Textual Poaching

Each student will choose an existing, mediated representation of the culture / race / ethnicity / gender / nationality / religion / subculture, etc. with which he/she identifies. The representation may be in any medium—film, photograph, visual art, poetry, literature, advertisement, news article, song, music video, etc.—but it should be older than the student. Students will remix the representation so that their new creation demonstrates their negotiation of this aspect of their identity and how it has been historically represented in media. Artist statements should include a discussion of the correlations and contradictions between his/her ‘self’ (perspectives, practices, etc.) and this historical representation of this aspect of his/her identity.

Your ears were just headbutted by the lovechild of my first encounter with Apple Logic Pro X.

I first isolated the vocals from Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". Once I was satisfied with the vocals, I proceeded to incorporate some "beep boop" sounds and electro-drum kit components. I also reused certain portions from the song to mimic the tendencies of a dance remix.

Cash's "Ring of Fire" is a lovely Folk/Americana tune. Why would I mess with the composition? The lyrics and the quality of Cash's voice are certainly more in line with Americana / than they are geared toward a modern electronic beat.

I didn't commit this blasphemy against the Man in Black without reason. My little remix of his song is intended to be a commentary on the implicit style of masculinity within Cash's music. He has a great bass voice. He has a rough sound. His diction is distinctive. He sings about crime and alcohol, but portrays a didactic commentary on the negative aspects of a fast lifestyle. Unlike many recent Christian artists, he manages to avoid preachiness and self-righteousness, but instead, is forgiving and honest about weakness. He is humorous, gruff, hard-working, and even romantic. Overall, the Johnny Cash public persona's portrayal of masculinity is very conventionally American. He embodies the ideal of the rough and tumble but golden-hearted Wild-West man.

How does this portrayal of masculinity compare to the lifestyle of the fashionable modern urban male? Does Johnny's preference for folk tunes relate to the guy listening to "Sin Fang"? Does Johnny's conventional Christianity mesh with the New Age hippie attitudes? What about the dudes with skin-tight clothes who are doing the "bernie" in laser-lit dance clubs?

I myself have always avoided the club scene. (Is the "bernie" still a thing? It might be the national dance if Sanders wins the election.) However, I still can't say that I fit Cash's macho Wild-West ideal. I mean, I shed a tear during Toy Story.

Joking aside, this one minute song represents my attempt to compare a modern-ish urban masculinity with Cash's older ideal. It's not an in-depth study; the gender conversation is wide and varied. Nonetheless, the creation of this short tune and its contrasting elements has been an interesting experiment.

Unintelligible Art & Medium Specificity

Each student will choose an artistic medium (film, photography, drawing, painting, dance, performance, graphic design, poetry, literary narrative, etc.) and produce a work which explores the specific elements unique to that medium--like Brakhage or Daren’s films, Pollock’s paintings, Warhol’s prints, Cage’s music, etc. Artist statements should include a discussion of how their particular work functions as a celebration, commentary or critique of their chosen medium.

Commercialized food is about more than food. There is an implicit visual language----expectations for food presentation. We organize the food on plates. When we cast light on our food, the lighting tends to be a certain way. When capturing footage of food, there are traditional stylized camera movements. For my medium specificity assignment, I decided to preserve the visual language of food presentation. This visual language triggers a habitual expectation that the subject will be edible. However, for a twist, I decided to present inedible food. I have all the trappings and signs that would indicate the food will be delicious, but the food itself is made mainly out of trash.

Tangible elements of the visual language included the simple yet welcoming wooden table, the gas lamp (which added a sense of old-fashioned reliability!), the high-contrast dining plates (to show off the food as though it were worth eating!), and the napkins. We use folded napkins to imply order and cleanliness (thereby implying edibility!) In my case, all of these conventional visual elements were ironic and misleading!

I also paid attention to diction. Words and phrases like "generous portion" and "complementary" and "delicious" evoke memories of every commercial you've ever seen.

I have studied food advertisements. I observe they use a particular kind of harsh spotlighting, which brings out glistening highlights in the food. This spotlighting is the equivalent of an eye-light when shooting human portraits. The remainder of the shadows are made less impenetrable using a diffused fill-light. This is all done to reduce bad shadows, while simultaneously adding gloss to the moist parts of food, to make it look fresh.

I used a combination of sweeping camera shots, extreme closeups, and the iconic plate-placement shot. It is a common trope in food advertisements to show a disembodied hand as it places a platter of delicious food onto a table, before retreating back off screen. The plate-placement shot is the conventional way to introduce a new food item, and thus it carries with it the expectation that the food will be worth looking at. However, my extreme closeups (another common advertisement feature) revealed otherwise! The sweeping shots (another conventional advertisement cliché) provided a grace that contrasted ironically with the ugly food items.

Even the music was upbeat and happy, not matching the ugly food whatsoever.

My use of the visual language of commercial food presentation was intended to demonstrate something specific. I wanted the audience to consider: to what extent do we consider food delicious because it is well prepared, and to what extent is our appetite influenced by the triggers contained in the visual language of food presentation? Without the stylized presentation, can good food look unappetizing? With the expected presentation, can bad food look more appetizing? Definitely.

Were I to go back and make corrections, I would do the following:

1. I would change "shredder fresh toppings" to "freshly shredded paper". This alternate wording would be more clearly in line with the trash theme, and would spell out the identity of the topping. In its current state, the only solid clue regarding the identity of the topping is a single closeup shot.

2. Correct visual stutter. During the final shot, there is a visual stutter during the left panning movement between the spaghetti and the cup. This disrupts the stylized flow and makes the entire video noticeably less believable.

3. Better match the visual of the salad with the dialogue, "beginning with a fresh backyard salad". As it is now, the salad is moving off the frame when the narration is describing it. This is confusing, and again disrupts the stylized flow.
4. Delete everything and start over to make it better.

Co-Authoring a Script

The Plum Jar, A True Story from WWII is a script by Grant Gomm and Camden Argyle.

Click here to view the script

Hollywood has attempted to tell the stories of World War II nearly since the end of the
war.  Movies like Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, and Series like Band of Brothers
all tell the stories from the perspective of the soldiers who fought in the war.  Audie
Murphy was the most decorated U.S. soldier during the war, and even starred in the
movie To Hell and Back where he played the role of himself, telling his story while
fighting in the U.S. 3rd Infantry division.  In 1945, in what is known as the Colmar Pocket
in Eastern France, Murphy held off an entire company of German soldiers by himself for
over an hour.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor for this achievement.  But what
about the average citizen that was liberated by the allied armies portrayed in these
films?  What is their story?  What was their experience like having to endure German
occupation for nearly six years?  One moment they are under the control of the Nazi
German government, then the bombs fall and bullets fly.  Sometimes the fighting lasted
for many days as was the case during the battle of Jebsheim, which was a part of the
Colmar Pocket fought in by Audie Murphy. 

Today, the French Foreign Legion tells the story from their perspective on their official website: 

http://www.legionetrangere.fr/index.php/79-infos-fsale/389-histoire-janvier-fevrier-
1945-la-legion-dans-la-bataille-de-strasbourg-et-dans-la-bataille-de-colmar.

But again, what about the citizens?  Do they not have stories to tell?  Not far from
Jebsheim, and within a few short minutes from the German border is the village of
Durrenentzen.  Lucy Eischer, who had been a long time resident of the village, told a
story that she experienced shortly after the French and American forces pushed the
Germans out.  Lucy’s story is the framework for The Plum Jar.

I had thought that collaborating on the script for The Plum Jar would be counter-productive. It seemed to me that pausing intermittently to confer with a co-writer would slow down the entire process. However, I did not account for how much time I spend trying to overcome writer’s block when writing solo. So yes, while it is true that a co-authorship of a script adds extra communication time to the writing process. However, there was a time reduction factor that I did not account for. It seems to me that whenever one of us experienced writer’s block, or did not have time to continue working on the project, he could ship the project to the other.  The other collaborator would delve into the issue at hand with fresh eyes, often able to find a solution that the other had been too entrenched to see. This phenomenon occurred several times, but there is exchange in particular that I am most proud of. Grant wrote out a wonderful story arch wherein the POV character finds a jar of pickles; which is set aside for a special occasion. This jar of pickles is later given to starving soldiers. When I read that passage, from my own perspective, I saw the jar of pickles as a symbol to represent the offer of goodwill that is extended to the german soldiers. To flesh out this symbol, I suggested that, when the german soldiers are killed, we show the jar of pickles being shattered, to represent the loss of the opportunity for peace. I was caught up in the whirlwind of establishing the gift as a symbol, and didn’t see how the symbol could be improved. However, viewing the suggested symbol from a different perspective, Grant was able to see an opportunity for improvement. Grant suggested, in order to optimize the symbol’s effectiveness, that we change the pickles into plums. Plums would be a local treat, relevant to the setting. Also, plums would be sweeter and therefore more representative of the goodwill for which they are intended to  be a placeholder.This rapid fire exchange of good ideas, each building off of the next, is the reason why I am now infinitely more accepting of collaborative authorship. Take that, Auteur theory!

Telling a Story Using Only Sound

Students will work in pairs to produce a 1-2 minute audio piece documenting some type of process. In this case, a process is an act of human labor with a beginning, middle and an end. Artist statements should should include a discussion of both form and content in their creations, as well as both the process and the product of their own creative efforts. 

My classmate and friend, Pepe, joined me on this project. Our goal was to tell the story of a wedding ceremony as it is interrupted. Specifically, the process of a man objecting to a marriage. Our means for accomplishing this goal: native sound. We used no scripted narration to tell the story; only sounds that you might hear at a wedding ceremony. By organizing our collection of native sounds into a premeditated structure, we were successfully able to communicate the experience of an interrupted wedding.