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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Ramona Meng Xi


The Setonian
Column

Beyond the Underneath: Starting from an empty dance floor

A DJ once told me that mixing techno or house during a set is easier than mixing pop or hip-hop songs due to the similarity in beats and repetition, as well as the anti-teleological nature and layering characteristics of house and techno tracks. The difficult part is how to perfectly master the grand rhythm of buildups and drops in order to keep the audience hooked to the evolving repetitions. If the whole night of music is graphed in terms of its excitement, then it should look like a flow of slowly ascending waves.

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Column

Beyond the Underneath: Vinyl survival, Part 2

What I like about vinyl stores is that I need to be prepared to handle the disappointment of failing to find the record I want, but at the same time, I never know what I will discover by sheer chance. The burst of joy after flipping through arrays of vinyl and all of a sudden spotting a favorite album or a non-mainstream artist can light up my day.

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Column

Beyond the Underneath: Vinyl survival, Part 1

Despite a vinyl revival in recent years, classic vinyl records are still deemed obsolete in the mainstream, as modern technologies and the digital world sift them out. But they are still there, lining up quietly and unyieldingly, in boxes organized by genre, protected and loved by a small population of firm supporters. 

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Column

Beyond the Underneath: Some thoughts on being a video jockey

VJs are visual artists who create and improvise videos for performances and live music events. My VJ project was abandoned, but I started to pay more attention to visuals during music events. Some of them were sublime in terms of design, composition, meaning and even beat-matching; some of them raised questions in my head. 

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Column

Beyond the Underneath: A world in the bomb shelter

The place is also much bigger than I imagined. It's not just a single room but almost a maze. The hallway connects several rooms together. From roaming in and out of rooms, looking at the style of the arches and the bricks on the wall, I was drawn to its structure. It's like a part of a bigger picture.

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Column

The Graffiti Street: An ephemeral span of eternal stories

Fortunately, and unfortunately, this street is one of the very few places where graffiti is completely allowed and legal. People obviously love it. The punchy colors and bold lines could invigorate the disciplined city even though the rareness of their appearance couldn’t do much as a whole. 

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Arts

Janice Lourie: A pioneer in the fusion of art, software

At first glance, Lourie's artworks are geometric, abstract and slightly bewildering. Blocks and layers of colors, shapes and lines serve as the basic composition. The whole picture might look surreal and confusing, but Lourie's inspirations and sources for her multimedia graphic art are in fact based on simple day-to-day matters. 

The Setonian
Arts

'Critical Printing': The power of simplicity

The word "printing" carries a sense of monotony and is, in general, rather self-explanatory. People can be fooled by its seeming banality because the frequent appearance of the word "print" in our lives (especially as students) conditions us with the association of repetition and ...

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