Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Concerned Citizen

            

Artist Statement:

            Walking around BYU campus, it’s hard to escape the millions of messages LDS women are exposed to. Young LDS women at BYU are supposed to be top students, they’re supposed to have a great social life, an active and important calling in their church, an involved group of friends. They’re supposed to be physically and spiritually fit, beautiful because of their righteousness. But as girls desperately try to achieve all of these things at once, menacing murmurs are heard: “I’m not thin enough,” “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not good enough for a boyfriend.”
            Both of us were already aware of the negative self-talk that poisons the views of a woman’s self-worth, but were completely surprised at how magnified this is at BYU—especially when this group should be more aware of their value than any other group of young women. While Goldbard focuses on the positive effects of Storyland, the stories these young women tell themselves are skewed and hurtful, and the culture that is a result of it hampers their ability to progress. Perhaps the checklist of things women are “supposed” to be corresponds more specifically with Datastan, where people are expected to mathematically fit into a single mold.
            Such an idea is set on its head when one considers the words of Dieter F. Uchtodorf:

“We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads some to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold—that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God, who created every man different from his brother, every son different from his father.”

            Which brings us to this lovely opinion, found in an essay entitled “All and Sundry” on AspiringMormonWomen.org.

“I’ve seen enough of God’s creations to know that He values diversity and variety. Mountains and plains. Deserts and oceans. The giraffe and the platypus. Universes and molecules. Our God is a very open-minded God.”

            This essay was written by Hadley Duncan Howard. As a mother living in Provo, UT, Hadley does not fit too many of the stereotypes laid out for LDS females. She has had a very successful career, and has not hesitated to work and actively pursue career and education, even while having children. She contributes as a concerned citizen by often writing articles on AspiringMormonWomen.org as a way to help her community and society see a different side of the Mormon woman mold. Merritt, who went on a Study Abroad when Hadley (as one of the professor's wives) was "camp counselor," was impressed with the way Hadley acknowledged that it takes all kinds, and that a woman, with the help of the Lord, must find her own path.
            Hadley has spread these ideas because, as she says in the video, she has something to say. Though she has been criticized before for her parenting style, and expects to be criticized for some of the things she has written, she feels these are messages that need to be shared—something that will end up providing women with more intrinsic worth.
            Hadley is a great example of this. While she is “non-traditional” in the sense that she has had a career, she is still an excellent homemaker. We decided to film her there, as her home shows much of her personality. Just like Agnes Varda in The Gleaners and I reveals herself most beautifully in her home (filled with artistic mold and souvenirs from her travels), Hadley’s home carries artifacts of her life. The walls of her home are lined with books and her children’s artwork is on the table. We tried to let our camera movement and overall style be unobtrusive and organic. Because the best part about this is what we experienced—sitting down and enjoying friendship, as real, adequate, and wonderfully diverse daughters of God.

Protest Poster

Artist Statement

It is not news that women have been under attack for centuries; sometimes we are targeted as objects of lust, or subservient to men, or as unimportant and dismissible. Today women are gaining more rights than we have ever had, we have independence, we can vote, we are able to work and provide for families. This is progress, however, looks can be deceiving. Women themselves are less and less the target, as the bulls eye has fallen upon the institution of motherhood. In a shocking recent study, Satoshi Kanazawa says that people with higher IQs are less likely to want children. The study then sights some famous people with the captions like “clever and child-free Cameron Diaz and Lucy Worsley have both said they don’t want to have a family,” or another caption showing famous women who are “unencumbered” by children. The stigma of motherhood being a silly choice, or taking the easy way out of a job was reaffirmed in Hilary Rosen’s interview with CNN, in which she suggested that because Ann Romney was a stay at home mom that she “never worked a day in her life.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has quite a different stand on the decision for women to make the huge sacrifice to be a mother. On LDS.org I found Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s approach to the swift change that is taking place in the hierarchy of the importance of motherhood. He warns, “A pernicious philosophy that undermines women’s moral influence is the devaluation of marriage and of motherhood and homemaking as a career... We do not diminish the value of what women or men achieve in any worthy endeavor or career…but we still recognize there is not a higher good than motherhood and fatherhood in marriage.” This recognizes that there has been and continues to be immense achievements by women, but that the greatest will always be the good that can be done within the home.

Being a mother is work, it’s hard work and often doesn’t get the recognition that other jobs receive. The poster’s slogan “When do you clock in” is meant to signify that being a mother is just as, or maybe more, prestigious than being in the work force, and that mothers don’t get the perks like breaks, a paycheck, or days off. In fact, with this poster I’m suggesting that being a mother is more than having a job, she doesn’t clock in, she doesn’t get the limelight, but she gets so much more than any normal job satisfaction, I am suggesting that being a mother is the ultimate job and is more important, and more work than anything else we could do. However, this poster is also a salute to working mothers. Again, any kind of mother cannot clock in or out of a job, and once she’s at work she also is trying to attend two full time jobs, and one of them may lack. So, whether it is more important to attend to the sad child on the right, or to look the glamorous job in the publics eye on the left, is up to you.

Many people on Facebook agreed with my stance, and many saw different unintentional messages enlaced in the image as well. I am grateful for the debate that ensued about whether working women are hurting their families, or about the stereotype presented here that childrearing is only a woman's duty and, as Andrea Wojick commented, can often perpetrate "both gender pay gap and the glass ceiling." While these are all aspects of the issue at play, my poster was meant to be more based on the fact that in today's society, childrearing is often seen as something that is not quantifiably significant in society. Megan Shea perfectly summarized this issue in her comments saying, "this is the inherent problem with capitalism, only goods and services which fit within the neoliberal economic structure are considered valuable... but who says that childrearing isn't part of productive society, when in fact taking care of children and raising them to be productive members of society... could be seen as one of the most important aspects of creating and maintaining the class system capitalism is based on." I chose this medium to explain exactly Megan's point that childrearing is work and it is possibly the most important work, because I feel that black and white images are powerful, and focus the attention more on the message than the details, it also is a way to signify how so many people have such a black and white stance on an issue with many grays.

Social issues are often told as single stories, that is to say generalizations are created based on one side of the issue. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an author and speaker hosted on TedTalks said, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” I agree with her analysis because judging issues based on one story creates a barrier of an ‘us’ verses ‘them.’ The media pushes single stories because it is so much easier to cover just one scenario in a three minute segment, and then the other sides of the issues, the other stories, are then treated as anomalies and unimportant. Media suggesting that only stupid or lazy women have children and the church’s stance that motherhood is the most grand calling are both single stories, but together they create a more broad picture from which to center ourselves. Where do you stand?

Webspinna Battle

Robots Vs. Aliens

(although it's not really a fair fight when we all know aliens dominate)

Links:

UFO Sounds

E.T. "Phone Home"

Independence day "Welcome to Earth"

The Day the Earth Stood Still music

"Space Man Still at Large"

"Take me to your leader Earthlings"

UFO Sounds

Independence Day speech

Independence Day "Die"

Beat

"Ship comes from another planet"

Signs alien sounds

"Large object in the sky"

Artist Statement

            Aww, the ageless tale of good verses evil, light verses dark, love verses hate, aliens verses robots…? Okay, so not every opposition is timeless, but they are always interesting. Things that perfectly mesh don’t tell a story or drive a point. Who would read a book where everyone got exactly what he or she wanted and never had to fight for a single thing? Of course we wouldn’t, because that’s not what life is really like. For this Webspinna Battle I played with the idea of juxtaposition to make something more interesting and unique than that could be accomplished by itself.

            Representing aliens for my side of the battle, I found juxtaposition within this single topic when I chose to use sound clips from old movies and new movies. This union was fun to create because sound in films has changed drastically from 1951 when The Day the Earth Stood Still was filmed, to the creepy clicks of Signs, 2002. But together it formed a historical story about how our films deal with ‘aliens.’ Then, combining all the alien sounds with the robot sounds, Caitlin and I found a brand new story.

            Similar to DJ Spooky’s Rhythm Science our smattering of sounds don’t make a ton of logical or sequential sense, but give more of an idea of something. Spooky’s music was similar in that it didn’t make any sense to put together words like theater, cool, and vector, which have no correlation to each other, except that now Spooky has placed them together in time, consequently giving each more meaning than before. The same can be said for Pogo who put down a beat, then mixed in sounds from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but together they tell a brand new story.

            Picasso was a master at combining many small elements together with other normal elements to create something nonsensical or some kind of new story. For example, Guernica is a masterful exploration of the bombing that took place there. But the reason that this work of art has paid memorable homage to the incident, rather than just something that was lost through time, is the way he makes the viewer interact with the art. On a small scale, we see the individual shapes like triangles and squares, or we can see the individual faces, hands and animals, but that is not the point of this art. The point is the emotion being conveyed. I believe that even if we can’t always understand how something is created, why it’s created or even what is created, we can still be influenced by not only it, but also the emotion and opposition within it. 

Picasso's Guernica

World Building

Artist Statement

There is nothing more powerful than an idea. Through ideas, wars are started and ended, diseases are cured, art is created, and love is born. We decided to create a world in which ideas became commodities, items to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. In doing so, we came to consider how the world we created, and in turn, the world we live in reflect and influence our morals and society.

It was an enjoyable experience crafting the world in which ideas were mined, bought, and sold. What was particularly interesting was that we seemed to feed off of each other’s ideas, even though we worked mostly separately. Each new idea or concept seemed to spark new ideas and we were very unified in our vision of this strange world. Upon further reflection, it became clear that this was due to our having a unifying theme or purpose in our world building. Julian Beecker wrote in a 2009 essay that fiction follows fact. In our case, the design of our world followed fact in that it was based on our perceived inequalities in the world and merely accentuated these.

George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, is not merely a novel about one man’s search for sex and fulfillment in a dystopian society. Rather, it is a stirring commentary on not only the society in which Orwell lived, but the progress of the human race. In much a similar fashion, we came to see how our created society was a commentary on our current society and world. There is class inequality in the world today and although social mobility is possible, it is severely limited due to lack of education and appropriate infrastructure. In short, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, although there are several exceptions. We wished to highlight this, by creating a world in which there is no social mobility, since even ideas can only be purchased by the rich.

We attempted this feat by creating a newspaper. Through this medium we were able to present several different ideas in what would hopefully be a fairly normal fashion. We wanted to present the world as those living in it would see it and not as outsiders. Because of this, we focused on ordinary stories and advertisements. Through advertisements, we showed fashion, in particular focusing on the elaborate fashions of the upper class. One of the advertisements even compares the fashionable upper class to the plain clothing of the lower class. The upper class show their power and status through their extravagance. We also focused on the idea of ideas affecting everything from propaganda to crime.

Through this assignment, we were able to not only create a world and society, but also were able to speak through this world and get a point across that was more powerful through the presentation.

Textual Poaching

Artist Statement:

            I am part of Generation Y. It’s true. And while you can sit there pointing a judgmental finger because we are inherently lazy, narcissistic and entitled, I can take it because that’s not what this generation is about. To me, being part of Generation Y is being someone who can live in her surroundings, understand the world, and then change it. We are not among those who are only acted upon, but those who act. Being part of the most educated generation, the most passionate generation, and the most creative generation means that our world is not limited to the flat view around us.

            M. C. Escher understood this concept, even though he lived from 1898 to 1972, and experienced such a different world than I do; he also was part of the turn of a century and knew that the world can be so much more amazing than we know. He often drew impossible things like never ending stairs or buildings whose proportions are a little askew, but the beauty of Hand with Reflective Sphere speaks more to our common understanding of the world. This drawing relates to Generation Y, not just because it’s probably the first ‘selfie,’ but because it shows a normal room, with a normal man, but then it is modified to be something truly unique and beautiful. To me, this drawing represents those who are living in their surroundings, but at the same time, they are re-imagining them.

            In the book Television Fans, the author explores the way that normal books, TV shows or movies gain a cult following. In essence, he says that it’s not the art itself, but the interactions with it that makes it a cult object. When people read Harry Potter, then discuss it with others, re-read it, wait in lines at midnight to buy a copy, pay money to see adaptations to the screen, travel to other countries to visit filming sights and constantly chat about it with online friends they’ve never met, then it becomes something greater than just a few books and movies. My interaction with M. C. Escher’s Hand with Reflective Sphere may be seen by some as rude or defacing the art, but only once the edges of the page start fraying, and the colors start smudging, do you know that the art work is truly loved. So while I may not have my own reflective sphere to look into when I am contemplative, I do have my adaptations, my interactions and my reality (which includes the smart phone) that can provide the same reflective understanding and simultaneous re-invention of my world.

Medium Specificity

Artist Statement

            The Avengers, Battleship, Cars 2, James Bond, and Inception. All movies that have made millions of dollars, all very entertaining and visually stimulating films, all representations of the media market, but perhaps also these movies are only that. They don’t seem to have a story that has any connection to reality, or has anything to say about life, relationships, emotion, struggles (besides how to kill a bad guy), or any real increase in understanding. Aristotle defined theater as beautiful and functional, he said that the only reason we should indulge in it is for the sake of learning, of gleaning something new about life and ourselves. Now I’m not saying that Aristotle word is scripture, but I am saying that while escaping can be good and necessary, escapism is detrimental.

            Similarly, newspaper clippings from 1943 show that this may not be just the musings of an old crackpot, they too wrote articles about how to try and understand, accept and learn from paintings that were on exhibit at the time. Edward Alden Jewell closed is column by saying, “Permit[ting] unrecognizability to be a barrier is to condemn ourselves to a life of monotony, without thrills of discovery, insight and ‘conversion.’” Apart from making up the word ‘unrecognizability,’ I believe this quote to be fact. So, how then can I have the double standard against the unrealistic films? Film should not only be about the world created, but also the lessons that we may learn while inside.

            My short film here is a visual representation of the way movies can focus on the wrong things. In this tiny clip, real conversations are happening, actual relationships are being formed, and the intensity and lulls of the conversation are natural and affect each person individually. While it may be just a mundane task of decorating a small space, the viewers could still gain knowledge or enlightenment from watching something that raw happening. However, instead of allowing my audience to do that, I set up a nice shot with the focus on something interesting, it is artistically set up and I even have effects to further blur the background figures. This is all set up so that not only are you in my universe, but you will only look at what I’m allowing you to. Sadly, so much of the media we consume does the exact same thing, showing the audience a calculated and ultimately frivolous view, while missing the real edification that is just beyond our scope. 

Historical Script

Click Here

Artist Statement

            History is fascinating to contemplate and reflect on because it becomes the driving force, which creates who people are. On the personal level, these events can be as simple as childbirth, marriage, or even death. These milestones create a history for every individual in their own unique way, but sometimes an incident can affect an entire nation, such as a tragedy like the one experienced in Jonestown.

According to our research found in the article 30 Years Later, Survivors Remember Jonestown Massacre, Jonestown was a cult that originated in San Francisco, and then as it gained popularity and followers they had to continue to expand, until finally settling in Guyana, South America. This cult, called The People’s Temple, gained a piece of land outside the United States because some of the practices could be seen as unconstitutional. This may have included disciplinary thrashings, abuse or beatings along with not being able to leave once you joined. Then came the fateful day that an American Congressman came with an entourage of media and concerned family members to investigate. These men and women were chased out of Jonestown and many were shot at the airport. Afterwards, the leader told his cult that the only way out of being arrested by the government was to commit mass suicide. Amazingly, after very little debate, the majority of people conquered and was administered cyanide through some juice, lay down, and died. The script is about a boy who is raised in Jonestown but makes it out before the massacre occurs.

As mere storytellers, we did not want to condemn any actions or make suggestions about what should have happened. We realize that most of the men and women in The People’s Temple were just people who wanted to help each other in this communist-like cult (The Timetables of History, by Bernard Grun). They believed that this was a cause worth dying for, and we aren’t making excuses for them at all, but merely shining a light on the power of choice. Everyone had a choice in the beginning, they could chose to stay in their own lives and try to make the world better, one task at a time, or join a group of like-minded people to do it together. But that choice had its consequences.

Part of the process of finding the historical event was looking for something that moved us. A starting place was looking simply for a tragedy, and the reason Jonestown stuck out was because September 11^th just passed. Before then Jonestown was the largest amount of American citizen deaths in one event. Then the terrifying realization that all of these lives could have been saved if just a few had the courage to stand up to authority. It’s a shocking story that is often brushed under the rug, but these extraordinary people were good people just wanting a better life, and died for it. The least we can do is take a moment out of our hectic lives to marvel at this great event, and then continue on our way.

Process Piece

            Artist Statement: 

            As film students, we usually focus on the visual and only use the audio to enhance the image. This assignment was based on only using sound to convey a process. So, we chose to use a process that we are very familiar with as film students, watching a movie. We included the sounds of a TV turning on, a DVD case opening, using a DVD player, the actual film sound, popcorn and snacks. It was interesting to fabricate some of the sounds that we weren’t able to have around, like the popcorn popping. We had to use to world around us to find a similar sound, which was fun to discover how to use sounds we already know in a different way.

            Process is something that, arguably, this generation has lost appreciation for. We are in a world of instant gratification and products. Rarely, do you go into a home and see chickens being raised so that at dinnertime we can actually eat meat. Instead, today we have frozen dinners that take 3-5 minutes to heat up, or restaurants where you can order food without even leaving the comfort of your car. But there is something inherently satisfying in process. For example, I crochet blankets and scarves, not for the product (which I actually give away more often than not) but for the process itself.

            In class, we had viewings that demonstrated the use of not only sound, but also process. In Mercadante’s Routines, we see a simple, everyday task accentuated by embellishing the sounds that accompany putting on a belt. This is something that we usually overlook in our day-to-day lives, but it was nice to take a moment to acknowledge the process that is involved in our daily routines. Similarly, in our audio piece we drew attention to the tiny sounds that go along with such a mundane task.

            Gary Hecker, the foley artist from Robin Hood (2010) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) also recognizes the importance of sounds in a process. In an interview Hecker says, “It takes timing and a huge creative mind to… use, chose and change sounds.” He goes on to say, “films are a big canvas of sound, and we paint different colors and textures so that you have a [masterpiece] of sound.” Then for the audiences he demonstrates the different sounds fabricated for his films, and describes the process that it takes to complete a film.

P.S. 10 points if you can guess the movie playing in the background.

Tiny Stories

            These tiny stories created a sort of problem for me because I am a long winded person, I can just talk and talk and talk and not get tired of it because that’s how I tend to tell stories and how I try to get my point across, I can just keep talking and… Well, you get the point. So to try to be concise while still getting a beginning, middle and end in I had to be creative. That’s where the idea of using poetry came in. Poetry is all about the word choice. Specific words is the only way it has to communicate what it needs to, so by limiting myself to various rhyme schemes I was automatically limited to a more suitable tiny story structure. This form helped me to express what I needed to in 30 words or less.

            As for the topic, well that was a different story. I ran through so many different ideas that there is no real way to keep track of them. As I was struggling to get my stories to where they needed to be, the idea hit me. Why not write about exactly that? So, I chose to write about various things that can’t quite get to where they need to be.

            The first inspiration that I looked to for this idea was from the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, which I read in High School about a boy and a girl who can’t touch because they are painted on a vase. My favorite line is “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” To me this poem pains the perfect picture of things that are meant, but can’t be accomplished, and how beautiful the things that we can’t do in life are. It really is a very beautiful poem and can be read in its entirety here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173742

So while my second tiny story is inspired from that poem, the rest were the result of careful consideration and observation of what else in my world seems frustrated by the inability to get what it needs.

            The readings provided by my TMA 112 CRV teacher were fantastic examples of short stories that had perfect plot structure, and I took it as a personal challenge to try to make my stories similar. Many of the tiny stories found here: https://twitter.com/VeryShortStory are able to set an expectation and then defy it in very few words. I don’t know if any of my tiny stories will surprise any one, but the intent is to show a frustrated silent side to things that others may not have discovered before. I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I liked writing them.

Music Mosaic

This image is meant to go along with the song clip "One Word" composed and recorded by Benjamin James Hoff.

Artist Statement:

The idea of this assignment was to collaborate with the music to create an image in space, not time. My first thought was to create a series of pictures and let this wonderful piece of music tell a story. The reason that this came to my mind first is because as humans we are driven to find stories. Our minds automatically fill in the gaps and try to make sense of the information around us. For example, when we sit down in a dark theater and the film begins, the instinctual assumption is not that this film is the meant to be the beginning of time, but that these characters have past experiences, that the world has been around for quite a while and that there are social and cultural norms already in place. All of this conjecture is based in time.

            Therefore, I chose to focus on my ability to create images in space. I then wanted to conceptualize the main feeling from the song in a sort of mosaic. For me, the main sensation cultivated by listening to this song was about conquering the world, being happy and finally winning an internal or external battle. I then used various images to show a girl punching the air as a celebration of her success. Then, in order to work with the music I walked around my apartment and outside with the music playing in my ear-buds. The rest of the images, to fill in the space around the main concept, happened in conjunction with the music. I didn’t decide what they should be when just listening to the music or aesthetically without the music in mind; no, they happened together. So, the rest of the photos worked with the music individually and collectively.

            Corresponding with the recent lectures in class, I focused on not just what the image says, but on the color and especially the line. All of the photographs include strong, distinct lines. The clouds are soft and curved, while the trees and ball have stark beginnings and endings, but each has a line that points into the center of the image, which is meant to bring the focus inward. Also, like the Gorillaz, the images aren’t necessarily literally connected to the sound, but they represent the mood. I made sure to use photography instead of any other medium, because the feelings of joy, courage and epic success inspired by the music feel very real, so I wanted to bring images from real life.

            After creating my humble mosaic, I was reminded of the trailer from my favorite movie: The Social Network

This trailer includes a compilation of Facebook profile pictures and sequences from the film, with the background music sometimes overwhelm the dialogue. The most important part of this trailer is not what is happening, but the mood that is invoked. This is similar to my mosaic because each image itself has something to say, but together the most important thing is just the experience.

 

To Stylize Or Not To Stylize

          

             Leo Tolstoy first wrote the story of Anna Karenina in 1873; since then it has been made into 43 different adaptations including films, plays, operas, TV shows, ballets, songs and radio broadcasts. These statistics beg the question: why do we still care so much about a fictional Russian affair? One answer is that Anna Karenina is not necessarily a hero, no one in this film is. Anna is just a person breaking the rules and living in her own limited life, while finding and fighting love. Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina in 2012 sought to expose the theme of love, lust and betrayal as it relates to the artificiality of life. There is no better way to conceptualize the disingenuousness of the character’s lives than to place them on not just a figurative, but also a literal stage. Joe Wright teeters on the edge of either reaching the publics attention and affection by stylizing this timeless story, or losing his audience completely in the complex setting.

            The entire film is set in and around a theater stage. The characters walk through the set leading to bedrooms or train stations, they walk up on the catwalk and are instantly in another country. As they venture to the boxes and seats, they find themselves in the middle of a horse race set squarely in the heart of the small theater. The characters themselves also move in a theatrical way, as if everything from working to making love is a dance. The stylization made Anna Karenina more apt to express the publicity and artificiality of the peoples’ lives, than would have been possible otherwise. Not only does Anna feel like she is always the center of attention, but there is literally a spot light on her face. Some of the characters feel trapped in their lives and it is exaggerated when they never really leave the main stage. Anna is born, raised and died in a world that was so limited it almost feels like an illusion. The longer the audience is trapped in her world, the more we are capable to understand how she decided that the only way out was under a train.

            The all-encompassing stylizations, however, were not suited for everyone. The reception of this film was about 61 percent positive, but the audience didn’t just seem to think it was mediocre they fell on one side or the other of a very distinct line: you either hate it, or love it. Most critics agree that the costume design and Kiera Knightley’s performance was spectacular, but that the rest didn’t fit into their understanding of this enduring tale. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, while also nominated by Houston Film Critic’s award for “Worst Film,” and won the Alliance of Women Film Journalists award for “Movie You Wanted To Love, But Just Couldn’t.”

            Why are some people able to connect and see the beauty in Joe Wright’s adaptation, but others are not? As Kiera Knightley said in a behind the scenes clip “what is the point of doing [a film] safely… in a theater you are required to use your imagination… reality is going to be suspended, but we’re ultimately trying to hold up a very beautiful mirror to life.” About 61 percent of the audience understood the meaning behind the stage, and were able to suspend their conceptions of reality for two hours and discovered a beautiful world where movement is all ballet and life is just pretend. But the others were unable to see out of society’s tunnel vision, which suggests that the only representation of life must be realistic. Perhaps the mirror’s revelation was too uncomfortable or ugly, and just as the fox desperately tries to eat the grapes just out of his reach, then gives up and with his nose in the air says “I am sure they are sour,” we despise things that are out of our reach. Just because our world is restricted, does not mean that our imagination is just as limited.

            In the name of love, stylization, and passion, this film follows some historical traditions while boldly shattering cultural traditions. Faithfully, Wright researches, works and ultimately encompasses late 19^th century fashion with the amazing costumes, jewels and hair. The actors look like they all stepped out of a time machine and into our world. But Anna Karenina intrepidly burst through our cultural rules for a historical film, and neither forces the actors to speak in the correct language, nor shoots on location (for the vast majority of the film). Actions may not be historically correct, but the music is straight from Russia. The camera’s angles may not coincide with today’s standard for a historical piece, but we do understand the reality of life as a royal.

This is all to say that this film may have broken rules and stepped on a few toes, but it was not for nothing. This Anna Karenina may take us closer to Anna’s world than has ever been possible before. Our eyes may be seeing new things, but our hearts follow the path of all humanity: through love, passion, loss, desperation and ultimately insanity. The stylization of this adaptation is not a hindrance, but a gift through which we are able to experience pure raw emotions and struggles without the restrictions of our reality. This film allows us to live in Anna’s reality, in 19^th century Russia’s reality, and hopefully see our own prisons for what they are: just perceptions.