Visula Symbols, take 2

A while back I did a little exercise where I examined the visual symbols that are prevalent in my life. It's not a bad post, you should go back and read it.   Well, this time I have another round of new ones.

By KMJ

1.  Bottlecaps.
A very good friend of mine is about to graduate, and I'm going to miss him terribly.  Before he's leaving though, he gave me an old table that he and I spent about a year collecting bottlecaps to cover the top.  So many of them are mine that I can look back and think, "when did I have that?" and I'll remember.  I spent so much time asking people for caps when we together that I can remember who I was with at the time when I look at the table:  The Guiness Extra Stout I had with my Dad over the Four of July, The Miller Chills from my little brother's graduation party last May, the Goose Island IPA I bought when we had our barbecue. 

The Bottlecaps represent the time I've spent with the people I love.  Its a chronology of the good times I've had with them over the last couple of years, and it makes the table more than just a cool conversation piece.

All nostalgia aside, it is a pretty rad table, though.

2.  Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic, from the video games made by Sega back in the nineties.  Don't pretend you've never played.  I played a lot of Sonic Games back on the Sega Genesis, back when there was a lot at stake by making a choice, either you chose Mario, and Played Nintendo, or you played Sonic and the Genesis.  Such a simple time, the nineties.

It was kind of sad to see Sega stop making consoles in the early 2000's, to watch Sonic fade out of popularity as Sega tried in vain to recapture what made the games so much fun when they were 2D.  Sonic is kind of my symbol for the loss of optimism that began as I grew up, and the slow fade into being an adult, and losing what made your childhood so fun.  I probably put way too much emphasis on my past.

3.  Cottonwood Trees

About a week after I graduated high school, I moved out of my house and out to South Dakota.  I worked in the state parks, and I was always kind of in awe of these huge trees along the river.

This semester I had a Personal Essay class, and when it came time to write an essay on place, I wanted to write about my time in Pierre.  I never could get the essay right, but every time I tried, my mind chanted, The cottonwoods, the cottonwoods.  There was something about them that represents being on my own for the first time, finding somewhere to call home. 

Propaganda

I recently did a project with a friend of mine about Propaganda, and one of the most remarkable things I found through the research were George Orwell's words, "All art is essentially propaganda."  He wrote it in a review of T. S. Eliot's Poetry, and it was kind of a throw away line, but he really has a point.  Is it possible to separate the art from its creator, or does it always gleam through?

Orwell himself wasn't exactly subtle.

It s a pretty interesting idea, at least, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing by any means, it just means that we have to be careful and consider where the things that we consume comes from.

Also, it is my birthday tomorrow.  Kickass.

Saving the World

We recently pitched our idea to the class for our company, SunSpots, LLC.  Here, for the we gave everyone an opportunity to be a part of our future, perhaps as a species, and became filthy rich in the process.  The presentation was fun, but I don't know if the idea is going to catch on . . .

I just don't understand why . . .

It was really cool to see the other groups ideas too, everyone had such different ideas, from skits to posters and plays.  and while I'm disappointing we didn't win, we still had a great time making the project.

Nothing quiet says "fun" like Libel!

Gaming. The Battle for our future. (Cue dramatice thunder)

I'm torn.  I've watched Jane McGonagal's lecture on how Gaming can save our future, on how it can make us better people, and I've seen Seth Priebatsch's lecture on the way we'll be creating a level of gaming directly on top of our culture over the next few years.  I really love this idea, because, you know, reality is kind of boring as hell.  Gaming has the potential to create an augmented reality, a hypereality lumped on top of our own that can, and indeed is, exciting and may make us better human beings.

Pictured:  Reality.

The problem I have is this, and it shows in Priebatsch's lecture a little, but it is completely ignored in McGonagal's: that games are a great way to make money.  Off of you.  While you're playing.  It costs 15 bucks a month to keep a WoW account, and in 2008 they had 10 Million subscribers.   10 million people they have to keep playing.  10 Million people they need to keep playing in order to continue to sleep on pillows made of money.  Money they can use to buy cocaine, and possibly hookers.  So in to fund their hypothetical cocaine addictions, they turn to sneaky, underhanded ways to keep you playing.

All businesses, once they get to be too big and profitable, will eventually start using less than reputable techniques to control your money, but if this business is going to be built on top of the very fabric of reality, then they will, in effect, control your entire life.

As Spike Lee once said, "if you can control the media, you control the country" (or something very much to that effect--google it), so if this new media will be our entire reality, what kind of ethics can we expect from the companies controlling our interactive media?

The Media Narrative and Culture

This isn't a new Idea.  I personally like to hear people who are funnier than I am talk about it.  The idea is that media, any media, controls us by presenting news as a story, and that story is all we're going to hear about.  Ever.  Oh, yeah, and this.

I think I can present this argument in the study of a single person, namely, John Singleton.

This dude.  As seen in an expertly taken picture by Bobak Ha'Eri.

John Singleton is a director.  And he's a pretty good one, or he was, I guess.  The point is that he made two movies in the early nineties called Boyz n the Hood and Higher Learning.  I submit that these movies as evidence for the danger of the single story.

Boyz is an awesome movie.  Singleton takes time to create characters and give each of them specific desires and motives, and each is different (Except for in the first half, when he's just doing Stand by Me).  The point is that I come away from that movie not feeling like I understand the culture of urban LA because its so complex.  This complexity is a mixture of poverty, social pressures, and competing personalities.  It seems real because Its taken from life, and is subtle and honestly crafted after Singleton's own experiences.

However, when Singleton tried to reclaim that same feeling with Higher Learning a few years later. Here Singleton actively drafted from stereotypes and crammed them together like a toddler playing with brown Scultpty clay and cat poop.  All the white people are Nazis, or Lesbians.  Last time I checked, I really didn't identify with either.  He's got THE Black athlete and THE Black stoner, so kudos for simplifying your own race, John.

No cowboys?  huh.  What about a pirate?  Where's their representation?

The movie, then comes up short.  Its not believable.  I don't know if its because of the blatant mixing of bad characters or the blatant mixing of stupid stereotypes of different ethnicities, but it didn't work.

Why, God? Why?

I think its because we, as culturally biased people, don't understand one another.  I know, I know, its simplistic, but I think its true.  Worst of all, we think we do.

Maybe someday we can all back up, look at the world, and collectively shrug.  And then the golden age of World peace can begin.



Cowboy Photo by Matthew Trump copyright 2004.  For funnier raging at the media visit Fatboy Roberts' Blog here.

Creativity and School

I recently watched Tim Brown's Lecture on creativity in children at play, as well as Sir Ken Robinson's Lecture on the idea of schools killing creativity.  Both of these short presentations left me with a slight sinking feeling in my gut, which I quickly dismissed as general crippling fear of the future (Due to my unwarranted and unearned crotchetiness), but it led me down a a very honest sort of thought process.

Me, circa 1995.  Was anyone ever so young and naive?   (Photo by M@rg.  I was surprised to see me on Wikimedia Commons, too.)

 A lot of the criticism in this area (and I hear a whole lot of it, being an education student), comes from bashing the very idea of curriculum.  And also teachers.  Theorists really hate teachers.

And so, presumably, do cartoonists.

Now I understand why people hate both of these ideas.  My parish priest once told me that when he was in college, those who couldn't hack it in the major programs would default into an education program.  I've had some apathetic teachers, sure, but for every terrible teacher, I had at least one (maybe one point five) teachers who were caring, and even encouraging.  Maybe I was lucky, but I'm not ready to write off America's Teachers just yet.
So is it Curriculum that's to blame?  I'm not ready to say that yet either.  Our standards are their to prepare students.  These are good standards, they make good, or at least proficient humans.  So if we have good teachers and good curriculum, what's the problem?

I think it's fear of failure.

And I think that because we want our students to be creative, but when they try something original, and it doesn't conform to the rubric or grading scale or whatever schools use, then those students get Bs.  If they do it well.  Or they fail.  We don't grade on creativity.  We're involuntarily discouraging it.

Art and I have a long awaited heart-to-heart

I've never been an "Art Person", per se.  And especially not a high-minded modern art kinda guy.  You see, Modern Art and I have an agreement:  if I stay away from Art, art agrees to stop keeping me awake at night with horrible doubts about my sanity and the nature of humanity.  Because who needs that?  Not me. 

Dammit, Marcel Duchamp, We had a deal!

I didn't come to this conclusion lightly.  Exit through the Gift Shop helped a lot.  So did the fact that Jackson Pollack exists, and that guy who made a cross out of pee.  If that is art, then I really, really have better things to do. 

However, I recently learned about the basics of aesthetic theory, and the different ways in which people can appreciate art and the principle which make things pleasing to the eye.  Now this is where my life and art begin to intersect.  See, I've made no secret of the fact that I absolutely love webcomics.  I fritter away hours sifting through the archives of amazingly animated, fantastically creative comics like Sam Logan's Sam and Fuzzy, Kate Beaton's Hark a Vagrant!, Evan Dahm's Order of Tales, Jeffery Rowland's Wigu and Overcompensating, Scott Kurtz's PvP, Penny Arcade, Kris Straub's Starslip, and Dresden Codak's Bad Science.

I know that sounds like a lot, but to be honest that's probably not even half of them. My god, I've just outed myself as a massive nerd.  It was bound to happen, I guess.  But the point is, these are all beautiful.  In order for me to follow a webcomic, I have to be sure of the artist's chops.  Now I can recognize and verbalize what I like about each comic, each style:  I can understand the use of continuity and composition in each frame.  I'm no critic, but I'm no longer illiterate to the art that actually goes into something I love and enjoy everyday. 

You may have hurt me in the past, Art, but I'm willing to to make this work if you are.  C'mere, ya big lug!

But not You, Jackson Pollack!  You make painting like baby.