Fireside Chat Artist’s Statement
After we first talked about the Fireside Chat during class, I went and read the assignment description. It makes no mention of belief. It simply describes the performance of a (more or less) scripted story accompanied by media. So I went off, thinking of a good story to tell. I settled on one and began planning things out. Later in class we talked again, and this representation of belief came up. This threw me for a loop at first. What? I have to embed my story with some sort of belief? Crap. Then, I realized how stupid I was being. It came to my attention that nearly every story is founded around a belief of some kind or another. That’s why we tell them.
Beliefs come in all different forms. They may be large and all encompassing, or small and detailed. They can be blatant, as in the series of pictures from our reading of people praying to many different gods, or they can be subtler as in I Stand Here Ironing. In thinking about the story I wanted to tell, it became clear to me that it was laced with several of my beliefs. They were concrete, they were there, and they meant something in my life. The beauty was, the more I thought, the more beliefs I though of and realized how many things you could take away from a seemingly goofy, and somewhat crass tale.
My story was kind of inherently funny, as “bad date” stories often are. I chose to play off that as much as possible, and tried to turn my performance into a sort of stand-up comic routine. Obviously it’s a little different, and I’m no stand-up comedian, but I based some of my mannerisms of comedians I like, such as Jim Gaffigan. The thing I hesitate to reveal, as I don’t know if people would be relieved or disappointed, is that my story was not entirely true. It is in fact a culmination of multiple true experiences I have gone through. The fact that I did this could represent several of my different beliefs, the most prominent here probably being that your little experiences in life mash and collide together to make you who you are. There are others, but I’ll leave it to my audience to decide what they think the belief is… or to just sit back and laugh. That’s cool too.
Creating my story was a lot of fun, albeit nerve-wracking. As usual, the vague assignment description led to a certain lack of confidence. Was my media sufficient? Is the story beliefy enough? Is it what I’m supposed to be doing? As with most of the assignments in this class, I would come around to the feeling yet again, that I loved the vagueness; for the Fireside Chat in particular.
That vagueness resulted in a wide array of varying performances. Every single student’s presentation was different. I absolutely loved the Fireside Chat. I’ve never felt closer, or more interested in my classmates; every story, personal or not, felt like a deep glimpse into their lives, and obviously their beliefs. I have gotten to know these people over the course of this semester and this was a fantastic culmination to the whole experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the fear and panic felt right before performing. But it was okay, because you knew everyone else was feeling the same way. It really brought us together, was completely entertaining and was a perfect culmination of the course in my opinion. I just hope whoever is grading me liked my story.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Concerned Citizen
Concerned
Citizen Artists’ Statement
After having cycled through a couple
of ideas, we finally came to choose Christopher Allen as the subject for our
piece, whom Elise only came in contact with a day or so before we filmed
him. It was a huge stroke of luck for
us, since Christopher most exemplified the idea of a concerned citizen out of
all our possible subjects by far.
Chris lives here in Provo and is a
student at BYU. After having been raised
in a conservative family, Chris found that his own opinions differed from his
upbringing, and has since found a calling of sorts to advocate his beliefs by
interacting heavily with his community through different means. He vlogs,
attends clubs, groups, and rallies with the same beliefs, and even occasionally
gives impromptu speeches at these rallies.
As discussed in class, we tried to
keep in mind throughout both filming and editing that our piece was not about
the issues being advocated by our subject, but solely about our subject and how
he interacts with his community as a result of his beliefs. This was more difficult than it sounds. Chris is very passionate about his beliefs,
and was very willing to express his opinions extensively, and we were willing
to listen. A solid amount of our footage
is Chris doing this very thing and it was sometimes hard not to use it simply
because it was such a bulk of our content, and because it showed so much about
Chris’s character. Nonetheless, we’re pretty confident that in the end, our
video simply presents the subject and his activism and does not focus on the
beliefs themselves.
There are plenty of documentary
films out there that are strongly pushing a certain ideology, some so much so
that it’s a little overwhelming, even to the point of it feeling negative. We obviously didn’t want to do this, mainly
because the assignment doesn’t call for it.
We wanted to approach our piece with an air of positivity, but without
having it lean one way or the other with regards to the opinions expressed by
our subject. In a way, it’s sort of like
the “I’m a Mormon” ads, and not just because our subject says that line. That’s a coincidence. But our piece presents the subject, lets him
express his beliefs, and shows the various ways in which he does so. The lack of music is actually very
significant to keeping this piece neutral, because music tells you how to feel
and when to feel it.
In our reading this last week,
Goldbard says, “…artists are pointing the way to what is emerging: a new
understanding of reality grounded in human stories and connection…” Though it
might be a bold claim, I would say that this is the purpose of our Concerned
Citizen project. Despite the fact that
our goal is not to advocate the beliefs directly being presented by the
subject, we are still advocating a set of beliefs. Our presentation may have an air of
neutrality, but by simply depicting someone so actively involved in their
community, we are advocating such involvement and activism, no matter the
belief. In this way, we as the artists
are attempting to create “a new understanding” by grounding it in a human
story, as Goldbard suggested.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Protest Poster
Protest Poster Artist’s Statement
Before
starting my project, I was already somewhat knowledgeable about my chosen topic
of violence and video games. Last
semester in my Writing 150 class, I did my research paper on the effect of
violent video games on youth. I argued
that the effect of violent video games were not as drastic as popular reports
were making it out to be, and I found a significant amount of research
supporting my assertion. The one thing
I’d never looked into though, were media representations either in support of
or against video games. I researched
these in preparation for my poster didn’t find that much surprisingly. I found only one series of ads that showed
close-ups of keyboards and game controllers with blood splattered all over them
and a catch phrase like “He just got a headshot.”
Obviously
these were villainizing games, and while I definitely agree that violent video
games can have an affect, and that we should be concerned, I felt I’d argue in
support once again. It’s funny to me the
degree in which some people will publicly bash media for our current level of
violence. Horrific violence has existed
all throughout history. Cain murdered
his brother for starters, and we’ve had innumerable amounts of senseless wars
and displays of violence. In a fit of
fear and despair, I think people are looking to blame something and violent
media, specifically video games, is a prominent target.
My protest
poster plays on the above idea; that violence has been around for a long time and there’s no reason to blame
video games as much as our society currently is. So, I decided to attempt to bring up a
humorous point rather than do something serious. I contemplated various things, like showing
video game characters being really sad with a catch phrase that we were going
to blame them for everything, etc. I
settled on a sort of cartoon, drawing off a meme-type of style, except instead
of doing impact font, I did speech bubbles and weird cutouts to make a
historical painting look funny.
I’m not trying to say
that violent video games have no effect at all, because they do. Games have ratings for a reason, and no one
under 17 years old should be playing M rated games, as the rating indicates. However, like Chimamanda Adichie tried to
point out, there is a huge danger in only having one story for any
situation. If people just accept the
news reports that the most recent sick and twisted psychopath that went on a
killing spree also played video games as a confirmation that games are the cause,
then they are not seeing all the stories and all the sides of the issue.
I’m not
huge on social media. I have a Facebook
account, but rarely post anything. I
only have a twitter account for Dean Duncan’s class, and a blog for this class. And the few times I have posted something on
Facebook, I don’t exactly get a huge slew of comments. Nonetheless, I posted my poster, even asking
people to comment, which is entirely unusual for me. In all honesty I only got one comment that
was helpful, or critical in any way. It
said, “Straight forward and funny. Keep
it just like that.” The others said “Haha”
or some smart-A comment like “I will comment here.”
I think I
got my message across as best I could in a poster. That medium is meant to be short, quick and
simple. There are a hundred different
arguments you could make for both sides of this argument, and some are pretty
scientifically oriented, and would take awhile to explain. But in just taking one simple argument and
articulating it in an appealing way, I think I did alright. But I guess that's up to you.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Webspinna (List of Links)
http://www.gamethemesongs.com/Galaga.html
Webspinna Artist’s Statement
As soon as
I heard that our Webspinna project would be a collection of sounds, I
immediately thought of Star Wars. I then
imagined branching out and mixing other movie themes and well-known sound
effects… then Ben demonstrated his example in class. So even though his only started with Star
Wars, I decided to nix that idea.
Nonetheless, as I thought about my original idea, I realized I could do
essentially the same thing with video games.
It wasn’t
hard to find websites with video game soundboards and theme songs. In fact, one of my biggest problems was
deciding which video games to cut from my little roster of sound. I simply couldn’t manage that many links and
tabs, so some had to go. My decisions
came down to using elements from video games that most people would recognize
(I use the word “most” tentatively).
Even after deciding to cut several of my
games’ theme songs and sound effects though, it was still incredibly hard to
put them into a coherent remix of sorts.
My goal was to make a bridge between old classical games, and some
popular new ones, in an effort to demonstrate how gaming culture has evolved in
lots of ways, but its core fandom attitude remains the same. I figured that by bringing together popular
and well-known sound elements from games of all generations, it would show that
gamers today still geek out over the same types of things that gamers of old
did, and its all brought together through my own love of the medium.
It’s hard to pinpoint a specific
outside inspiration I may have had for my mix, not because there aren’t any,
but because there are so many. Pop culture is absolutely filled to the brim
with references to other instances of pop culture, and my mix is essentially a
collection of references.
Within my mix itself are inspirations, for instance, the Ocarina of Time; “The Lost Woods” dub
step remix. The artist took a simple and
beloved Nintendo 64 soundtrack and mixed it with the popular dub step music
genre; not only is it funny, but to many, it’s also legitimately cool. It’s definitely its own thing, and the artist
isn’t said to be a hack for making the N64 track loud and high pitched.
In our reading this week, Bourriad
said, “It is up to us to judge artworks in terms of the relations they produce
in the specific contexts they inhabit.
Because art is an activity that produces relationships to the world in
one form or another makes its relationships to space and time material.”
The artist of the dub step remix is
simply using a medium they are proficient in to reference an outside source
that they have a connection with. They
didn’t invent either dub step or “The Lost Woods” soundtrack, but what they did
with it is art. My mix probably isn’t as
original as that, and again, is mostly a mix of references to things I enjoy,
but meaning can be found within and is therefore art.
Our gathering as a class on Friday
was pretty enjoyable, despite my performance of my mix not going as smoothly as
I would’ve hoped. The funny thing is, no
one noticed when I messed up except myself, but it would’ve sounded a lot
cooler if I hadn’t. Regardless, the
experience was pretty interesting and I haven’t ever done anything like
it. I really wished I could’ve seen
people performing their mixes though.
That was half of what was so interesting about it to me.
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