body rotting or a leaf withering. This is the beauty of abstraction.This class seemed easier than the first one because I could connect with the references we spoke about, which made me get involved in the class discussions.
As our assignment, we had to depict the passage of time through pictures/ narratives.
These are the three ideas I came up with-
Fleeting steps: Depicted using a girl who is weeping while she is joining a boarding school and the same girl is sobbing again as she is passing out of the same school. The emotion is the same but it deals with two different feelings that have changed along the passage of time. She is upset because she does not want to leave her parents and home first and then she cannot imagine leaving her “home away from home.”
Understanding of art: We were taught a definite way to make a landscape as a kid. Developing interest for art in my high school and pursuing design now, this passage of time, has made me change the way I look at a landscape now.
Flow of waves: I chose this to be my final idea because I have always loved the sight and sound of waves. I have shown a series of pictures where the waves hit the feet, it leaves a footprint for a few seconds and then it washes it away with itself. It depicts passage of time as it is about time that I realised that the at some or the other point the waves return everything that it takes with itself.
Sirina’s blog 