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Well, this week, our series
about Kansas City fountains resumes
as producer/videographer Dave Burkhardt
takes a trip to Mission Hills.
Where Octarium director
and KCPT contributor Krista Blackwood
gives us the scoop on her favorite fountain.
[cheerful music]
- It''s called Swan Fountain.
I discovered it in the early 2000s
when I was in this neighborhood
to deliver a CD of a church service
to a congregant.
And I saw this, and I stopped.
And I spent an hour here, just sitting here,
imagining what could be possible in ancient times.
I am a leader of a group of eight singers.
There are eight pillars, and that seemed like kismet to me.
It''s the whole space,
and it''s how they''ve set up these stairs
as if they''re expecting a performance here,
as if they''re expecting something to happen here.
I imagine a procession.
I imagine--and a larger choir than my eight,
you know, a 60-voice choir up there,
doing something beautiful,
with chairs filling this whole grass area.
I would love to have a concert here
and place the singers on these steps.
If I was going to program music for the space,
I think I''d program nature music.
There''s music about swans.
There''s music about wind. There''s music about water.
There''s echo music.
And I think if you put people in a space like this
and program music about the space they''re in,
it makes it a really formative and complete
artistic experience.
I use swans a lot when I''m working with choirs,
because they''re these graceful creatures.
Above the water, they just glide,
like choral music sounds.
But under the water, they''re working like heck.
They''re kicking those little feet.
And that''s--you know, choral music and singing is like that.
You need to sound and look graceful,
but underneath, you''re working really hard
on that air you''re creating and the support you''re creating.
So I use swans.
Often, I use ducks, but swans are more elegant.
# #
It''s almost like an organized performance space,
like somebody painted a backdrop
and we''re gonna put on a Greek tragedy here--
"Antigone" or something.
# #
The water feature portion of it
is not as important to me as the whole piece of it,
which is, I think, why I like it so much.
The fountain is not the central portion.
It is a part of the whole ambiance.
- We had to catch Krista quickly for that.
She and her family leave at the end of June
for a new job in Morocco.
- I hear she has reserved the right
to chose her own favorite fountain over there as well.
Best of luck, Dr. Blackwood.
- Well, this next story also involves people
who help get music made and sometimes suffer for it.
- Symphony and choral conductors can develop
rotator cuff and other repetitive motion maladies.
- But thanks to the innovative folks
at the UMKC School of Computing and Engineering,
help is on the way.
- Brad Austin and Mike Sherry show you how health and art
come together in a most unusual way.
-Researchers at the University of Missouri Kansas City''s
School of Computing and Engineering
are using motion capture technology
to help aspiring maestros avoid problems like kyphosis,
an exaggerated rounding of the back.
- Conductors are constantly trying to avoid
rotator cuff injuries in their shoulders,
injuries in their back, injuries in their neck,
injuries in vertebrae.
And anything can be a--
postural injuries can become very costly and debilitating.
And the worst-case scenario could be--
prevent them from continuing their career.
-My background''s in mechanical engineering.
We study movements. We study forces.
It just happens that we''re applying those things
to humans in this case.
To help people in real life, we can take
this motion analysis data or motion capture data
and process it, and in processing it,
we can calculate different things
like joint angles
and other kinematics.
So, for example, we could calculate kyphosis angle.
We could calculate the angle of pelvic tilt.
[soft music]
- I''ll look at the monitor
and kind of just play around with it
and watch how the motion capture system
shows you everything that''s moving.
And then the force plates tell you
where your body weight is
and what your muscles are doing at the time.
So it''s interesting to see how your whole body reacts
to what you''re doing.
-And in taking the theme of unlikely partnerships
one step further,
consider how UMKC School of Dance
helped its musical brethren correct the mistakes
picked up by the motion capture technology.
- Well, one of the things that Greg and I talked about is,
the kyphosis angle had changed.
So--and that was something
that we were looking at very closely,
because that is something that plagues a lot of people
and, in particular, a lot of conductors.
So instead of an angle like this,
you had a little bit more of
this kind of an angle happening, right?
So now the neck and head are not jutting forward anymore.
Someone''s in more of a proper up-and-down alignment.
They seem to be more stable on their footing
with the conducting trials that happened later in the lab
compared to the ones that happened earlier.
So my assessment of that was,
their core strength or core stability
was helping them be more stable in general.
- The reality of the motion capture data, for me,
is a quantitative opportunity to really synthesize
what they are, in fact, doing scientifically
and from a concrete, cerebral viewpoint.
And it can give us the ability--allow us the ability
to measure improvements that we think are happening.
But this has been a really great way of knowing
that the course that we''re going down
actually is of benefit, not just of metaphor.
- Movement is definitely the name of the game here
at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity,
named for the man who led the Kansas City Ballet
for so many years.
- It serves as the company''s home base,
but there are a lot of other things going on here
that also serve the cause of dance.
- Classes for young and old, events and performances,
and it''s really a great reuse of what used to be
the power plant for Union Station.
[upbeat music]
- Here on "Arts Upload," we not only show you
great stories close to home--
the ballet will be performing "Rite of Spring"
at the Kauffman through May 15th--
but also stories from around the country.
- This next one takes us to the great Southwest
to watch Ian Ruhter''s camera truck in action.
- He''s taking photographs the old-school way.
- Photography is like a passport to the world,
and--and this truck has opened up so many doors,
and it''s allowed me to meet so many people,
and it''s like a big magnet, and it brings stories to you,
and it also gives you an excuse to travel and see the world.
The minute I stepped in here, it made sense.
It''s like, "Of course you built a camera
where you see the world upside down and backwards."
Like, it really made sense, and I''m like, "Okay."
[gentle piano music]
Upside down is one thing,
but the backwardness is-- I really understand that,
''cause that''s really dyslexic,
and that''s part of my learning disabilities
or whatever they call it, but it''s how I see the world.
The pictures that I really like
are the ones that make you feel.
They''re not so much pretty colors
or something over the top,
but they''re something that make you feel,
and it makes you feel sad or happy or a certain emotion,
and you don''t really know why,
but you have that connection with it.
# #
Why I chose the wet plate?
I think it was out of necessity,
because I''d been working in the digital medium for a while,
and they didn''t get rid of all the film,
but Kodak and Fuji and these companies
started going out of business or discontinuing film,
and a piece of me got discontinued at that point.
And when I learned about wet plate,
I learned that I could make my own film.
And at that point, no one could ever take that away from me.
It''s interesting; with photography,
I''ll literally dream about photos
and I''ll see them in my head.
And then as I''m driving down the road,
it''s almost like déjà vu where I''m like,
"I''ve seen that before" or "This strikes something in me."
And then I''m like, "That''s what I want to photograph."
When we''re shooting out in the elements,
you know, just a little bit of wind will shake the camera.
And nature creates all the beauty,
but it also gives us the most adversity
and the most challenges,
so you just have to be patient.
That''s the big lesson in photography, is being patient.
# #
When we travel to a new place,
what I like to do is just look at it
and sit there for a couple days until you can kind of feel it.
And I think it could take years, even,
but we only had so much time.
But before you just go out and start shooting,
you got to kind of sit there and feel it
and feel the dry desert air, like, blow across you
and your lips get dry.
And once you feel that, then you can go out
and kind of capture it and absorb it.
This one actually worked out pretty easy.
But I had looked at it for over a week,
and I kind of had it figured out.
We just had to wait on the wind and the wind to stop.
And then we showed up at the right time, and it worked.
# #
If I ever space travel, honestly,
this image, I felt like I was on Mars.
I mean, I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains,
and there''s all Yosemite and these real famous spots,
but I''ve never seen anything like this.
This doesn''t even look like the Earth to me.
See, because there are limitations
on the contrast and everything
where that plateau in the back is really washed out and that,
but it also creates depth.
And I don''t try to correct those things.
I really just embrace them,
and I think they make them-- they make them what they are.
And in life, it seems like we always want to fix everything,
and it''s kind of--start thinking of it in society
with plastic surgery and Photoshop.
And we always want it better, better,
but what''s wrong with the way it is?
What''s wrong with the way we are?
And that''s why I like the collodion process too,
''cause it is--this is it.
And it''s not perfect, but it is perfect.
It''s better than perfect.
One thing that really got my attention
is how powerful nature is,
but the life that exists in it is equally as powerful.
And this tree has probably been washed out
over hundreds of years; I don''t know.
But you can see the roots are stretching out like fingers
reaching into the Earth,
and they''re still sucking up water.
And where that tree is half dead,
but it''s also half alive,
and it''ll probably be like that for a long time.
And that one...
just really struck something in me
that how--it just shows how powerful life is
and the will to survive and live.
This house really drew me in,
because it''s kind of like a broken dream.
And I''m sure someone at one point lived there
and they had a farm and it was a really neat thing.
And then as time went by,
it kind of looks like it didn''t work out.
How we make the plates is,
I usually sit somewhere in here.
And what we do is, we pour the film on top of this plate,
and it''s--the film''s actually collodion,
and it has other iodized salts in it,
and we pour it over this plate
and just float it back and forth
to get it on evenly.
Then from there, it goes into our silver tank.
Those silver crystals mix with those iodides,
and it makes a silver haloid,
and that''s what makes these plates so reflective.
And then we put the plate on the focusing board
and open the lens and expose it to light.
So that--those are the really big--
the really important components of it,
and then you just develop it and fix it
like kind of traditional black-and-white.
New Mexico kind of fits into our process and the West,
because it reminds me of this pioneer spirit
and these vast open spaces and ruggedness
and kind of this "you have to do it yourself" attitude.
And you''re out there.
And the guys that--and women that did this photography
in the 1800s, they had that spirit,
and that was something that I missed in photography
over the years.
It kind of went away.
I''m not sure if I found photography or if it found me,
but I know that it''s a real important piece
of who I am.
The people we meet and we ask them questions,
I end up learning stuff about myself.
And you start finding out you''re not alone
and you''re not the only one that feels a certain way
or looks at the world that way.
And what inspires me to continue
is just the thought of having a dream.
And I think that everyone has dreams,
and that''s really one thing
that connects us all as a human race.
And without dreams, you wouldn''t have a reason
to get up in the morning.
You wouldn''t have a purpose or something to go forward.
And I think the dreams are really important.
- So fountains, photographers, quilters, and conductors.
Looks like another "Arts Upload" has hit the end of the line.
- But we''ll be back next week with a visit to The Rabbit Hole
and stories that center around movies.
- Till then, from here at the Bolender Center,
I''m Randy Mason.
- And I''m Maris Aylward. Thanks for watching.
[dramatic percussive music]
# #
[dramatic classical music]
- "Rite of Spring" is a very sort of dark work.
It''s all about--about society kind of becoming
less and less in touch with the natural world
and about, you know, how we''re,
with all this pollution and technology,
becoming less and less connected.
And there''s a central figure who kind of represents
everything that is pure and natural and innocent.
And you''ve got these depleted, kind of empty, you know,
soulless kind of people kind of ruining her.
So she''s kind of fighting for her light, so to speak.
So it''s just really a little parable
about the times we live in.
It''s quite bleak.
- As an informaticist, I''m also very intrigued
in the volume of data.
So one minute of data capture
generations a million data points,
and you can imagine the opportunities
to improve how we can analyze that data.
And then if we can start to connect that
with data derived from our clinical settings
and look at which performance patterns correlate
with more effective outcomes, that''s a huge opportunity
for informatics at UMKC.
people: # Praise God #
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- Man. [applause]
announcer: Production funding for "Arts Upload"
has been provided in part by: