General
I am Joshua Thomas. I am at the time of writing this in the class Mat4a and I am 16 years old. Both of my parents are from Germany and my father recently moved back to Germany because of his job and his mother.
Interests
My top 3 CAD art forms are Architecture, film, and music. But if writing were an option it would be at number one. With film, I find the music in the film the most interesting because its effects are mostly unconscious but still very important to the atmosphere of the movie.
CAD assignments
- (I’m not sure this is part of CAD but it would be nice if we learned how to write, with which I do not mean the actual words and sentences but more the story and the personalities of the characters.)
- Analyzing the music behind a famous movie or tv show looking at what characters have themes and what emotions certain music wants to invoke.
- Comparing different buildings based on functionality versus aesthetics and seeing what sacrifices in functionality were made to increase aesthetics.
- Picking 2 movies an old movie, at least 20 years old, and a new movie and compare the visual effects, the music, and the acting. Everybody has to find changes that are not ”better technology” and write down the reasons why this might have changed.
Film and TV
My favorite two series are Avatar the Last Airbender and Star Trek The Next Generation (or Star Trek deep space nine). ATLA a.k.a. Avatar The Last Airbender is a show which is apparently very well written and has really good scores, themes, and music. I said apparently because I am not good at judging how well something is written I just know that I enjoyed watching the show. The music in ATLA is very interesting because not every person gets his own theme but every problem the heroes face gets a theme. This is probably because the show is written for kids to watch once a week and they must keep all the villains straight in their heads. The other interesting thing is that one of the “villains”, Zuko’s, changes during the span of the show. At first, his theme is the same as the theme of the evil empire but later it slowly evolves away from it until finally, it is a unique theme separate from the fire nations theme.
My other favorite show is Star Trek the next generation a.k.a. TNG. I like this show because it’s very philosophical and it explores ethical problems where there is no clear right or wrong. This and the crazy technology makes you think about the future and the morality of space travel. The technology of TNG is very futuristic but they have thought about how everything might work. They hired theoretical physicists to help them make the show more accurate. This show has is incredible and it feels like it could be what the future looks like.
I do not watch horror movies. Firstly because of something I will discuss in the next part and secondly because why would you ever want to watch something just to be scared? I mean I have watched stranger thing or at least the first season and I sort of enjoyed watching it but not the scary parts only the storytelling and the mystery. I also do not like roller coasters and basically anything that creates adrenaline so it’s not really surprising I don’t like horror movies and tv shows. People watch horror and ride roller coasters for the same reason, right?
Music
I want to say three things about music. First, the music I listen to while doing homework is from Enya because you cannot really understand the text, so it is great to listen to while typing. When I listen to music where you can clearly hear the text I cannot type because I just accidentally start writing the words of the song. At the beginning of quarantine, I was incredibly hyper, and I was constantly listening to the song it is time for Africa by Shakira. This song made me even more hyper and I built a fort out of rope and blankets which is extremely out of character for me. Now I’m listening to High Hopes by Panic! At The Disco. I have this bad tendency to listen to one song for days on end after which I will hate the song for all eternity.
Secondly, music in horror music. In horror movies tension is incredibly important and music is very important for tension. Therefore music is very important in horror movies. There are sounds that we cannot hear but we can feel it and our bodies really do not like it, a few years ago a horror movie where they used these sounds a lot was premiered and about half of the audience threw up. This makes me even more scared to watch horror movies because I obviously do not want to throw up.
Thirdly, I want to talk about the scores and themes of ATLA a bit more. The show is set in a world where there are four nations: the fire nation, the earth kingdom, the water tribes, and the air nomads. The “bad guys” are the fire nation and the hero is the last of the air nomads because the fire nation killed the rest of them. Every problem the hero and his friends face gets its own light motif, for example, they go to the earth kingdom Kapital and nobody there knows that there is a war outside the city walls. This is a whole storyline, but it does not matter here what does matters is that it’s a problem, so it gets its own light motif. The main antagonist in the later series is Azula the fire nation princess who is trying to capture them. At one-point Azula on behalf of the fire nation infiltrates Ba Sing Sei and takes over. During the explanation, this is represented as Azula’s theme played partly using instruments from Ba Sing Sei’s theme and has a bit of Ba Sing Sei’s theme added in too. This perfectly portraits what has happened musically so it’s incredibly easy to follow even for kids. Another example is when one of the main characters is walking around Ba Sing Sei and we hear the theme of one of the semi-bad guys who have opened a tea shop in the city so we know that she will find the tee shop. Also, non-villains get a theme like a teacher from the northern water tribe who refuses to teach the main characters causing a whole episode of them trying to prove themselves to him. I think this is incredible and if I had more space page, I could probably go on for about 5 pages. Below you can see the Ba Sing Sei light Motif.
Theatre
I have gone to multiple operas and I generally liked them, but I thought it was a bit loud. I went to The Magic Flute which was made by Mozart and I thought it was a bit weird and confusing but that may have just been the actors and not the original script Because my family also thought it was weird and they have seen The Magic Flute before.
Visual arts/fashion/design
I have been to Tefaf multiple times and I unexpectedly liked it. There was one sculpture where it looked like the artist took two sculptures of people. It looked like he proceeded to stretch one of them and squish the other one. This caused one to look fat and the other one to look thin, but all the proportions were wrong. This may not seem to weird but every time I am extremely tired everything in my head either gets squished or stretched which is incredibly annoying.
Photography & new media
My dad and my uncle have both done photography semi-professionally. My dad has stopped but my uncle has a little photography company where he and his wife photograph weddings. This is my Unkles website where they upload pictures of the weddings they photograph. https://www.asa400.de/blog/
Architecture
As a kid, I had this book called Hundertwasser filled with buildings that Friedensreich Hundertwasser built. These buildings are crazy, and they do not have any straight lines. In the book Hundertwasser says he hates straight lines, so he bent his ruler forcing him not to make straight lines. He has a lot of very colorful and whacky buildings all of which are as nature-friendly as possible. He also has a building near Maastricht in Houthem which is only found out about recently.