We couldn’t say them/So now we just pray them
I like you. I don’t know if it is because of lust or because you make my curious, but I’m very much attracted to you. Part of me wants to see what you’ve been hiding behind your outfit, but an even greater part just wants me to become your shadow. Each night, I think about what it must be like to sleep with you but not have sex with you. Late at night when I’m still awake, I wonder what it would be like to have sex with you.
God, I find you so beautiful and so sexy it hurts my very soul to just catch a glance at you reclining in a chair as your shirt ever-so-slightly lifts just far enough to see the skin above the seam of your jeans or when you are smiling at a conversation I’m not a part of. My heart skips a beat every time I see you wearing anything that accents what it is that I find so physically attracting about you. My heart swoons whenever you do something that shows you really are a kind person.
You confuse me. Am I in lust with you or am I in love with you?
We couldn’t find them/So we tried to hide them
I found your e-mail address the other week when I was cleaning out my stuff. I’m not sure if I should even contact you. It’s been so long. You’ve probably switched accounts because that’s just how you are. Still, after all this time, after all these years, I still doubt that I actually know you.
All I know about you is based in this place we know as cyber space. I’ve never met you, and that bothers me greatly. I’ve met people you have met you, but even then that doesn’t put my doubt at ease.
Are you even real? I don’t know anymore.
I’m starting to believe that you lied to me. You’ve been lying to me all this time. You never were real. You never existed. And yet, I still think you are because I’m talking to you right now and not to your friend.
But we are not talking in person, face to face. If you are this real to me with just your written words, why can you not be this real to me in person? What are you so afraid of by meeting me? If you really are who you say you are, you have all the power in the world to come in and just do this with no qualms. And yet you don’t. Why?
I’m not the aggressive type. I respect you too much to do that to you. But with all this doubt on my mind, I have no other option. Either step up to the plate and show me what you got or get the fuck out of my head!
I’m tired of being tortured by the regret of not knowing the answer to “What if,” and only you have the power to stop it. I’m too weak to get you out of my head. I’m too attached to you to want to push you out of my head.
But these days, I’m also smart enough to question if you really are who you say you are and your motives. Keep that in mind, and let me know what you are going to do. The ball is in your court now.
We couldn't make them/So we had to break them
I promised myself I wouldn't become like him. I thought I could control myself and not do what he does every month.
Recent activities suggest otherwise. I can't even keep a promise to myself. With every lustful thought, I take a step closer to becoming like him. With every day that goes by where I cannot get any release, I take a step closer to becoming like him. And at least twice this past year, I've done what he does every month.
I told myself I wouldn't do what he does, but I've picked up his daily habit as my own.
I sit here on my shelf/Just talking to myself
If you are lucky enough to catch me when I'm alone, you'll find that my fantasy world has invaded my reality. I may be walking the dog, but I'm also holding a conversation with someone who isn't there. And they talk back to me.
I believe my social ineptness has made me crazy. Another part of me assures me that isn't the case.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
TGITEOTS (Thank God It's The End Of The Semester)
Going to the studio at the school today became a test in resisting temptation and lustful urges. Fear caused by past social experiences cause me to keep my distance from the people I admire, while doubt pokes a stick at my curiosity. A combination of sexual frustration that needs to be released mixed ever nicely with an honest want to find companionship leads to stalker-like behavior and what may very well be an acute development of nymphomania that can only be subdued by traumatic memories of that first real crush I had and the naive path I took to get where I am now.
Part of me wants that fairy tale to happen, where someone is secretly attracted to me that is impossibly out of my league. Or better yet, someone I secretly admire. That someone having more guts and bravery to take the risk that I cannot or will not depending on how you look at things. Oh, how lovely that would be if fairy tales were real and not a fabrication of dreams and wishes.
Part of me wants that fairy tale to happen, where someone is secretly attracted to me that is impossibly out of my league. Or better yet, someone I secretly admire. That someone having more guts and bravery to take the risk that I cannot or will not depending on how you look at things. Oh, how lovely that would be if fairy tales were real and not a fabrication of dreams and wishes.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Disney, Art, and the Popular Mainstream
I really need to go through my blogs to find more of these posts for my thesis. You know, just because.
Anyway, I may have been sick to the point of not being able to move since Friday, but that has given my mind a lot of time to think. You'd be surprised how fast my mind was processing when I was suffering from a fever and what felt like sand paper against the channel that leads into my lungs. Currently, I'm on the final leg of recovery, but I'm giving myself until Tuesday before I do any big moving around outside of making my way to my bed and the computer.
To start this entry off, I'm going to post my comments about a video I found over on Jason's blog. I've been meaning to write some commentary about it for some time now, but never really got around to it because of my thesis. I bring it up now because I feel it is appropriate for the overall subject matter of this entry.
Now, this video was under the title "Claymation Animals Make Art-Ignorance Cute" on Jason's blog. I would not call this "art ignorance" so much as it is the common view of art by the mainstream. Given the last several hundred years or so, the actual definition of art has been given a very loose and broad range. This video, albeit edited heavily to get the most comedic commentary out of what possibly was a series of serious interviews, does a really good job of displaying this. You have people that don't see Christo's Gates in Central Park being art because they just looked like flags. At the same time, you have people that know what art is but don't understand why someone is walking around a gallery naked. There is no real common definition of what art is according to the mainstream. One person says it's art, another person says it's animal cruelty.
The only common ground that the popular mainstream has is that art is something that has to be first declared as art before it is questioned if it is in fact art. As exampled in the video, some people consider comic books art. That's declaring a genre of media is art. From there, you have people questioning said claim from all walks of life. Some of my professors early in my education even thought comic books were not art but merely an excuse for men to draw big breasted women. Well, that was before someone showed them Maus.
But these kind of swaying of opinion are really hard to pull off. Again, it isn't so much ignorance but a matter of opinion. If someone was truly ignorant about art, they would be like Peter Griffin in Family Guy who had no idea who someone as big as Leonardo Di Vinci is. (The punchline has him responding positively when the art mogul mentions Bazooka Joe.) Generally speaking, the definition of what is and isn't art is really based on the individual. Just because they don't know about the contemporary art scene or is willing to put any effort into looking into why someone used elephant dung in their portrait of the Virgin Mary doesn't make them any less ignorant than someone who does.
Frankly, when you boil down all the rhetoric and social research, the main broth consists of what people like and what people don't like. If they like something a lot, it's art! If they don't like it, it's crap!
Some three months ago, it was reported that Disneyland was closing down It's A Small World because the boats were getting stuck in the canal due to excess weight. It was later reported that not only will that change happen, but Disney decided to change the ride to include some 38 Disney characters in the various countries represented. With this change also came the addition of an America scene at the expense of cutting out, ironically, a portion of the Rain forest scene.
Well, needless to say there were a lot of community up-roar about this mess. Everything was said from how the inclusion of the characters takes away from the overall theme of the ride to how Disney is just trying to push plush dolls through ride tie-ins to even how the change won't really affect the overall ride experiences. People were called names, letters were written, the press was called at one point. You get the idea.
From my observation, the main core group of the upset part where using a lot of art terms that I secretly questioned if they knew what they mean. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Watkins needs a language class of some sort, because finding out the definitions of these "art terms" on my own proved daunting. But to see these words used by people whom I can only assume have not had the same art education I was something I didn't expect from a bunch of Disney Geeks like myself. The only thing I found that relates this subject to the one above is the fact that the people were on this march to ensure that Mary Blair, the original Imagineer and art designer of the bulk of the rides many scenes, artistic expression was being threaten by a commercial intent.
Now, I can't speak for Mary Blair or her family, but from this single statement came several tangents about artist intent in personal expression dating back to the High Renaissance. It got to the point where someone on the only Disney forum I go to now (I got banned from all the others for stating my opinion on several things, most of them very negative and critical towards the company, because the community running the sites saw Disney as this "can do no wrong" entity.) got their art history mixed up. I stepped it with what little art history I know, but enough to make my teacher proud for being able to say something that made logical sense.
And my knowledge was seen as being a display of my personal art ignorance. What did I say?
I simply pointed out that during the time that everyone claims artist expression was important (High Renaissance) that what was really going on was that artists were just doing their job. It dates back to the caveman era where they painted on walls for documentation of a great hunt, to Egyptian times where kings would tear down any representation of the former king so they create bigger and better representations of their own, to the High Renaissance where the Church hired artist to paint inspirational depictions of Biblical stories to teach the people who didn't know how to read, and up toward the Revolutionary Eras where The French Court had way too much money on their hands and nothing to spend it on other than essentially buying an artist to paint portraits of how cool they are because they have all this money. I pointed out that it was only in the last several hundred years where personal expression of the artist has been the forefront of art making.
They didn't care. And in retrospect, that information was completely off topic from what was bothering them even now. But the point still remains that the popular mainstream view of art is based on what little knowledge they know about art.
In their defence, the most art education any of them probably got is from public schooling. That kind of art education is all about names and dates and not really about concept, content, and context. If there is anything in those art classes that is about technique, it's level one stuff like what is a line verses what is a plane. So to them, the scenes from Small World are as artistic to them as a sculpture by Murakami is to me. And Murakami is the closest artist I can pull off the top of my head that is even remotely similar to Mary Blair's stuff!
Meanwhile, while this was all going on, it was reported and confirmed that Hong Kong Disneyland was going to open it's version of Small World with these changes already in place. They had their sneak preview run this past weekend, and video quickly hit YouTube.
If you can stomach the song, feel free to watch the video below.
I would find video of the original version to help you guys compare, but I've been also known to use the soundtrack to this ride as a form of slow torture when need be.
Anyway, as soon as this and other videos hit the web, the reaction from the Disney fans were kind of mixed. The people that hated it before seeing the video hate it even more now. The people that were neutral about it, like myself, no longer see what the big deal is. I have yet to find anyone that is absolutely fanatical about the addition of Disney characters in a ride that purists say is a celebration of global unity through the commonality of humanity and the hope it is said to bring. Kind of reminds me of that documentary about Maya Lin where there was this one guy that kept popping up saying he hated everything about the Vietnam Memorial both before and after it was installed. (My favorite shot is of him by himself at the alternative memorial they erected next to it smiling proudly as if he won the battle while there are people behind him crying over how moving Maya Lin's memorial is.)
The strange part? People are still throwing the definition of what is and isn't art around like it's a basketball. Some saying that the ride is art and shouldn't be changed because artworks don't change after they are made. (Boy, do I know how wrong that statement is first hand...) Others are saying that it isn't art, but a theme park ride that needs to be updated and made relevant to today's audience. More still are saying that while the design and concept of the ride is art, the ride itself isn't art and needs to be treated like a ride while the actual models of the ride be treated like art pieces.
My opinion? If the change makes sense, they should go ahead and do it. The changes to Small World don't make sense to me, but at the same time they are not that bad as people made them out to be. Still though, as a Disney Fan, I feel rather upset that this kind of thing has happened yet again. It happened when they took Figment out of Journey Into Imagination, added Jack Sparrow to the Pirates ride (which I was against from the start), and when Nemo moved into The Living Seas (which was a change I favored). Events like these, especially when they get this heated, convince me that there are people out there that are so afraid of change, their fear will not die until everything they hold dear to their hearts is vacuum-sealed like a limited-edition comic book in a museum archive vault.
Anyway, I may have been sick to the point of not being able to move since Friday, but that has given my mind a lot of time to think. You'd be surprised how fast my mind was processing when I was suffering from a fever and what felt like sand paper against the channel that leads into my lungs. Currently, I'm on the final leg of recovery, but I'm giving myself until Tuesday before I do any big moving around outside of making my way to my bed and the computer.
To start this entry off, I'm going to post my comments about a video I found over on Jason's blog. I've been meaning to write some commentary about it for some time now, but never really got around to it because of my thesis. I bring it up now because I feel it is appropriate for the overall subject matter of this entry.
Now, this video was under the title "Claymation Animals Make Art-Ignorance Cute" on Jason's blog. I would not call this "art ignorance" so much as it is the common view of art by the mainstream. Given the last several hundred years or so, the actual definition of art has been given a very loose and broad range. This video, albeit edited heavily to get the most comedic commentary out of what possibly was a series of serious interviews, does a really good job of displaying this. You have people that don't see Christo's Gates in Central Park being art because they just looked like flags. At the same time, you have people that know what art is but don't understand why someone is walking around a gallery naked. There is no real common definition of what art is according to the mainstream. One person says it's art, another person says it's animal cruelty.
The only common ground that the popular mainstream has is that art is something that has to be first declared as art before it is questioned if it is in fact art. As exampled in the video, some people consider comic books art. That's declaring a genre of media is art. From there, you have people questioning said claim from all walks of life. Some of my professors early in my education even thought comic books were not art but merely an excuse for men to draw big breasted women. Well, that was before someone showed them Maus.
But these kind of swaying of opinion are really hard to pull off. Again, it isn't so much ignorance but a matter of opinion. If someone was truly ignorant about art, they would be like Peter Griffin in Family Guy who had no idea who someone as big as Leonardo Di Vinci is. (The punchline has him responding positively when the art mogul mentions Bazooka Joe.) Generally speaking, the definition of what is and isn't art is really based on the individual. Just because they don't know about the contemporary art scene or is willing to put any effort into looking into why someone used elephant dung in their portrait of the Virgin Mary doesn't make them any less ignorant than someone who does.
Frankly, when you boil down all the rhetoric and social research, the main broth consists of what people like and what people don't like. If they like something a lot, it's art! If they don't like it, it's crap!
Some three months ago, it was reported that Disneyland was closing down It's A Small World because the boats were getting stuck in the canal due to excess weight. It was later reported that not only will that change happen, but Disney decided to change the ride to include some 38 Disney characters in the various countries represented. With this change also came the addition of an America scene at the expense of cutting out, ironically, a portion of the Rain forest scene.
Well, needless to say there were a lot of community up-roar about this mess. Everything was said from how the inclusion of the characters takes away from the overall theme of the ride to how Disney is just trying to push plush dolls through ride tie-ins to even how the change won't really affect the overall ride experiences. People were called names, letters were written, the press was called at one point. You get the idea.
From my observation, the main core group of the upset part where using a lot of art terms that I secretly questioned if they knew what they mean. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Watkins needs a language class of some sort, because finding out the definitions of these "art terms" on my own proved daunting. But to see these words used by people whom I can only assume have not had the same art education I was something I didn't expect from a bunch of Disney Geeks like myself. The only thing I found that relates this subject to the one above is the fact that the people were on this march to ensure that Mary Blair, the original Imagineer and art designer of the bulk of the rides many scenes, artistic expression was being threaten by a commercial intent.
Now, I can't speak for Mary Blair or her family, but from this single statement came several tangents about artist intent in personal expression dating back to the High Renaissance. It got to the point where someone on the only Disney forum I go to now (I got banned from all the others for stating my opinion on several things, most of them very negative and critical towards the company, because the community running the sites saw Disney as this "can do no wrong" entity.) got their art history mixed up. I stepped it with what little art history I know, but enough to make my teacher proud for being able to say something that made logical sense.
And my knowledge was seen as being a display of my personal art ignorance. What did I say?
I simply pointed out that during the time that everyone claims artist expression was important (High Renaissance) that what was really going on was that artists were just doing their job. It dates back to the caveman era where they painted on walls for documentation of a great hunt, to Egyptian times where kings would tear down any representation of the former king so they create bigger and better representations of their own, to the High Renaissance where the Church hired artist to paint inspirational depictions of Biblical stories to teach the people who didn't know how to read, and up toward the Revolutionary Eras where The French Court had way too much money on their hands and nothing to spend it on other than essentially buying an artist to paint portraits of how cool they are because they have all this money. I pointed out that it was only in the last several hundred years where personal expression of the artist has been the forefront of art making.
They didn't care. And in retrospect, that information was completely off topic from what was bothering them even now. But the point still remains that the popular mainstream view of art is based on what little knowledge they know about art.
In their defence, the most art education any of them probably got is from public schooling. That kind of art education is all about names and dates and not really about concept, content, and context. If there is anything in those art classes that is about technique, it's level one stuff like what is a line verses what is a plane. So to them, the scenes from Small World are as artistic to them as a sculpture by Murakami is to me. And Murakami is the closest artist I can pull off the top of my head that is even remotely similar to Mary Blair's stuff!
Meanwhile, while this was all going on, it was reported and confirmed that Hong Kong Disneyland was going to open it's version of Small World with these changes already in place. They had their sneak preview run this past weekend, and video quickly hit YouTube.
If you can stomach the song, feel free to watch the video below.
I would find video of the original version to help you guys compare, but I've been also known to use the soundtrack to this ride as a form of slow torture when need be.
Anyway, as soon as this and other videos hit the web, the reaction from the Disney fans were kind of mixed. The people that hated it before seeing the video hate it even more now. The people that were neutral about it, like myself, no longer see what the big deal is. I have yet to find anyone that is absolutely fanatical about the addition of Disney characters in a ride that purists say is a celebration of global unity through the commonality of humanity and the hope it is said to bring. Kind of reminds me of that documentary about Maya Lin where there was this one guy that kept popping up saying he hated everything about the Vietnam Memorial both before and after it was installed. (My favorite shot is of him by himself at the alternative memorial they erected next to it smiling proudly as if he won the battle while there are people behind him crying over how moving Maya Lin's memorial is.)
The strange part? People are still throwing the definition of what is and isn't art around like it's a basketball. Some saying that the ride is art and shouldn't be changed because artworks don't change after they are made. (Boy, do I know how wrong that statement is first hand...) Others are saying that it isn't art, but a theme park ride that needs to be updated and made relevant to today's audience. More still are saying that while the design and concept of the ride is art, the ride itself isn't art and needs to be treated like a ride while the actual models of the ride be treated like art pieces.
My opinion? If the change makes sense, they should go ahead and do it. The changes to Small World don't make sense to me, but at the same time they are not that bad as people made them out to be. Still though, as a Disney Fan, I feel rather upset that this kind of thing has happened yet again. It happened when they took Figment out of Journey Into Imagination, added Jack Sparrow to the Pirates ride (which I was against from the start), and when Nemo moved into The Living Seas (which was a change I favored). Events like these, especially when they get this heated, convince me that there are people out there that are so afraid of change, their fear will not die until everything they hold dear to their hearts is vacuum-sealed like a limited-edition comic book in a museum archive vault.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
"Sick Day" -or- "Sleepy Valley Ranch"
These last few days, I've been waking up feeling rather crappy. Not depressed crappy, but more like sickly crappy. I can't tell if it is allergies or if I've actually caught a spring flu. Either way, I haven't been making my way to the studio for the last three days because of this. And I've gone through three-quarters of a bulk supply of Ramen noodles in the process.
Even so, I was able to get something done. Though if it was actually productive in any sense of the word is up for debate. All I know is that with these videos included at the end of this entry, I now have one RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 project done and two others to address. I think I'll revisit my Cinderella fireworks show, since that has to be done in two parts and I want to baby the project just like how I'm babying my Hello Kitty and Sonic the Hedgehog self-portraits for my thesis.
In any event, enjoy Sleep Valley Ranch. My wild west adventure theme park built on the remaining grounds of my "late uncle's horse breeding center." (That's the scenario's story as I wrote it.)
The Native Dance
(A roller coaster I designed in the game)
Even so, I was able to get something done. Though if it was actually productive in any sense of the word is up for debate. All I know is that with these videos included at the end of this entry, I now have one RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 project done and two others to address. I think I'll revisit my Cinderella fireworks show, since that has to be done in two parts and I want to baby the project just like how I'm babying my Hello Kitty and Sonic the Hedgehog self-portraits for my thesis.
In any event, enjoy Sleep Valley Ranch. My wild west adventure theme park built on the remaining grounds of my "late uncle's horse breeding center." (That's the scenario's story as I wrote it.)
The Native Dance
(A roller coaster I designed in the game)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Soon to be legal: Art Theft
Surfing on the internet, I caught wind of this news article reporting that there is a bill that will affect the entire creative industry of the US. Art, music, and everything in between will be affected by this bill should it become law.
When you get past all the hysterical writing and advocating to context your local representative, you find out what the bottom line is should this law get passed.
Congress wants to make art theft legal.
Now here is where I get confused, which is probably why I don't follow politics very often let alone get involved. Apparently, the way the are going about doing this is by claiming a work of art, whatever media that is, as an orphan or abandoned work. This means that you can pick it up, mess around with it, and call it yours even if all you did was change a color swatch or put a MSPaint line of text on it for your company's name. And then, in theory, I can turn around and do the same thing only call it art. And then someone can take my image and mess with it again to turn it into a shirt.
And the cycle repeats itself.
What I got out of the article is that creativity is going be pretty much killed off. It's mostly amount money and who gets it, yes, but it also is about use of creative material and being creative. The two are totally different from each other.
This kind of mirrors something Jason told me one night over the phone. Should this law be passed, I can legally make art using Mickey Mouse and not be penalized. (I can't be penalized anyway to begin with unless said product makes Disney look unfavorable, but that's a tangent for another time.) In return, that also means that Disney can search through my posts on MiceChat and use my idea for one of their dark ride products. It also means that I can legally draw an image of a Small World doll photo realistically and sell it as art with no real creative intent behind it.
Let's go an extreme (and very unlikely) route to show how creativity can be killed by this. Let's say that Jason's picture of himself nude with a vacuum cleaner draped around him is published in a magazine. Then, somebody in a graphic design firm for a vacuum cleaner company sees it in an article and thinks "That's a great image! I can use that!" The next day, he presents Jason's painting, completely unaltered, to his marketing boss. The only changes he made is include a white box of text with the company's product spelled out underneath the painting. The boss loves it. The ad is published. Jason finds the ad one day at gracing a department store ad in the USA Weekend that came with his Sunday Newspaper.
Yeah, I'd be upset at this point as well, mostly because nobody gave Vac-U-Suc the permission to use said painting in a commercial setting. On top of that, the very action is pretty much saying that the graphic designer, whose job it is to create an ad for the company, can't do their job without resorting to using someone else's creative material. But the company can get away with it by claiming the photograph documenting the painting is an orphan work and has no copyright protection. Ironically, I can say the same thing about Disney's Songs of the South or even the second half of Gargoyles Season 2. And as such, I can get the media from those films and TV shows and then sell them on DVD under this law. And Disney can't do a damn thing about it. (Well, maybe with Songs of the South since that's not within the 35 year time frame of affected media under this bill.)
I knew from the moment I said I wanted to be an artist that I wasn't going to make a lot of money. I never knew that eventually my creativity would be ultimately killed legally. I would have it killed off in the same manner as a presidential sniper, silently and in a public fashion because of a personal problem left unresolved.
Well, I did my part in making a few people aware of this issue, so I guess that would also be me getting involved in politics despite my failure of understanding it as clearly as I understand the mechanics of my computer.
When you get past all the hysterical writing and advocating to context your local representative, you find out what the bottom line is should this law get passed.
Congress wants to make art theft legal.
Now here is where I get confused, which is probably why I don't follow politics very often let alone get involved. Apparently, the way the are going about doing this is by claiming a work of art, whatever media that is, as an orphan or abandoned work. This means that you can pick it up, mess around with it, and call it yours even if all you did was change a color swatch or put a MSPaint line of text on it for your company's name. And then, in theory, I can turn around and do the same thing only call it art. And then someone can take my image and mess with it again to turn it into a shirt.
And the cycle repeats itself.
What I got out of the article is that creativity is going be pretty much killed off. It's mostly amount money and who gets it, yes, but it also is about use of creative material and being creative. The two are totally different from each other.
This kind of mirrors something Jason told me one night over the phone. Should this law be passed, I can legally make art using Mickey Mouse and not be penalized. (I can't be penalized anyway to begin with unless said product makes Disney look unfavorable, but that's a tangent for another time.) In return, that also means that Disney can search through my posts on MiceChat and use my idea for one of their dark ride products. It also means that I can legally draw an image of a Small World doll photo realistically and sell it as art with no real creative intent behind it.
Let's go an extreme (and very unlikely) route to show how creativity can be killed by this. Let's say that Jason's picture of himself nude with a vacuum cleaner draped around him is published in a magazine. Then, somebody in a graphic design firm for a vacuum cleaner company sees it in an article and thinks "That's a great image! I can use that!" The next day, he presents Jason's painting, completely unaltered, to his marketing boss. The only changes he made is include a white box of text with the company's product spelled out underneath the painting. The boss loves it. The ad is published. Jason finds the ad one day at gracing a department store ad in the USA Weekend that came with his Sunday Newspaper.
Yeah, I'd be upset at this point as well, mostly because nobody gave Vac-U-Suc the permission to use said painting in a commercial setting. On top of that, the very action is pretty much saying that the graphic designer, whose job it is to create an ad for the company, can't do their job without resorting to using someone else's creative material. But the company can get away with it by claiming the photograph documenting the painting is an orphan work and has no copyright protection. Ironically, I can say the same thing about Disney's Songs of the South or even the second half of Gargoyles Season 2. And as such, I can get the media from those films and TV shows and then sell them on DVD under this law. And Disney can't do a damn thing about it. (Well, maybe with Songs of the South since that's not within the 35 year time frame of affected media under this bill.)
I knew from the moment I said I wanted to be an artist that I wasn't going to make a lot of money. I never knew that eventually my creativity would be ultimately killed legally. I would have it killed off in the same manner as a presidential sniper, silently and in a public fashion because of a personal problem left unresolved.
Well, I did my part in making a few people aware of this issue, so I guess that would also be me getting involved in politics despite my failure of understanding it as clearly as I understand the mechanics of my computer.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
New York or Bust
Okay, so it is official. Mom and I are trying to get to NYC. Our research into the financial matters with the trip are at the point of no return. We are going to do this or kill each other in the process.
Which is proving to more factual than just a figure of speech.
This may be the first time I've planned a trip like this with my mom, but this isn't the first time the two of us have looked at prices for a major trip. That honor goes to my Study Abroad class. That said, it was easier looking those up and agreeing on times because we didn't have to worry about lodging and transit fees.
My experience in Spain has made the NYC subway map a little easier to read, but it seems everything I say involving that or any mass transit map is dismissed as bullshit by my mother. We literally spent 45 minutes going back and forth about the same train and subway line! She just couldn't get it in her head that what I was reading on the map was right because all the lines were confusing her. I even told her that "If this is anything like the subway maps in Spain, then..." this should happen. But to her, Spain's transit is different than NYC.
In her defence, it's been years since she has had to deal with any mass transit. The last time she used it on a regular basis was in Oregon. Some 14+ years later in a city where we don't have bus service in my area but six times over the course of the entire day before 18:00 has pretty much killed any experience she once had with reading bus routes and schedules.
Don't get me started on how strict she is about our transit budget. I can't defend that without the use of racial stereotypes.
Which is proving to more factual than just a figure of speech.
This may be the first time I've planned a trip like this with my mom, but this isn't the first time the two of us have looked at prices for a major trip. That honor goes to my Study Abroad class. That said, it was easier looking those up and agreeing on times because we didn't have to worry about lodging and transit fees.
My experience in Spain has made the NYC subway map a little easier to read, but it seems everything I say involving that or any mass transit map is dismissed as bullshit by my mother. We literally spent 45 minutes going back and forth about the same train and subway line! She just couldn't get it in her head that what I was reading on the map was right because all the lines were confusing her. I even told her that "If this is anything like the subway maps in Spain, then..." this should happen. But to her, Spain's transit is different than NYC.
In her defence, it's been years since she has had to deal with any mass transit. The last time she used it on a regular basis was in Oregon. Some 14+ years later in a city where we don't have bus service in my area but six times over the course of the entire day before 18:00 has pretty much killed any experience she once had with reading bus routes and schedules.
Don't get me started on how strict she is about our transit budget. I can't defend that without the use of racial stereotypes.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
One Step Forward, Three Days Back
Either I'm doing something very wrong with my art process or I should just stop listening to people. Not everyone, naturally.
I went into the studio all fired up and ready to tackle what I had going on only to end up falling back down to where I was a few days ago. Frustrated and unable to figure out what to do.
Long story short, my current challenge is to take the eight pictures and present them in a more polished and finished fashion. My tactic is to go about the whole presenting the portraits as if they are the portraits that are sitting on the shelf above the computer I'm at right now. But I simply cannot clean up the images in photoshop, print them on photo paper, frame them, and call them done. Apparently, there needs to be more.
And the more I tweak with it, the more I end up messing things up. I'm about at the point where I'm ready to say screw it and just do what I want to do even if they don't like it. Because at the rate I'm going with all the talking to teachers about ideas, I'm not producing a damn thing anymore.
I've effectively nullified my installation.
I've edited a one-and-three-quarter inch thick stack of drawings to eight.
I've done almost all of the suggestions they gave me at every critique.
And I've made no headway.
I don't know what the department wants from me anymore short of what is spelled out for me in the syllabus. I feel I have met those goals, but they feel like I haven't. I'm slowly becoming my fear. I'm not going to graduate in December at this rate. I may not graduate at all if I can't do anything right.
I went into the studio all fired up and ready to tackle what I had going on only to end up falling back down to where I was a few days ago. Frustrated and unable to figure out what to do.
Long story short, my current challenge is to take the eight pictures and present them in a more polished and finished fashion. My tactic is to go about the whole presenting the portraits as if they are the portraits that are sitting on the shelf above the computer I'm at right now. But I simply cannot clean up the images in photoshop, print them on photo paper, frame them, and call them done. Apparently, there needs to be more.
And the more I tweak with it, the more I end up messing things up. I'm about at the point where I'm ready to say screw it and just do what I want to do even if they don't like it. Because at the rate I'm going with all the talking to teachers about ideas, I'm not producing a damn thing anymore.
I've effectively nullified my installation.
I've edited a one-and-three-quarter inch thick stack of drawings to eight.
I've done almost all of the suggestions they gave me at every critique.
And I've made no headway.
I don't know what the department wants from me anymore short of what is spelled out for me in the syllabus. I feel I have met those goals, but they feel like I haven't. I'm slowly becoming my fear. I'm not going to graduate in December at this rate. I may not graduate at all if I can't do anything right.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
NEWSFLASH: Squarepants Murders Fudd
The internet is a wonderful tool. It is a wealth of information on any and nearly every topic you can think about looking up, often with some degree of credibility in the academic field. But mostly the knowledge found online is for the trivial.
That said, who would have thought that one of my internet forum sites would be the source of revived nerdom from the dead zone caused by stress and frustration? Certainly not I!
It all started innocently enough. I was reading a forum thread that was a game involving word association. Well, someone playing the game didn't know who Elmer Fudd is, as the character's name came up when associated with the word rabbit. A tangent happened where one person was so surprised at this that they immediately blamed Spongebob for the murder of classic cartoons.
And then this is what I posted in response:
But much to my benefit, the fact that I was able to nerd out in a context such as the one presented to me was something that I desperately needed in order to feel better about what I was doing in my thesis. It's a shame that I cannot go into these kind of subjects with my thesis right now, as illustrated in Seminar 2 when I tried this. The branches of controversy and subversiveness in any "classic" cartoon are things that I could easily spend my whole life on, both researching and exploring artistically. And that's a good thing.
As was the case in the forum I posted in, this information is nothing new. It's just been forgotten about since contemporary cartoons now have a formula and a bracket system that helps outline how to design an animated show for a target audience while still being able to air it with little to no controversy. (Selective time slots help a lot in some cases.) But a lot of people are growing up not knowing about these things or even why something that makes others smile and laugh but a very vocal few flail in disgust and offense.
To paraphrase Sweeney Todd, I feel alive again.
That said, who would have thought that one of my internet forum sites would be the source of revived nerdom from the dead zone caused by stress and frustration? Certainly not I!
It all started innocently enough. I was reading a forum thread that was a game involving word association. Well, someone playing the game didn't know who Elmer Fudd is, as the character's name came up when associated with the word rabbit. A tangent happened where one person was so surprised at this that they immediately blamed Spongebob for the murder of classic cartoons.
And then this is what I posted in response:
what do you expect? You are witnessing a generation where comedy can't be "too much" for children in animation despite the fact we have mature animated comedy shows that have a self-awareness of what media they are in. That's why we have to deal with Chowder not showing anything that resembles a human being and Foster's Home for Imaginary friends forcefully adding a Goo because someone complained about there not being any blacks on that cartoon despite the several times people of color would show up. We are living an era where cartoons now are being bracketed off like the movie ratings. If it has this and that, it's for the teen block. If it has this or that, it's for the kid block. But if it is designed for kids or has a kid-friendly aesthetic but has something that is not? Well, don't expect it to last very long.The kids on that forum were more than shocked to learn this. One person claimed that they never knew about the controversy with Mammy Two-Legs, but found any women character from that era depressing. To which I replied:
Case and point, the Speedy Gonzales cartoons. They can no longer air ANY of them (that's right, all of them) because the Mexican community finds it grossly offensive in how they stereotype Mexicans as lazy, party-hungry, womenizers. Frankly, I thought it was because he used "Arriba" in the wrong context. The same applies to some Tom & Jerry cartoons featuring Mammy Two-Legs (Tom Cat's original owner), most of the Road Runner cartoons, and the first two seasons of Sesame Street. Those items are no longer "kid friendly" because of how we've become "too sensitive" when dealing with children's emotions.
Pixar has the right idea. They believe that you shouldn't talk down to kids. Most of the time, they are smarter than adults even if they don't understand the Webster definition for the big adult words we use. That's why their movies are the best family movies in contemporary entertainment.
Both of Tom's owners were very depressing as far as representing women of their time. Mammy Two-Legs was a Sambo plantation kitchen slave type of character. Tom's second owner was the Betty Crocker good ol' American house wife who is deathly afraid of Jerry Mouse.Yeah, total nerd alert.
It's a wonder why people are still upset with the Neo Feminists out there. You still see those gross female stereotypes everywhere. Just look at Mary Jane from Spider-Man. Even Kristan Dunce said she doesn't like playing the screaming dame in distress, and what role does she get?
But much to my benefit, the fact that I was able to nerd out in a context such as the one presented to me was something that I desperately needed in order to feel better about what I was doing in my thesis. It's a shame that I cannot go into these kind of subjects with my thesis right now, as illustrated in Seminar 2 when I tried this. The branches of controversy and subversiveness in any "classic" cartoon are things that I could easily spend my whole life on, both researching and exploring artistically. And that's a good thing.
As was the case in the forum I posted in, this information is nothing new. It's just been forgotten about since contemporary cartoons now have a formula and a bracket system that helps outline how to design an animated show for a target audience while still being able to air it with little to no controversy. (Selective time slots help a lot in some cases.) But a lot of people are growing up not knowing about these things or even why something that makes others smile and laugh but a very vocal few flail in disgust and offense.
To paraphrase Sweeney Todd, I feel alive again.
Monday, April 07, 2008
A Few Days Too Early?
Going into the studio today to get some work done was no doubt a premature decision on my part. Not only was I not productive, but I became frustrated while sitting in the space.
The only good part of it all is that I edited down my images to just my eight strongest. A one-and-three-quarter inch stack of drawings reduced to eight images. And the interesting part is that all eight images are in different styles, which eliminates the "just anime" look.
I ran the idea of treating these portraits as if they were commissioned family portraits or vacation pictures by Brady, and he seemed to like the idea looking at the images I selected for that process. The fact that I want to use the same photo printing process that Joe Shmoe can use at Wal-Mart is an interesting tactic, and the use of "kick stand" frames like the ones my mom has set up around the living room would be an interesting way of interacting with the space. But it is clear that I have a long process to go. Brady is confident that I can make it, though.
The entire time I was looking over the images, I kept trying to figure out which of them I wanted to do in oil and which I wanted to do in acrylic. There were at least two images I knew I was going to dump into Photoshop the moment I felt productive again, but for the life of me I couldn't bring myself to think in said productive fashion.
On the ride home during my mom's lunch hour, we talked about NYC. I said that a few people at the school suggested this and that, but ultimately we are still looking. I forwarded the idea one student had, which was to just fly there for the day and then fly back that night. Mom and I agree that if we are going to be in NYC, we should spend a few days there and see what we can instead of going for just that show and then leaving like a frequent-flying corporate business mogul. If all else fails and we can't go, I'll just order the catalogue from the museum's online store... as well as a few of Murakami's character plush dolls if not for my collection then to make my studio space a little bit more bearable.
I also had to explain where my thesis is right now to my mother. She didn't understand how what I was doing related to subculture-mainstream social interaction. It was a nice practice to explain to her how I'm still in the arena of subculture behavior while just cutting out mainstream reaction and focusing on the idea of the avatar, which is an element similar to cosplaying but different from those hired to walk around the Magic Kingdom dressed up like Tarzan. I got it "in one." So did my mom. It's a good sign.
The only good part of it all is that I edited down my images to just my eight strongest. A one-and-three-quarter inch stack of drawings reduced to eight images. And the interesting part is that all eight images are in different styles, which eliminates the "just anime" look.
I ran the idea of treating these portraits as if they were commissioned family portraits or vacation pictures by Brady, and he seemed to like the idea looking at the images I selected for that process. The fact that I want to use the same photo printing process that Joe Shmoe can use at Wal-Mart is an interesting tactic, and the use of "kick stand" frames like the ones my mom has set up around the living room would be an interesting way of interacting with the space. But it is clear that I have a long process to go. Brady is confident that I can make it, though.
The entire time I was looking over the images, I kept trying to figure out which of them I wanted to do in oil and which I wanted to do in acrylic. There were at least two images I knew I was going to dump into Photoshop the moment I felt productive again, but for the life of me I couldn't bring myself to think in said productive fashion.
On the ride home during my mom's lunch hour, we talked about NYC. I said that a few people at the school suggested this and that, but ultimately we are still looking. I forwarded the idea one student had, which was to just fly there for the day and then fly back that night. Mom and I agree that if we are going to be in NYC, we should spend a few days there and see what we can instead of going for just that show and then leaving like a frequent-flying corporate business mogul. If all else fails and we can't go, I'll just order the catalogue from the museum's online store... as well as a few of Murakami's character plush dolls if not for my collection then to make my studio space a little bit more bearable.
I also had to explain where my thesis is right now to my mother. She didn't understand how what I was doing related to subculture-mainstream social interaction. It was a nice practice to explain to her how I'm still in the arena of subculture behavior while just cutting out mainstream reaction and focusing on the idea of the avatar, which is an element similar to cosplaying but different from those hired to walk around the Magic Kingdom dressed up like Tarzan. I got it "in one." So did my mom. It's a good sign.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
A Perfect Spring Day in the Sleep Valley
Today is one of those rare spring days where things are just perfect. The sun is out, the birds are singing, people are walking around the neighborhood for their own pleasure, the dogs are actually behaving, landscaping is getting done. Today is one of those rare spring days right out of a 1950s family show.
And I had to spend most of it inside toying away with my latest RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 project (which means I have a total of two projects now in that game on hold, possibly indefinitely).
My mom is still trying to help me with my thesis show by pointing out art exhibits advertised in the local paper that may be of interest to me. With the exception of the Murakami retrospective, I haven't been feeling all that artsy. Give me a few more days, and maybe I'll be back to where I was a month ago before all that shit hit the fan as if it was pitched by an irate baboon.
The entire time I was toying around in RCT3, I couldn't help but look at my Custom Avatar I made for my family in the game. It's a feature where you can create avatars that will visit all the parks you create in the game. You can even set their ride preference to what their real life counterparts would be. In my case, I'm the only person in my family of four with a high preference. Everyone else has a low preference, as nobody in my family is much of a fan of roller coasters. You can also dictate who would be the leader of the family, which translates into who holds the camera and who calls all the shots as to where the group should go next on their visit. This leads to some really odd behavior mechanics, but what I find interesting is that whenever my family's avatar hits a photo spot (you know, those plaques that you see all over theme parks sponsored by Kodak or Fuji Film that say "Take a picture here!" because the view is perfect?) is that my avatar is nowhere to be seen. Like I said before, it is because I set my own avatar as the leader of the group and, as such, my avatar gets assigned the camera.
For a while now, I've been tossing the idea of printing some of these pictures the game saves on photo paper a la how most families print their vacation photos now and then put them in a coffee table book via Photobucket or the like. It would make a very interesting art piece in my mind, because they are vacation photos of a trip that did not happen but yet is treated as if it did. With the avatar thesis I'm going with now, I wonder how this idea would work if I used the pictures as a guide for a drawing that would be later scanned, digitally colored, and printed on photo paper. The majority of the pictures would be the Photo Spot pictures from the cyber theme parks with one on-ride featuring no other member of my family but myself on some roller coaster that was in the park. The immediate question that would be asked is who is this person and why is he not found in the other pictures that are clearly from the same theme park?
I could talk about the idea until I'm blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is I won't know the answer to the big question of "Does it work in my thesis?" until I do a mock up. Now I just need to play RCT3 again and hope my family's avatar have some interesting photos. But first, I need to actually have a completed park. After all, who visits a theme park that is only half built? (And don't say the Hong Kong Disney fans.)
And I had to spend most of it inside toying away with my latest RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 project (which means I have a total of two projects now in that game on hold, possibly indefinitely).
My mom is still trying to help me with my thesis show by pointing out art exhibits advertised in the local paper that may be of interest to me. With the exception of the Murakami retrospective, I haven't been feeling all that artsy. Give me a few more days, and maybe I'll be back to where I was a month ago before all that shit hit the fan as if it was pitched by an irate baboon.
The entire time I was toying around in RCT3, I couldn't help but look at my Custom Avatar I made for my family in the game. It's a feature where you can create avatars that will visit all the parks you create in the game. You can even set their ride preference to what their real life counterparts would be. In my case, I'm the only person in my family of four with a high preference. Everyone else has a low preference, as nobody in my family is much of a fan of roller coasters. You can also dictate who would be the leader of the family, which translates into who holds the camera and who calls all the shots as to where the group should go next on their visit. This leads to some really odd behavior mechanics, but what I find interesting is that whenever my family's avatar hits a photo spot (you know, those plaques that you see all over theme parks sponsored by Kodak or Fuji Film that say "Take a picture here!" because the view is perfect?) is that my avatar is nowhere to be seen. Like I said before, it is because I set my own avatar as the leader of the group and, as such, my avatar gets assigned the camera.
For a while now, I've been tossing the idea of printing some of these pictures the game saves on photo paper a la how most families print their vacation photos now and then put them in a coffee table book via Photobucket or the like. It would make a very interesting art piece in my mind, because they are vacation photos of a trip that did not happen but yet is treated as if it did. With the avatar thesis I'm going with now, I wonder how this idea would work if I used the pictures as a guide for a drawing that would be later scanned, digitally colored, and printed on photo paper. The majority of the pictures would be the Photo Spot pictures from the cyber theme parks with one on-ride featuring no other member of my family but myself on some roller coaster that was in the park. The immediate question that would be asked is who is this person and why is he not found in the other pictures that are clearly from the same theme park?
I could talk about the idea until I'm blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is I won't know the answer to the big question of "Does it work in my thesis?" until I do a mock up. Now I just need to play RCT3 again and hope my family's avatar have some interesting photos. But first, I need to actually have a completed park. After all, who visits a theme park that is only half built? (And don't say the Hong Kong Disney fans.)
Friday, April 04, 2008
10 Hours Online
According to my computer's online connection clock, I'm approaching the 10 hour mark of sitting here on what is suppose to be the big due date of my thesis class. But since I withdrew from the semester in order to continue my work and try again next semester, I see this as fair game for the three weeks of stress and panic I have yet to come down from.
I am getting better, however. Just not well enough to talk about art.
Amanda gave me a heads up about a show in NYC that is opening soon featuring none other than Takashi Murakami. It's a massive retrospective and features two of his animations. Told my mom, because she reacted rather well when I showed her MR. DOB (Murakami's original character), and she seem impressed by the offerings. Don't know if we are going to go there or DC, but I'm told I'm not a real artist until I go to NYC... or something like that.
I am getting better, however. Just not well enough to talk about art.
Amanda gave me a heads up about a show in NYC that is opening soon featuring none other than Takashi Murakami. It's a massive retrospective and features two of his animations. Told my mom, because she reacted rather well when I showed her MR. DOB (Murakami's original character), and she seem impressed by the offerings. Don't know if we are going to go there or DC, but I'm told I'm not a real artist until I go to NYC... or something like that.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Living Thesis
It one thing to research all the academic studies available in some published form involving my thesis. It's another thing to have a case that functions as an example.
Jason's latest blog gave me a ping this morning on Google Reader, and I have to say the entire situation he is going through is pretty much my thesis. This isn't the first time I've heard of him being in this situation. Hell, his own thesis show at Watkins had some of the same problems to some degree. This time around, I don't have enough information to go on to figure out what's the problem this time around. The only thing I can assume is that someone out there has a problem with Jason essentially producing nude self-portraits of himself or the homosexual content involved with it. How that falls under Sexual Harassment is beyond me.
This event is very unfortunate. There is no denying that. Personally, I think Jason would benefit a lot from presenting himself and his artwork up front at the next desk job he chooses to be interviewed for if and when that time comes. It certainly can't hurt him.
Jason's latest blog gave me a ping this morning on Google Reader, and I have to say the entire situation he is going through is pretty much my thesis. This isn't the first time I've heard of him being in this situation. Hell, his own thesis show at Watkins had some of the same problems to some degree. This time around, I don't have enough information to go on to figure out what's the problem this time around. The only thing I can assume is that someone out there has a problem with Jason essentially producing nude self-portraits of himself or the homosexual content involved with it. How that falls under Sexual Harassment is beyond me.
This event is very unfortunate. There is no denying that. Personally, I think Jason would benefit a lot from presenting himself and his artwork up front at the next desk job he chooses to be interviewed for if and when that time comes. It certainly can't hurt him.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
New Speed Racer Trailer
This movie is starting to look so much better and better as it gets closer to its release date.
