Fireside Chat

The fireside chat was the first time I allowed myself to create a piece of art that was not just trying to communicate a message, but was actually therapeutic for me. When I found out about the loss of Jason's Dad this winter, together with the horrible news about his parents being convicted, I honestly did not know how to deal with it. I talked a lot with family and friends, but I wasn't able to make sense of it. When I finally decided to focus my fireside chat around it, it forced me to make meaning of it, and examine what I am learning from the experience, and it was one of the most meaningful things that has happened to me this semester.
My initial idea was to write a poem about it, and perform the poem in SLAM style, but as I tried to write the words down, it felt way too mechanical. Instead I decided to pull from The Moth podcast, one of the broadcasts I admire most on the web right now, and tell the story without notes or memorization, just from my heart. I had the idea of using masks a while back, but decided to use paint as the theme of repentance became a more concrete idea in my head. What I found was interesting was that even though I did not write down what I was going to say, the more I practiced it aloud I formulated what would be most meaningful and true to myself. I developed a new form of writing as I did so, where instead of writing down actual words, I repeat a theme to myself so many times that I slowly flesh out what is most meaningful and in what order the words should be presented. Max provided the perfect backdrop to the entire piece on his guitar, and I felt that it was overall very successful.
I was amazed with how transformative this experience was for our class. It was the culmination of all of the themes that we had talked about throughout the semester. I saw the strengths of medium specificity and game for change, together with the Power of a Single story, the elegant corpse, and exercises in empathy. By the end of the night, I felt I had not only seen great art, but that my level of understanding and love for my classmates had increased immensely. No art piece has ever done that so distinctly for me, and I cannot wait to reproduce this experience with an even wider array of people who I will then come to better understand.
As I said before, the transformation was also in me. I finally feel content about this event in my life, and I know now at least a few things that I have learned from it. In the future, I am sure that I will continue to learn from it. But at least for now it is healing, and I am satisfied. The power of art has become a real force in my life, allowing me to access the atonement. This project helped open my eyes to a whole other realm of spiritually that I have barely explored.

Mike Call: How Do Video Games Mean?

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Professor Call's lecture on games and video games, and I was extremely impressed with his research. His analysis of a new media form, which is quickly becoming the most abundant in the world, was both enjoyable and critical, and invited further questioning and speculation.
Professor Call began by establishing the parameters of his research. He is not trying to argue that video games are art, as the art community cannot even agree on a definition for art, so there is no sense in trying to include video games in a canon of work that cannot even be defined. Professor Call is concerned with how we analyze games. Other media forms, such as literature and film, have established a vocabulary of terms through which the form can be analyzed. Video games have yet to reach this point, but as the amount of Americans who play video games rises over 50 percent, it is high time that we started thinking about what this form of media is saying.
To help get a grip on the world of video games, Professor Call turned to another branch of his study, which is board games. As board games have been around for a much longer time, anthropologists have already established a few ways of interpreting them. The French intellectual Callois created a few terms(agon, alea, mimicry, and illiny)which analyze a game on its level of competition, its reliance on luck, its ability to mimic real life, and its ability to physically excite or stimulate. Just as these old ideas of luck and strategy are easily applicable to games like Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, the same principles apply to video games. Many video games have high levels of competition,  like Super Smash Brothers, involving multiple players who must actually eliminate others to win, while other games like Little Big Planet have a lower level of competition, as players must work together to work through puzzle presented by the game. Alea, or luck, is low in such games like Call of Duty, where maps are pre-determined, with predictable outcomes, but high in games like Mario Kart, where question mark boxes will equip players with randomized weaponry. Mimicry is perhaps most easily recognized, not just in hyper realistic games like Grand Theft Auto, but also in games like the Sims, which do nothing more than try to mimic everyday life. Video games have always had an aspect of physical excitement, through the use of buttons and joysticks, but this level of involvement has only been heightened through the invention of the Rumble Pack, the Wii, the Kinect, and most recently, the XBOX 1's triggers, which adjust the amount of pressure required to push them down depending on the challenge of the task in the game.
It is also important to analyze the ideologies represented in games. Though games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Grand Theft Auto have taken a good deal of the flack in this department, it is important to analyze other games which at first sight, may seem more benign. Even Settler's Of Catan present a problem for the Western World, with its blatant exclusion of natives on the habitable land. This type of game represents a dream of the 'perfect colonization' where there is no pre-existing culture to deal with, and resources are free and out there for the picking. Issue of race and sex are easily recognizable as the canon of video game heroes is examined, and the scales tip drastically to the side of white athletic males.
Video games are the fastest growing media form in the world, and they can simply not be ignored. Just as film went through a time when it was considered a passing fad, only for youthful entertainment, and corrupt and dangerous for kids, video games is has passed and is passing through those areas. Video games have reached the studio stage, where they are marketed by massive studios, but as programs like Steam and XBOX's independent game program flourish, the day is not far off when video games will join film, in passing out of the studio age and into the auteur arena. Yes. whether they are art or not, video games can simply not be ignored. In the next twenty or thirty years, Professor Call has suggested that the question will not be: "do you play video games?" but simply: "what video games do you play?"
Also, this lecture inspired me to take Professor Call's class this spring all about games and game theory. It is called IHUM 280, and it will be taught on Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:30 to 3:00. Anyone interested in coming would be welcome company!

Concerned Citizen

Ian Hawkes and Erin Willmore

https://soundcloud.com/erin-rainay-willmore/scott-harman-concerned-citizen/s-F1u6T

Meeting Scott Harman was like meeting one of those people you only hear about in magazine articles, but never expect to meet in real life. Just by looking at him, we would have never guessed he spent more than six years in solitary confinement. He even admitted himself that most people who know him, from church and work, don’t know anything about his past or his involvement in the community. For this reason, we decided to do an audio interview. We liked the idea that Scott is a sort of secret hero of the Provo and Orem community, who does not care if people don’t recognize him or even remember his name, and we felt that just having his voice and not any visuals would communicate this sort of faceless and noble service.

Scott’s humility was what was most impressive. He could not even say with great confidence that he was helping those people in the Addiction Recovery Program, but he said that he remembers looking up to his counselors and being strengthened by them, and he therefore hopes that he is helping others. This sort of noble service reminded me of Jared Jakin’s Documentary Ghosts on the Mountain. One thing that impressed me about Jared’s documentary, was that he was not trying to make a work of art for the purpose of causing social change, but he wanted to tell the story of underprivileged people and allow the audience to act for themselves. Scott’s benefit to the community is similar. He is not leading a grand campaign to help addicted individuals. He simply does his best to share his story, and stand as a living example to those who are heavily addicted to harmful substances that there is hope after addiction.

We feel that this piece of art can be helpful to the community as a whole. One thing that we found interesting was that Scott referred to the addiction recovery group as a ‘second family’, a microcosmic community in its own right. This is a community, which for many reasons, goes unnoticed and unappreciated by the larger community of Provo and Orem. Much like Adichie’s speech on ‘The Danger of a Single Story’, it became clear to us that many people in this community have a single story of addicted. Many think they are dangerous, while others think they are weak, or incapable, or simply hopeless. Scott’s story offers a second perspective. Though he is an ex-convict who served more than six years in solitary confinement, he is happily married to a BYU grad and just had his first child with her three months ago. His story is extremely important, not just to those people who are recovering from addiction, but also those who need to understand better how to interact with the addicted community, which is frankly all of us. As we move farther away from Datastan, Scott’s story is just another story that will be important to have in Storyland, helping us understand how to reach out to and strengthen the sub-community of addiction recovery groups which live within our community.

Game for Change

Dinner Quest

Video games have the potential to be powerful motivators for social change, on perhaps an even greater level than any other media form. As players assume the role of another character, that character's concerns become the player's, their pains, worries, and joys shared. It is physically impossible to passively engage with a video game, as engagement implies activity. This became particularly apparent to me as I played Depression Quest for the first time. The difficulties of depression, which I had often attributed to distanced characters in movies and books, became extremely personal. I began to positively recognize potentially depressive qualities in myself, and instead of simply gaining sympathy for the clinically depressed, I found I was able to reach a level of rudimentary empathy.
I believe that video games have the power to change lives, as we place ourselves in others' shoes and have proxy experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. With this in mind, I decided to tackle a social issue that is very dear to my heart by creating Dinner Quest: The Hunt for a Real Meal. About seven years ago, as a budding high school student with the mind of an anarchist but with no particular system to tear down, I turned my eye of scrutiny on the food industry. As I was introduced to interesting food theorists such as Ian Cheney and Michael Pollan, I became extremely alarmed about the culture of food that is developing in the 21st century, and the implications it has on future generations. While serving a mission in Denmark, these concerns were placed mostly to the side due to a fantastically healthy food culture in Scandinavia, but upon my return to the United States of America, home of preservatives, I have begun once more to critically analyze food.
I studied three works specifically for this project. The first is Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', his beautiful critique of mass production in the food industry. Within the book he follows four separate meals all the way back to their origins, and this idea became the main theme for Dinner Quest. This reading was supplemented by 'Hungry City', a book by British author Carolyn Steel. Her book is a more specific examination of how food is consumed within the city, and reveals alarming facts about how far our food really travels before it gets to us. As more and more people in the 21st century live in cities, we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our food, and most of us don't even know what fresh food tastes like any more. The final piece was Ian Cheney's documentary Truck Farm, which is a playful yet instructive study on how farms can be made practically anywhere. Cheney himself begins a farm in the flat bed of his Dodge pick up, and then drives around New York City to meet with other farmers who use rooftops, barges, floor to ceiling windows, and abandoned baseball fields to get back in touch with nature.
All of these texts went in to the creation of Dinner Quest. For this game, I wanted to put the players into a position where they are forced to be accountable for each aspect of their meal. As I began to study the topics myself(especially some fun blog pages about slaughtering chickens)I realized just how agrarian and foreign these types of activities are. It scares me how far removed a plastic wrapped chicken breast in the supermarket is from slitting the throat of a flapping chicken. I hope that Dinner Quest is a reminder that behind every chicken patty served, there was a living chicken. I did not, however, want the game to just be a scary ride through the terrors of slaughter, as many studies of the food industry have been(Food Inc. and The Jungle being classic examples). In my studies of honest farmers, hunters, and gatherers I have noticed a consistently increased respect for nature and life. Those people who slaughter chickens, ironically, seem to have a greater respect for life than the person who has never killed. I hope that Dinner Quest not only reminds players that a lot more went into the creation of their food than they often account for, but that greater satisfaction can be pulled form a closer association with their food at every level of its creation.
In a world full of restaurant ads, fast food drive-thrus, and deliver to your door internet food companies, I believe that this issue is poorly represented in the media. I hope that Dinner Quest makes a difference in the lives of those who play it, and I honestly believe that the closer we can associate with our food the happier we will be, the healthier our bodies and spirits will be, and the better our food will taste.

Play Dinner Quest here:
http://www.philome.la/DavidHawkes14/dinner-quest

Webspinna Battle

This was honestly the most enjoyable project I have done in this class up to date. Not only did it involve aspects of sound design that interest me, but it also introduced an element of live performance that was invigorating and also strengthening. By embracing this aspect of the life performance, my partner Max and I were able to create a work of art that was way better than what could have just been pre-recorded and turned in.

This project also opened a lot of conceptual windows for me as an artist. I really enjoyed Lethem’s ‘Ecstasy of Influence’ and the perspective he took on art. I have been so afraid of copying what other artists create in an effort to not plagiarize, that I have made myself unaware of the value of remixes, not to mention the fact that by the nature of the time I am living in, almost everything I make will be some sort of a remix. The realization that I came to through Lethem’s article is that there is a beauty in poaching. Before, I had always viewed it as a less refined art, but now I think it is beautiful and in a way almost more redeemable, that you can take things that already exist and place them in a new light to give them new meaning.

As Max and I looked more into musical themes that would inform our remix of disco and rock, I also became increasingly impressed with musical remixes. Fantastic groups like ‘The Avalanches’ and ‘Beck’ sample all the time, and when they do, we just accept it as music, and don’t complain. Not to mention fantastic mash ups like ‘Jaydiohead’, another Jay-Z mash up, but this time with Radiohead songs. The combination of tones and lyrics is fantastic! These groups have become a staple in my listening, and I love the idea of making unity out of things that originally are not harmonious.

Max and I really embraced the idea of live performance which was also key in the Webspinna Battle. We put in a good deal of time before the performance, creating a balance between songs and statements from movie and instructional videos. We used the words to act as transitions from one song to another, and as the performance goes on, the line between the two becomes much more blurred, eventually ending in a total mash-up between rock and disco. Once we had this basic skeleton established, we started brainstorming about what we would do to bring the performance to life. Costumes played a big role, and I felt that we were able to make ourselves visually interesting but not distracting. Our ‘battle moves’ were also fun to choreograph, and as I studied famous rockstar moves and Max studied disco dance moves, we were able to pull some fun stuff together, most noticeably the guitar smash. I was really happy with how the final performance turned out. Most exciting, is that I could see the art form continuing in my future, and I have a vision of kids coming together in back alleys and empty basketball courts to audio battle and spread remix across the world. It’s a medium I would love to explore more.

World Building

Dhane Taylor

Ian Hawkes

Kent Thalman

In the world of the composed dead, there are many solutions proposed, but none without controversy.  Several political and religious factions do much by way of persuasion in order to rally others behind them.  There are those in favor of cremation, others that propose reanimation, and several others who are in favor of simply preserving those that have passed on.  The politics as they relate to aesthetics has much to do with the motivations behind each group’s proposition.  For example, if those in favor of preservation are heavily opposed to “dead labor,” then their arguments take a moral aesthetic tone.  You could almost call it a play toward our sympathy and guilt at the same time.  Conversely, the groups in favor of cremation seek a more informative and realistic aesthetic tone.  There is no need to guilt anyone into burning themselves after death.  Rather, their stance is a logical one, seeking to achieve social reform through spatial practicality.  Finally, those who wish to reanimate the deceased more often than not will take a similar tone to logic.  The aesthetics therefore will relate, much to the outrage of extremist groups that find reanimation immoral.

A social reality today is centered not around the time of death as much as near birth.  Abortion is a topic with very difficult texts to navigate, and is a current and important topic of discussion.  While the issue of reanimation is fictional, it can be related to the complexities of current issues such as abortion, illegal labor, xenophobia, etc.  Are not some people treated as if their lives were less important than the high-born today?  And are not others feared because they are considered the “other.”  This happens in every society in today’s world.  Such a discussion potentially navigates and communicates within the confines of this invented reality.  There are potential limitations as well, as is the case with nearly all narratives or artistic platforms.  But the benefits of such a communicative platform is its reach.  Such a fantasy can cause reflection within those who would otherwise refuse to grapple with said issues in the real world.

One example our group drew from in class specifically is that of Effie Trinket and the Capitol’s absurd focus on fashions around a death game. It creates an aspect of the Hunger Games world that wasn’t as explored in the film. It is an advertisement those people would see every day and influence their menial decisions. Comparatively, the people of the world where the dead refuse to decompose would be so accustomed to the bodies that many would not have a strong stance as to what to do with them. With our endeavour, we created public service announcements, government issued messages, and juvenile placards. Each of these were to represent a different decisive extreme aimed at swaying the average citizen’s opinion.

The creation of a world within a fiction piece is always daunting and exciting to me. I will always remember the first time I read ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert. I was absolutely enveloped in the science fiction world he created. What I thought was most impressive with Herbert’s work was how each of his characters were driven by actual social pressures, that interplayed with one another and had correlating sponsors, enemies, and followings. Herbert created a complete system of government, trade, and religion, and his technology and characters were based off of these constructs and felt as though they had grown organically from the world. We tried our best to bring this type of believable culture into our world. We quickly realized that not having bodies decay would lead to a great deal of religious complexity, as well as social problems with responding entities who try to solve those problems. As different viewpoints became clear to us, it seemed natural to break our group into factions, having each of us create artifacts from that certain social view. I feel that in this way we have managed to create a world which is populated with actual social questions that seem relevant and human.

Textual Poaching

There is a special joy in admitting that you like Dungeons and Dragons, almost like telling someone that you secretly have a pet hampster that you’ve never revealed to them before. I am fascinated with how scociety reacts to Dungeons and Dragons, and roleplaying games in general, and have struggled to come to terms with why this and many of my other favorite hobbies are viewed as puerile and lacking substantial content.

My relationship with Dungeons and Dragons has been very much like the Skin Horse’s experience of becoming ‘real’ and loved through long association, from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was about seven, and continued to play on and off with my older brother up until I was a teenager, when I started leading my own games at home with my younger brothers. When I started working at a Boy Scout camp at fifteen, I lead groups of friends in role playing games every summer, and then at college played multiple games with my brother and his wife, a hobby that continues still today. Over the years, the game has become an integral part of who I am, and I feel that only the people who have a similar relationship with the game can understand my relationship with it.

What fascinates me with Dungeons and Dragons, is rather like the ratty stuffed rabbit, it is so often discounted as childish and unimportant, while such plotless games as Modern Warfare are allowed to slip through the cracks as ‘a great adult game’. As I began to analyze the nature of roleplaying, I realized that roleplaying is so unbelievably commonplace in our culture. Particularly at BYU, there is a strong culture of putting your best foot forward, and not admitting your doubts, stresses, or insecurities. We all create a ‘BYU Character’, who we often hide behind, hoping to be able to marry well, get great grades, and slip under the eye of our Ecclesiastical Leaders without ever revealing the real us. I decided to create a BYU Character Sheet, and remixed a number of the character statistics to better fit this vision, as well as superimposing a picture of myself in the background instead of the emasculated barbarian sketches which are the backdrop of most DnD character sheets. I personally believe that everyone should be familiar with the concept of Roleplaying games, as we play them in real life constantly, from our resumes to our Facebook pages.

This project quickly became extremely personal to me. I have always loved Rage Against the Machine, and discovered just recently that their classic album ‘Rage’ is actually an entire album of covers! I was amazed, because each of the songs seems so personally theirs. I similarly began to pour my personality into this project, and quickly became aware how much this idea of masking and roleplaying has effected my life. Most of my childhood and teenage years I was convinced that I had to hide my weaknesses from my parents and especially my friends. I was so insecure with who I actually was, and thought that repenting and changing meant hiding the things you were not happy with. I am just barely beginning to realize that because of this, I have an extremely unclear idea of who I actually am as an individual. This project has changed me spiritually and emotionally, and I have set out to discover who I really am, not just the character I say that I am.

Medium Specificty

A Link to the Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/david-hawkes-7/this-god-of-sound

The process involved in creating this audio piece was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in art. My interest for sound design has been increased significantly, and the more that I examined the medium, the more sacred and significant it appeared to me. I decided to pick the medium of sound design because of my great love of narrative radio, such as Radiolab, This American Life, and Serial. I am also impressed with Beck, particularly in his earlier works, where he uses sound much as Pollack uses paint, testing its limits and textures. My love for sound was then informed heavily by Scott McCloud’s ‘Understanding Comics’. I love the idea of a piece of art describing itself, and I thought I would try it with sound design too. As McCloud did in his book, I began to examine what sound design really was, and what it’s capabilities were. I was quickly struck with how much sound design resembles the way that I believe God lives, and this became the theme of my final product.

I find it fascinating that God is heard, and generally not seen, though like sound, he is also felt. As I went about recording conversations and sound effects, I became surprised at how shocking the absence of noise can be. When you are editing sound together, it becomes immediately apparent that any break in the track will stick out like a sore thumb. For me, this has also been my experience with Deity. I do not think that he plays a large role in my life, until suddenly, he is noticeably gone, and the experience is empty and unforgettable. The comparisons between heaven and sound are nearly endless, such as sound designers ability to remove barriers of space and time, and also to present their subjects as personalities, without having us judge them by their physical appearance.

I feel that this project acted like a lens, returning the focus to me and my experiences. Much like the piano player who sits and plays nothing, allowing the audience to be the product of the art, I feel as though I was the end product of my own art piece. By focusing only on the medium, the artist is forced to truly examine how they will be interacting with their art. I believe that it is at this level of modern art where true personality and value shines through. My respect for interpretive artists has grown immensely.

The project has also really familiarized me with the medium of sound design. Though there were many places in the process where my inexperience shone through clearly, overall I think the end product turned out nicely. I am sure that I will work with the medium again, not just because I believe it is a great storytelling device, but I feel that I have now come to an understanding of sound’s importance to me spiritually. It is a medium that I simply cannot leave.

Historical Story

Writing the historical piece was a great lesson in teamwork, and also an interesting new way to receive story ideas. The initial idea for ‘Fighting the Tiger’ came from a small article that Ian located in an historical newspaper in the BYU Special Collections. The newspapers were from a small town called Candelaria in Nevada, which does not exist anymore, and had a lot of fascinating information. The first piece we used was an advertisement for a saloon, that proudly advertised that there was an ‘Elegant club room...attached where patrons can fight the tiger at all seasonable hours.’ This information was teamed up with a separate newspaper from the same town, which had an article about a huge project they were putting on to build a town well. With those two articles in hand, plus a little research on Rensselear Institute(the first civil engineering school in the country)we were ready to go. Unfortunately the newspapers have not been processed yet, and so cannot be referenced, and the engineering information came from Rensellear Institute’s own webpage.

It was amazing to us how quickly the story came together once the basic research was in place. The articles gave us the backbone for the entire plot, and over that we were able to insert characters who we thought were interesting. Like the animated short in class about the King of Norway, we decided it would be fun to make the accuracy of the story questionable. Though our research informed the setting, conflict, and also the motivation for the characters, we took a lot of creative liberty with the characters themselves and certainly embellished a lot of details. It was enjoyable to think about how a grandpa might tell this story to their children, and it helped us to examine the importance of stories in our own lives.

In addition to the research process, it was interesting trying to write a story collaboratively. In so many classes previous, students are assigned to work on essays and papers and scripts alone, and trying to lend efforts to this story without overpowering it was definitely the biggest challenge. On one hand, one doesn’t want to force too much work on their partner, and on the other, you don’t want to monopolize the story or come across as pushy either. We came to an agreement that worked pretty well. As it was Ian’s story, he wrote a quick outline for the plot, while Ethan wrote the first full script, with both dialogue and scene direction, printed out the copies, and brought it to class. Then, Ian took one last good look at the story, made revisions and fixed issues as he saw fit, and the final product was produced.

It was definitely beneficial to get some experience writing collaboratively. Especially in TV and Film, more often than not scripts and screenplays are the product of a handful of people, not one individual with complete power. There are going to be differences in creative process, even mildly, and there were things that were cut or changed by one person that the other may have not agreed with, and vice versa. That doesn’t mean we were disrespectful towards one another’s interpretation of the story at all! We’re both adults, largely, and were able to compromise without anything even approaching argument. It’s important to be able to take and give criticism, especially when working on something like this. That’s just the process, and it works well.

Follow this Link to our PDF: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0Bz1eG58sdC3ISUxPMUZJTmJiUWM

I am not sure if this URL will work, if not, shoot me and email, and I will be happy to send you the PDF: ihawkesbot@gmail.com

Process Piece: The Band Practice

For our process piece, we decided to film Ian’s band, “Riveter’s Son”, during one of their practices as they worked on new material.  Filming a band writing a new song was an interesting experience.  There were so many different elements that were involved in the process.  Every member of the band contributed something essential to the process, whether it was setting up equipment, commenting on how the song should be played, or simply playing their instrument.    Listening to our audio recordings reminded me of the video “scriptures” by Dean Duncan.  In the video, even without looking at the video, you understand who is talking and you can picture all of the processes in your head simply by listening to the audio.  You can turn off the visual element to the video and still understand exactly what is going on.  We strove to do the same thing for our project.  We wanted the process to be presented unambiguously.  It wasn’t necessary to see the band members warming up or talking or playing their instruments because the sounds told the story.  By focusing on the audio elements of the songwriting process, we were able to create an image of a band at work solely through audio storytelling.

Editing the video together was exciting and introduced me to a new type of media I was unfamiliar with but enjoyed immensely. The advantage of audio editing, is that there is a great deal of freedom with how the clips are arranged, as the listener cannot notice discrepancies within the timeframe. This allows the audio editor to completely tell the story, often doubling up tracks or adding in pauses for emphasis, and I discovered in our case that one could actually make the audio more ‘realistic’ by editing. An actual two minute segment of the practice would not have portrayed the practice well, but a two minute piece constructed of many small elements from the whole two hours gave the full picture. It reminded me of my childhood, listening to Prairie Home Companion, especially the ‘Guy Noir’ line, and being enthralled with stories that are just words, music, and sounds. Other shows, like ‘This American Life’ and ‘Radiolab’ have absolutely brilliant editing, and epitomize audial storytelling at its greatest.

Ian Hawkes
Steven Olson

https://soundcloud.com/riveters-son/apartment-practice-january-29th-2015

Round Robin

Charlie Cutlass, fraudulent IRS worker, is arrested and dropped in the Alaskan tundra with 10 other inmates to learn teamwork.

 Charlie and his 10 new friends stand around staring at each other to determine for

themselves who will die first.

What Charlie didn’t know is that 5 of his new friends were Choki natives, which

communicated solely by eyebrow expressions.

Suddenly Charlie found himself acutely self-conscious about his own eyebrows. Was he moving them in a polite manner?

Charlie rushed to a mirror and prodded his eyebrows, concerned that his expression would give him away. 

According to DJ Spooky, “there is on one way of seeing anything,” (pg. 9) this claimrang true as we collaborated on a set of group mini-series. Our round robin experience compares well to an exquisite corpse.  What struck me about DJ Spooky’s essay was how he compared the parlor game that the exquisite corpse began as, to the current way the world processes, compiles and stores data (pg. 12).  This project was similar to DJ Spooky’s analysis of Pandora (pg. 13). On Pandora, we hope for certain outcomes, much like when we began our round robins. 

However, Pandora is unable to interpret our wants from the small amount of information we 

give.  Some of the songs it presents are to our liking and others are not, but it continues to churn out songs, sometimes getting progressively further from the source.

This project, on a very small scale, echoes Bryan Pugh’s Star Wars Uncut project, which 

won PrimeTime Emmy in 2010 for Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media. The director, Bryan, broke down the film Star Wars: A New Hope into fifteen second segments, and asked thousands of internet users to recreate those fifteen seconds in their own way. Each person used their own style and interpreted the movie in their own way, and pieced together, the final product is much greater than the sum of its parts. The final effect is much like what we have here: a cohesive line that can be understood, but an individual artistic flair in each segment which cannot be missed. 

The creative process needs to accommodate adaptation. In the real world, projects could 

very well demand different things at different times from artists and collaborators. Deadlines can change and objectives can morph. I think that theme of adaptation is the strongest point of this assignment, as far as improving oneself is concerned. As we wrote our pieces, and prepared to illustrate them, we had to be ready to improve upon and inject individuality into the prompts set up by our peers. It was definitely interesting trying, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, to 

contribute to the thought processes of others.

Beyond the obvious communication technicalities, this assignment came with its own 

creative challenges. With all prior details a mystery, each of us was given immense creative 

leeway to take the story wherever we wanted it to go. The only constraints, generally speaking, were our resources in composing a visual representation and some kind of coherent link between the new and old story.  Of course taking into account the uniqueness and change of subject matter in each story, we all felt the creative restrictions and liberations while completing this assignment. 

        Collaboration can sometimes result in a more creative piece than if one person had done 

it alone.  Initially, the idea of writing a Tiny Story each day and provide an illustration seemed daunting. But it was surprisingly easier than anticipated, and by Friday my hesitations were gone due to the practice and experience.

Music Mosaic: Play Her Piano

The song 'Play Her Piano' by Glue is an innovative combination of historical and modern sounds. The main melody has the regality of a baroque piece, while the record scratching and digitalized drum beats slip a hip-hop rhythm between the piano strokes. 

The images I have placed with this piece only emphasize Glue's interesting dialogue between the old and the new. Glue cleverly plays the differing tones off of one another, excluding neither one nor the other, but showing that old can slip away to new. I wanted to show this interesting relationship between the past and the present in my images as well. I started by finding historical photographs, and then juxtaposing them with modern icons. The effect was startling and effective. 

I found that as I placed the images together, I discovered new and evocative meanings. Together, the images meant much more than they did on their own. As recovering blind patients met the world in a new way in 'Seeing' by Annie Dillard, I felt I had similar experiences as I encountered familiar images through a new context. Things which had only seemed two dimensional before suddenly popped into a much wider context, as they gained an element of historical dimension. In this way I think that the images are 'historically cubist'. They have the ability to show both sides of history at the same time, a sort of Photoshop Picasso. 

The images represent the music in many ways. First of all, I love that 'Play Her Piano' seems repetitive and almost glitchy, like a skipping record. I realized that history is often the same, coming back to the same places it left, just at a different time. The images I have placed together, though often very different in actuality, are emotionally linked. The trepidation and fear of college graduates relates to the uncertainty of soldiers fighting with their lives for a just cause, as the amazement at exploring the poles must have felt similar to exploring the vastness of space. The song also reminded me of a life story, beginning with a slow and simple beginning, and ending in an abrupt drone. However, as the piece seems to transform from old to new, I didn't want it to be the story of a life, but rather the bridge between lives. I placed a picture of an older woman first, passing on her history to the boy at the end, mouth open to receive it. The boy, much like us all, is taking these stories and understanding each one in the context of his modern, boyhood, world. Though we of this generation are unfamiliar what it would have been like to live in the past, we can compare it to the things that we have experienced, and are able to give our history emotional meaning. 

Thinking and Writing

Tomb Raider: The Believable Killer

With such stiff competition as Zelda, Samus, and a literal endless number of armor-clad gun-wielding heroines, it’s no small honor that Lara Croft was recognized as the most successful human virtual game heroine by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2006. Since the release of the original Tomb Raider game nineteen years ago, the pistol wielding super-woman has paraded her short shorts through eleven video games, two feature films, a number of comic books, and several theme park rides. In March of 2013, Square Enix rebooted the series with the release of the most recent game, titled simply Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider is not only a reboot of Lara Croft’s storyline, but is also a reexamination of her character. Visually, narratively, and ideologically, Lara Croft has changed from the pixelated fleshy blob of 1996 to a relatable human being. However, Square Enix’s fantastic graphics and candid plotline may unintentionally alarm more than it delights. Tomb Raider invites us to judge this new Lara as a responsible agent as opposed to a morally untouchable oddity, which has its challenges.

The first major change to the Lara of 2013 is a noticeable desexualization. The short shorts, which have stuck with Lara through the preceding seventeen years, have been replaced with more practical work pants. Thanks to sophisticated(and frankly gorgeous)motion capture technology, Square Enix is finally able to present us with a beautiful yet anatomically correct Lara Croft, a drastic improvement from her earlier designs, which were disturbingly over sensualized. One of Tomb Raider’s most unique improvements is its attention to the detailed grime, sweat, and blood which collect on Lara as she works her way through combat filled jungles and caves. The overall effect is a heroine who is not the unrealistically super-powered robot of before, but a real living woman.

This is a welcome development for those bothered with the Tomb Raider Franchise’s oversexualization of women, but the full effect that this realist development has on Tomb Raider as a whole must be carefully considered. Though virtually all encourage embracing realistic representations of capable women as role models, does Square Enix’s humanification of Lara go far enough to make her a fully redeemable character? To answer this question, a closer look at the narrative is required.

Tomb Raider takes place upon an uncharted island, where Lara’s exploration boat has crash landed. Lara must survive in a jungle full of natural dangers and psychopathic cultists. She begins the game, weeping, and wounded, in a position of weakness. Slowly building her confidence, she finds a bow which she uses to defend herself from packs of wolves, but refuses to use her tool as a weapon against human enemies. Up to this point, Lara is extremely easy to relate with. We can see ourselves as Lara, panicking to survive through a situation of intense trauma.

About thirty minutes into the game, Tomb Raider takes a drastic shift, as Lara is accosted by one of her captors, who she must kill with his own handgun. The scene is graphic and appropriately startling, and Lara falls to the ground, dry heaving in shock. At this point, we bond with Lara on a moral level. We can imagine, or at least sympathize with, what she must be feeling. The image of Lara Croft, bleeding, mud splattered, and crying on all fours, is a boldly realistic and arguably positive move for the Tomb Raider franchise.

Unfortunately, what may be the most beautiful moment in all of the Tomb Raider games combined, quickly becomes problematic. Seconds after going into near shock over her first experience as a killer, Lara holsters the pistol and assumes the role like a pro. Within minutes she has more than quadrupled her body count, and as the game progresses she goes on to kill literally hundreds more. By the end of the game, she masters gruesome ‘finishing’ and ‘stealth takedown’ moves using an ice pick, rendered in startling gratuity. The human Lara, who was once so familiar, has become a killing machine.

The effect on the gameplay is disturbing. Lara, who you feel is so much like yourself, is killing with confidence and ease. This differs greatly from most other popular shooting games, where the main character is undeveloped or mostly unimportant(Call of Duty, Battlefield)or is pre-established as an experienced killer(Halo, Assassins Creed). More than these other games, where the main character is either ambiguous or live in such a different world it is excusable, you feel responsible for the killing when you play Tomb Raider. Which in the case of a game which becomes so violent, must be examined and criticized seriously. Tomb Raider, through its strong and remarkable attention to realism, has unfortunately made Lara Croft an unredeemable character.

The reason for the drastic change in style is unclear, as well as the effect it has has had on its players. Video game forums are full of questions about why Square Enix moved Tomb Raider from a fast-paced puzzle game to a full-fledged combat game. Perhaps the recent trend in media to take a more candid approach to war-related trauma inspired Square Enix. Maybe a combination of motion capture technology together with increased demand for video game violence created an unfortunately realistic combination. In any case, Lara Croft’s future does not look much different from her past. A recently released trailer for Rise of the Tomb Raider(2015) shows Lara coping with psychotherapy. Though pleasantly realistic, as anyone returning from the hell of Tomb Raider would most certainly need therapy, the preview becomes as problematic as the previous game. Unbeknownst to her therapist, it appears that Lara is coping with her trauma by going on more adventures, which, the preview does not hesitate to remind us, involves more stealth kills. As 21st century gamers, we are finally confronted with video games that give us shockingly realistic representations of life. It’s high time we started thinking about the effect this may have on our previously morally untouchable virtual heroes.