Fireside Chat: Artist's Statement

                I had a lot of rough ideas for my Fireside Chat. I was originally going to do something more serious and personal, discussing my believe in overcoming hardships and trials despite circumstance. I was going to give a speech, while audio simulating what auditory hallucinations are like. My speech would coincide with the audio - during the more intense parts my speech would also increase in intensity, etc. But, I scrapped this idea because I didn't really want to do a "Woe-is-me" approach to this. I mean, this was the last impression I could make on the class and I had the potential to create a reputation for myself. 

                So, with that in mind I took a new approach to the assignment. I started thinking about the impression I wanted to leave behind, I started thinking about what I wanted to be known for as a result of this project. Did I want to be known as the scary kid whole mentions their mental disorder at any given chance? Did I want to be known as the kid who talks about one thing and only one thing? No, not really. So I thought about things I liked: sweaters, doing nothing, sleep, being around people, ghosts, aliens, scary movies, spooks and cooks and scares. Basically, just weird, dorky paranormal garbage.

                And then it clicked, the thing I wanted to be known for. The impression I wanted to leave behind: I would be the guy who went on a tirade about ghosts. I would be the guy who made the audience play with a Ouija board so we could all be scared and all have fun together. It wasn't very serious, but I still think it was the best thing I could have done.

                Watching other people present, I found it interesting the different approaches people took. Approaches far different from what I had done, with varying interpretations of the simple prom "What I Believe In" and I think that's amazing. A simple thing can be taken in so many ways by people, and we can get presentations ranging from privilege to Lego, from make-up to dance, from Jesus to ghosts. But, I found myself applying my own approach to all of the presentations. I kept asking "Is this what this person wants to be known for? Is this the impression they want to leave behind?" But, that's not a fair question to ask, because they didn't prepare with that idea in mind.

Concerned Citizen

Video

Concerned Citizen: Taylor from Helen Butcher on Vimeo.

Artists' Statement

When it comes to media, community is very important. As community is portrayed in media, media is consumed by the community, so it’s a constant cycle of the two influencing each other. As new filmmakers, it’s our responsibility to portray and showcase communities that inspire service and kindness to the audience. Showing that the small acts we do can be a big deal to others is very important, and whether we do it for a job or just in passing, we need to remember that it doesn’t take much to make other people happy.

Taylor Whitehead is a daughter, friend, college student, and CNA. CNA means Certified Nurse’s Assistant, a job where she goes to people’s houses and help take care of their elders. Cody suggested that Taylor be the subject of our project because she pointed out that it takes a special kind of person to dedicate their life to helping old people. We wanted to portray Taylor as an ordinary young woman, so we tried to be fairly casual about the shoot. This was to emphasize that it doesn't take an extraordinary person to do good things. The emotion and interest comes from solely Taylor herself as she is so animated and happy to talk about her job. This is what sets her apart; she’s dedicated to doing this job not because it’s hard, but because it makes her happy and others happy. The work she describes seems simple, but it’s clear that she is a huge help to the old people.

This week in class we read Human Rights and Culture: From Datasan to Storyland by Arlene Goldbard. A quote we liked from that was “In Storyland, we understand that the resilience that sustains communities in times of crisis is rooted in culture, in the stories of survival and social imagination that inspire pepe to a sense of hope and possibly even in dark times. Sharing our stories as song, drama, dance, in word or image supports resilience by showing people how theirs met similar challenges, survived and prospered.” This supports our idea that it doesn’t take much to help others, and when we show this in the media, we can inspire communities to come together with those small acts. An example of this in the media is Soul Surfer (McNamara), a movie based on a true story about a thirteen year old girl who gets her arm bitten off by a shark. It’s an inspiring to see the community rally around her and give her love and support through the small collective acts of them all. Therefore, when everyone does small and simple acts of service and kindness, the result can be overwhelmingly positive.

In conclusion, it’s important to show service in the media to inspire communities to do good things. Like Taylor, we can choose to do things that make us happy while also helping out others. When we show this in media, it can inspire communities because it shows that when everyone bands together to do good things, amazing and inspiring things can happen.

World Building

In our world, gravity isn’t a constant. Instead, it just sort of wildly fluctuates throughout the day. This idea was somewhat inspired by the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slapstick. In it, sudden, rapid shifts in gravity’s force cause the whole of society to plummet into chaos. When we were pitching ideas, Slapstick immediately came to my mind because of how drastically this one thing changed the world. I thought that this idea could be interpreted in a lot of different, really interesting ways. Our world is a lot less intense than the one described in Slapstick, the whole of society hasn’t collapsed. Instead, people have had to make adjustments to live their day to day lives despite the random shifts in gravity.

We created concept drawings of different ways typical items would be altered in order to function in this world. For example, towns would have domes over them to stop things (including people, and even the air itself) from floating away into space when gravity fluctuates into its weakest levels, or anchored chairs with buckles that allow people to strap themselves in and wait for gravity to return to normal. Another idea we had is a vest that has a controllable mass, that can be increased or decreased depending on the strength of gravity allowing people to still walk around during the fluctuations. All of these ideas would have varying levels of quality, richer people would be able to afford better equipment while the poorer would have to settle for things like strapped down chairs. This would create a very clear distinction between the upper and lower class.

One example from the class that we drew inspiration from was the notice from the film, District-9. This public notice gave us the idea to create our own for our world where gravity is not constant. So we wanted to create a sign that portrays a particular public issue that commonly occurs in our world. We wanted to show how littering is a very eco shattering problem, more than it is in our present world. When people choose to litter in our world, it can be lost into our atmosphere every time our gravity starts to fluctuate. In this world, you are unable to simply pick up litter from the ground, because it floats around the atmosphere, getting in the way and polluting the air. Another issue that this fluctuation in gravity creates is sudden, forceful garbage rain caused by higher levels in gravity makes trash jettison towards the Earth with extreme force.

It was interesting to think of all the implications that such a world demands, from the obvious (the need for mass-changing vests and chairs with “seat belts”) to the more unapparent (like the need for domes so that the atmosphere doesn’t float away, or the litter problem). We tried to imagine what the everyday life of someone living here would be like, and it helped us to come up with more creative ideas. Though we all agreed that living in this world would not be fun, the citizens of it have made it manageable for themselves, and that is what we tried to convey with this assignment.

Textual Poaching: Fear in False Advertising

Fear in False Advertising

Artist's Statement

I am a 20 year old, LDS, American male who attends BYU. There are a lot of different things that I, according to society, should be doing at this point in my life. Men my age are supposed to be enlisting in the military, to prove their dedication to their country and to their masculinity. Men my age are supposed to be getting married, so they can have a wife to take care of. Men my age are supposed to be having kids, the ultimate sign of your life being on track. And if you are a man my age, at least at BYU,  and you aren't doing these things they you should be on a mission, to prove your dedication to God and Church and to make everyone proud that you are doing what you should be doing.

Except, I'm not doing any of those things. I am 20 years old and I'm not in the military, I'm not married or even engaged, I'm obviously not having children anytime soon, and I have not and likely will not go on a mission. I am an anomaly, at least according to the ideal. Honestly, all of these things that I am supposed to be doing, that I am so clearly failing at doing, terrify me to no end. I can barely take care of myself, let alone a spouse and kids. And so, I've taken old advertisements of what men are typically supposed to do, and combined them with still from old horror movies. Army recruitment propaganda mixed with Michael Myers, the Preach My Gospel cover mixed with Leatherface, an ad for fatherhood mixed with Linda Blair, a man and a woman passionately kissing on the streets of New York mixed with Freddy Krueger. Mixing the typical with the horrific, to show that I am both missing these seemingly important milestones, and actually, to some extent, scared of these things to varying degrees.

This is similar to Eileen Maxson's Cinderella+++, which mixed classic Disney scenes with audio from more modern films. She gave a new meaning, a darker meaning, to these innocent classics to show just how different reality is from the expected. Following along with the idea of an incongruity between societal and medial depictions of what it means to be a man, and what I experience as a man, recent studies have shown that men are incredibly effected by the sexist way they are portrayed in advertisements. The Huffington Post wrote an article entitled"Be A Man" which discusses how advertisements, both modern and not, are promoting a hyper-masculinity that is causing men to feel generally discouraged with their own self image, and this in turn is leading to low self-esteem, poor body image and, in extreme cases, things like drug use and violence towards women.

Webspinna Artist Statement

I was really excited for the Webspinna battle, because I love any project that involves me getting attention. But, I was a little worried when it was announced that it was moving up a week. And then I didn't get a partner on the Thursday before it was due, which was very worrisome. Really, I only had two days to work with my partner on out presentation - which is very stressful. But, in the end I really like how it turned out. Taylor and I decided to do Halloween vs. Christmas, which is awesome for me (ignoring the fact that another group had the same idea).

We decided to have Christmas sort of encroaching onto Halloween's territory, and Halloween not being happy about that. It was sort of a reflection on how, during the holiday season, decorations for the next holiday go up before the current one has even happened. At the beginning of October, Christmas decorations had already been put on display in stores, despite it being three months, and two holidays, away. One of the sounds I used was for an Onion video about how Halloween has become over-commercialized, poking fun at how people have lost the true meaning of Halloween and are taking the shortcuts to make their experience easier.

It was interesting only being able to use sounds that already exist, and not being able to edit together anything or record anything. From other people's work, we had to create our personas and out entire presentation. We needed to raid things that had already existed and break them up and reform them into another, separate work. In this week's reading "The Ecstasy of Influence: a Plagiarism" by Jonathan Lethem, there is a nice quote about this idea about literature being broken up in this way to great new works: "Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time." This project is more obvious in its breaking up of previous pieces to build up a new, greater piece. But, this sort of thing has been happening since the beginning if literature, people borrow from previous things in order to augment their creations more.

One thing I thought was fun about this project was how it was live, which meant things could (and did) and we needed to improvise and create. We had an issue with our Webspinna that required me to improvise a lot. The last few clips didn't work, which meant our presentation lacked an ending. Instead of floundering in front of everyone, I simply yelled out what our ending was, and then threw the prop glow-sticks to show that something happened. 

Webspinna Battle Playlist

• Spooky Scary Skeleton- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgFtxHhCQ0
• Nightmare Before Christmas ST- https://play.spotify.com/album/32hXKuDkMnpQaOI67xQj86
• “What’s This”- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVSpfQHEsNY
• Anaconda Laugh-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy-QbberpXM
• Halloween Overcommercialized- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0McggLIYmnE
• This Is Halloween- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVSpfQHEsNY
• Halloween sound FX soundboard- http://www.soundboard.com/sb/halloween
• Psycho Theme- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-VhC9ieh0
• The Nightman Cometh- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR4zefzP7d0#t=308

Medium Specificity: Filming a Photograph

The Video

Artist's Statement

      For this week's topic, I was worried that I would not be able to produce anything that actually captured the idea of medium specificity, and that I would end up just creating a few Pollock knockoffs and resign to unoriginality. However, once I started thinking past the well known and into newer mediums, and idea formed in my head and I realized that I had found my project: Photographs. Specifically, amateur photos people take of their friends and family in order to remember that specific event.

     Vacation photos, graduation photos, birthday photos etc. all share a common aesthetic: people standing, posing in what they believe to be the most natural way. Except, it isn't really a natural pose at all. It is an idealized pose that the subject uses because that is how they want to be remembered when they look back at these photos. Although people want to have nice, candid photos of themselves, they usually end up with idealized forms of themselves, slipping their way down uncanny valley.

     So, I wanted to explore this idea, this space that last all but a fraction of a second when someone takes a picture. Only, I wanted to expand that small moment into uncomfortably long moments. I asked subjects to act as if I was their brother, father, uncle, friend taking a photo of them at a significant moment in their life. And then, I pressed record. They assumed I was taking a picture, so they waited until I said I was done. After a while, they typically started to change their pose slightly, to make it more comfortable. Eventually, they caught on and told me to stop recording. At that point, they realized just how silly they had actually looked.

     I do have to admit that the idea of filming people when they think you are simply taking a picture is not originally mine, I first saw the concept about a year ago on Youtube. A man named Dean Fleischer-Camp took five second long videos of his friends in a short he titled Smile (Warning, some language). Drawing from this inspiration, I decided to extend this thing that is only supposed to be a second of a second, into a clip long enough to show how silly posing really is.

     The people who helped me waited to be captured, without realizing that they were already being captured. Without realizing it, the people on camera were a part of the creation. This is a similar idea that John Cage had in his song 4'33", which is a piece of music which has no notes. It is performed by having a man or woman sit at a piano and time themselves, occasionally shifting for each movement but never playing a single note. This causes the audience to become a part of the piece, every sound they make becomes the music of 4'33", and without knowing it, by just is existing a space, they have embodied the meaning of the piece of art.