Saturday, December 1, 2012

HELENESTEYA BY RANA GHAZY



HELENESTEYA

MODERNIZED HELLENIC JEWELLERY

Artist Rana Ghazy is presenting her second solo exhibition “HELENESTEYA” in cooperation with AGORA Arts and Culture during the period from 13 to 24 December 2012 in Alexandria Atelier. The exhibition is in context of AGORA’s artistic season “HISTORIA”. HISTORIA is a Greek word meaning inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation. It also means the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events.
HELENESTEYA is the first step in Rana’s attempt of documenting the historical epochs through jewellery. The word HELENESTEYA comes from the word “Hellenic”; Alexandria was established as Egypt's capital during the Hellenistic period (332 BCE-30 BCE), which encompassed the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt. Following Helenesteya, Rana will present the preceding historical epochs such the Roman, the Islamic, and the Ottoman influences. Her presentations and designs demonstrate the modernism of each epoch; modern jewellery inspired by history.


Opening: 13 December 2012, 7:00 pm, Alexandria Atelier
The Exhibition continues until 24 December

هـيـليـنـيـستـيـا

حُلي هيلينيستي حديث

تقدم الفنانة رنا غازي معرضها الثاني "هيلينيستيا" بالتعاون مع مركز أجــورا للفنون والثقافة في الفترة من 12 إلى 24 ديسمبر 2012 بأتيلييه إسكندرية. المعرض في إطار موسم أجــورا الفني "هيستوريا". هيستوريا هي كلمة يونانية تعني البحث والمعرفة والتحقيق. التي حصل عليها التحقيق. وتعني أيضا اكتشاف وجمع وتنظيم وعرض معلومات عن الأحداث الماضية.  
هيلينيستيا هو الخطوة الأولى التي سوف تقوم بها رنا غازي لتوثيق الحُقب التاريخية من خلال عمل الحُلي. كلمة هيلينيستيا  تأتي من كلمة "الهيلينية"؛ تأسست الإسكندرية عاصمة لمصر خلال الفترة الهلنستية (332 قبل الميلاد-30 قبل الميلاد)، والتي تضم سلالة البطالمة في مصر. بعد هيلينيستيا، سوف تقدم رنا الحقب التاريخية السابقة مثل الرومانية والإسلامية، العثمانية. العروض والتصاميم تُظهر حداثة كل عصر؛ المجوهرات الحديثة المستوحاة من التاريخ.


افتتاح: 13 ديسمبر 2012، 7:00 م، أتيليه الإسكندرية
يستمر المعرض حتى 24 ديسمبر

Saturday, September 22, 2012

FORUM OF YOUNG MUSICIANS II – The Reinvention




3-5 October 2012
PARTICIPANTS
1- Shaware3na Band

A 7-members band established in 2009. The Bands songs represent society issues. The uniqueness of the bands comes from their ability to mix between theater and music.  For more information about the Band please visit:
Contact Person: Amr El-Gendy 01009042017, gendeeto@hotmail.com

2- Khat A7mar Band
 
A group of youngn musicians mixing all colors of music. Their slogan is "Music Across the red line" that is why they chose this title for the band. In their songs they talk about the people and issues related to one's life. For more information about the band please visit:
Contact Person: Mohamed Magdy 01287224464 and Sarah Fahmy 01202807696 

3- Qarar Ezala
 
A newly established band in August 2012, trying to present alternative music style with the aim of spreading awareness about certain topics. For more information about the band please visit:
http://www.facebook.com/QararEzala
Contact person: Yaseen Mahgoub

4- Belma2loub Band

Established in 2012, performing Arabic Rock and representing the problems of this generation and the intergenerational gap. For more information about the band please visit:

http://facebook.com/belm2loob
http://myspace.com/belm2loob
Contact Persons: Hany Nagy 01222355059 and Ahmed Hawary Keko 01065652944
real_keko@hotmail.com


5- Ahmed El-Hareedy
 
As a rebellious young man, he found himself being drifted into dental studies, and copied into another dying soul template until music sparked his desire for another path.
Born and raised in Alexandria, for Ahmed writing poems started in 2005 as an outlet for his thoughts. The beats of Rap and hip-hop especially the music of his idols like Tupac Shakur,Biggie Smalls, Snoop dogg,Dr.Dre and others married his Alexandrian roots, and gave birth to the "rapper" in him. For more information about Ahmed please visit:



This project is in Cooperation with the Anna Lindh Foundation for dialogue between cultures in the framework of Farah El-Bahr Festival 2012, funded by the British Council and supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum and Goethe-Institute Alexandria.
 



Friday, September 21, 2012

حكاية الملتقى



حكاية الملتقى

إه حكاية الملتقى؟ بدأت فكرة الملتقى مع مبادرة مؤسسة الأنا ليند للحوار بين الثقافات "الفن من أجل التغيير" في العام الماضي. حاولت أجـــورا التفكير في فعالية أو نشاط مختلف، ليس فقط حفلة أو مهرجان، ولكن نشاط يكون له تأثير طويل المدى. ففكرنا في الملتقى. كانت الفكرة في الأول لقاء بين الفنانين الشباب والفنانين الشباب أيضًا ولكن الذين لديهم خبرة أطول في الموسيقى المستقلة.

شارك في الملتقى خمسة من أفضل الفرق الموسيقية المستقلة في الإسكندرية وهم كراكيب، وصلة، بالمقلوب، ستورم و نقطة تحول. وقام خمسة من أهم الفنانين بإدارة ورش عمل مع تلك الفرق. كما قامت مديرة خشبة المسرح ميادة سعيد بإدارة ورشة عن كيفية عمل ورقة المتطلبات الفنية للفرق. بعد  الملتقى تلقينا توصيات من المدربين بأن فريق وصلة من الفرق التي تستحق المساعدة. عندما أُتيحت لنا الفرصة قُمنا بذلك بالفعل وبدأنا العمل الفني والإداري مع فريق وصلة. وقام بعض أعضاء فريق مسار إجباري مشكورين بالمساعدة بشكل تطوعي. كما ساعدنا المركز الثقافي البريطاني بتمويل جزء من الألبوم والجزء الآخر قُمنا بتغطيته من مُدخراتنا الشخصية.

لقد نجحت التجربة وقررنا اعادتها بل وتطويرها ووضع منهجية لتنفيذها بطريقة أكثر فعالية. لذا فنحن نعيد الملتقى هذا العام، سوف يشارك خمسة من أحسن الفرق المستقلة في الإسكندرية وهم شوارعنا، خط أحمر، قرار إزالة، بالمقلوب وأحمد الهريدي. يشارك معنا هاني الدقاق، فيروز كراوية، خالد وفيق، محمد جمال وعمر يوسف كمدربين للورش. سوف يقوم أيضًا مهندس الصوت عصام السحرتي بإعطاء ورشة في هندسة الصوت للفرق. كما سوف يشارك الفريق النمساوي سواف شوتجان.
قررنا أن تكون هناك معايير واضحة لاختيار الفريق الذي سوف نتشرف بالعمل معه في العام القادم، لذا سوف يقوم المدربين وفريق سواف شوتجان بتقييم جميع الفرق من حيث الموسيقى، الكلمات المستخدمة، والحرفية في الآداء على المسرح. سوف نعلن عن جميع النقاط بعد الملتقى حتى تكون النتائج واضحة للجمهور والفرق. كما قررنا أن نعطي الجمهور حق التصويت والإعلان عن الفريق الذي حاز على أكبر عدد من المصوتين من الجمهور.

سوف نسعى جاهدين أن تكون تجربة العام القادم أكثر إيجابية  مليئة بالورش والفعاليات للفريق الفائز. الملتقى هذا العام بالتعاون مع مؤسسة آنا ليند للحوار بين الثقافات في إطار مهرجان فرح البحر لعام 2012، وبتمويل من المركز الثقافي البريطاني، وبدعم من المنتدى الثقافي النمساوي ومعهد جوته بالإسكندرية.

نتمنى أن نراكم جميعًا.

أجـــــورا

Friday, September 14, 2012

ARTS & SCIENCE



Adapted from a lecture by Robert Eskridge titled “Exploration and the Cosmos: The Consilience of Science and Art.”

Science and art naturally overlap. Both are a means of investigation. Both involve ideas, theories, and hypotheses that are tested in places where mind and hand come together—the laboratory and studio. Artists, like scientists, study—materials, people, culture, history, religion, mythology— and learn to transform information into something else. In ancient Greece, the word for art was techne, from which technique and technology are derived—terms that are aptly applied to both scientific and artistic practices.

Art and Scientific Investigation in Early-European Art
Leonardo da Vinci, painter and draftsman of the High Renaissance, is best known as an artist whose works were informed by scientific investigation. Leonardo observed the world closely, studying physiology and anatomy in order to create convincing images of the human form. He believed that the moral and ethical meanings of his narrative paintings would emerge only through the accurate representation of human gesture and expression. For this Christian artist, science and art were different paths that led to the same destination—a higher spiritual truth. His Sketch of Uterus with Foetus (c. 1511–13) is one of several thousand drawings he produced in his lifetime in which artistic and scientific investigations are bound together. These extraordinary drawings are revered as examples of the Renaissance concept of the integration of all disciplines.
The Astronomer (1668) by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is another example of the profound connection between science and art. The people of 17th-century Netherlands had an exploratory spirit. Equally interested in this world and the larger universe, the familiar and the exotic, they were intent on looking and investigating. It was here in the early 17th century that the microscope and telescope were first developed. Vermeer’s painting celebrates an astronomer. Yet it equally celebrates the work of artists and the materials of this world. The painting hanging on the back wall was created by a local artist; the Middle Eastern carpet on the table was crafted by a foreign artist; Vermeer’s own paints (ground mineral pigments mixed with linseed oil) and brushes were produced by local artisans. The globe at which the astronomer gazes evidences the link between science and art most pointedly, for it demonstrates this astronomer’s—and his culture’s—combined interest in finely crafted objects and scientific systems, such as cartography and astronomy.

The Science of Color in 19th-Century Painting
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the physiological, psychological, and phenomenal effects of color and light were of primary concern to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Paul Gauguin (1843–1903), and Claude Monet (1840–1926). Considered by many to be the greatest nature painter in modern-art history, Monet suggested that our sense of our physical environment changes continuously with our shifting perceptions of light and color. In On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (1868), a painting of his wife-to-be, Monet captures a fleeting “impression” of the landscape through loose brushwork and composition. His impression is pre-cognitive—before the mind labels, identifies, and converts what it sees into memory. Tellingly, the woman in the painting looks not at the house and trees across the river, but down at their wavering, upside-down reflections in the river, a perspective that echoes the process of perception itself. Images in the form of light enter the eye, an orb with a nerve-sensitive background. As light penetrates, it is inverted and projected onto the back of that light-sensitive orb, where the brain processes the information. Monet’s painting captures the vibration between impression and perception—the contingent moment. It conveys a sense of trembling as the light and color of the landscape shift and time passes.

A number of years after Monet’s Bennecourt, Georges Seurat began painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 (1884–1886) (above). As an art student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, he studied the physics of color, and this enormous painting is an exercise in color theory. Unlike Renaissance and Dutch artists, Seurat and Monet did not mix their own paint. They benefited from breakthroughs by French chemists in the early 19th century who had invented both premixed paints packaged in tubes and synthetic pigments, such as ultramarine blue, which previously had been made from ground lapis lazuli and was, therefore, the most expensive pigment. Neither Seurat nor Monet, with little money in their pockets, could have created their blue-filled, experimental works without the scientific breakthroughs earlier that century.
Using these new paints, Seurat invented a technique called Pointillism to investigate how adjacent colors blend when taken in by the eye. Up close, the surface of his painting contains thousands of painted dots and dashes, discrete areas of color. But Seurat placed these dots of complementary colors next to each other—purple and yellow, orange and blue, green and red—so that at a distance they interact to create vibrant blended colors and larger, whole forms. Carrying his scientific approach to color theory to the edges of the image, Seurat represented the range of the visible spectrum in the painting’s border dominated by red and blue.

20th-Century Art and Science
Pablo Picasso's (1881–1973) portrait of art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1910) combines Monet’s ideas about the contingency of time and Seurat’s theory about the perception of discrete elements. Here, Picasso breaks up the figure and objects

in his composition in the style known as Cubism. Instead of rendering his subjects as distinctly recognizable forms, he paints them from several points of view. Kahnweiler’s head, suit, watch fob, and hands, as well as the still life to the left and the decorated wall behind, remain identifiable, but these elements have been broken up into flattened planes and rearranged across the picture surface. Painted just a few years after Albert Einstein put forth his theory of relativity, which asserts the contingent nature of observing reality, Picasso’s work similarly illustrates the elusive presence of his subject—Mr. Kahnweiler. Picasso’s Cubist painting style, like studying Einstein’s scientific theory, requires careful analysis, but it rewards the viewer’s effort with perception and understanding.

The invention of photography in the middle of the 19th century was a technological wonder—artistically and scientifically. The practice of oxidizing and fixing images on light-sensitive paper or a metal plate posed a great challenge to painters, who had historically been charged with the task of providing their culture with images of itself and the world around them. People believed this new medium could represent the world accurately and more quickly. Ansel Adams (1902–1984) one of the most extraordinary photographers of the North American landscape, used his camera to capture the spirit and beauty of the American West. His majestic vistas of mountains and rivers, such as The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942), embraced the bond between man and nature while recording with astonishing technical accuracy the phenomenal effects of light and atmosphere.
Today, light-and-space artist James Turrell seeks to link the terrestrial and celestial realms in his work at Roden Crater, a natural cinder volcano situated on the southwestern edge of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona. Since 1972, Turrell has been transforming the crater into a large-scale artwork by subtly manipulating and reshaping its form. Like Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci did, Turrell uses his knowledge of engineering, and, like Seurat and Monet, he employs his knowledge of the effects of light and space. When Turrell completes his gigantic project, visitors standing in the middle of the crater on the reflective material with which the artist has lined it will feel suspended between the sky and earth.

Imagery produced at Princeton University in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science.  That's a picture of some kind of crystal thingy.


There has long been a connection between art and science, one that can be traced back to the Egyptian pyramids. History proves that the two disciplines cannot exist without each other, enduring in constantly changing and evolving relationships.