Taste the sound of a second - Hear the Smell of a Moment

I'm going to admit that I had a really hard time with this assignment. I ran through several thoughts before I finally settled on the one that I did and even then, I feel like more could have been taken away from it. 

Every day I go on a two mile walk along the White River Trail. Usually on this little jaunt I mold ideas for my stories or art or ruminate on any issue that may be dragging me down. However, yesterday I decided to take that time and dedicate it to my assignment. So instead of spending the trail in my head, I concentrated on how the walk felt. I began to notice the position of the sun, the strength of the wind, the tightening in my chest from seasonal allergies beginning to affect me. I noticed the way my shoes rubbed on my feet and how my right leg began to pull (because technically that leg is crooked, but that's another entry). The end result is mapped:

So I got the "use another sense" thing down, but the whole "experiment  with time" aspect was kind of neglected. Unless you count that the trip is a circle in which case I both started and ended at point A, putting a circular path in a linear timeline. But I feel like that really doesn't count. So instead I have another example of playing with time.

Electro Swing is a music genre that takes music from the Swing era (1940-ish) and adds a dance beat to it. This video illustrates that well since the dance style is also a hip hop/swing mix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FALYmqt-7TQ

This shows time play by taking the style of the past and remaking it to fit into today's atmosphere.

So touch and anachronisms: that's my "Tasting the sound of a second." 

 

Class Take-Away 7

In class we talked about needing new friends, and while a few people laughed, I took it to heart. Because not to long ago I had to do the same thing.
My high school friends were known to my family as The Pound because we had nothing in common except that none of us had any friends. So we adopted each other. But it's hard to have friends who have nothing in common and try to still hang out and do things and on top of that, none of these people - myself included - were good at communication. I was left to plan everything and then wait and watch as some of them showed up late or not at all, or would have to leave in the middle of something, or never get back to me period. It was frustrating. And I hated that that was what my only friendships amounted to.
But then I came to college and something bizarre happened. People came to what I planned, they wanted to hang out, and we all communicated what our problems with the plan were. It was amazing! These were real friends. So to anyone who is in that boat, I want you to know that it is possible. It is absolutely possible to make new friends, and believe me, it's wonderful when you do. I know it's tough, but try not to be scared. And it will take time, but it's a relief when it happens.    
How will this help creatively? When you have people around you who are true friends, who support you, you become willing to try new things, experiment. I had never done a digital painting before college and when my friend let me borrow her tablet, I instantly fell in love with it. If I hadn't had made this new friend, I would have never found what I want to do for the rest of my life. And that's a pretty big help creatively.

And yes, sometimes it can feel like this.

Breakin' Rules

During freshman year I began to write what would later become the first book in a trilogy. Now when I committed those first words to paper, I had no idea that it would blossom into this thing encompassing years of my life and endless ideas to fill over nine hundred pages. However, the point is not the book; the point is that during those years and multiple pages, I became tuned in to grammatical structure. In short, nine hundred plus pages makes you a grammar Nazi. Now I carry a pen with me everywhere to put commas in where they are missing and harp on the usage of semicolons.
Grammar became hardwired into my brain.
So for my "breaking rules" assignment, I decided to break something that is close to sacred to me. I wrote an entry that purposely breaks some of the fundamentals of grammar: punctuation, capitalization, verb-tense agreement, and proper uses of homophones such as there and their. 

(Because of spell check and the like, I had to put it on paper. Sadly the end result just looks like the average post on Facebook.)
This experiment nearly killed me, and I failed it the first (and second and third) time. I capitalized letters at the beginning of sentences and added periods and commas. Grammar is so second nature to me that breaking it was not only painful, but a real struggle. Now obviously a repercussion of this is that one has a wicked hard time trying to read it; there's no structure to it to give the reader any flow. However, it was a good exercise in that, because I kept messing up, I know that my grammar skills are still sharp and honed.      
   

Good news, everyone. Class take-away 6 is here.

From a first look, sneak peek, at Age of Ultron, to finding out the Fraction's Hawkeye series is ending, to seeing Futurama's skyline re-imagined in beautiful 3-D, the past twenty-four hours have been a geeky, emotional roller coaster. Coupled with a reaction to Facebook post I received yesterday, and I've been all over the map.
But I'd like to talk about that Facebook post and how it connects to the class.
Critical thinking came up once or twice yesterday and I'd like to make that my class take-away because I applied it. To me, this class is about asking why, about going deeper into what makes us tick. And in the case of that post, it was more like ticked off.
You've probably seen it floating around on your feed: one girl tags some friends to post five pictures that makes them feel beautiful and then they're supposed to tag others. My newsfeed was littered with these particularly patterned posts, and when I got tagged to do it, I became furious.
But instead of just logging out and sulking the rest of the day, I applied those critical thinking skills and the mindset of the class and asked myself "why." Why did this post make me so angry? Was it because I'd seen so much of it all day long? Was it the idea that all these girls (and it was like 95% girls) were following a trend like a bunch of sheep? Was it because I didn't have any pictures that I thought made me feel beautiful? Answer to that:  Maybe...
Now, I'm not very photogenic (and I say that in the sense that I think I've taken maybe three good pictures in my life - excluding professionally done senior photos) and being the photographer in the family meant that I spent far more time behind the camera than in front of it. So I don't have the "selfie" gene that seems to be manifesting in my age group. And is that why I was so pissed off? Yes. Because these girls were posting pictures of themselves. Some had friends and family in them, but the main subject was THEM.  (Please do not take offense if you did this on Facebook. If you have photos that make you feel beautiful, awesome! Don't let me stop you.)
Okay, so, I didn't post my five pics, but I got thinking about it, and if I did, I probably would have posted pictures of my art. Because that's what makes me feel beautiful. My art is my soul and as long as I keep making things I genuinely love, then my soul is happy, so my work is good, and the cycle goes on. And that's the part I want to keep in mind for my future artistic endeavors. That it's okay to make something that's awful, as long as I don't let it get to my soul too much. Because I know I've made some pieces I've very proud of. And those pieces are the ones that make me feel beautiful. So thank you, critical thinking, for allowing me to arrive to that conclusion. And thank you, Seeing Sideways, for nurturing that skill.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go attend a funeral for the best comic book series ever. (You may leave condolences in the comments below.)    

50 "What Ifs"

What if I…

1.       Bind it up with twine

2.       Chew it up

3.       Wash it with the laundry

4.       Wash it with the dishes

5.       Cook it in a skillet

6.       Put it in the dryer

7.       Doodle on it like a kindergartener

8.       Watch TV with it

9.       Use it to silence my roommate’s dying fire alarm (BEEP!)

10.   Write a radio play about it on it

11.   Microwave it (is it safe to microwave this?)

12.   Turn it into a flip book

13.   Put it in the freezer (Like Captain America)

14.   Put make-up on it

15.   Burry it next to where some dog buried a bone

16.   Leave it on the bus

17.   Make paper cranes out of it

18.   Dunk it in milk like an Oreo

19.   Hack it into pieces

20.   Spit on it

21.   Fold it up with the laundry

22.   Make it into mini books

23.   Hang it on the laundry line

24.   Mail it to the president

25.   Drive over it repeatedly

26.   Wipe it down with bleach

27.   Sew the pages together

28.   Post it online

29.   Cover it in glue and put it on the ceiling

30.   Make it into a greenhouse

31.   Cover it in glitter

32.   Weave it into the blinds

33.   Use it as an umbrella

34.   Make it into a sandwich

35.   Make it into a necklace

36.   Stomp on it

37.   Clean the toilet with it

38.   Vacuum it up

39.   Hand it out like flyers

40.   Give it to a homeless man

41.   Let it swim with the fishes

42.   Put it in a hole with seeds and let plants grow from it

43.   Scatter it over the floor of an elevator

44.   Make it into a ton of paper airplanes

45.   Turn it into business cards

46.   Make it into a parachute

47.   Use it as Kleenexes

48.   Cover it in smiley faces

49.   Melt crayons on it

50.   Give it away page by page at Halloween

Taketh away the number of five

The cave of wonders! Or something like that.
Despite having seen it before, the Cave is always cool. And with some of the new stuff that has been done on/with it, it just keeps getting cooler. And yes, the other stuff was incredibly neat too (and the reactions from those who tried it amusing) but the Cave is truly something that holds my interest. And while sitting there, watching people race and explore hunted houses, I got an idea…
I love digital painting. It's the amalgamation of what I've been taught about fine art + my admiration and interest in technology. It's fun and easy and it would be incredible to take a shot at this on four floor-to-ceiling surfaces. Imagine being able to paint on all surrounding surfaces. I guess you'd use the gyro mouse. But you could have three paintings next to each other, not just displayed, but done right there. You could have a preset pic of a sidewalk on the floor and then do chalk drawings on top of it. There could even be a level of performance to it. Paint to music, your body's motions captured on the canvases behind and below, layering it, changing color. And when it was all over, you could save or delete it.
So yeah, the Cave is what stood out to me today, and I might just get ahold of Chauncey (spelling isn't my strong suit) to see if this could be possible.

Who am I and why am I here?

Who am I and why am I here?

I find it funny that as soon as we are given an assignment that looks at our self-identity, I find a TV show to watch that deals with a man who knows everything there is to know in the world, but not one thing about himself. He calls himself John Doe (also the name of the show, 2002) and he knows everything from the current Yellow Pages to the first lines of Hamlet. But he doesn’t even know his own name, favorite color, what he likes to eat. He just woke up on an island off the coast of Washington state with all this knowledge and no idea where it, or he, came from.

A quick Google search comes up with several movies and TV shows about identity, whether it be mistaken, stolen, changed, or crisis, it seems that identity is a huge concept in storytelling. There were even both a movie and a TV show entitled Identity. Holes, The Giver, Charlotte’s Web, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, they are all listed as books that have a central theme of identity. Even the X-Men comics dabbled into the subject.  

So are we obsessed about finding out who we are? Do we feel that if these characters can achieve some sort of “found ID” that we can too?

I had a teacher in grade school who told us all that basic human needs include food, water, shelter, and the need to belong. Is that why we are so set on finding out who we are? What if when we find out we’ll know how to belong…

But that’s the catch. We can look out at other people and wish to know who we are so we can belong like them, but chances are they’re staring right back thinking the same thing. Who we are is not a destination; it’s a journey. Everything that happens to us helps shape our identity. And what happens to us later down the line will change us yet again.

For example, I was bullied in grade school and some in middle school. I spent most of high school without any friends. So today, I have a hard time believing that there are people who want to go and do something with me, to hang out with me. And I’m petrified that I’ll mess it up. So I try to be as receptive and supportive of my friends as I possibly can because I can’t afford to loose them. I also get a little jealous if I find out they spent time with someone else. I feel forgotten then. And I know it’s irrational and petty, but it's part of who I am. My past made that part of my identity. And there’s a good chance that something in the future will change it.

So the questions “who am I and why am I here” can only be applied to a single fixed point in time. Because if you ask me tomorrow, something could have happened that altered my identity even the slightest, but it still renders my previous answer as false. So who am I and why am I here today?

At this point in time I am a pioneer, and I’m here to travel along a path un-blazed by the masses. I’m here to belong to the few that are combining old and new. I want to bring together the ease of digital to the techniques and the looks of fine art. I want to paint with pixels, sculpt with wires, write words on a blank screen instead of blank page. And most of all, I want people to recognize what I do as real art.

Who am I? A digital artist.

Why am I here? To let the world know it.

But ask me tomorrow. You might have a totally different answer.