The more places I'll go

This semester I'm taking an elective course that is geared towards reconnecting contemporary painting with contemporary architecture, and there is something about it that makes me want to fully invest my life in learning about our contemporary culture. Recently we have covered information regarding stylistic periods of art from the 19th century to now, and the external learning that we have been given leave me searching for more. We were required to watch a documentary called Painters Painting which opened my eyes to how an artist creates. As an architect, we are given a predetermined paradigm of functionality or a restriction, which, due to our medium is one that requires our attention in design. But instead of working towards an idea and stopping at our restrictions we should learn how to break down those restrictions in order to find something new.

I just watched this lecture/discussion between an artist and a film maker as part of researching how Matt Connors as an artist conceptualizes his own work, and there is a whirlwind of thoughts running through me currently.

I want to go to museums. Wherever I go my new goal is to go to a museum. Historical, art, science, anything. Especially in the contemporary realm. In schooling we are taught history. It is given to us as sheet of information that we are supposed to retain. But no one tells us about the world we are living in right now. We're just expected to know about it, which, if you are anything like me, you don't even realize how many innovative things are happening, and how many ideas are being realized in different manners. Not only the fact that things are happening, but we need to experience them, and try and understand them.

I need to watch more movies. Not romantic comedies or action films. Documentary's. Films with a message, with a story, with art. I've neglected considering films to be a source of "art" persay, since I've considered movies to be more so involved with the entertainment of masses, and quality suffers. There are movies of course that I thoroughly enjoy and would praise for several things, yet the connotation of art had never been realized. I'd like to change that.

I want to read more books. For a while now I've been wanting to read Heidegger's Subculture: The Meaning of Style because I find society and its representational qualities to be a fascinating aspect of our contemporary life. In that respect there are a lot of books that conceptualize relationships of our future to that of our past. One that was mentioned in the discussion I previously addressed was titled Retromania and discusses specifically music, but overall conceptualizes our modern fascination with reproducing the past into contemporary culture.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” 
- Dr.Suess