Alone in Union Station

Sitting in Chicago’s Union Station is interesting.  I am here alone, but not really alone, there are a lot of people who rush around me.  Yet, I feel alone.  I feel kind of uneasy.  I feel that I just want to be back in Ann Arbor, in my familiar Ann Arbor city, with my familiar buildings and streets and people and knick-knacks.  Even thought I want to be somewhere I am not, I also regret those feelings.  It makes me feel weak and I hate feeling weak.  It makes me think, and sometimes I hate when I think. I hate when I think mainly because it leads to more uneasiness.  Not just uneasiness from the unfamiliar and big city environment, but also uneasiness within myself. This happens because I am not able to talk to anyone else; I just have myself to listen to.  Memories and worries, ambitions, and regrets seem to always leak out of my soul and into my brain when I am alone.  I wonder how many others around me have similar feelings? Looking around me, there are a lot of people who are also “alone.”  But they have families, they have worries, they have goals, they want to be somewhere other then here.  If all the people disappeared and all that was left was the feelings of people, I believe it would look like swirling ghosts; I believe these ghosts would find connections amongst each other and make friends.  I believe the room would no longer be lonely; instead it would be friendly and exciting.  Isn’t it amazing how flesh and bones so easily tear us apart from making friends? That hair and fingernails stop us from saying hello? That cloth and rubber acts as force fields from sitting near each other? If the flesh and bones melted away, if the hair and fingernails fell off, if the cloth and rubber dissolved, what would the world be like? What problems would we have, if any? If we could only see emotions and nothing else, would the word be happier? Safer? Hmmmmmm it is interesting to think about, and these thoughts overrule my uneasiness, which is nice for a minute.  I decide to give into my rumbling tummy and buy food, pay the cashier, and pick a spot three seats away from the nearest person.  Funny how thoughts and actions are completely unrelated in real life. 

....These thoughts continue to inspire my end of the year project....the first being a series of ceramic pieces and the second a series of white t-shirts.... I want to use each to explore how different types of media can be used for expression, where some pieces represent how others perceive me, and 

Sound as an Object

Lately in my film class, we've discussed how sound is treated like an object by filmmakers. Viewers often anticipate that a sound is dictated by, or connected to, an image; it is jarring or unexpected for a sound to seem inorganic. Yet the most creative teams match sound and image in ways that are both unexpected and narratively important. Playing with this idea for a while gave me a stronger direction for my project to teach myself how to animate. I had several ideas for videos, but really wanted to play with the relationship between image and sound. So, I decided to pick what I think to be an abstract song, and come up with a narrative guided by the sounds.

Here is what I picked:

This song is a good representation of how music can exist without a traditional verse, bridge, chorus format. I particularly like it because of this absence of words, and I will maintain this in my project. Image and sound will be used to create a narrative--a short narrative--that I hope will be as effective in telling a story as a book. Film and music are different formats than something written (which we've agreed on in class is the best definition), but I do not think it eliminates them from being effective story-telling mechanisms. 

My new Blog idea

Check out of new blog idea- quotes!!! - CHECK IT OUT! :) See you in class tomorrow!

A Vlogumentary

Considering we spend so much time in front of screens, we might as well turn all of reality into screen life.
I have an idea for a long-term project. An ongoing documentary/vlog about the mundane aspects of reality that the Internet does not fully capture yet. Toothbrushing, showering, making the bed, walking, pressing elevator buttons, opening doors, tying shoes, preparing food, eating food, releasing food, talking, plugging in laptop chargers, breathing, zippering a backpack, folding sheets, pouring laundry detergent, drinking water, driving cars, filling cars with gasoline, opening cans, shaving, holding hands, buying groceries, mopping a floor, and smiling.
Each piece of this vlogumentary will highlight a different aspect of everyday living. There will be an entire segment focused on covering all aspects of trimming toe nails, for example, or swiping a Visa card at stores. Every time I clip a chunk of nail or fumble for my wallet, it will be recorded. The duration of each activity will vary on the topic. Toothbrushing may require 3-4 weeks of intensive filming while turning keys in locks may only require 48 hours.
I hope this project will help capture the fullness of what it means to be a modern day human. A 21st Century Homo Sapiens. Perhaps it will say something about the Do Easy method of living or the pointless amount of time we waste on simply surviving as opposed to prospering.
I think I will begin this project by filming myself eating. There is a lot to go off with this topic. Does the time of day I eat affect my appetite/mood? Does the food I consume affect my mental state, alertness, and/or emotions/personality? Is there a correlation between the type of food I consume and the time of day in which I consume said food?
I'm sure there is a proper scientific method for answering these questions and lots of thorough experiments I could apply to test and measure this, but I'll let more intelligent people do that job. I'll just start by recording.
The little red dot is blinking.

Silicon Shuttles to a Synthetic State

On average, we spend <insert shockingly high but hopefully accurate statistic here> hours in front of a screen every day. These screens are windows to whatever we wish to see. The internet offers us places we’ve never been and people we’ve never met IRL. Our lives exist in front of them, our eyes scanning spreadsheets and two-dimensional newsfeeds when they were designed to perceive depth and location of prey we used to hunt. We have no reason to search after running animals when we can purchase preservative-pumped meat through online retailers. Computers take away our need to move beyond the glowing pixels in front of us.

With several hours spent before screens each day, one begins to wonder the aesthetic appeal of such devices. Is it the great graphics that draw us in? New Apple products are perpetually improving upon display and interface design. Is it the simple appeal of the Internet and the indirect connections we can make with other humans? Constant improvements on social media sites and web browsers are adapting to make these experiences increasingly easier to access, speedier, and more enjoyable. Whatever the case may be, we are spending exponentially more time before screens as “better” technology continues to develop. In this sense, a significant portion of our minds and presence exists within this virtual realm. We take up residence in our homepages and online media sites, but when we exit out of our browsers, we are faced with an image that overtakes our field of vision—our desktop.



Most often, these pieces of art are beautiful depictions of the real world, whether it is a panoramic view of mountains or oceans or a photo of family or friends. These pictures can be cycled and rotate, becoming abstract shapes and designs, but in whatever case, they are what we perceive as visually pleasant. If these images are constructs of actuality, as art is most often based off inspiration found in the real world, why is it that they make such a dominant presence in our virtual existence? Perhaps we are setting up a home in the screen, a place to find peace or silence when the world is loud or find action and life when reality goes dim? If computers are the places for our minds to explore and wander, the world is left to be a simple provider. Rather than be enjoyed or explored as a primary passion, it is a place we are simply stuck in and thus escape to the virtual realm. Beautiful desktop images serve as enjoyable views when glued to the screen. These pieces of art can be seen as indirectly evil, as they are offering a Land of Lotus leaves to our visual senses, enticing them to spend more time before the screen. For this reason, I have set my desktop to the most atrocious scene I could spawn:
 

Rather than waste away my years before a screen, lulled into satisfaction by misleading visual art mimicking the true beauty of the real world, I hope to spend less time in front of the screen and more time in reality. Despite the many great tools it can provide, the computer is a double-edged sword. We ask it questions and it answers them. If we ask it why we should spend more time in reality, it will give us an answer, perhaps even a good one, but it will lure us back to our virtual desktops.

Google, why do I ask you my life questions? And how does Yahoo always have the answer?

Maybe that’s why I spend so much time in front of this screen?

New running blog post!

check out my new running/ exercise blog post!! Enjoy! :)

On Creativity, Erasure, and Altruism

In class, we are often asked to question the idea of creativity and originality: to be liberal in this definition, to look at what limits it, and to commit to it as a lifelong habit. Claiming originality defines it as something that chance alone could not produce; the creator is the only party capable of doing what has been done (sounds similar to using God to explain what evolution does). There is beauty produced by the human hand (and heart)--don't get me wrong. Recognizing how incalculably small of chance there was for such an alignment of parts only heightens this beauty. Yet the most important part of creating anything is recognizing that it can be done, by anybody.

What I mean by this is that events, miraculous events, can be reproduced and explained with the rules of probability. I like best the "Infinite Monkey Theorem" which describes a circumstance where random typing on a keyboard by another primate could produce a line from Shakespeare. Repeated often enough over a hilariously long stretch of time would reproduce his entire life's work. At first, this is disheartening (and kind of funny). But then you think about how limitless putting a limit can be; there is essentially an available set of combinations to bring to life anything that can be thought, or was already thought.

There are those who take this realization and use it as terrain to explore playing with other's work; if everything is unified as unowned under such probability laws, then each hand has a right to what's been made. Philosophies similar to this--though perhaps they do not overtly state it--support the concept of a public domain, open source technology, and other free resources that allow for unbiased, accessible information flow on and offline. Where does an attitude of ownership come in, and when are we infringing on another's right to originality? Would people be as driven to create were their accomplishments not promised to be tagged with their name? Does rejecting ownership--and authorship--lead to altruistic creation? It could boil down to a simple generational question: is a model like 4chan and Reddit better than Facebook?