Rape-a-Thesis

Several weeks ago, close to a month at this point, I caught wind of a documentary film that we would get at the theatre. It was art related. By the time I went to see it, I already ran into two people I knew from Watkins. One was a member of the board, the other was a recent graduate student whom I was going to graduate with.

The film was titled The Rape of Europa. It was a three-hour art history class, but it put World War 2 into a different perspective for me.

The way they teach you about the war in public school is that it was all religious genocide by the Nazis. As you go up the levels of grades, they expand on this a little more saying things like how the Nazis found the Jewish religion primitive and "lower than human" and other disgusting things.

What they don't tell you is that wasn't the start of The Holocaust. They don't tell you that Hitler applied for an art school where some of the great European masters of his time would be brought out. They don't even tell you that he had plans for a giant art museum consisting of art that he fancied. They don't even tell you that whatever art he didn't like was going to be burned and destroyed.

After the film, as an art student, I left realizing that what I was producing and am trying to produce is not just something you can hang on a wall or project on a screen. Its the very culture that I live and breathe! They are not so much representations of ideas but rather a representation of an entire community, a subculture group that nobody who considers themselves above that social circle would otherwise be exposed to. That's why there was a Murakami Retrospective for the people who don't like anime. That's why there was a graffiti exhibit for the people who don't consider that art. That's why there are films being shown in a gallery space because the movie theatres don't want to show it.

...

I haven't touched my thesis since I moved out of my studio, which was just before I watched the film. I've been obsessing with Spore's Creature Creator and producing fantastic life. Some of the designs I'm happy with, while others I want to see in the game just so I can have the pleasure of hunting them into extinction. The game, by design, has recharged a science interest I forgot I had.

But like Will Wright has said several times at his talks about Spore, science and creativity have a common ground. And creativity doesn't limit itself to drawings or photographs or movies or even games. It's inherently deconstructive and will constantly double back on itself. And to have this creative loop in an area of scientific ideas will only generate a learning process equal to the Montessori teaching method.

In some way, I feel like the best art I've produced is through the Montessori method. By playing, failing, and still enjoying myself during the process. How I can get back into that mind-set without being bogged down by a thesis this semester is beyond me.