Process Piece: Frickin' Dishes

“Frickin’ Dishes” manipulates and repeats fewer than 20 audio recordings to illustrate the never-ending task of cleaning dishes. Much like a song, its auditory theme cycles often enough to be recognizable and represents the mechanical routine of taking dishes out of the sink, scraping off caked food, rinsing, and throwing them into the dish washer.

To add a common human sentiment towards the chore, moans and complaints of the one washing the dishes are heard. The tempo and volume of the repeated noises intensify as the frustration and annoyance towards the task increases. Ultimately, the audience can appreciate the great amount of monotony of this ever present task.

Upon capturing all the isolated noises, we couldn’t help but notice the musicality of some of the noises. Although it wasn’t in the original plan, a musical hip-hop beat (compliments of Garageband) was added to the machine. The up-beat tone it adds may have appeared contradictory to the more obvious agenda of the work, but does it?

First, a quote from Thomas C. Foster in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Here Foster is talking about symbols in literature.

“Is that a symbol? Sure it is…. Seriously, what do you think it stands for, because that’s probably what it does. At least for you….Here is the problem with symbols: people expect them to mean...something in particular. Exactly. Maximum. You know what? It doesn’t work like that… in general a symbol can’t be reduced to standing for only one thing.”

As our piece becomes more noisy and abstract, it gives more room for interpretation. It doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone and thus our change in overall tone of our piece was part of what came out in our creative process. We have found it meaningful as an added layer of emotion to our piece on dishes.

So is this abstraction appropriate? The Mercandante’s Routines 09 answers this question. The process of getting a haircut is documented in an abstract way. The abstraction sends the film through the kaleidoscope of human emotion making it more internal and unique for each individual. When we watched the video we noticed the noise of the weed wacker and it made us think of haircutting as a violent process stripping one of their identity. Was this the artists intention? Quite possibly, but maybe not and that is okay because the experience was symbolic and individual.

Abstraction represents realities of emotion. Most people hate dishes. This is what we showed first. Monotony is pressed upon us but the abstraction brings room for interpretation. As the clinks and scratches repeat themselves frustration can sometimes give way to fun through the little hip hop melody. Possibly on the other side of that, the emotion invoked is how much I hate it when people try to make a process fun when it isn’t. The point is it can mean different things to different people. We tried to express emotions we feel and realities of the process with noises that invoke memories of doing dishes. What people get from it is up to the listener.

Sources:

The Mercandante's Routines 09

Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines. New York: Quill, 2003. Print.

Round Robin: Herbert and the Chupacabra and Tom's Tentacles

Ben - Sam - Melissa - Hunter 

Sam's Story

Herbert’s soul was resigned. At least the part of it trapped in cardboard in front of 

U-Haul. First he tried being positive, but his situation was hopeless, his fate

sealed.

One day, a baseball came flying towards the window and smashed it to pieces.
Herbert was free! He made the decision to leave U-Haul forever.

He immediately realized the consequences of his decision.  

As his eyes adjusted to the hazy afternoon, he saw someone under a 

tree -- the Chupacabra, his old nemesis.

Please old friend. Join me. We've spent far too long trying to end one another. 

So many tears. So much anger. Perhaps it is time we start anew.

Ben's Story

Tom woke up early, and showered and shaved. He neatly parted
his hair, he pressed his shirt and dressed for the day,
people complimented his spiffy tie all day long.

It finally happened, Tom's tentacles had killed someone.
Suddenly "accepting Tom for who he was" didn't seem as great a policy.
Clearly the HR department had a lot to discuss.

Tom stood on the prow of a boat. 

Despite his pleas, his coworkers still planned to throw him overboard.

Tom crashed into the sea. As he sank downward, he passed
by a titanic sea monster. The monster didn't even notice Tom.

Artist Statement

Stories occupy a strange space between the personal and the communal, and this assignment blurred the division between the two. It was interesting to create a short story, then to see where other people took it. It kind of revealed a bit about the person behind the story. And not only did the stories do this, but the illustrations as well (both in the illustrations themselves and in the method of illustration). Those illustrations turned out to be the most distinguishable aspects of our work.

          For example, Melissa always did her illustrations on Photoshop because she wanted things to look clean. Everyone else used various methods of illustration: hand drawing, Paint, etc. The others were well done and showed a bit of who the creator was. That personal aspect was present in the stories themselves too, but the often-absurd nature of those stories made it difficult to discern who wrote which segment. This also gave us common ground.

         All of the stories dealt with people. This indicates that we prefer stories about people; it’s something we can relate to. All of the characters had something they needed to overcome.  Ben’s story, though absurd, dealt with the human struggle of being different. We are human and all have trials, just as the characters did.  These odd and playful stories represented things about us.  Furthermore, this micro example of an Exquisite Corpse translates to large scale.  As we talk about worldwide collaboration, it can show deep-seated philosophies and speak for a generation.

In a recent episode of Radiolab called “In the Dust of This Planet,” the hosts talked about nihilism appearing in pop culture. They noticed the trend when a book called In the Dust of This Planet was cited as a source for a nihilist character in the recent HBO show True Detective. The book cover has since appeared on apparel in fashion magazines and even on Jay Z’s back. They speculate this trend is a result of crises around the world, with global warming etc.; that it is cool, maybe even comforting, to take on this nihilist view point and say, “I don’t care.” This Exquisite Corpse is telling us about cultural trends and attitudes. Totems without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse states, “The way I see it: whenever humanity tries to really grapple with the deep issues — life, death, taxes, you name it — it becomes a game.” 

          It’s important to note that the fundamental nature of the assignment is a game. We played Exquisite Corpse as a means to create but it was also fun. Expression through sometimes spontaneous collaboration is fundamental to the artistic experience, not only for the purpose of play but also to bring to light “deep issues”.  

Just as the example from Radiolab illustrates, the pop culture we discuss and access for fun evidences issues we are grappling with in society.  The same thing went on with our stories.  The different stories we created gave clues into who each author was and what we care about.  As a group we cared about people and overcoming challenges.  As a society it seems we are talking about nihilism, among other things.  These realizations come through the process of play and creativity and help us to answer deep and difficult questions about ourselves.  

Sources:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/dust-planet/

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9Lc1sVyYWa1ZjR1YmpzQWRPdXc/edit

Music Mosiac

Link to What?? by Folke Rabe *note that the video says the title is was?? by all other accounts I have found the title is What??

Let me start off by talking about the experience I had with the song I selected.  I was sitting in the library going through various songs and came across What?? By Folke Rabe.  None of the songs I had listen to really effected me until this one.  As I listened I closed my eyes and had what I would describe as an almost out of body experience.  The low hum of the song reminded me of being in a parking structure late at night –an empty, dark feeling, yet brightly lit place.  I imagined sort of gliding through this garage yet it wasn’t necessarily me kind of like watching through a camera on a dolly. As I listened to the song it was a bit of an eerie creepy feeling.  It felt very new and unsafe but as the track continued the continual exposure to this uneasiness and darkness turned into comfort.  After listening I felt peaceful, calm and sort of joyful.  The goal of my mosaic is to express the emotions I felt during my experience with this song.

In all of the images there is a play between light and darkness.  The images are all shrouded in darkness with enough faith promoting light to beckon you in.   The blurriness extenuates the unknown. For some of the images the emotion is communicated through an implied narrative.  For example, the dark path with the light at the end especially beckons you forward.  Like the song it is dark yet maybe there is some hope to be found.  Also to me I see a sort of mistrust in the first image of the person walking by.  These narratives are abstract and will surely be different for each person but hopefully they evoke some similar emotions. 

But I want to emphasize that the point here is not to make a point but rather express my emotions.  In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at one point the author, Robert Perzig, talks about romantic vs. classic schools of thought.  He explains that romantic thought is all about feeling and ascetics and that classic thought is about form and functionality.  He gives the analogy that riding a motorcycle is romantic and fixing the motorcycle is classic.  I would put myself more in the category of a classic thinker.  Even with art, I pay attention to what it means and want to quantify it.  So I wanted for this assignment, to take a romantic point of view.  I don’t have a practical meaning with these images.

I am trying to take images from the streets of Provo and make them into something more pure and elemental.  As Annie Dillard explains in Seeing, “For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning”.  So that is how these photos are intended, to have at best an abstract narrative but more to give a reaction on a more elemental level; to aid in riding the emotions of the song.

Sources:

Seeing by Annie Dillard
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Perzig
*Link to What?? above.

Thinking and Writing: Boyhood and the American Dream

We all love the story of the underdog—watching someone start from nothing and make something of his or her life. Some would say that this is the essence of the American Dream, that anyone can make it and be someone. This dream is what America was founded upon and has positively influenced the prosperity of the United States and its citizens today. If we move away from the underdog story though, there is a bit of a dark side to the American dream. To put it one way, do we all love stories of the rich getting richer? Not as much, it seems at a certain level of prosperity this dream starts to sour. Once a certain sustaining amount of wealth has been accrued the acquisition of more starts to be more poisonous to the country than good for it. Maybe the American dream needs a bit of an amendment and the 2014 film Boyhood argues rather beautifully for how a change can come about.

I want to make clear that it is not that I think the dream of working hard or pursuing dreams is what needs to change. Instead it is what we are working towards that needs a change. But first off lets talk about the dream of economic prosperity and how it does work today. If you haven’t heard of it, there is a website called Humans of New York where the photographer takes pictures of strangers on the street and conducts short interviews with them. Here is one mans story that captures the classic American Dream.

"I came over with a student visa. I wanted to study computers, but I couldn’t enroll in school until I could prove that I had money to pay the tuition. The first three weeks I slept on trains. I kept asking people where I could find the Senegalese community. Eventually I met a person who told me to go to Harlem because there was an African community there. In Harlem, I found an association for Senegalese people. And they had places to stay for people who were new. I did restaurant and cleaning jobs for a couple of years. Eventually I met my wife and became a citizen. And now I have a security job, so I can finally enroll in school."

Here we have the portrait of a man who has come to America to change his life. Through hard work he is changing his economic status. Things are not easy but he is making it happen. I am all for that American dream. But to an already somewhat economically established American, I don’t know that this dream is such a good thing. Take for instance this portrait again from Humans of New York.

"I was hoping I’d be somebody by now."

I don’t mean to read into what this mans life story is too much, but his portrait here illustrates the concept that somehow you have to be special or rich. This is where the dream becomes less of a good thing. It seems this goal of being rich at all costs is what drives the wealth gap today. It seems for those who have money, the idea is always to have more. Many people who don’t have enough are then suppressed while the rich get richer. What Boyhood is able to do so well is communicate that maybe this classic American dream, after a certain level of economic prosperity, is no longer necessary. Here is one last portrait from Humans of New York.

"At this point in my life, I’m trying to figure out the things I truly care about."

"What’s something you care about less than you did ten years ago?"

"Being extraordinary."

On one end we could say that this man has given up on his dreams. Dreams to be unique and to be on top. So is this a resignation? Is this giving up or is it realizing that to be special or on top is not what it is about. Boyhood gives a beautiful portrait of the change that can occur in peoples lives. Both the mother and father start out in pretty lowly circumstances—sort of white trashy and poor. But over the course of the movie they mature and change. The mother goes to school and becomes a professor. Though by the end of the film she is only marginally, if at all, better off economically. Yet her whole world has changed and you see it. You see it in her effect on those around her, in her demeanor and in her stability. Aren’t those things worth more than money? Over the course of the narrative we see little moments in this families life, which add up to something that is substantial and joyful. Which is worth much more than money or fame.

Hero by Family of the Year is a song prominently featured in this film. The lyrics help say a lot about the view of the American dream communicated here.

"Let me go

I don't wanna be your hero

I don't wanna be a big man

Just wanna fight with everyone else"

There is this societal pressure to live up to the American dream in the sense of getting rich or making it to the top. This song says I don’t care about standing out, I can have a fulfilling life based on things more important than money. I don’t need to do something that will go down in history or make a mark on the world. I am happy living my life like everyone else is.


This idea is a little scary, it almost sounds communist. It seems that American culture is to get your full slice of the pie and it builds industry and propels America forward. If everyone is content with where they are complacency can easily form. But this isn’t what the argument is, the argument is for continual improvement but a focus on living a wholesome life rather than so desperately seeking money. This is what we see in Boyhood, not a dramatic change in economic status but in education and quality of life. Another concern is if Boyhood could really make that big of a change in society. I think the answer is no, the film Boyhood by itself will not make this change, but it has influenced my life and many others I’m sure. The more material that can communicate this idea, the more the change is actually possible. So I think it is a step in the right direction.

There might be worry that this idea would tear apart what America is all about. This may be true, but this may not be such a bad thing. With an ever-increasing wealth gap the root of the problem might be the philosophy of more money no matter how much you have. What Boyhood does is says that a decent living is enough for a happy life. This is done so powerfully because it isn’t preachy or in your face it simply gives an example of how it actually works. Within its sphere of influence I think it will make a difference.


Sources:

http://www.humansofnewyork.com

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/familyoftheyear/hero.html