Concerned Citizen



I really enjoyed making this project, mostly because of my discovery that one of my close friends is actually a “concerned citizen.” Finding someone to document was intimidating and proving difficult, until my friend, Kate, told me just got back from adjudicating a children’s string festival (unfortunately, she didn’t mention this before she went, otherwise we could’ve documented part of the actual process). Being an elementary education major, her cause in the community is children’s music education and giving every child the opportunity to experience creating music. She’s also volunteered in kindergarten class rooms and plans to incorporate music and rhythm into her future classroom. Although she is still busy with college, she finds little ways to contribute to children’s music education, like with the Suzuki competition.

Being naturally musical herself, our video focuses on Kate’s passion for music which has translated into her other passion—teaching children. To avoid a sit-down interview video, we included many cut-aways of her singing and playing (also, we missed the actual Suzuki competition, so decided to film her performing instead). In retrospect, we wish we had asked her what her opinion is of current public school music education and if she would like to change anything in the curriculum or program.

Our outside source of inspiration came from the experience of watching many interview-type videos through many different sources, but for me I particularly drew upon the “I am a Mormon” videos. These videos are able to both gather information about the subject’s opinion and capture their personality, allowing the viewer a glance into their life. By connecting with the subject on a personal level, you’re more likely to be sympathetic to whatever cause they are pushing for. For Alexis, she drew upon a film she saw at Sundance called Private Violence and the way it incorporated voice over elements.

I personally am very passionate about this subject, which is partially why we decided to interview Kate. Every child should be exposed to music, both in study and creation, just as much as drawing and other forms of art. As Arlene Goldbard’s article states, “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Not only is it beneficial for children to learn musically, but it is our responsibility as the older generation to bring opportunities to participate in culture to the younger generation. The arts, including music, teach sympathy for others and tighten the bonds of communal identification as they express the human condition. “Artists expand social imagination, helping us envision the transformations we hope to bring about, stimulating our thoughts and feelings toward the new attitudes and ideas that will drive recovery” (Goldbard 22).

Game for Change

My Game! -- http://www.sploder.com/?s=d00422nm

My Social Issue: Treating deafness as a disease or disability, and mis-educating deaf children.

“At least ninety percent of deaf and hard of hearing children are born to hearing parents who usually want their children to be like themselves, to understand sound, to use their voices and verbally express their thoughts through spoken language, and to hear the voices and spoken language of those around them” (National Association of the Deaf). Because most hearing parents don’t know how to react when they’re told that their child is deaf or hard or hearing, they follow the advice of their hearing doctors and attempt to integrate them into hearing society, with little or no education in sign language. The enemy isn’t the parents, or even the doctors (although as professionals they should be better informed), it’s the ignorance of their deaf child’s needs. Despite how you feel about it, your deaf child’s first language is NOT English, it’s sign language. They’re whole world is visual, and therefore need a visual language to properly develop cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Deafness is not a disability or a disease to be cured medically or by modern technology, and although hearing aids and cochlear implants can help some hard of hearing situations, they are not replacements for ASL and Deaf adult role models.  “Advocates for inclusion will throw out the usual but it’s a hearing world argument and insist this is for the better good… I’ve heard so many stories of deaf kids in the mainstream who don’t make the basketball team, don’t run for class president, and so on” (Mark Drolsbaugh).

My game represents the struggle that mainstreaming (integrating into hearing public schools) poses to Deaf children. The residential school route is obviously easier, quicker, and provides more benefits to the child, while mainstreaming is full of learning impediments and social obstacles to overcome. However, it is still possible to win going this route. I especially wanted to emphasize the fact that much of the time it is the parents naively handicapping their children by trying to fit them into a “normal” mold. The child wishes to belong to their native culture and language (the tunnel leading up to the surface), but the parents prevent them in an attempt to make them fit their definition of normal.

If I had the time and resources, I believe a very powerful role-playing game could be made that simulates a Deaf child’s situation in a mainstream school. However, I am pretty proud of my little one level game, and believe that it conveys my point, even if it is a bit on the nose.

Here is a video of a Deaf man’s testimonial of how a residential school changed his life as a child. Being part of a community, culture, and natural language made a huge difference in his life and education. (6:47 – 12:43).

http://youtu.be/60lzVhXW_0U?t=6m47s

The popular videos of babies and adults hearing their loved ones for the first time through cochlear implants is touching, but represent only the few cases that the implants significantly improve their hearing and ability to integrate fully into hearing society. Both sides of the story need to be told, just as Chimamanda Adiche explained in her TED Talk.

 

 

 

Sources:

"Cochlear Implants." National Association for the Deaf website. 2008. Web.

          http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear-implants

Drolsbaugh, Mark. "Mainstreaming vs Deaf School." Deaf Culture Online. 2014. Web.

        http://www.deaf-culture-online.com/mainstreaming-vs-deaf.html

(see above YouTube video, "What is it like to be DEAF?")

Webspinna Battle Artist's Statement

After a bit of a process, we decided to theme our Webspinna Battle with the age old question: which is better, a pirate or a ninja? Since this is a pop culture, modern project taking place on the internet, we wanted to have an “in-the-moment” theme. We started by gathering hallmarks of martial arts and pirate film and music, and then added in more generic sounds, (such as the ocean, traditional Japanese music, and various sound effects) to create the proper background atmosphere. It was incredibly fun to create a dialogue between our two personas using only sound clips, music, and sound effects. Especially in the middle of our performance, we tried to have a more literal exchange with different movie and TV show dialogue cut to sound like they were replying to each other. The ending of our battle was very deliberate, even if it wasn’t perfect in execution. The sounds of our battling personas were to build up loudly, and then suddenly cut off together while the single line, “Stop fighting, and let it flow,” ended our feud. This was to mirror the fact that neither a ninja nor a pirate is “better” and so there can’t be a winner.

This project perfectly echoed what Jonathan Lethem discussed in his article, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” He stated that “literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time,” and that authors, subconsciously or not, take lines, wordings, and themes from works they encounter and recut them into their own writing. He also talks about how we live in an “‘open source’ culture” where pre-existing fragments of art are available to inspire or lend themselves to new meaning in a fresh piece of art. This was, at a lower level, essentially what we tried to do. We took pre-existing sounds, “plagiarized” them, and reworked them into a completely new dialogue which shed new meaning on them.

Another piece of art work that influenced me during this project was Pixar’s short “Day & Night.” It’s the story of two characters who can only speak through either sounds found during the day or during the night, and show off what cool things they have in a day vs. night showdown. In the end, they discover that they create the most beautiful sights and sounds together. Our battle has a similar back-and-forth element and ended much in the same way.

It was really interesting to create a project in the limited (and at the same time, limitless) venue of the internet and work with pre-existing and pre-uploaded sounds. Hopefully, our live performance was able to reflect the preparation we put into gathering and rehearsing the sounds.

Webspinna Battle - PIRATE vs. NINJA

Gong
Everybody is Kung Fu Fighting
Punching SFX
Martial Arts cries
Japanese Music 
"Wax on, wax off"
Inner Peace
TMNT slap
Batman Jujitsu
Kung Fu Panda music
"Who am I?!"
Batman Begins training
Jackie Chan fighting
TMNT theme song

World Building - Nikola Tesla

Link to the PDF (so you can make it bigger to read it):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9LCiAd7yWtsc2didkJoMlJfSkk/edit?usp=sharing

 

Artist's Statement

For our project we decided to build a world that had Nikola Tesla triumph over Thomas Edison. Tesla was the leading inventor of electricity, which means that towers, copper receivers, and wireless energy are the main influences of design and lifestyle. We also decided to set our “present” in 1984, showing that technology advanced faster and in different ways through Tesla’s inventions. Having such a volatile energy source also creates a world that is balancing on the edge of self-destruction with radical factions and anti-Tesla militant factions. We wrote a newspaper spread because we thought it would give the best range of politics, environment, and advertisements to showcase our world. We put a terrorist threat piece, an environmental impact piece, a human interest piece, and tastes of business advertisements and other stories in the issue.

I thought changing this fact in history would be interesting because it would completely change how technology and the modern world developed, since electricity is the center point for all technological advances. We really drew upon this aspect of the reading, “Throw out the disciplinary constraints one assumes under the regime of fact and explore possible fictional logics and assumptions in order to reconsider the present.” (Bleeker 6) We wanted to change a fact in history but keep a line of logic through our alternate timeline. As much as we could we kept to real science facts but took some liberties and made exaggerations with our unstable world. It was fun to explore and experiment and settle on a world that is feasible and links “imagination to its material form” (Bleeker 4) but still fantastic.

For an inspiration for world building, I really admire Brandon Sandersen’s ability to effortlessly create a complex world that is easy to understand. Especially in his Mistborn series, he creates a very intricate magic system and political narrative that is still somehow easy for the reader to dive into and understand. He’s an expert at creating atmosphere which is something we wanted to achieve with our newspaper spread. We also drew upon an article “Tesla’s Tower of Power” by Alan Bellows, which outlines the history of Tesla’s experiments and his eventual bankruptcy.

This project was really fun to do. I love thinking about the possible politics and design of different worlds, and I’ve always been a fan of science fiction. However, it was challenging and I now have even more respect for authors and filmmakers, because so much backstory and research goes into design that will never be read or seen.

Textual Poaching

Project:
http://youtu.be/239nt_djIM0

100%

Artist's Statement:

Though this assignment didn’t come as easily to me, in the end it was a lot of fun to put together. As it says in the description of the video, I decided to combine Rush’s “The Spirit of the Radio” with clips of Mozart conducting from Amadeus (1984). I did this for many reasons: first, because Mozart was much like a rock star in his own day. He was radical, used drugs, and wrote emotional, sometimes dark music. Secondly, I listened to Mozart and other classical composers at a time in my life when I should’ve been listening to pop or rock music. Mozart and his operas and symphonies were my rocking out music—to me they were attention grabbing and toe-tapping. By combing Mozart and classic rock, I enhanced the history of Amadeus and reflected my own experience and personality in Mozart’s compositions. I’ve revised an excerpt from Jenkins’ “How Texts Become Real” to reflect my own experience: “[My] investment in [Mozart’s music] will give it a meaning that was unanticipated by the [composer], a meaning that comes not from its intrinsic merits or economic value but rather from the significance the [I] bestow upon the commodity through its use” (51).

This video reflects my identity as a musician. I come from a very musical family and grew up listening to classical music and small-time children’s bands. Classical music could never be boring to me, and I view it almost as others view rock music. A piece of outside art that influenced my project, besides of course the fabulous movie Amadeus and its portrayal of Mozart, is an album called “Hooked on Classics” by Louis Clark, which is a CD of classical songs remixed with a drum set underneath them. As a young child it changed my perspective of classical music and made it accessible to me. I am also (more recently) a huge fan of 70’s and 80’s rock, hence the Rush song and the emphasis on electric guitar and drums.

This assignment emphasizes how personal a piece of art becomes once it is consumed by someone other than the author. “Fans draw texts close to the realm of their lived experience” (53), and by doing so take the authorship from the creator and make it their own. A piece of art is never viewed or valued the same by two people, simply because we all loan unique experiences and perspectives to the art when we consume it.