James Doss
Arts Scholar
Pentathalon Semester 1
Pentathalon is designed to broaden experiences and perspectives for my Art's Scholars endeavor.
Watching HBO's Chernobyl.
September 20, 2020 - #Film
HBO’s Chernobyl mini-series is a fantastic work of cinematography and historic fiction writing. From my experience watching through the series, the core theme permeating every tense minute is the notion of how few men can change the lives of so many - for better or worse. From the beginning of the series, we follow Soviet scientist Valery Legasov in his reluctant quest to not only save the lives of millions in Eastern Europe but to ensure the tragedy at Reactor #4 never occurs again. While the whole series makes fantastic usage of multiple visual elements (most notably subdued and washed out lighting to convey a grim and bleak atmosphere) and is in its own right a wonderful example of what cinematography should be - the writing is the standout for Chernobyl. The 1986 explosion at Reactor #4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was one of the most misreported and covered events of the 20th century, with the Soviets not even making an official statement until residual radiation was detected in Finland. Despite this, few personal accounts of the events have survived, and certainly no dialogue between the men and women who died subduing the radioactive hellfires. The brilliance of Chernobyl is to manage to connect audiences viewing the series over a third of a century later with characters and historical figures whose names have been all but forgotten in the western world. The ultimate demand Chernobyl makes of us all, is complete accountability and honesty. It asks us to ponder with the utmost importance not only our government’s honesty to us but our honesty to ourselves - for should we falter, the cost is often too high to fathom. As Valery Legasov puts it in his final courtroom statement “Each lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt will be repaid…”
Drawing scenes from Wings of Honneamise
October 4, 2020 - #Visual Art
I’m not the greatest at drawing, but I recently watched Wings of Honneamise. It’s a fantastic movie about an aimless youngman who enlists to become humanity's first astronaut. I decided to draw the battle scene on the eve of the launch as not only is it fantastically drawn in the original but has great symbolism heavily strewn throughout. This drawing was done digitally using an overlay from the scene itself which i’ve found to be a good way to get lines down quickly. While I certainly couldn't draw this by scratch myself yet, I do find tracing work to be a good way to practice line weight and I learn a lot from each time.
Watching "How I make paint from poison."
10/25/2020 - #Presentation @Home
For my group's podcast presentation we are talking about environmental artists. During that process I had come across John Sabraw, an artist who is making paint out of acid mine drainage and decided to watch his TEDTalk. His presentation details how he first became an artist, how he became connected to sustainable pigment research, and how he is using it to combat the destruction of waterways. One of the major takeaways I got from his presentation was to connect with those in vastly different fields from your own, as the experience is broadening and valuable for everyone. As I pursue my engineering major I will keep this in mind and make an effort to connect further with all varieties of other disciplines.
Reading "In The Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka
11/14/2020 - #Literature @Home
For this pentathlon event, I knew I wanted to do something with literature. I had recently had a discussion with a friend about our favorite novels, and he had recommended that I read the short story "In the Penal Colony". Without spoiling too much it is a fantastic work of fiction that I find most compelling for it's ability to capture a sense of numbness to the world as is exhibited by the narrator. I think this is especially fitting in our curriculum as our art scholars podcast attempts to capture the numbness many feel towards climate change.
Watching Dr. Strangelove
12/13/2020 - #Film @Home
Dr. Strangelove is an absolutely fantastic film for those who haven't seen it. It is absurd, hilarious and simultaneously serious beyond all comparison. Dealing with the theme of nuclear warfare and military irresponsibility, even today, the questions we ask ourselves watching the apocalypse unfold on screen are relevant. I think Dr. Strangelove is simply a fantastic example of how one can be an activist for a cause through humor and art rather than traditional campaigning.
Pentathalon Semester 2
Follow along this semester as I document my arts experiences this semester.
#Visual Art, February 7th 2021, @Home
This semester I'm taking INST154, "Apollo at 50". The class has been fantastic so far focusing not only on the logistics and history of NASA, the Cold War and the Apollo program, but more generally on accomplishing large tasks. One image from our class stuck with me which is the Apollo Command Service Module in orbit around the moon. I chose to try and digitally paint this. Using what I learned in my visual arts pentathlon last semester I paid careful attention to the construction of the image based on the reference photo and was able to recreate the positioning pretty faithfully. I'll be using a lot of the construction techniques I got to practice here in my Art Scholars workshop.
My Process
For my drawing I'm using a program called Clip Studio Paint which functions a lot like photoshop. I began by changing the background to a light grey to be easier on my eyes and created a rough draft of the form of the capsule and rocket in a light blue pen. I then reduced the opacity of this layer and traced over it in a solid black gel pen. A layer was create beneath this to serve as a shading layer and was filled in with a soft brush with reduced opacity.
#Film, February 28th 2021, @Home
For this event I elected to watch a fantastic movie I only learned about recently called Fail Safe. Far more famous than this classic is the satirical remake Dr. Strangelove which I watched last semester and thoroughly enjoyed. There is no humor to be had and no jokes to be made. If one is to argue Dr. Strangelove comments on the absurdity of politics and warfare, Fail Safe comments on the sheer horror and feeling of helplessness. Everyone from the common folk, to the soldiers, generals and even the president himself become powerless to stop the doomsday machine once the brakes are off. The cause of crisis in this particular movie is automation of a defense computer network, and when a number of the systems experience errors, nuclear warfare begins. Much of our modern infrastructure is similarly being automated and replaced which makes me ponder if such an event as depicted by this movie is only becoming ever more likely. In my scholars colloquium this semester (The Painting of Gods and Goddesses) we’ve been learning and comparing classical paintings to modern versions and analyzing how elements of value and color can influence the motions of a reader. This is very prevalent all throughout this movie in the purposeful black and white imagery and dark atmosphere.
#Music, March 21st 2021, @Home
For this event I listened to "An American Tragedy" on the Met Opera website. All the songs in this production are truly fantastic creating and immersive atmosphere which I can only presume must have been magical to see in person. The aura of the production is melancholy perhaps but not nearly as much as many other operas. While the work of the singers and actors stands out very well on the recordings, the work done by the accompaniment and orchestra I think is what really steals the show. I've never been particularly sophisticated when it comes the the musical arts (I don't play an instrument/read music/compose) but few things motivate me to consider learning and acquiring skill in the field like hearing an expert performance. More than anything while listening to this piece I am reminded there is no single artist in performances like this opera or movies/musicals. How could you claim the work done by a member of the orchestra is less than the stage actors and performers or the composer?
#Literature, April 11th 2021, @Home
There are a number of literary works out there that are genre defining. 1984 for instance set the standard for political dystopian novels. Similarly, much of the modern genre of literary horror was defined by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado".
While perhaps not as terrifying as a number of modern pieces of horror (the work was written in 1846), the timeless fear of being buried alive in some manner is ever present. The protagonist of the story is the murderer of a Somellier by the name of Fortunato. Feeling slighted by his rather frequent insults, the murderer on night during carnival gets the man drunk and leads him into the catacombs beneath the city. There he chains him to a wall and immures him, leaving him to die.
For me the true horror in the story is that of the concealment of identity. Fortunato was clearly friends with our murderer for a great many years and all along trusted him as much as any many could trust another, not even fearing for a second to venture into the catacombs alone with him. The trust he build would be his undoing and so depraved a murderer passed off the crime for at least 50 years without notice.
In regards to literary elements the story is not only excellently written but uses foreshadowing to great effect within. Numerous times on their journey down to the catacombs, the protagonist notices Fortunato coughing and offers to forget the cask and return to the surface to which Fortunato replies that "a cough will not be the death of me." In my art scholars seminar we have been learning how senses of darkness and dread are conveyed on a canvas so seeing the equivalent implementation by pen is fascinating.
I would consider this a must read horror story and its brevity makes it accessible for anyone!
Pentathlon Semester 3
#Visual Arts, September 21st 2021, @Home
Painting a Duck
I’ve never been particularly good at painting and digital painting especially. After watching a bit too much bob ross I wanted to try getting a bit better but i’ve never particularly enjoyed painting landscapes. Therefore, in honor of the duck I saw over the weekend snatching frogs out of my pond, I decided to paint one.
I began by creating a lineart draft layer which I used as the basis of the rest of the drawing. Using Clip Studio Paint, I maxed out brush stabilization and used that to enclose my line art, and from there created separate color layers (one base color, one tints and one shading). Using the close and fill tool with the lineart as my reference layer I put down base colors based on a wikipedia image I was referencing. On top of that I used a transparency locked tint layer and the blender tool to lay down tints and gradients. Finally on top of that I used a similarly locked layer with a black water color brush and low opacity to put down shadows. These get passed through a multiple blending mode to darken the base colors below. Finishing the painting was a matter of simply cleaning up everything with an edge aware eraser. These were all techniques I researched over about an hour before actually drawing, and I think it produced a rather good result (at least compared to my past work). This is definitely a skill I’d like to get better at as I found painting in itself more therapeutic than just doing lineart. I think that would consist largely of more practice as well as hopefully finding a few more useful tips and tricks out there to speed along the process. I also definitely had a leg up on this process from my time in The Painting of Gods and Goddesses last semester.
Pentathalon Event #2
#Visual Arts
@Home, 10/4/2021, Rendering sci fi designs.
I’ve been kicking around a sci-fi novel idea for a few months, and recently began working on the concept designs for it. This pentathlon event shows one of the work in progress renders for a rocket engine design used on the biggest spaceships I’ve imagined in my fleet. This was actually one of my first times producing a proper render of my 3D work.
The basic process was fairly simple, I started out with some very rough concept sketches, then created cleaned lineart I could use as a modelling reference in Fusion 360. I then wrote a python script to compute the required dimensions and geometry for modeling. Interestingly enough, a lot of my aerospace background and the things we’ve covered recently in class helped a great deal accomplishing this. With the help of one of my buddies who has been working on this novel with me (and did most of the wireframe work for this), I UV mapped and textured his model. The final result is shown here.
3D modelling has always been one of my strong suits, but as previously mentioned rendering is entirely new to me and I learned a great deal about the whole design process from doing this exercise. I plan to hopefully use examples similar to this one for my Capstone project where I plan to teach a course on realistic sci-fi design.
You can check out more of Roman Mamus' absolutely fantastic work here: https://rmam.us/
Pentathlon Event #3
#Literature, @Hoem, 10/18/2021, Virtually Watching King Lear
Shakespeare if often touted as the greatest western writer in history, and with good reason. Few authors can compare to the truly revolutionary thought and themes he introduced into public consciousness - yet in school when we read Shakespeare we miss out on half or more of what is actually so remarkable about his work. Shakespeare was foremost a playwright, and his greatest works are meant to be seen - not simply read.
I had read King Lear in highschool previously, but like so many of his other plays, I had never seen it actually being performed which is why for this pentathlon event, I chose to watch a BJU performance of King Lear on YouTube. I think what blew me away the most was just how different the entire play felt to me. Almost a render with no lighting or a drawing in only black and white, the pure written word felt bare in comparison. The same things were being said, the same themes and motions were present, but all felt more profound when given voice and movement by actors. When I play to lead a workshop in the spring, I'll be lecturing for a bit each day, and this has really driven home the point for me of how I need to speak and move dynamically even when speaking mundanely to keep interest.
Pentathalon Event #4/#5
Rajas Concert in the Quad, Thursday, October 28th: 7pm, 1100 CCC, #Music + #ArtScholars
Rajas was a musical experience not quite like any other I had before. I’m not a big part person and have only been to a limited few concerts in my life, but the ones I did go to were never improv. From lip syncing to carefully planned pyrotechnics, they were never off the cuff performances, and almost seemed to be more about the venue than the music. Rajas in the quad wasn’t that. It was loose, it was fast and there were problems, but it was pure and a joy to listen to in a way that's hard to convey. To my untrained ear there were no progressions or rising and falling actions like you hear in traditional symphonies - there were no real lyrics or fanciful playing to speak of and yet it resonated uniquely and powerfully. Much like their namesake, Rajas did a fantastic job at simply capturing the almost aimless and undirected human drive to create. In general I would say simply listening to this musical presentation, while being delightful and relaxing, was also slightly challenging. Not in the traditional sense, but in that I found my notions of what does and does not constitute “music” to be challenged by it. For something that was so incredibly distinct from what we commonly listen to in the West, it had the same stirring resonance that so much of what I love listening to does.
Pentathlon Semester 4
Pentathlon Event 1
#Theatre, @Home, 2/6/2022, Virtually Watching A Midsummer Night's Dream
This was a unique pentathlon for me. Using the UMD Theatre in Video website I watched A Midsummer Night's Dream. While I generally consider myself fond of Shakespeare's work, I've never seen this play. I have however acted in it, which made watching actual professionals and their rendition all the more interesting. Overall the cast did an absolutely fantastic job bringing dynamism to their motions and passion to their prose. Especially interesting was the scene with the Mechanicals and their rendition of Pyarmus and Thisbe as this was the scene I had previously acted in. I don't think at the time I really appreciated the meta-commentary made by that but I certainly do now.
I don't plan on doing more theatrical work in the future, but it certainly was interesting to see and helped me realize some of the shortcomings in my own acting (even if in retrospective). It also gives me the idea that I should more regularly be checking my artistic work against professional pieces to judge flaws rather than analyzing them in a vacuum. Much of the same could be applied to other academic work.
Pentathlon Event 2
#Film, @Dorm, 2/28/2022, Virtually Watching Solaris (1972)
My favorite science fiction novel of all time is hands down Starship Troopers. My second favorite would probably go to Roadside Picnic. The book itself is not particularly well renowned, but the film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky is perhaps one of the most famous pieces of Soviet cinema. Ever since seeing it, I became a huge fan of Tarkovsky and have slowly been working through his filmography. For this event, I watched Solaris (1972) - one of his more famous works.
The plot of the film is relatively straightforward. A space mission to an alien planet goes awry as the crew of the mission are driven to insanity by an unknown force on the planet. The main character is the reinforcements sent by earth to investigate the phenomenon, however he realizes pretty quickly his vast inability to comprehend the universe.
Solaris is a breathtaking film. By modern standards the cinematography may not be flashy or memorable, but it exudes a quiet and eerie tone. The visuals, likewise, while not comparable to modern CGI, are in their own way, perfectly suited to the hostile environment of an alien planet. The whole atmosphere is tense and so thick you could cut it with a knife. A film from a simpler era where far more was done with far less.
It's of course not only the visuals that are of not. One element of the almost perfect atmosphere of the film is the dialog and writing. The film itself is slow - almost unbearably slow for modern movie goers. Tarkovsky films are almost all slow like this, so going in with that expectation its not so bad, but properly pacing the plot and character development makes the whole world feel so much more organic, and most importantly, adds to the sense of mystery around the planet.
The film in and of itself is an exploration into the truly baffling and confusing. The nature of the universe, the machinations of the mind of an advanced race, and the feelings and emotions we humans experience day to day. As an aspiring sci-fi author, I'm not only impressed by the world, but inspired to create something just as compelling.
Pentathlon Event 3
#Presentation, @Dorm, 3/15/2022, Virtually Watching "Visions of Change: Addiction and Art Therapy"
I had heard of the term "art therapy" before watching this TED Talk, but in the context of PTSD recovery. This was a powerful talk in an entirely different way than I expected. Usually TED Talks primarily focus on a sort of raw or data-driven perspective behind issues or new ideas - what are the absolute pros, what are the absolute cons. This talk was impactful in that it was very much not that. This was a personal story of an addict and how that addiction destroyed his life. Then very much the story of an addict and how discovering Art Therapy as an outlet very much put him back together.
Overall, this presentation changed both my perspective on Art Therapy, but addiction in general. In addition, it gives even more reason for me to be convinced of the centrality and importance of the arts in addressing a public health crisis (much like how artists were able to spread concerns and information around COVID or how La Manaplesa addressed issues of systemic police brutality). I would highly recommend watching this talk.
Pentathlon Event 4
#Visual Art, @Dorm, 4/3/2022, CAD and Modelling Work.
I'll start of by prefacing that my phone camera cracked so I can't really take a good selfie for this.
This weekend, I collaborated with my good friend Roman Mamus on another sci-fi design for the fictional universe we are creating. We've been working on a whole bunch of designs, but this is one of the most recent - a hypersonic VIP transport aircraft.
In addition to getting to do art collaboratively (which always helps inform my future workflow and in general gets me more practice with collaborative work), every time I open up my CAD software, I feel like I learn something new. This was also my first chance to get to do some actual modelling in Blender - a new tool I've been trying to learn. Usually, I use Fusion 360 for design. F360 is a parametric modelling program meaning the traditional workflow process works by creating parametrized two-dimensional sketches and then extruding them into three dimensional space. Blender is a more free-form modelling software that emphasizes geometric freedom over precision (overall a far better choice for Art). Finally, this composition was a chance to practice some of the workshop concepts i've been teaching as well as providing material I can use in lectures for discussion.
Some other fun notes about this project was that I got to finally run aerodynamic tests on a concept piece. It's very cool to create an initial idea, mock up concept art for it based on how you think it would work, then experimentally validate your assumption (in this case the lifting body characteristics of the vehicle). This is of course really closely related with my Aerospace Engineering major.