olivia grace’s Neighborhood

Mid-August we should be back in business. Don't forget us!

From this post until August.

It's nearing the end of the semester, so we might put this thing on hiatus. We're having a meeting this week at the SAC at Temple if any reader is interested in coming. We'll have a fun photo update soon!

April Barack Obama Rally

A Less Objective and More Biased Article

So this may be completely off topic for the general idea of this blog, but I consulted a fellow member and we decided it’d be pretty cool to cover this really awesome event that happened in Philadelphia, which is not quite artistically related. (I mean, I definitely could make this really elaborate explanation to how this relates to art, but I mean, politics is as pretty dry as it gets. However, in a cultural aspect, I think this is pretty cool)

So on a whim, I was invited by some friends to go check out the Barack Obama rally that went down at the Constitution Center. I’m sure you all saw it covered on the news, heard people talking about it, and might have seen the mass amounts of people in support of Obama swarming the streets of Center City. I have a story of my own (and some awfully written opinions) that are pretty epic that I wanted to share with the fans of this blog.

This was my first rally I’ve ever been to - I think it’s like some weird right of passage for politically sound college students to attend something remotely politically activating if it’s around, so doing my duty as a good college freshman, I went.

Coming from a long heritage of Democrats, I decdided to support my party by seeing what Obama had to say. Now, not to confuse you, in the beginning of this whole campaigning thing I was a strong supporter of Obama. And like most intuitive Democrats, I began to  get bored with the primaries and let my views coerce me into thinking that any Democratic candidate would suffice, as long as I wasn’t faced with another Republican party member. Basically, my interests in politics began to shift into a less passionate outlook. In any case, I had nothing to do anyway, so I went, hopping off the Market line downtown just to see what was up.

Now, apparently, when they promote these rallies they make it seem like they’re completely free and void of any loop holes, except for RSVPing to the rally on the respective candidates websites. My naivity was corrected. I was under the impression that since this was a free event, the order in which you came would determine how close you would get to see Obama, first come first served. We (myself and friends) were strongly mistaken. 

They set up the rally in three distinct parts:

The “free” section: Across from the Constitution center they set up speakers and gated the area from the road so any passer-by could come and listen to Obama speak, but definitely not be in the ballpark to see him. That’s where the most of the mass of people were.

The “red” section: Across the street from the “free” section they have a gated area where people who obtained red tickets could get a little closer to see Obama. They had volunteers guarding the entrance and literally every police force in the city guarding it. I swear to God, even the National Park Service was there. I’m not quite sure why they would be there, unless someone there might’ve been harboring ill will towards plant life.

The “blue” section: They had yet another separate gated section where you could actually be as close as you could get to Obama. It was basically the ‘VIP’ section. (Mostly filled with volunteers and not the general public.)

The funny thing is, they had tickets available at various places before the actual rally, but the majority of the public had no idea tickets were even necessary to get a glimpse of the man himself, or even being given out at all. Another loop hole was people who volunteer for the Obama campaign also received tickets and to my knowledge didn't have to go through the fiasco. Now, let me discuss how hepful these volunteers are:

Most of the volunteers were trying to cattle herd ticket holders and non ticket holders to their respective areas. No one really knew what was going on for the first two hours of trying to put this rally together. I remember watching an older woman flip her lid because the pamphlets and flyers she received for the rally specifically said it was a free event and that basically no ticket was necessary. The "coordinator" (as he claimed to be) was trying to persuade her into shutting up. I saw a few Drexel students standing around like tools wearing pro-Obama shirts and literally just jumping in herding people. I'm not quite sure why that irritated me as much as it did, but I'm guessing it was because these Jack Johnson-looking bros were pretending to be good volunteers when they were just showing up to receive entrance tickets. At any rate, it was annoying.

Needless to say, I was (/am) bitter and none of my friends nor I had one of these tickets. A friend of mine began asking people if they had extras. It was about two hours into the rally, (with no sign of Obama yet) and we were basically thinking we'd be stuck with staying miles away from the actual event. We recklessly begged people standing in line to somehow get us in. (In retrospect, it was pretty pathetic) and at that point I think we lost the reason why we were trying to get tickets, we basically were now trying to get our hands on them to prove that we could. At any rate, some woman who was in line happened to have two extra RED tickets (keep in mind, there's four of us together) and from there we plotted our valiant infiltration of the Obama rally.

Some dude had suggested we go to a copy place and make copies of the two tickets for the other two in our group. Well, we didn't think that far into it, and decided to be bad ass and use what we had. Volunteers were waiting inside of the gates to rip tickets and let people in. Other volunteers were yelling that we should rip the tickets beforehand so it made it a more efficient process (yeah, more efficient, like hundreds of confused people randomly walking around and being pissed off in budding summer heat? Efficiency? I suppose!) so, we prescribed to the latter idea, and ripped each ticket in half. We basically walked in, with random people cheering as we came in and tried to psych us up for the rally. No one said a thing about our tickets, so at that point we basically snuck two people into this rally.

So we felt pretty good at that point that we basically snuck around the rules a tad.. obtaining two tickets and making it work for four people. So, we sat down in the grass and hung out for a while, in anticipation of Obama speaking. There were actually a lot of families there, which I thought was interesting. I'm not sure I'd put my kids through a rally, anything could happen and I think that's a little brainwashing, but having people come together was pretty cool.

Anyway, so some guy started secretly handing out 'blue' tickets, which got you the closest you could get to Obama. Tons of people started grabbing them and I guess it looked kind of shady, so the guy randomly walks away. I'm not quite sure how he obtained that many blue tickets, but whatever. Then randomly they start letting more people into the blue section because I guess they didn't fill all of the room (yeah, because the fact that you have tickets available is ridiculous, and the fact that you made two separate TYPES of tickets is even more ridiculous)

We get checked by security, listen to the opening music, and ignore raging families pushing each other to get close to Obama. When he finally speaks, it's close to 8:30. Obama gave a pretty good speech, and it was really neat listening to him talk. He has a really good voice, that kind of reminds me of how powerful Hitler was. Not that I'm even coming close to relating the two, but you get the idea. He spoke about independence and freedom from politics, about the lost jobs in Pennsylvania. He only spoke for like fifteen minutes, but he drove his followers wild and there were easily at least a couple thousand people there. Obama's whole platform was pretty amazing, and there's something about the way he speaks that offers more than just regular political bull, he cares about the people. I mean, if he's actually some weird Machiavellian leader, he's doing a damn good job in letting us know he cares. His team still kind of sucks, but I don't think any Democrats have that well of organization skills. 

When the rally let out, hundreds of people walked through Center City, parading the streets screaming "Yes we can!" and "Obama!" for at least a half hour. People were on tops of busses, traffic was insane, and lots of people were beeping their horns in approval. It reminded me of the sixties, when everyone was militant and passionate about politics. Except, I wasn't alive in the sixties.

Obama is the buzz

I'm not endorsing anyone, but I'm just sayin'...

If you didn't vote in the primaries, get out there and vote in November!

Article by Brittany

http://www.barackobama.com/

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/

http://www.johnmccain.com/

http://www.rockthevote.org/

Hey guys,

Lack of articles due to the gang being completely flabbergasted about this kick off party! Colbert review, etc etc. Stay tuned.

Just a list of stuff that's being exhibited at the museum if you're interested in checking it out:

The keyboardist, Alex Tyson, of the Philly band, Brown Recluse Sings, has created a great short film: "CHARLES COHEN AT THE BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL"  Shot with a lens that reminds you of Michel Gondry and may make you doubt that you haven't eaten shrooms today, Alex Tyson does a great job of capturing the beauty of a purely analog synthesizer. 

Read more on the Buchla Music Easel's history here. 

Press Release!

This colorful video features sound artist Charles Cohen improvising music on a 1970's Buchla Music Easel. This extremely rare instrument is one of Don Buchla's 200 series. Buchla (a founding father of synthesis) only manufactured 14 units. The entire film clocking in at 5:25 was edited from an hour-long set of free improvisation, with audio taken directly from the sound board. All of the photography and editing was produced by Alex Tyson, a sound and video artist from Pennsylvania. The film was shot in 16:9 720p High Definition format, using a 35mm 

LensBaby 3GPL. 

At this time the film is only available online. While you can stream it in HD, it is best viewed on DVD. Please contact the filmmakers for hard copies if interested. 

Alex can be reached here.

Alex Tyson & Charles Cohen 

Viewing with headphones is advised.

CHARLES COHEN AT THE BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL from AL'''X on Vimeo.

Make sure you check it out. It's pretty good.

Submitted by Tiffany

Olivia and Austin covered the Women’s Caucus of Art Philadelphia Chapter's meeting the other day, and this is how it went!