I figured I should do this fast, before I fall asleep. What's the story with group work? Nobody likes it. Me either. At least the people in my group were interesting to talk to. None of us had super-creative ideas that we were really on fire about. Man, two sentences ending in prepositions in a row. I am mangling the English language. Anyway, though none of us were enthusiastic about talking up our projects, I found the exercise helpful. It made me think a bit more about an idea that I had just thrown out, with no real thought about it's feasibility.
The idea to make a full album related music videos using different techniques is definitely exciting to me, but I don't think it is at all feasible in the given time frame, and taking in to account my other obligations. i do think I could get a duo or trilogy done though. Talking about the project even made me think about what songs to do, and how. So yeah, I think that will work. The class was useful, even if we didn't talk about the projects for a full hour.
Really, it was motivating to talk about the poor job market that I'll be graduating into in June. It made me want to really focus on my few remaining projects and get some really good After Effects stuff on my reel. So that's the deal. I've been sort of kicking around the idea of doing this stuff anyway, and this gives me an excuse to do it well. So there. I had a useful day.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Day Off
I found this assignment to be very difficult. One thing I don't have in my life right now is free time. At least 50 hours per work week, along with a 15 credit hour course load means that I find it very difficult to find a three hour block of time that I don't have things to do. So, rather than a slacker attitude holding me up on this deal, it was the fact that I had too much to do.
This is a change from my traditional lifestyle as a lazy-ass. Generally, the time when I do my best thinking is when I'm at work, with a particular client. I work with adults with developmental disabilities. One of my fellas is autistic. He is non-verbal, and just likes to walk in the woods. During nice weather, we'll go to Ft. Ben and walk for hours in silence. I take a notebook with me, and all sorts of ideas come to me during that time. Sadly, the fact that it is very cold stopped that from being a viable option.
The only time that I was able to set aside for thinking this week was during a three hour drive over the weekend. I should pay more attention to driving, but I find it boring, and my mind wanders. While the silent walk in the woods is good for some types of thinking, I need some stimulation in the car, or I'll fall asleep. So before my trip, I synced a few episodes of This American Life to my ipod. For those of you not familiar with This American Life, it is a radio show on NPR. (Although I think they're officially affiliated with American Public Media, but you get the idea)
This American Life is what I like to call, "the best thing on the radio, ever." The show usually has a theme, and there are four or five stories on that theme during the course of the episode. What makes the show magical is the quality of storytelling that these people do. They find all sorts of people with stories that range from fantastic to mundane, and they're all told skillfully, and just make the stories real, with nothing more than voices and music. I'm not doing it justice in my description, but these stories are just perfect.
What does listening to a radio show have to do with my own creative process? Well, this show is inspiring to me. I'm interested in storytelling, and this show is the ultimate in my book. When I listen to the show, I not only think about how they put the shows together structurally, to reveal the key plot points at the correct times, but how they put the shows together thematically. Often, the different stories in the show will approach the theme idea from radically different directions.
In lots of cases, the show will even inspire me to write down my own stories that fit the theme. If I have an experience that fits the subject of the week, I'll often write it down and see where my story fits in with the stories of other people. Listening to this show gets me excited about telling my own stories, and seeking out the experience of others to relate them. Lots of the projects i want to undertake come from ideas sparked by This American Life Episodes.
Now, on to the Final Project. I'm not sure what I'd like to do. If time and scope were no object, I'd like to make a series of music videos for an entire album. I envision many different types of animation, and a few of the songs in live action. They're not necessarily a continuous story, but they have some common themes. The biggest barrier to this is that I don't have the After Effects skills to play out a lot of the ideas that I have. I guess I should start messing with them, and perhaps I could get a couple knocked out by the end of the semester. Or maybe I should come up with a less intimidating plan.
This is a change from my traditional lifestyle as a lazy-ass. Generally, the time when I do my best thinking is when I'm at work, with a particular client. I work with adults with developmental disabilities. One of my fellas is autistic. He is non-verbal, and just likes to walk in the woods. During nice weather, we'll go to Ft. Ben and walk for hours in silence. I take a notebook with me, and all sorts of ideas come to me during that time. Sadly, the fact that it is very cold stopped that from being a viable option.
The only time that I was able to set aside for thinking this week was during a three hour drive over the weekend. I should pay more attention to driving, but I find it boring, and my mind wanders. While the silent walk in the woods is good for some types of thinking, I need some stimulation in the car, or I'll fall asleep. So before my trip, I synced a few episodes of This American Life to my ipod. For those of you not familiar with This American Life, it is a radio show on NPR. (Although I think they're officially affiliated with American Public Media, but you get the idea)
This American Life is what I like to call, "the best thing on the radio, ever." The show usually has a theme, and there are four or five stories on that theme during the course of the episode. What makes the show magical is the quality of storytelling that these people do. They find all sorts of people with stories that range from fantastic to mundane, and they're all told skillfully, and just make the stories real, with nothing more than voices and music. I'm not doing it justice in my description, but these stories are just perfect.
What does listening to a radio show have to do with my own creative process? Well, this show is inspiring to me. I'm interested in storytelling, and this show is the ultimate in my book. When I listen to the show, I not only think about how they put the shows together structurally, to reveal the key plot points at the correct times, but how they put the shows together thematically. Often, the different stories in the show will approach the theme idea from radically different directions.
In lots of cases, the show will even inspire me to write down my own stories that fit the theme. If I have an experience that fits the subject of the week, I'll often write it down and see where my story fits in with the stories of other people. Listening to this show gets me excited about telling my own stories, and seeking out the experience of others to relate them. Lots of the projects i want to undertake come from ideas sparked by This American Life Episodes.
Now, on to the Final Project. I'm not sure what I'd like to do. If time and scope were no object, I'd like to make a series of music videos for an entire album. I envision many different types of animation, and a few of the songs in live action. They're not necessarily a continuous story, but they have some common themes. The biggest barrier to this is that I don't have the After Effects skills to play out a lot of the ideas that I have. I guess I should start messing with them, and perhaps I could get a couple knocked out by the end of the semester. Or maybe I should come up with a less intimidating plan.
PS: As I've been thinking about this, I did do some reading this week, which is surely a passion of mine. I find that reading, like the radio show above, is great training for storytelling. This week I spent a few hours with "Little, Big" by John Crowley. Not enough people read his stuff. It's fantastic. Check it out.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Deaf Percussion Jam
I'll blog with the caveat that I have a real problem with improvised music. I could make a big fuss and argument about what music is, and what makes it music, but I'm not going to. It's a tired argument, and it's so subjective that there's no sense in even discussing it. It's like religion. No one is going to convince a convicted person of anything.
I will say I enjoyed the movie. And I was very happy to hear melodic lines emerging at the end of the part we saw. The marimba and the guitar came together in something very musical. I do think that Evelyn is a very talented musician. Extraordinarily talented, to be able to overcome a disability that significantly impairs the fundamental experience of music. It's interesting that she feels her hearing impairment expands her concept of music. Again, I'm not going to get into a technical definition of what I think music is, but I see Evelyn as blending music and sound, rather than making pure music. Some of what she is doing is music, some is an exploration of sound textures. She combines them into what I'll call her schtick. Schtick is non-judgemental by the way. I'm not negatively judging her work. She can do whatever she wants, it's just of no interest to me.
I'll admit that I have a very narrow conception of what makes for good music. I also make no apologies for having very narrow tastes when it comes to music.
I will say I enjoyed the movie. And I was very happy to hear melodic lines emerging at the end of the part we saw. The marimba and the guitar came together in something very musical. I do think that Evelyn is a very talented musician. Extraordinarily talented, to be able to overcome a disability that significantly impairs the fundamental experience of music. It's interesting that she feels her hearing impairment expands her concept of music. Again, I'm not going to get into a technical definition of what I think music is, but I see Evelyn as blending music and sound, rather than making pure music. Some of what she is doing is music, some is an exploration of sound textures. She combines them into what I'll call her schtick. Schtick is non-judgemental by the way. I'm not negatively judging her work. She can do whatever she wants, it's just of no interest to me.
I'll admit that I have a very narrow conception of what makes for good music. I also make no apologies for having very narrow tastes when it comes to music.
The Deafness
I decided that the only sense I had the time to do without for three hours was my hearing. Also, I happened to have a fine handicap, as Harrison Bergeron would say. I am the proud owner of custom molded earplugs, which were perfect for this exercise. On Saturday, I popped the -9 dB filters out of my earplugs, and put in the total blocking filters. I popped them in, and viola, I couldn't hear anything except my own breathing. There was a bit of background noise, seeing as I couldn't stop my eardrums from working, and some of the sound waves we hear are transmitted by the skull. No matter how completely I blocked my ear canals, there was still a bit of sound, but nothing I must admit, I found this experience to be kind of nice. I had already planned to spend much of the day catching up on homework, and truth be told, I found the earplugs to be a great help in getting this done.
I was able to sit down and work without being distracted by the TV, which is important at my workspace. I did find that I'd missed a couple of calls that I had to return, but as someone who doesn't really care for phone calls, I wasn't too disappointed to miss them. In actuality, the first three hours of the experience were really rather enjoyable.
As I've gotten older, I've somewhat lost my ability to tune things out. I'm much more easily distracted, and have a harder time focusing like I did when I was a youth. The earplugs were very good for my long-lost concentration. The deafness allowed me to withdraw into the bubble that I used to be able to move to anytime I picked up a book. I don't think I'd like to be deaf though. I'd likely start to miss it eventually.
As I got toward the three hour mark, I decided to try and interact a little bit, and went upstairs to hang with the old lady for a bit. She was watching TV, and I found that not being able to hear anything was good for paying attention to the editing of the shows. She was watching some arts and crafts show, and without having to listen to the awful people on the screen spout their drivel, the show was a lot more interesting to watch from a structural standpoint. I did have some trouble communicating with the lady friend, but after nearly six years together, I haven't listened to her in quite some time anyway, so it wasn't very different.
I think that this exercise was made a lot easier by the foreknowledge that I would be getting my hearing back in a couple of hours. The actual loss of a sense is easy to recreate in the physical sense, but the psychological impact of a loss like that is impossible to imagine. What I found myself thinking about is the difference between being born with a missing sense, or losing a sense. It's tough to pick which scenario would be harder. If you were born without hearing, I suppose you wouldn't have the memory of it to miss. But, wouldn't the memory of sound be something you'd want. I imagine it would make communication easier, to have had some concept of what speech is before losing your hearing. I don't know. It would be pretty crappy, except for the freedom to ignore anyone.
While I was living in my mostly silent universe, I got to thinking about what sense people should have that they don't already. Almost all of my initial thoughts were really just extensions of our current senses, such as being able to see atoms, or hear in a greater range. It's kind of tough to imagine another sense, as I've been limited to the five (or six, if you count balance) that I've always had. An interesting sense to have would be the ability to detect and send thoughts and images through radio waves in addition to audible spectrum sound waves, but that ability would effectively be ESP, and so is discounted for this exercise. The truly new is hard to come by.
I was able to sit down and work without being distracted by the TV, which is important at my workspace. I did find that I'd missed a couple of calls that I had to return, but as someone who doesn't really care for phone calls, I wasn't too disappointed to miss them. In actuality, the first three hours of the experience were really rather enjoyable.
As I've gotten older, I've somewhat lost my ability to tune things out. I'm much more easily distracted, and have a harder time focusing like I did when I was a youth. The earplugs were very good for my long-lost concentration. The deafness allowed me to withdraw into the bubble that I used to be able to move to anytime I picked up a book. I don't think I'd like to be deaf though. I'd likely start to miss it eventually.
As I got toward the three hour mark, I decided to try and interact a little bit, and went upstairs to hang with the old lady for a bit. She was watching TV, and I found that not being able to hear anything was good for paying attention to the editing of the shows. She was watching some arts and crafts show, and without having to listen to the awful people on the screen spout their drivel, the show was a lot more interesting to watch from a structural standpoint. I did have some trouble communicating with the lady friend, but after nearly six years together, I haven't listened to her in quite some time anyway, so it wasn't very different.
I think that this exercise was made a lot easier by the foreknowledge that I would be getting my hearing back in a couple of hours. The actual loss of a sense is easy to recreate in the physical sense, but the psychological impact of a loss like that is impossible to imagine. What I found myself thinking about is the difference between being born with a missing sense, or losing a sense. It's tough to pick which scenario would be harder. If you were born without hearing, I suppose you wouldn't have the memory of it to miss. But, wouldn't the memory of sound be something you'd want. I imagine it would make communication easier, to have had some concept of what speech is before losing your hearing. I don't know. It would be pretty crappy, except for the freedom to ignore anyone.
While I was living in my mostly silent universe, I got to thinking about what sense people should have that they don't already. Almost all of my initial thoughts were really just extensions of our current senses, such as being able to see atoms, or hear in a greater range. It's kind of tough to imagine another sense, as I've been limited to the five (or six, if you count balance) that I've always had. An interesting sense to have would be the ability to detect and send thoughts and images through radio waves in addition to audible spectrum sound waves, but that ability would effectively be ESP, and so is discounted for this exercise. The truly new is hard to come by.
So I guess that my attempt to create a new sense would involve an instant emotional thermometer. This would be an apparatus located just above the Adam's Apple which would be able to detect the mood that people nearby were experiencing. Called by some, "the empathetic organ," this wouldn't be about reading minds but more about deciding how or even if one should approach another person, and how to interact with them appropriately. Although people have adapted to this lack of empathy pretty well, by using crude indicators like body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, this new sense would make things quite a bit easier, and cut out all sorts of faux pas. No longer would you tell someone how great you feel on the same day that they get dumped by their wife. On the downside though, I guess you couldn't help but be read by the emotional thermometer. So one could still make others feel bad by being in a good mood. Or you could have a contagious bad mood. Man, this thing could be a downer.
Pennance
I think I’m going to be heartless, and say that we needn’t do anything to make up for what we did to the room last week. I feel like what was done was done as the result of a legitimate exercise in creativity, and was therefore a class activity. What is a legitimate exercise in creativity is a very subjective, so we’re probably in the clear on that one. I think that this university is always putting people in a bad position for the benefit of others, so we shouldn’t feel bad about inconveniencing the class who came in after us. I’ll tell you that I’ve been extremely inconvenienced by paying the athletic development fee every semester here at IUPUI, which annoys and upsets me to no end, as I not only have no interest in college sports or athletics of any sort, but also feel that shit has no place in the academic setting. I won’t go into too much detail about my dislike for the system of universities as minor leagues for professional basketball and football leagues, but suffice it to say, people are frequently inconvenienced by the “educational” activities of others.
I’ll also say that people need to lighten up. If a classroom in disarray really has the capacity to ruin your day, you need to think a little more realistically about what upsets you. If you’re getting agitated about having to move a few chairs, then you don’t have a real and immediate idea of what could be going wrong in your life. I don’t want to be a complete goof, who goes around reminding people that they could have it worse, and to think about others, but come on. Get over it, I say.
Now, in the interest of not being completely heartless, maybe we should offer some peace offering, so as to avoid being glared at by people in the following class as we leave. None of them looked very school-shootery, but you never know. Perhaps we could make some overture, such as leaving a note that we plan to leave the room in decent order for the rest of the semester. I think this overture may defuse any sort of bad feelings those people have, and save our lives.
Reading back over this, I see that I appear to be a complete sociopath, with no regard for the feelings of others. The truth is, I do care about the feelings of others. I think that the sort of activity we engaged in is the same as vandalism and littering, leaving the next guy to clean up the mess. It’s what I like to think of as asshole behavior when I see other people doing it. I’d say that the mess we made in class was a microcosm of the worst of human behavior, when I really think about it. Lack of caring about others combined with mob mentality.
While I think there isn’t much we can do to smooth things over with the class after us, I think that we can take some important lessons into the future from this exercise. I know it’s probably more of the same sociopathy to write people off, but there are 6 billion other people in the world who don’t hate us personally, and we should probably just try to not piss them off, rather than spend a lot of time groveling to general studies students.
If we really want to improve the situation though, maybe baking some cookies would be good. Fat and sugar always improve people’s moods.
I’ll also say that people need to lighten up. If a classroom in disarray really has the capacity to ruin your day, you need to think a little more realistically about what upsets you. If you’re getting agitated about having to move a few chairs, then you don’t have a real and immediate idea of what could be going wrong in your life. I don’t want to be a complete goof, who goes around reminding people that they could have it worse, and to think about others, but come on. Get over it, I say.
Now, in the interest of not being completely heartless, maybe we should offer some peace offering, so as to avoid being glared at by people in the following class as we leave. None of them looked very school-shootery, but you never know. Perhaps we could make some overture, such as leaving a note that we plan to leave the room in decent order for the rest of the semester. I think this overture may defuse any sort of bad feelings those people have, and save our lives.
Reading back over this, I see that I appear to be a complete sociopath, with no regard for the feelings of others. The truth is, I do care about the feelings of others. I think that the sort of activity we engaged in is the same as vandalism and littering, leaving the next guy to clean up the mess. It’s what I like to think of as asshole behavior when I see other people doing it. I’d say that the mess we made in class was a microcosm of the worst of human behavior, when I really think about it. Lack of caring about others combined with mob mentality.
While I think there isn’t much we can do to smooth things over with the class after us, I think that we can take some important lessons into the future from this exercise. I know it’s probably more of the same sociopathy to write people off, but there are 6 billion other people in the world who don’t hate us personally, and we should probably just try to not piss them off, rather than spend a lot of time groveling to general studies students.
If we really want to improve the situation though, maybe baking some cookies would be good. Fat and sugar always improve people’s moods.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Reaction to Class 2/3
From the perspective of an avid scrabble player, I enjoyed the exercise of word finishing at the beginning of class. I liked the discussion of what 'creative' means. Creativity has always been an interesting concept to me. In today's educational environment, almost nothing is placed before creativity. It seems to me that this emphasis on creativity causes a lot of bad creativity.
While creativity is completely subjective, and my characterization of other people's work as 'bad,' is pretty inappropriate, I'll stick with it. I think that creativity has been commodified in a lot of ways by the Hobby Lobbies and Jo-Anns Crafts stores of the world. There are thousands of examples of creativity as commodity in these places, but I think I'll go with the scrapbooking phenomenon. This is the classic case of selling a creative endeavor to the masses. It is a minimally creative activity, in which people combine prefabricated elements with their own photos and memorabilia to 'create' a scrapbook. I think it isn't terribly creative.
I should leave the frustrated housewives of the world alone though, and quit invalidating people's creative outlets. Live and let live, I guess. Their output is good for them, and I don't have to look at it, so I'll leave them be.
While creativity is completely subjective, and my characterization of other people's work as 'bad,' is pretty inappropriate, I'll stick with it. I think that creativity has been commodified in a lot of ways by the Hobby Lobbies and Jo-Anns Crafts stores of the world. There are thousands of examples of creativity as commodity in these places, but I think I'll go with the scrapbooking phenomenon. This is the classic case of selling a creative endeavor to the masses. It is a minimally creative activity, in which people combine prefabricated elements with their own photos and memorabilia to 'create' a scrapbook. I think it isn't terribly creative.
I should leave the frustrated housewives of the world alone though, and quit invalidating people's creative outlets. Live and let live, I guess. Their output is good for them, and I don't have to look at it, so I'll leave them be.
Monday, February 2, 2009
50 What Ifs...
Here are the rest of my what ifs. They probably are pretty telling about what's on my mind. The future, you know?
What if I could throw objects perfectly, like throwing coins into a soda machine from 30 feet?
That one is new. Just popped out now. so 51 questions it is. I didn't find this to be too difficult. I'm a man who's proposed a hypothetical or two in my day. They come easy to me. Oh regarding my comments to my classmates, I didn't remember the real name of Pontious Omlette (the crucifier of our egg and savior), so his comment isn't on his blog, but does appear in my list of questions.
What if I figured out how to manage my time?
What if bacon weren't bad for you?
what if my dogs could talk?
what if I moved to Oregon?
What if I had effectively unlimited resources?
what if I knew how to work?
What if I liked auto racing?
What if teleporters were available?
What if sweatsuits weren't acceptable public attire?
What if I could talk to people?
What if I were a good salesman?
What if Indianapolis had acceptable public transit?
What if people didn't have thumbs?
What if half of people didn't have thumbs?
What if I'd chosen a financially lucrative field?
What if if I try to sell my house?
what if i had any interest at all in programming?
what if history really is cyclical?
what if history is exclusively linear?
what if there were no term limits?
what if an asteroid hits the earth?
what if i keep eating poorly?
what if pigs did in fact fly?
what if ice skating were less terrifying?
what if pickles tasted good?
what if i could ride a bike?
what if talk radio were less crazy?
what if i start my own business?
what if people cared about their pasts?
what if humans could learn from their mistakes a bit better?
what if i learned to tie a necktie?
what if people move to the moon?
what if people don't find another planet to live on?
what if cows and pigs were more sympathetic characters?
what if i had a hard drive in my brain?
what if i find a steady job, and keep the one i have?
what if i stopped sleeping altogether?
what if there were a pill that made it possible to go without sleep and not die?
what if people didn't have nationalistic tendencies?
what if telepathy worked?
what if RYAN had full control of his own facial hair, and could have kept his sweet moustache?
What if there was still an Inquisition?
What if this became a carer in egg melting/painting?
what if someone managed to take offense at your egg message?
What if this creates a craze for egg beers?
What if I could throw objects perfectly, like throwing coins into a soda machine from 30 feet?
That one is new. Just popped out now. so 51 questions it is. I didn't find this to be too difficult. I'm a man who's proposed a hypothetical or two in my day. They come easy to me. Oh regarding my comments to my classmates, I didn't remember the real name of Pontious Omlette (the crucifier of our egg and savior), so his comment isn't on his blog, but does appear in my list of questions.
What if I figured out how to manage my time?
What if bacon weren't bad for you?
what if my dogs could talk?
what if I moved to Oregon?
What if I had effectively unlimited resources?
what if I knew how to work?
What if I liked auto racing?
What if teleporters were available?
What if sweatsuits weren't acceptable public attire?
What if I could talk to people?
What if I were a good salesman?
What if Indianapolis had acceptable public transit?
What if people didn't have thumbs?
What if half of people didn't have thumbs?
What if I'd chosen a financially lucrative field?
What if if I try to sell my house?
what if i had any interest at all in programming?
what if history really is cyclical?
what if history is exclusively linear?
what if there were no term limits?
what if an asteroid hits the earth?
what if i keep eating poorly?
what if pigs did in fact fly?
what if ice skating were less terrifying?
what if pickles tasted good?
what if i could ride a bike?
what if talk radio were less crazy?
what if i start my own business?
what if people cared about their pasts?
what if humans could learn from their mistakes a bit better?
what if i learned to tie a necktie?
what if people move to the moon?
what if people don't find another planet to live on?
what if cows and pigs were more sympathetic characters?
what if i had a hard drive in my brain?
what if i find a steady job, and keep the one i have?
what if i stopped sleeping altogether?
what if there were a pill that made it possible to go without sleep and not die?
what if people didn't have nationalistic tendencies?
what if telepathy worked?
what if RYAN had full control of his own facial hair, and could have kept his sweet moustache?
What if there was still an Inquisition?
What if this became a carer in egg melting/painting?
what if someone managed to take offense at your egg message?
What if this creates a craze for egg beers?
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