Distracted by the Second Head

It was bound to happen.

I am pulling some overtime in the studio, which means I'm coming in during my "days off." Mostly to get some things done that I cannot do at home due to other distractions. While taking a break from the computer to get some blood flowing and to give my eyes a rest from being bombarded by whatever dangerous invisible rays are being emitted off this computer screen, I ran into my current crush Luke. Head-to-toe denim with a newly shaved head and a trim but attractive facial hair that hid what little grey he has rather nicely but still made him look as young as he really is. As usual, he was all smiles with a mug of coffee in his hand.

We exchanged polite conversation, but I noticed that I was unusually close to him in proximity during the walk down the hallway. By the time I caught myself, he had to duck back into the class he was in. Apparently he needed the mug of coffee in order to get his mind ready for the critique that was going to happen.

I've been very good so far at curbing my perversions and dirty thoughts, limiting them to only the occasional Freudian slip or purposely-placed innuendo. Now that I'm back from my walk around the building to keep my blood flowing to my legs, I'm back to acting like a dog in heat. At least in my own mind as I silently use the pen tool to cutout digital images of my head we took this morning with the school's camera.

I know someone is going to call me out on this behavior sooner than later, and before you know it, I'll be in a very socially awkward position. And I hate when that happens, because I just don't know what to do when those moments happen. I like to think I know what I would do in those moments, but those scenarios are similar to sexual fantasies that will never be played out even if the situation presents itself.

Connect the Thoughts

So I was going over my thesis from last semester in preparation for a process paper when I noticed some interesting connections from it with my current thesis. With the books involving hacker culture, I found a quote I forgot I wrote down stating that the internet is the ideal media for contemporary youth to express themselves because it engages their imagination, their ideals, and reality all at once. Bring in Murakami's quote about how otaku lifestyle tends to lead to a fantasy world overlapping with reality, and you have the reason people construct avatars on the internet in the first place when given the appropriate tools.

I was originally looking for any information about cosplay in my old thesis, but it looks like that was never really utilized. What little notes on the subject I still have all point to the Trekkie fanbase, specifically the fans that go out of their way to dress up as Klingons and learn the alien races language through special interest classes. The documentary of the same name actually shows a group of fans dressed up as Klingons order fast food AS Klingons, complete with dead pan stare and confrontational tone of voice. Kind of wish I had a better example than that, because very few people will take that as a serious academic example in the context of creating a new identity in order to be or act in a way you cannot as your normal "non-Klingon" self.

It's a good thing I blog, because now I need to search my past musings to see if I can't make the connection I'm looking for at the moment. Who knows, maybe I already made that connection and didn't know it at the time.

My Ultimate Vice and Weakness

I just learned during this downtime that apparently there is an anime out there that involves the most forbidden of forbidden fruits in my small known fetishes. I'm not going to tell you what that is, because even I'm a bit ashamed that this turns me on, but I'll give you a hint.

Process Documentation

Studio as of Friday. Has since changed in order to make more room for things to be put up.


Left Side


Right Side


First Triptic. Found favorable were the first two on the left.


Detail


Detail


Detail


Second Triptic. Digitally documented individually on the Mac, so all I did was take the picture of them together to get a better sense of how they would look properly arranged. Same goes for the two peices above it. I'll probably post JPEGs of those if pursuaded.


Detail from Left Side


Detail from Left Side


Detail from Left Side


Largest peice on the Left Side. Also the least worked on.


Detail from Left Side. The result of not caring about how it would turn out. Surprisingly, nobody's called me out on the potential "penis envy" signifier with the black sandpaper.

Presentation for the show is in two weeks. Ideally, I know they want me to be ready to hang and have nothing to do but frame my pieces. Thing is, if it has taken me this long just to get the process done, how long will it take me to get pieces printed and framed? Everything is due the week of Halloween, and life got in the way with the whole identity theft fiasco.

I guess a part of me has resigned to believing that no matter what I do or how well I do it, there will always be someone out there that won't like it. And as such, I'm probably not trying or pushing myself as hard. Which is bothering me since I've heard nothing but genuine interest from the faculty about the SUBJECT of my thesis.

Distractions, Distractions

iPod doesn't like LP and skips due to corrupted data transfer.
Need to check that out when I'm home.
Might have to switch to manual sync if problem continues.
(Third time this has happened.)

The power of creation at my fingertips.
I can create life and take it away!
(Provided all the bugs have been patched.)
For some reason, I want to play God rather than be one.

Silence is annoying.

Spore Critique

It's been about a week since I got Spore and started playing it every chance I can get, mostly at the risk of being productive with my art work. And while I am enjoying the overall experience of the game, I feel the need to review it for one reason or another.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Spore is the latest game to come out of the mind of Will Wright, creator of the popular Sims franchise and pretty much the entire simulation gaming genre. In Spore, the player is in charge of creating and evolving life on an alien world from the microscopic stage all the way up to the space age. The game even caters to those that believe in Creationism by letting you pick which stage to start out in once you've played enough of the game your first time around. Along the way, your creation will encounter other alien creations with several options available in regards to interact with them. The big selling point of the game is the fact that everything the player will encounter will be created by other players who own the game. Spore boasts having some powerful content creation tools that allows even the non-gaming types to create a creature on par with that of a Pixar or ILM employee without the hours or sometimes weeks it would take to construct such a creation normally.

For the most part, the game holds up to all the marketing hype and selling points. I'm continued to be amazed at some of the surprises that the game will throw at you in the various stages where player-created content is essential. (There's at least two stages where you will rarely see creations from other players due to the game mechanics.) It's very addictive, as I'm sure I've said in a previous post.

The game is no without their problems. It is clear that there was some kind of pressure from some higher power to get the game out as soon as possible. The game isn't buggy as hell, but it could be worse. I have not encountered some of the really bad ones as of yet, but the ones I've encountered are rather annoying.

For one, the creatures I made in the stand-alone Creature Creator do not translate very well into the final game, specifically if your creature has wings. As a result, I've been going through my game and redesigning those creatures slightly so that their wings are positioned properly.

Another problem I've encountered was a crash scenario that made it impossible for me to advance in the Space stage of the game. This resulted in a lot of deleted games for one reason or another. The same can also be said for the sharing aspect of the game, as some creations just refuse to upload to the servers properly. This has resulted in my second blog and my PhotoBucket account becoming a place for "exclusive content" for Spore that I've created.

Other than that, I now know what it feels like to have your life be sucked into a game a la Worlds of Warcraft and The Sims. And for that feeling alone, I will tolerate the bugs and glitches. I've even made a few buildings and characters as a result of channelling these frustrating encounters, so all is not lost.

Now if only I could stop playing it long enough to be more productive. I'm just happy I didn't install it on my "work" computer.

Work and Play

I'm not stuck. I'm not creatively dead or inept. I'm sure there are ideas brewing inside my brain trying to get out. I'm just majorly distracted. With Spore, with life, with trying to escape life by using Spore to gain a control I never had in my life. (Although, for what it's worth, I don't have much control over what's going on in Spore either. The game's AI finally figured out my play style and is starting to give me some interesting environmental effects as a result.)

I think a depression is starting to creep in, and as much as I'm trying to fight it, I simply cannot. It takes over the moment I walk into my drab studio, the moment I open my MacBook--which I love to death--in an attempt to get some work done. And it's here now that I've done almost nothing for the last two hours but formal paper work for the administration office and the class itself. Things like turning in drafts of statements and applications for degrees and the like.

The only light of hope in this madness is the fact that Spore has created a conversation avenue for my thesis, almost accidently. I've created two alien races that are both similar and completely different from how I am in real life. I'm working on a third avatar which will be a religious fanatic who will either convert the planet to their belief system or blow it up if they resist.

And then there's Halloween coming up! A time when avatars run rampant in a candy-begging frenzy, as I've said in an earlier post.

I seriously need to just focus on the research associated with these two. If I can peel myself away from exploring the galactic core and running out an evil cyborg empire in an attempt to escape my own real life insecurities and nightmares.

Lost a Day & My Identity

Irony seems to follow me like... well, like my dog whenever I'm not where I'm suppose to be.

I lost an entire day and possibly sleep yesterday. Why? I got Spore in the mail almost immediately as soon as I got home from school on Monday. So all day, despite the protest from Skippy for not taking him out to the back yard for potty (I'm still surprised he was able to hold it for 12 hours.), I was glued to the front of my computer screen impatiently evolving my creature and playing through the game to get familiar with the controls and other settings. The in-game achievement of Galactic God is a fitting one. As well as the other two I can earn for spending 50 hours in the content creation editors and 100 hours playing the game.

But for what it's worth, I enjoyed every moment of it. I found it very difficult to delete my first game, which was a dry run anyway with no intent of keeping it. The game does an amazing job of making you emotionally attached to your creation through very subtle things, like the occasional breaking of the 4th wall when it stares back at you because you haven't given it a command after several minutes. And once they get to the next stage of their existence, you cannot help but want to build their houses and cars in a way that is kind of like spoiling your favorite grandkid. It's addictive to the point of madness, but I love it.

I'm sure my tone and opinion will change in about three weeks.

Meanwhile, as I was staring into the shiny picture frame of a monitor that is my computer, someone found my debit card number and has been making purchases.

I found out fairly quick, as you have probably guess given the timeline of event. The total damage so far is only $50 at the most, but still. That's my $50! They were, strangely enough, all online purchases that had the name of the website posted on them. What hinted to me that they were ID Theft related was the purchase from iTunes. I didn't purchase anything since the Kanye West video was released. The others were for adult porn websites that I never visited. I do deal with the dirty videos, but when I do, I keep a strict eye on those purchases. That's how I found out that my bank account was compromised; I was checking up on a purchase and saw that more than what I bought.

The ironic part? My thesis involves identity and avatars. One one hand, you have me playing God channelling myself into an alien creature who will function as my identity in the game. On the other, my real identity is being used to make porno purchases I know for a fact I didn't make.

Life's funny sometimes.

Forced Representation

I forced myself to produce something, mostly to turn in for Monday.

The digital sketches, as I call them, suck. They look like (and excuse my internet terminology here) noobish photoshopping attempts by some skript kiddie that bit torrented GIMP because of some scary DRM Adobe may or may not have installed with their best selling products. They aren't my worst works, but they are certainly not something I want to look at again. However, given the nature of the class, I will have to look at these ugly cut-and-paste digital photo montages again as I tighten them up over the course of the next three weeks.

My first critique is next Monday. I'll start with the easiest one, as I'm not even sure IF the most difficult one of the two ideas that I've solidified will work when I clean it up. I have a third idea involving the avatars I use to create a more sexually attractive me, but nothing that has solidified into a visual idea.

Work About Me Without Me

The more I think about this thesis, the more I wonder if it is even appropriate for me to have myself in the work. The reason I say this is because of how avatars work in both the religious world and in the contemporary world.

In the old world, any god or divine being that would form a mortal shell as an avatar for their power would never look like what they are suppose to look like. That's why God doesn't have a face despite being constantly painted and characterized as some balding white man with a flowing gray beard. I believe the movie Dogma has a line saying that to see and hear the true form and voice of God would cause mortals to explode due to the sheer magnitude of not being able to comprehend the awesome power of the universe that is spilling forth before them. Or something like that. So what does God do? He gives us Jesus in order for Him to communicate with us in one sense or another. Or an angel, or some other sign that is normally accompanied with bright lights. You know the kind. There is no physical feature in any of his diplomats He sends down that is exclusive to God, mostly because we don't know what He looks like.

I think it is just human nature to want to put a face to a name. Disney's Gargoyles even questions why we name things, which was borrowed from Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet" line from Romeo & Juliet. That's why when you talk about Buddha, most people associate it with the fat and joyful incarnation of the Buddha. But when you mention that Buddha was a monkey at one point in his many lives, people go "What?"

Meanwhile, you have the contemporary idea of the avatar, which for argument's sake is more of an icon than it is the actual person it is representing. There is a parody of Norman Rockwell's--the title of I can never remember--where he is painting himself looking into the mirror. The most famous one is that of Walt Disney in the same pose drawing Mickey looking back in the mirror. The equally famous opposite (Mickey drawing a picture of Walt looking back in the mirror) has been seen almost just as widely as the one I recently saw advertising laser eye surgery (Rockwell with glasses drawing a picture of him with no glasses looking back at himself in the mirror). Yet people will continue to look at Mickey Mouse and see Walt Disney. At least until that part of history ends up becoming lost to memory.

It seems almost ironic that Halloween will occur during this thesis exploration. You have the casual trick-or-treater who doesn't care if the neighbors know it is them. They just like to dress up, and that's fine. But what makes Halloween really fun for some people are when they get to dress up and completely own the character they are dressed up as. We are talking about those people who change the way they walk, moan and groan at anyone that talks to them, and actually become whatever they are dressed up as. Their true identity is only known to the friends that saw and/or helped them dress up. This is what separates cosplayers from role-players.

Knowing this, (well, more like after I discovered this) I can't help but wonder why I need to interject myself into the work now. I mean, these are self representations of myself if not my alter ego Zeek Slider. And Zeek doesn't look a thing like me, nor does he act like me. And yet, much like an incarnation of Vishnu, we share a common bond. I didn't just create him so that he can be some kind of internet identity or whatever Zeek ended up being. Zeek is a vessel for the things that I cannot do. He can be a wizard when I want to be, or as he is right now, he can talk to alien races from beyond the stars. But Zeek can't do what I can. For some reason, as adaptable and mutable as he is, he can't create things. I've never given him that ability to be imaginative. That's my job.

In some strange logic, the relationship I have with my alter ego is that bridge between the old world and the new world definition of the word "Avatar." I created Zeek in order to do the things I could not do for one reason or another, very similar to how the gods would create beings to interact among us mortals. I gave Zeek special abilities for the world you can find him in, very much how the gods would give their incarnations special abilities and how contemporary costume role players in the park would roll dice to determine the various statistics of their characters own abilities. But at the same time, Zeek cannot do what I can do, exactly how most mortal incarnations of gods in classic myths are set up.

He isn't me. He doesn't act like me or look like me. But he is me in a form that I cannot take. I cannot become him, so he is me for as long as I need him to be me. And though him and his abilities, I'm able to be something that I cannot be on my own. But he'll still never be me. He didn't create me; I created him. I act as his god, and he acts like what I want to be.

Due Monday

Images of how I envision my show space as well as preliminary sketches of the work I want to exhibit and/or photographs of past works so that the teachers can figure out whose work works best with whose.

And I'm having the hardest time trying to jump start this! It's driving me insane! it isn't so much distractions so much as it is that I just don't like looking at photographs of myself. Every last one, including the one where I Photoshopped the hell out of it! As narcissistic as I could be, I seriously cannot stand looking at myself. That's why I avoid cameras, and when I can't avoid them, I avoid seeing the results of the filming of photographing.

The idea of drawing myself or an avatar of myself is kind of out of the question. Actual real representation, something that is undeniably me to even the casual stranger must be shown. But working from even the best photographs I find extremely frustrating. I want to draw myself as I see myself and then place something that is genuinely me in the piece that people who don't even know me can say, "Yep, that's him alright."

Maybe if I try this image concept with an image of the web camera's lens. Or maybe I should wait until my aunt gets back from her cruise. She does have the best camera in the house.

Blogatar

So after a semester of being constantly told that my blog can be used or incorporated into my artwork, I finally came upon an idea that could work. Maybe.

In the arena of self-representation, I have a few physical attributes that could qualify as an avatar. The first is my ponytail; the second is my wandering eye. The third is my blog, which is also the most interesting way of representing myself. Here I am airing my dirty laundry in public for anyone and everyone to see without worry or care as to what people think of me. They can find this place and read what I really think about people or events. You cannot get any more honest and raw than this site.

And yet, I have another site that is filled with fictional stories and musings from an imagination generated by nothing but science fiction and flights of fantasy. You have an alter ego who is living a very secure life with an easy job and no real worries in the world outside of what his job requires of him.

In my research into the avatar, I found a duality that was very interesting to me. You have the old definition of the avatar in which the Gods would lower themselves for the sake of being mortal, often not realizing they are the human vessels for a very powerful divine identity. Then you have the contemporary definition with the online culture which is an elevated representation of how one wants to see themselves. This up- and down-grade of self could lead to some very interesting pieces.

So here I am with this idea having no way of actually making it into a visually interesting piece that people can look at and have conversations about. My intuition is telling me to pick the physical part of me and then place a body of text over that part or in the shape of that part. That text would be a blog-like entry explaining why that part of my body functions as an avatar. The problem continues to snowball when you ask things like "so how is this going to look in the gallery space?" As of right now, I honestly don't have an answer to that question.

In my conversation with my teacher, I remembered my video piece that Terry liked after my Study Abroad class. It was about memory and how an experience can often be forgotten rather quickly despite taking photographs to document it. In the video, I took the shots I loved the most and selectively faded them out until all that was left on the screen was a juvenile drawing of what my impressions were of the event. The actual piece went nowhere, but the process behind it came to mind this morning.

The new idea is to take this same process and fade in/fade out parts of my body that I wish were different for one reason or another. Start with the face, maybe work my way up to doing the torso (God knows I have body issues to work through), or something along that line.

Either way, I have to do something I don't like doing but is not resistant to doing if needed. I have to take pictures of myself.

Thesis Reboot

My morning routine has been interrupted. It normally goes like this:

Walk the dog
Check e-mail
Check message boards
Gaia
Neopets


I've done the first to, but as I was going to check the message boards I stopped myself.

Yesterday, Brady was trolling the studios and exchanged his usual polite hello. He more than anyone last semester expressed a genuine interest in my artistic potential and tried to be as supportive as possible, often leaving me little articles in my space he would come across. I pretty much told him briefly that I feel like I've just started over, even though I know I haven't. It's starting to affect my outlook on the class and my thesis.

I didn't know how right I was.

I also talked to Kristi. It was mostly because I got her e-mail and was confused by the words she used to express how she felt about my initial proposal. I got the impression that she thought my thesis wasn't ambitious enough, that it wasn't big enough. What she really meant was that there wasn't enough meat in the proposal for her to understand what it was that I am doing, both in project content and in subject matter that I'll be exploring. From there, we (more or less) went over what may or may not have been a contributing factor to my failure to graduate last semester. It was pretty much nailed into me that I, like so many other artists, get locked into a specific style because that's all I surround myself with. It was advised that I stop looking at those things and start looking at other artists and influences. Let my guard down.

I think that's why I stopped myself from checking my message board subscriptions. To me, it's just checking another form of e-mail. But I have to deal with an interface that is over saturated with Disney characters, anime role-playing game adverts, and the occasional independent artist who was able to break out of the comic genre with a graphic style unique to themselves.

Today is also research day... if I can bring myself to actually doing it given how awkward I feel right now about having to very literally start over. At least production wise.

What did I come online for again?

I came online for something. To get something. To do something. But I can't remember what that something is.

Skippy loves his heart worm medication. He eats those chewy little pills up and then begs for more. But he hates his flea-and-tick ointment. He's rolling around on the carpet moaning in frustration and discomfort, but the formula has already done what it needs to do. The life of a dog. Sometimes I wonder if I am taking care of a dog or a two year old child who can't speak but is smart enough to let me know that he needs to go potty.

Still, his juvenile behavior is proving to be more entertaining to me right now, which is more than I can say for how my day has been. Without a proper or affective outlet for all my aggression to channel itself towards, I became that unwatched pot of boiling water that ultimately ruins the stovetop. Oh, sure, the heats been turned off, but you have to let the thing cool down before you can fix the damage. The problem is this stovetop is a model they don't make any more, so now that the damage is done, you're left with only one option: get a new stove or just deal with the broken burner. The easiest thing to do is just deal with the broken burner, but what do you do with the pot of water that caused it?

The logical answer is to let the pot of water cool before you do anything else with it. There are two ways you can go about this. The first is to cool it as aggressively as it was heated. However, this leads to thermal shock and could break the metal if not cause other permanent damage. The second is to just let the heat escape on its own and come back to it later.

Social situations don't work like kitchen troubleshooting. People always want to try to fix the problem the quickest way possible, by cooling a still-hot pot. They do this through several different methods, the most common I've seen in my life is by saying "You're wrong. Here's what's correct and why it is correct." And by my count, that only works once out of every ten situations. The rest of the time, we are pretty much the living reenactment of the story of Jesus and the crowd who are about to publicly stone a person for whatever the reason it is. We think we know better because we know more or have more experience, but we are all wrong in one sense or another. We just like to think we are right.

One of the goals every parent wants their child to learn is the difference between right and wrong. This perception changes as we age and what we sometimes are told is wrong turns out to be okay in the end. The reverse is also true. Right and wrong are just perception changes, just like truth and fact. From one point of view, it looks red. From another, it looks blue.

Now I remember what I came online for! I came online to look up Sonic level cliches like the obligatory palm tree level or the recently-added speeding highway level.

I'm Mad at The World

Three hours with my dog snuggling and playing did nothing but strengthen the bond between a boy and his dog. A big bowl of ice cream did nothing but empty out another box in the freezer and put some sugar in my system. Spending half an hour on my thesis drawing background ideas for my current work proved more frustrating than productive.

With my door locked, I tried in vain to come down from this overflow of anger. Doing so is like trying to prevent a volcanic eruption along The Ring of Fire. You just can't. You can stop one from blowing up, but that pressure has to go somewhere. The Law of Conservation of Mass kind of insures that.

I don't know what's going on with me. I'm so angry that I have come up with a way terrorist can effectively take over our country right now. I mean, if the guy in charge of the country of Georgia was asking John McCain for aid and not the actual President still in office several months ago during that conflict they had with Russia, that right there is a good sign to attack. Think about it: This country has essentially lost faith in who is in office right now. The rest of the world now sees him as a nobody. And maybe we have the media to blame for shining the spotlight on two bright beacons of hope and optimism. Or maybe it is because nobody gives a rat's ass about who is in the chair right now knowing he won't be there for long. Now would be the perfect time to take advantage of it and just strike hard and strike big.

I've never been a violent person. The only times I've resorted to those kind of actions was when I didn't have a choice or when I was brought to a point where my rage took over my actions. All morning long, however, everything that I read or is said to me just completely pisses me off.

The reason? What reason? To give a reason is to give an excuse, and those get fired down or attacked or whatever several times a day. Just do. Just act. Just be. A reason gives purpose, but there is no purpose in that which started without any. And that's anger. It just happens. Provoked? You can say the exact same thing to a person with the same up-bringing as me in the same family dynamic, but that won't mean you'll get the same reaction.

There's no control. We think the world revolves in a perfect circle unaware we are slowing orbiting away from our sun. We praise athletic achievements while academic ones get only a three-inch article in the paper, unless the discovery is something monumental like the cure for AIDS. We want everyone to believe in a higher power but are extremely disappointed when they either don't believe in one or believe in a doctrine that we don't agree with. Conservative families giving birth to liberal offsprings. Asians dating Mexicans. Black Jews. Hell, I know a Chinese Jew! And he's very fun to be around! But I know people will look at that and go, "What the fuck? How can you be Chinese and Jewish?"

Spore has a feature where you can fire a planetary laser that causes an entire planet to explode. It also has an Easter Egg where you could find the planet Earth and our own little solar system. I'm looking forward to these two features. Some cultures are just not meant to pro-create.

I've always said this world is going to Hell in a hand basket, and I'd love to be the one to deliver it to Satan.

Then again, I've always said things I've regretted within the hour but cannot take back. The damage has been done and not even a delete key can fix it, so why bother trying if it can't be fixed? I've done that, and it only made the situation worse.

That's why every friend I've ever made I end up loosing. I can make friends, but keeping them? It's only a matter of time before I end up offending Jason and then POOF! He's gone, and I won't hear from him ever again.

It's times like these I'm glad I don't drink. God knows what alcohol would do to me in this state of mind.

Boiling Point

"You think you can get away with things by yelling. That's so disrespectful."

My mom's words.

Controlling my anger is starting to become more and more difficult the more I become the target for other people's ignorance. I get the impression that they believe I know everything, that I can control anything, and that it is my fault for someone else's misgivings or mistakes. And in some respect, I may have presented myself as such. But not to my own family. They should know me better than anyone. They've had to put up with me for twenty-five years, for Christ's sake!

And the reason I yell? It's because nobody will listen to me!

Sometimes I wonder how our family dynamic would be if I never talked to them and just let them blame me for the things I didn't do. I'd rather get attention for the things I've done rather than the things I didn't do, but I guess that's acting too much from people who have expectations that are locked into a culture I have no clue about. After all, I didn't grow up in a post-war, third-world, developing country. I'm growing up in a technology-obsessed, media-watching, my-way-or-the-highway culture in a country that is losing its economic and political power in the world.