Photo essay Revisted

ABOUT THE ROUGHT DRAFT

SORRY TEAM MEMBERS I'M BEING A BAD TEAM MEMBER AND DON'T HAVE A DRAFT.  LOOKS LIKE I'LL BE UP TO A LOT OF GOOD WORK TUESDAY THROUGH THURSDAY, HOPEFULLY.  ENJOY THE OTHER PROJECTS, for now.

Infographic

What I struggled with most was really defining what exactly constitutes an info-graphic.  I had an idea in my head about how I wanted to make the readers eyes move and the general style that I would make use of in line, but i wasn't exactly sure it would count.  The biggest thing I left out was in my own assessment was that there needs to be visual statistical data.  

Another trial was working in the mode of free hand drawing.  When i was a kid my best friend i grew up with was amazing from a young age with his use of line, and it made me feel stupid and behind (kid's a graphic designer in cali now).

The electronic thing that took me the longest to work out was how to actually make a pdf.  Never had done that before let alone post it in high resssssssssssss.... o yeah.

Video Video and GAMES

I was interested in the how predecessors to the internet was mentioned.  The highways were a good example but I would have liked to hear a short shout out to electricity's best friend... COPPER! The copper highways and mass amount of the ore is surrounding us everyday, it's right in our pockets.  Bozeman is lucky to be close to Butte in regards to how we can notice the physicalness of mining in products and by-products by way of mining and smelting.  

I guess i started thinking about the networking of this class and how more of our discussion is held online...not everyone speaks in class...I hardly ever do.  It made me think about the change in cultures when humanity went from oral culture to written culture and now with the connection and community of the web and the video writing in its traditional sense is shadowed by a new wave of presenting yourself without purely long diction but in video and sound with body language and all as the awkward British guy said.  What if we did video responses to all of this?  When I'm told to go write my blog or even just blog i still think of sitting down to peck at some light up keyboard.  Maybe that's just me though.

The games and school idea was pretty interesting.  I usually have trouble getting along with reaayyuhl good grades but it seems to be very airy and in completeness I don't think I can explain it right now.  

 Just got back from work.  I'll try to get on before class again.

Getting Clearer

Our eyes have blind spots where our brains "fill in the gap" with what seems reasonable to the surroundings.  I guess that's how I see technology and its ability to record and store--just filling in the "uum" moments.  O yeah that's supposed to be right there.  A tool for a faster thinking and more accurate human.  Organic and technological computers together.

Sharing is Caring it can be Fun

When reading "Database and the Essay" all I could think about was the English language, or any for the matter.  If we didn't understand that we have to share English and the way it's used we wouldn't have much or anything.  What if someone could own the letter "S"?  Doesn't matter the font.  or if someone owned the sound "Ssssssssss"?  We'd be screwed.  But what happens when we really screw one person over from "remixes"?  James Brown's drummer Clyde Stubblefield is the most sampled drummer in rap and hip-hop music but he doesn't get anything for being the best.

It was also really interesting to me how there isn't a way in which we teach to write with or using intertexuality.  How are we supposed to say anything new without knowing how to speak and knowing what has been said?  How are we supposed to improve physics if we are islands?  What if Isaac Newton's work wasn't available for everyone?  What if the Qur'an or the Bible wasn't available or Harry Potter?  At what point do things become truly public?  And how do we deal/care about homage and compensation?  Is there an equaling value to it?  Does the elite fall a little?

Corn Lord

Broken Heart?

O YEAH! IT'S SATURDAY!

So there’s this font you’re looking at right now.  How important is it?  Can or does it somehow help my cause, in its visual presentation and message?  It’s really the question of “Why this there?”  I’d like to research my how text effects/affects it’s audience by its visual qualities and the methods in which marketing/campaigning is most effective to the purpose. 

I want to take a look around at fonts on event posters and fonts on local small business and differences between them.  There is a staggering amount of information just on Main Street, always.  The cool thing about event posters is their have a known life expectancy from the moment they are printed but a small business sign can really have both, a business card, or whatever type of a more permanent display of name that may be on the building…but should that text be uniform on the business card?  And I also have to be careful because what about a place like The Ellen?  They have a business sign that is an event poster but it is very blocky and bold while they also have business cards and additional event posters that are more dispensable, similar to a local band poster.  That’s a lot. 

I guess I would try to present it in a printable version that could also be viewed online?  Maybe have and actual band poster or two in the physical version and use a scroll in an electronic version of display?  Possibly be able to add audio?  I don’t really know if this is a good idea.  I hope I can get some help from you.

4:05 a,m,

            The story of my thing came from the original story of my thing.  At first I was confused at how to begin:  “Make a point”.  I had an internal “Awwww shit” momement.  What do I do with this?  Ok random assignment—that means music…

            But now what?  I sat down with a riff I liked, and then played all the parts.  Started with the drums—not my thang for you drummers out there but after 45 minutes I finally got the track.  No video.  Got the guitar and bass no problem.  No video.  I RECORDED ENTIRELY on GRAGEBAND and COMPUTER MICROPHONE.  Ha!  What an idiot. 

“Well I guess I was in a garage”. 

Placing the mic in different spots and changing the timbre and sustain of my instruments was vital to recording because of lack of audio controls and mic quality.  I could use my Wah Pedal for the chorus and ended up having to record multiple guitar tracks to deal with the transitions of the song and deal with the primitiveness of my materials (note primitive doesn’t mean simple…at least for me) for recording.  Everything sounds tiny, trebly, and somewhat flat. 

But I did this all on my own, striving for something along the lines of a Steve Albini approach, but clearly failing with the drum takes.  The money, equipment and software, and education that it takes to actually be able to produce even on an amateur level is extraordinary.  But most people have phones right?  Quality is a sass…Sometimes.  It can pay to know some people with gear and experience. 

Wait remember?  MAKE A POINT.  At first I wanted to make a video that showed me running for the whole time with a pen, as fast as I could, in one long clip to a piece of manuscript paper and finish the last note on it.  I procrastinated, and felt pretty nervous, so under pressure I made a video about bacon and it calmed me down.  I just let me do what I would do to make this thing a real thing.  Bacon, music, carnival style, weird wired and stoned in the garage.  But I did start with an original story, but this is what there is now!

If I could do anything differently I’d want to work with my friends.  Same humor, weirdness.  Sometimes I work well under stress.  I always say at the end of a project start sooner. 

I know I’d rather just make some one laugh, than smart stuff out or what not.

As a thinker I think I should do more of these things.


i swear my computer says four ahyehm.

Sex and Gender in Oral and Written Language

When reading Jamieson all I could think about was sex and gender, and how essentially and sex can use either gender forms of communication in language.  The masculine being described as logical, task-orientated, strong, effective, and to the point while feminine characteristics of communication tend to be emotionally expressive, residing in the "heart", and soft in nature.  Any boundary made will be bounded over... I think.  So I began to imagine some type of spectrum containing the masculine and feminine qualities of communication on either side, and the particular combinations of the two in between to understand the usefulness its variations may produce for different social situations.  But there's a lot of culture out there stifling its potential.  Simple things as "boys don't cry", or "you throw like a girl".  

Another thing that grabbed my attention was the way in which sexes differ in the timbre of voice.  High pitched voices are feminine while lower voices are masculine.  I couldn't help but think of middle school band and how girls play the flute or clarinet, both softer spoken and higher pitched instruments, while boys play the tuba or trombone, low, loud and brassy (ALL GENERALIZATIONS).  However, there were some mixtures of sexes in the saxophones, trumpets, and french horns.  (There was one female trombonist and one male clarinetist).  What I find interesting here is that these particular instruments, some in which contain different voices of instrument such as the tenor sax compared to alto, have a wide range of voice and ability to change the shape of the sound from a high growl to a low soft wave (SAX).  Or from insane brightness and loudness (TRUMPETS) to small sustained whisper.  But what i guess i find even cooler is that music has an ability to portray emotions and/or stories through communication that can be easily identified as feminine or masculine, and the range at which any composer of any form of gender can express or show a wide range of emotion from the masculine or feminine.  Does this mean music is feminine in nature because it is expressive mostly, even if it is a war chant? It's also strange how "Ode to Joy" is played at some remarkable events in humanity whether they seem atrocious or beneficial to society.  

Just some thought...peace

THE PIG

Reading/Pictures/Viewing/Words/Lines/Mirage?

By now you've noticed the lines above.  How do we read this?

Do you read it as a whole image noticing the bike or do you notice the letters then words?

Where do you first look?

Does it make anyone think of sounds?


It's kind of an interesting relationship, turning the words of an object into an image of the object.  I mean this is how kids are taught through association and experiential association with words and worldly objects, at first sound to sight--speaking and revealing (or pointing to) a visible object of reality--but then from representational image of an image (a word) to iconic memory like the physical word on a page such as "cardinal" to the imagined "cardinal".  Then from representational image to echoic memory like the sentence "A played middle c on the piano", but this second association can only happen for us only if we know what middle c is and what a sounds a piano makes, just like we need to know what a cardinal looks like to imagine it, but because we first translated sounds to image.  Mostly, i bet you imagined the iconic piano when you thought of the piano's timbre even if you don't know how to hum middle c.  Image can help display sound as sound can help display image.

What I notice is that you only need one word to describe what all these words are together--bike, but when I see the word bike my imagination takes me somewhere other than the image I am presented here, or rather multiple images that can be interpreted as one.  The bike I imagine is red when the bike I own is yellow and purple.  What kind of association is this?  have i just seen more red bikes or is there a  metaphysical bike that is surely red?  What color of bike do you see when you read the word bike?

I dunno if this is at all helpful with what weve got going on with comics but i find it somewhat fun to explore... peace.

Invisible Art

I've read some graphic novels, or comics, before (Sin City, The Watchmen).  During high school, I had some friends that really enjoyed filming movies and writing scripts and they highly respected some comics because, to them, a comic was the ultimate storyboard.  It could show every camera angle, scene, piece of clothing, all dialogue, colors, and actions between characters.  I think I can understand why my friends held them in revere for the benefit of film... the entire movie is imagined and worked out on a physical page where moments in space and time are easily navigated among.  But comics can work with readers more than a movie (vice versa), or perhaps be more intimately involved with one another, or just maybe, comics offer more freedom to the reader. 

An important first fact is that comics are purely visual in form and require more imagination than film.  In a movie the sound of a tea kettle whistling is projected for the audience where rather in a comic you have to imagine the timbre of the hum.  Interestingly in cartooning or animation, all sound must be recorded to fit the images or actions.  McCloud writes on the difference between movies and comics, "Each successive frame of a movie is projected on exactly the same space--the screen--while each frame of comics must occupy a different space.  Space does for comics what time does for film" (McCloud 7).  

I guess one thing I find interesting about all this is that the creator has to guide our eyes on the page to the line that is the story, and a page in a comic can really start anywhere.  Even though reading right to left and top to bottom is standardized for western readers the comic can throw it out the window... see page 106.  The flow of every page can be different and twisting but it also relies on a lucid creator and an able reader, because too much abstraction in this particular tool could cause it to be undecipherable.  Space is also effected in the comic by the different frames, speech bubbles, and the gutters in between. That then leads to how time is manipulated by space in comics.  It somewhat reminds me of how music uses space.  Music has its own gutters which are called rests.  With out space in between notes, melodies, or phrases, there would only be constant tones and no rhythm to move time along, just like the breaks in frames.  Without it both art form would be stuck in one moment or space.  

The "Invisible Art" is like a good B.B. King quote, "Sometimes it's not what you play, it's what you don't play."  The space in between has to be there.  (I'll try to expand more on space in comics tomorrow).

What do we call what we do?

I think possibly a way to start to define what we are calling our writing when produced through multiple mediums and presented in multiple mediums is an acknowledgement of how many forces are at work in the fundamental blocks that support the entirety of the work.  These fundamental blocks, as I will call them here, are the multiple ways in which a worker works for the collectiveness of one piece.  There has to be a cameraman for every camera and a musician, or speaker, for every microphone, an editor for every piece of audio, an editor for every piece of film, and a storyteller for every idea.  A way to begin to determine the type of writing and the way people are writing is to step back and just look at who and what are happening in the piece to make it a complete piece.  So if we can step back and notice how many forms of different writing make up the piece, I would guess that maybe the next part of what was going on in production, is how many people are involved with the piece and how many people are intellectually involved with the idea or underlying meaning of what is produced?  If there is a conglomerate of writers, should the piece fall under a different category of final product?  Maybe? I don't know.  Should it be considered something more, or different if one person is behind a production?

But lets say that someone just records a video of themselves and sends it to their mom instead of writing a letter to say hello.  They are the creators of all of the aspects of that product, but a product such as this lacks intellectual potency or a degree of "literariness".  There is no value for humanity behind it.  So when it is possible for most any person to create product that encompasses many forms of recording so easily, another step in defining what we are doing is the question, "what can this product shed light on?"  What does it tell us that we need to know.  It's sort of like making the difference between the cannon of literature and dime novels.  While there is nothing wrong with the dime novel, it holds nothing essential for humanity.  James Baldwin wrote something along the lines that only a good artist is telling its society what's wrong with its functions.  So to judge the value of a work by what it can do for the good of us all is not a new idea and should be considered when trying to interpret what it is that we engage in when we produce an idea into modern modes of presentation.

I guess that then to sum it all up is to say that when looking into the works of presentation and production we have to acknowledge how many genres of production are used in the product and how many people are involved in the production and what is the purpose or usefulness of the product to those that interpret it.  But what do we call it, this newer form of presenting ideas? I just want to put a string of words together like "multi-scriptural production" or "modarts" for multiple modes of art together at once.  Some brand new word I think is in need here, unfortunately it is not one that falls place so easily like "googling".

Stories

Every thing's a story because if nothing happens there is no story or you.  Power through story is manipulative-ability.  You can tell the truth or lie outright to get what you want.  We seem to find truth easier to handle in mathematics.  With calculus anyone can find the story of a line--the truth of the line.  But when you order a 100% beef hamburger from a restaurant how do you know it's 100% beef?  The power in a story is that it has believability.  If everything has an origin, then every move that thing made is a chapter, page, phrase, or word in the whole of its own story.  And of course it's always happening and changing and since we're human and don't have instantaneous truth checking machines for every situation we have to have some margin of just believing.  The only reason the dollar is worth a dollar is because everyone believes it is, and surely the dollar has its story. 

It's all about ME