Arts

Arts

Tufts Unplugged' sparks on-campus musician community

October 22

    For any aspiring singer/songwriter, it's hard to imagine the long road ahead scrounging for gigs and taking every opportunity for promotion. A college campus, where opportunities in academics and extracurriculars seem endless, is a more supportive environment for musicians than the so-called "real world." The lack of opportunities for Tufts musicians to play to an audience has been a glaring problem on campus, and though there are a few places to see fellow students play — like Brown & Brew and Oxfam Café — a new student group has formed called The Musicians Collective at Tufts to solve the problem.     This Friday night, "Tufts Unplugged," produced by the Musicians Collective, will be the first-ever songwriter showcase featuring Tufts musicians. Including 15 performers, the show is two hours, starting at 8 p.m. in the Distler Recital Hall in the Granoff Music Center. Performers will include the co-founders of the Musicians Collective, seniors Debbie Neigher and Bekah Gilbert, along with seniors Doug Pet, Ben Broderick and Kate Rizzolo, juniors Jake Stern, Josh Zeidel, Jeremy Strauss, Tara Vaughan and Jesse Kohn, sophomore Ben Anshutz, freshmen Steph Vasquez and Cody Hochheiser, and Tufts band FORT.     The Musicians Collective, which was founded just last year, now has over 200 students on its mailing list, and seeks to create an open forum for an exchange of information on upcoming concerts, collaborations between musicians, sharing of equipment and general advice. According to Neigher, "Tufts Unplugged" fills a critical need on campus. "There are few opportunities at Tufts for composers and songwriters and people who do spoken-word. There are really no occasions right now for a large number of Tufts musicians to showcase their own work at one time and at one concert," she said.     Co-sponsored by the Tufts Music Department, "Tufts Unplugged" is part of the Musicians Collective's aim to bridge the gap between musicians inside and outside of the department. Neigher said she feels that the Collective can provide a much-needed community for musicians on campus, "I felt like there were so many people that had talent both in and outside of the music department but there was no way for them to connect with each other on any level, be it musically or logistically — and I often hear people saying, ‘I want to form a band but I don't know how to find people.' There was no structure or place that would embrace musicians campus-wide," she said.     To get a preview of Friday's show, keep an eye (and an ear) out for rogue performances on campus all week by featured songwriters. To get involved in the Musicians Collective, contact tuftsmusicians@gmail.com.

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Arts

From the Office of the Tufts Daily

October 22

Dear Producers of "Saw,"   

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Arts

Whiteread's MFA exhibit creates a disquieting mood for visitors

October 22

                The best museum exhibits are those that elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Whether it's inspiration, humor, joy or sadness, museums can ask for nothing more than to have their visitors affected by the art on display. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's (MFA) exhibition, "Rachel Whiteread," certainly elicits emotion, but one not usually expected during a typical visit to the MFA.     The exhibition, which runs until Jan. 25, includes several sculptures (mostly plaster castings) and drawings, as well as an arrangement of 201 vintage doll houses made from 2006-2008 titled "Place (Village)." Located to the left of the main entrance to the exhibition, "Place (Village)" is the highlight of the show.     Rachel Whiteread is an award-winning contemporary British artist whose pieces range from installation art in places such as London's Trafalgar Square to relatively small items. Many of her works are castings of ordinary objects of all sizes made out of materials such as plaster, concrete and resin. One of her most famous public works is "House," which was installed in London in 1993.             "House" is the casting of the interior of a terraced London flat. It remained on the site of the structure after the structure itself was demolished. Other homes on that London street were also demolished by the local council, so the piece now stands alone.     "House" is bold but also haunting, and as such it is a good representation of Whiteread as an artist. It also shows her interest in making use of "negative" space and projected an air of emptiness and melancholy that is rather disquieting.     These themes of emptiness and melancholy pervade in the MFA's exhibition, particularly in "Place (Village)." The work is not a casting of an ordinary object like "House," but it draws on the same themes. It is installed in a dark gallery, and consists of 201 vintage doll houses arranged on multiple levels of crates, which also serve as storage containers for the doll houses. The only light in the gallery comes from the small lights inside each doll house.     The initial impact of "Place (Village)" is dramatic, as the illumination inside hundreds of tiny windows breaks the darkness of the gallery. Up close, however, each of the doll houses is empty, and the minimalist, haunting ideas behind the piece become clear. These are not the doll houses of a typical childhood. They are devoid of all warmth and project an image of melancholy, sadness and emptiness (as the artist intended) that becomes increasingly unsettling with each additional minute spent in the gallery.     This is the first time that "Place (Village)" has been displayed in its full form, though a partial installation was in Naples at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina. According to the exhibit curator, Cheryl Brutban, museum-goers in Naples commented on how closely the piece resembled the buildings of Naples itself, and it is ironic that in its full form, the piece is similarly reminiscent of the Boston neighborhood, Beacon Hill, particularly as seen from the Red Line on the way to the museum from Tufts. However, Beacon Hill is decidedly more lively and cheerful then the eerie arrangement of doll houses in "Place (Village)."     While the works in the rest of the exhibition provide good background on "Place (Village)," it is best to visit it before viewing the rest of the exhibition because "Place (Village)'s" overall effect is the most dramatic of all the pieces in the show. The other works, including "Double-Doors II (A+B)" (2006) — two plaster castings of doors — highlight Whiteread's extraordinary concern for detail and ability to "transform the ordinary into the extraordinary," as Brutban stressed.      "Rachel Whiteread" is certainly worth a visit to the MFA, as its emotional impact stands apart from the museum's other artwork. It is — as a result of the extensive, ongoing renovations  — part of the relatively  small amount of contemporary art currently on view at the museum and is at once thought-provoking and disquieting.

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Arts

Dance group kicks exclusivity in favor of fun

October 22

It's safe to say that most Jumbos know someone in Tufts Dance Collective (TDC), if they are not members themselves. Boasting over 400 members, this student group phenomenon has taken over studio spaces and conversations across campus.

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Arts

Mitchell mouths off about Watergate scandal in 'Martha Mitchell Calling'

October 21

In the very beginning of Jodi Rothe's play "Martha Mitchell Calling," Annette Miller warns the audience, "There won't be any 18 1/2-minute gaps in my tapes, like you-know-who's!" On that note, Miller sets the tone for the rest of the performance, plunging the audience into a Southern belle's gossipy summaries of the real goings-on of the Watergate scandal.

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Arts

Devin Toohey | Pop Culture Gone Bad

October 21

"High School Musical 3: Senior Year" comes out this Friday and I gotta admit, I'm dying to see it. No, I'm not a pubescent girl with a crush on the non-threatening Zac Efron. Let me just put it this way: The first "High School Musical" (2006) was absurd beyond imagination, a caricature of whatever teeny boppers gobble up. It was filled with awkward innuendo (I couldn't figure out if it was unintentional or the sick joke of the writers who knew that pre-teens would miss it) and generally was the closest thing to having a lobotomy while still keeping your brain intact. As for the second one (2007), it topped its predecessor. By the end, Troy gave the viewers the best anti-moral of all time: something along the lines of "For too long I've been thinking about my future, instead of what really matters: what my friends think of me."

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Arts

Award-winning filmmaker visits campus

October 21

Growing up in Dallas, Texas, Cambodian-American Socheata Poeuv thought she knew her parents. Their quirky customs, in her mind, marked them as strange immigrants and crippled them from keeping up with the times and with American culture. It wasn't until adulthood that Poeuv learned the secrets of her family's past and understood their incredible resilience amidst the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. Her consequent journey through Cambodia inspired the film "New Year Baby" (2006) which chronicles her discoveries.

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Arts

Happy-Go-Lucky' presents audience with a unique character and loads of optimism

October 21

Americans clearly love British comedies, often finding blunt irony much funnier and less restrained than Yankee humor. "Happy-Go-Lucky," the latest import from the motherland, is no exception.

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Arts

Wahlberg's style makes up for absent plot in video game-based 'Max Payne'

October 20

Mark Wahlberg plays the titular character in "Max Payne," a movie based on the video game of the same name. The plot is loosely built around chaotic action sequences as it follows the path of a troubled cop confronting the demons that haunt him. Creative direction and a convincing performance propel this film past mere remake status, but the gratuitous portrayal of chaos and death grows tiresome as time goes on.

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Arts

Boleros' has too much emotion for one production

October 20

Many dramatic dilemmas make for good theater. Numerous quality theatrical pieces have been written on subjects such as infidelity, unrequited love, suicide, domestic violence or broken hearts. The main problem with José Riviera's "Boleros for the Disenchanted," playing through Nov. 15 at the Wimberly Theatre, is that it is a theatrical piece that attempts to deal with all of these subjects in one production.

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Arts

Secret Machines' latest takes psychedelic rock to new heights

October 20

Can psychedelic rock be revived? Does progressive rock have to be overbearing? If a guitarist leaves a power-trio group, is it still the same band? Self-described "space rock" group The Secret Machines attempts to answer these troubling questions on their third, self-titled album.

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Arts

Boston photographer Christian Waeber takes viewers on a scary nighttime ride

October 19

The darkness and uncertainty of nighttime is scary for a child. Shadows play tricks on the walls. Mysterious rumbles emerge from under the closet doors. Christian Waeber's newest exhibition of photographs, "Later That Night…," now at the Panopticon Gallery of Photography, powerfully evokes memories of these fears.

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Arts

Stone's 'W.' merely scratches the surface of the Bush presidency

October 19

"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who the them was. Today we're not so sure who they are, but we know they're there."

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Arts

Grant Beighley | Pants Optional

October 19

With the current political climate, Americans, regardless of their political views, need to be given some motivation to be nice to each other for no good reason. And it's rather fortuitous that, as the election approaches, so does the beginning of the holiday season shenanigans, so I'm going to take this opportunity to address this issue.

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Arts

Slater proves to be his own 'Worst Enemy'

October 19

Just as television peaks at its height of banality, "My Own Worst Enemy" comes along and takes awful television to a completely new level. Advertised as Christian Slater's return to mainstream entertainment, the show presents Slater as a James Bond rip-off with a twist: a split personality.

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Arts

Major: Undecided showcases new comedic talent in tonight's Braker performance

October 16

    Bombs, injuries and "Independence Day" (1996) are only a few of the subjects to be explored and thoroughly ridiculed by Tufts' only sketch comedy troupe, Major: Undecided, in tonight's performance, entitled "Pls Don't Use Candles."     The group's first show of the year, it is a special opportunity to showcase the talent of new members. "Especially with this show, we try to get a lot of people involved, including a lot of people who have never done sketch comedy before," said senior Rachel Chervin, the troupe's president.     According to Chervin, the eight sketches on display tonight were selected from a pool of about 20 possibilities, all written and proposed by group members. "These sketches involve a lot of new actors and writers," Chervin said. She added that this is the first year in which the young group is without a single one of its founding members.     Sticking with a proven formula, many of the tonight's skits center on colorful, verbose characters in ordinary situations, or on ordinary people caught in amusingly improbable predicaments. Two prime examples are "Self-Defense School," in which an instructor teaches students how to defend themselves against a group of Bolivian Tree People, and "Independence Day," in which a man is wired to a bomb set to explode if he stops repeating Bill Pullman's epic speech from the movie.     "The idea combines our tremendous love of sketches involving bombs and sci-fi movie quotes," said senior Patrick Wilson, the group's artistic director and the co-writer of "Independence Day."  Though these two basic elements are especially popular among members of the group, the real humor lies in the absurd scenario and the ensuing argument about movies, which really gets heated when "The Dark Knight" (2008) is thrown into the mix.     The show will take place tonight at 7:30 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. in Braker 001,  where the group once held all of its performances before moving on to larger spaces for its more important performances. "I like this setting," Chervin said. "It's almost better; everyone can see the front, and it's a more intimate setting for the action and facial expressions."     Admission to tonight's performances is free.

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Arts

New Oasis digs a ditch of too-familiar songs

October 16

The Beatles' style evolved rapidly between 1962 and 1969 as the band produced record after record that revolutionized pop music forever. No album sounded quite like the previous one, yet they all became instant classics.

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Arts

Donovan's modern art exhibit proves superficial

October 16

Towering hills of plastic cups, strips of paper spun round and intertwined and millions of straight pins molded into a huge cube fill the space in an otherwise empty Tara Donovan exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The artist, a New York City native, takes everyday objects, collects them en masse, and assembles them into something beyond their original form, letting the pieces develop organically. According to the wall text, Donovan creates each work based on "how the material will behave," and allows the medium to designate the outcome.

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Arts

Kath and Kim' strain for laughs in quirky remake

October 16

What do "The Office," "Life On Mars," "American Idol" and NBC's newest sitcom "Kath and Kim" have in common? Surely not networks, and definitely not genres. Rather, these four programs are all adaptations of foreign television hits. "Kath and Kim," the remake of a popular Australian series, is merely the latest in a long-standing tradition of importing shows that hope to hit the ratings jackpot. While it certainly entertains, with a few good laughs and a few great performances, it also has the potential to easily go downhill, thanks to a few cloying performances and a wishy-washy, hit-or-miss script.

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Arts

Top Ten | Alternative Sources of Energy in Case of Blackout

October 15

    After losing power for an extended period of time this Sunday, Tufts, like the rest of the world, has been forced to examine alternative energy sources. As usual, that got us here at the Daily thinking about what we could do on a small scale to save (or create) energy. The Arts section had some suggestions of our own: 10. Impose mandatory blindness: In case you haven't seen the movie "Blindness," which came out last week, the basic plot of the movie sees (haha, get it?) everyone in the world going blind. If no one at Tufts had sight, we wouldn't need electricity to see stuff, because we wouldn't see. Though, the implications of this are pretty radical … we'd probably evolve into a post-apocalyptic wandering tribe of subterranean mole-people. Did I say radical? I meant awesome. 9. Befriend Andrew W.K.: Party Hard! Party Hard! Party Hard! Party Hard! Party Hard! 8. Expand ‘Do It In The Dark': Why does doing it in the dark have to apply only to sex? From now on, ‘it' is everything you do on a day-to-day basis. Making an omelet? Do it in the dark. Shaving? Do it in the dark. Your physics problem set? Do it in the dark. As a plus, it will be a very smooth transition to sex. 7. Find a method of turning Kevin Federline's undeserved sense of accomplishment into useable energy: This really shouldn't be that hard. Attach some electrodes to his brain and play back "Po Po Zao" for him a few times. His opinion of himself will go off the charts. 6. Do away with the Daily's sports section: Let's face it — the sports coverage shows up after the Sudoku, so nobody actually gets far enough in the Daily to read it anyway. Think of how much energy we could create during the next blackout by compiling all of the paper we would have used for hopscotch coverage (or whatever they write about these days) and burning it for fuel. 5. Find Madonna's source: Where does she get all her energy from? The woman has reinvented herself about 17 times while still maintaining a body like a Greek sculpture, not to mention the massive amount of press attention and strife she's had to go through in her life (divorce #2 was confirmed yesterday). 4. Art history majors on treadmills: Let's face it — art history majors are desperate for jobs, and the career fairs offer no answers, so why not start a need-based system of employment and hire all the art history majors to generate power by running on treadmills? All of that pent-up energy that usually goes into reading and writing papers could be put to good use, and in an entertaining way (ever seen someone try to run in skinny jeans?). We could even stage it in a museum and tell them that it's modern art. 3. Emo tears: If we can get all the obligatory self-loathing musicians into one room, their collective emo tears might be able to power a small turbine. Heck, if Gerard Way, Robert Smith, Morrissey and all of Hawthorne Heights were left in a room, they might just drown themselves while powering a small city. 2. Eliminate all techno music: Trance, house, electronica: All heinous examples of over-use of energy through lights and speakers at the expense of human energy. Mr. DJ, stop pushing buttons for a second and pick up a guitar. Oh wait; you can't actually play music, can you? Though night clubs might lose some business, stoners in search of an escape can just turn to harder drugs, where the lights and music are already provided. 1. Screw it, just light a candle: We all know that text message was intended for LOLcats anyway. "Pls don't use candles?" How else will we read the Daily? Come on, this is Tufts ... We doubt there's anyone dumb enough on this campus to actually start a fire from their candle during a blackout ... right? — compiled by the Daily Arts Department

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