Oct 12, 2009

Playgrounds Festival (and stress?)

I don't know if I have actually time for this or if I should work on assignments but I just feel like posting something about Playgrounds Festival last week.
Playgrounds Festival is two-days-event about digital media art held in Tilburg. Me and some of my classmates thought it would be cool to attend it. And it was pretty cool. We decided to go to both days and sleep at a hostel. the first day we were a bit late due to someone who forgot their ticket and also because we have to travel a lot since Tilburg is 3,5 hours away. The audience were mainly students from art en media institutes and several older people from the digital media business. We arrived, dumped our baggage at the hostel and walked into a big fully packed hall (in the concert building 013). There wasn't any fresh air in there, but the show was quite nice. We saw a lot of great animation/short movies and learned about how big media concerns work. Also, Pixar were there too! In the evening we couldn't decide where to eat so we split up and after that we attended some smaller artists talks.

What was peculiar about the whole thing was that some artists weren't really appreciated by my classmates. I think it's got to do with personal taste but I couldn't see what was wrong with them. It was about the cute drawings, you know, a lot of people get excited by cute japanese stuff (and yes me too) and it's getting more popular in Europe too. And it was the same with papertoys, you know, those little DIY-papercrafts which are pretty cute too. I don't think it will take over the world, but still I think it is something to watch. At least my fingers are itching if I see those cute things. But I guess my classmates are a lot more sophisticated art-academy students who think it isn't artistic at all. I don't care anyway, I had fun watching it.

Fridayafternoon was OK but not amazing or anything. At some point I got really weary of all the short movies and talks and I decided to go home. Then ofcourse the NS had problems, but I was back at 8. Then went with Nick to a party but went to bed early cause.. pfff I was tired.

I really need a short holiday, and luckily I get one next week, so I'll just have to survive this week and then I'll be able to rest for a short while. I just don't know what to do sometimes. You know the Dutch saying 'wikken en wegen' , well for me this means I can't choose between school or my own life. And I had this since the day I attended artcollege. I was hoping for some interesting lessons this year since we are in the third class and this is the last year to learn from our teachers 'cause next year we'll have our internships and exams. But it still dissapoints me. we only get interesting stuff like once in three weeks, which is probably more than last year but still very very little. I'm an illustration student, let me illustrate ($@#*^%)! I know it's probably for a good cause that I have to do all those other things (like making presentations, writing columns, working in big teams on interior/environmental design, talking about pictures and making typography posters (ok, that has actually something to do with illustration but isn't interesting at all to me). SIGH I know, I'm always ranting about this, but there isn't any way to avoid it since this is my all-day-life and I'm stuck with it but I just can't let the feeling go that I actually don't want this and that I KNOW that I'm developing far more/better if I have more time to do the things I want (which is making only illustrations). So why spent 80% of my life if I can't see the function of it? And you know that a lot of succesful artists didn't even finish artcollege, so it isn't really neccesary, while it costs a lot of your money. So I'll probably keep ranting about this until the end of this year, while I hope to finish it so I can start the rest of my life!
Now at this point I'm just doing nothing cause I don't like college and I can't just do whatever I want because I'll feel guilty then. It sucks the energy out of me.... :(

1 comment:

  1. thank you for your comment! I'm sorry for my English, I'm still learning... If I made some mistake, please let me know! n_n

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