Webspinna Battle

Medium Specificity

Artist's Statement: 

The medium that I chose for this project was YouTube. I chose it because it has been an important medium to me in my development as a storyteller, and I have been intrigued at how it has grown over the years. I was especially inspired by this week’s reading, which talked about the history and definition of comic books. I wanted to take a similar approach and explore the evolution of YouTube, and how trends affected my creative process. I briefly discuss my interpretation of internet culture.

I quickly realized that it was beyond the scope of this project to cover a comprehensive history of YouTube, and that’s why I chose to make the video more personal. However, I still learned a lot about modern media consumption and how our tastes have changed as social media has taken over our lives. As I recalled the videos that I used to watch, I realized that I was more loyal to certain creators on YouTube. Today I find that I’m more impatient and that my tastes are dictated by what everybody else is watching. To paraphrase scripture, I’m blown about by every wind of viral videos.

So much of the time we spend has been changed with the advent and popularization of YouTube. Even the comments section can take a life of its own. Just the other day I read an argument about how many days are in a weekend. This argument had over one hundred comments. Who would have thought just a few years ago that so many of us would spend so much time on something so trivial?

In my narration, I discussed some of the things that I love about YouTube, and some of the things that I don’t like as much. I found myself guilty of making videos just to get views instead of telling good stories and being true to myself. However, I also talked about how I love that anybody can use their imagination to make a unique and original short film that would otherwise be unavailable to the world. Both extremes can still be found on YouTube; we have but to search them out. Although it seems like the entertainment industry has completely taken over YouTube, there are still talented individuals posting original content. We just have to make an extra effort to seek it out.

As I created this video, I learned a lot about myself and how I create videos. I have decided to make a better effort in telling fun stories and sharing them with the world, without stressing about whether what I make is perfect.

Two Terrible and Offensive Titanic Animated Films

Film #1: "Titanic: The Legend Goes On" 

Featuring a Rapping Dog and Mexican Mice

Film #2: "Legend of the Titanic" 
In which nobody on the Titanic actually died. Actually, they were all saved by a giant octopus. And...more Mexican Mice? 

Historical Story

Artists' Statement: 

The years of Prohibition in the United States are a fascinating piece of history from which many writers, artists, and musicians have drawn from . Behind the scenes, speakeasies reigned supreme and organized crime blossomed. The scene is familiar, but we wanted to take a different angle and show what might have happened as those glory days came to an end.
Although our main characters aren’t exactly role models to BYU students striving to live the Honor Code, their struggles to adapt are relatable. Additionally, they are similar to the experiences told by Satrapi in The Veil. Just like Satrapi had to change her way of life to adhere to stricter guidelines, our characters found their lives changed by adjustments made to the laws of the land. When eluding the clutches of the 18th Amendment, they find themselves free to party as hard as they wish. Already breaking the law they disregard all restrictions. However, once the 21st Amendment is passed, they find the new additions to their crowd less than enthusiastic.
This is reflected in a modern example observed among non-LDS peers. It’s one thing to party with friends after high school graduation, but it’s a different feeling to legally sip a beer with your parents when you’re twenty-one years old. There’s something about the forbidden that encourages further reckless behavior and results in a very different mood.
Lacking personal knowledge of the twenties speakeasy underground, we turned to several outside influences to inform our portrayal of a saloon atmosphere. The Great Gatsby was a major source in understanding how gratuitous the partying may have been back in the day. In that film, modern music is used to compare our day with the twenties, which we might make the mistake of assuming could never be as sinful as our day.
Another source of influence was the self-titled album, Tumbledown House. This music has been described as “gritty saloon jazz” and “modern speakeasy music.” The first track is titled Midnight at the Openly Lewd and is simply a snippet of what a speakeasy might sound like in the throes of a party. Laughter, cash registers, and clattering is heard with a jazz piano playing over the din. It gives the feel of heavy smoke and questionable behavior. Fraught with gambling, murder, prostitution, and booze their songs describe the life of unrepentant sinners. Heavily coloring our depiction of a speakeasy party, this also informed our creation of Dixie’s character. The decision to make her unrepentant and confident in her life choices came from various ideas and characters portrayed in the songs “Brothers McGhee” and “Jug O’Rossi.” Besides these three tracks, the entirety of the album speaks to a romanticized version of what sort of characters you would find in this situation. This fit our script well as we wanted to romanticize the prohibition parties to reflect how they were viewed by those who had to adjust their lifestyle after the ban on alcohol was repealed.
Other characters helped represent reactions to the new laws. The gangsters Rudy and Vincent represent how the bootleggers themselves may have reacted to the loss of business. Helen provides a contrast to the mischievous and spirited saloon characters, serving to ‘rain on their parade’. The Mistress, although commanding, is quieter than the other characters in order to be a surrogate for the audience and observe the action. While these characters all possessed attributes that informed the theme, it was their interaction that presented the contrast between an underworld upset and a stiff class mixing with a new, unsavory crowd.

Process Piece

Artists' Statement:  

Our process piece covers rehearsals for a play over the course of two days.  We were striving to capture the essence of all the the work and focus that goes into each rehearsal. There is so much that goes on in a rehearsal and it was hard to know what to include. It was tempting to weave together the sounds of performers who simply warm up and instantly pour brilliance from their lungs. However, that is not what rehearsal is really like. Life is not like “Glee” where all we need to do is believe in ourselves and reconcile our differences with our ex-boyfriend in order to hit the perfect harmony. There is a lot of preparation that goes into the perfect final product. Which basically means, rehearsals are full of struggles and mistakes most of the time and it is only toward the very end when things start to come together.

We decided to have our piece include these mistakes and struggles in order to demonstrate the truth of rehearsal, rather than the illusion of performance. Ours contrasts with the video from the film Once, in that the musicians in our process piece do not catch on to the songs quite as quickly. We get to hear their struggle to find notes and blend together, as well as some of the preparation and warm up. This brought us closer to the goal of learning to appreciate the process just as much as the product. The struggle that the actors had to find the right notes is the real tension and conflict in the story, and it can be just as interesting as a more polished presentation.

As we found clips that captured those conflicts in the story, it was cool to see how the different segments of the audio matched up with each other even when they took place at completely different times covering different songs. The story had a beginning, middle, and an end, even though it wasn’t completely traditional. It was cool to see that you could find story in the process itself, not just a final cut. We are so used to the finished product’s progression that we don’t ever get to see the stories behind it.

We also got to show the personalities of the people involved with the play. Just like we got to see Jack White’s eccentric personality as he built a guitar in his backyard, we got to experience the sense of humor and work ethic of the characters in our story. By taking time to really experience this one part of a bigger whole, we are able to really appreciate the details of that moment.

Pokemon by Neil Cicierega

Here's the song I talked about in class. Enjoy.

Round Robin (Yum)

Day 1

Day 2

"One day when Jack was playing “Stairway to Heaven,”

one of his freckles yelled and said he was sick of that song.

Jack said “Ok” and started playing something else instead."

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Personal Artist's Statement:

            Considering that this project promised hilarity and wackiness, I’m surprised that my story still ended up taking a completely different turn than I expected. I knew that it would end up being funny, but I learned that the simple act of observing art and adding upon our interpretation fuels creativity in a magical way. I was interested to see that at first, my story had a normal response about the protagonist playing guitar, but quickly afterward, each story that followed had a distinct personality including a story about violin-playing moles, Confederate violin makers, and punny narrators. Paradoxically, as we accept the fact that we are building off one another’s stories, we can still create truly original art that might not have ever seen the light of day without being set up like this.

This emphasizes that there is no shame in, and in fact it might be essential, to listen to and appreciate different forms of art while we’re striving to create something new. Because we each have different life experiences, we’ll interpret things differently. The reading by DJ Spooky made this argument by explaining that creativity lies in our understanding of the information we observe. One particular example that stood out in his argument was that the concept of multiple lives in video games has its roots in Indian reincarnation theology.

This idea places great responsibility upon us as consumers of art to make sure that we are constantly filling our minds with the best books, movies, music and other materials. This way we can appreciate everything with a fresh eye and with new context. Our life experiences can also help us to appreciate art in new ways. One humorous example is in the film 500 Days of Summer, in which we see that the protagonist’s unrealistic expectations for love were, in part, formed by a completely misguided interpretation of the film The Graduate.  After a rough relationship, this character comes to see the ending of that movie very differently, most likely in the way that was originally intended.

            I felt that my story worked because it gave just the right amount of a frame of reference that challenged the others to conform to a basic structure, yet gives freedom to create an infinite number of scenarios within those parameters. It also shows just how important context is in the telling of a story. If there was no context or frames of reference in this round robin storytelling, the stories may be somewhat interesting individually, but we really don’t appreciate it until we see how each of the stories interact with each other. I especially enjoyed the stark differences in tone in days three through five. The stories were pretty different on their own, but were linked through talking about violins and allowed the reader’s mind to fill the gaps. Thus the small links that the different stories have to each other turned each one of them into something much greater. As they say, small and simple things bring great things to pass!


Group Artist's Statement: 

We believe, as a round robin group, and adhere to the absurd thought, that we are small little cheeses.

Sometimes we smell bad.

Sometimes we’re delightful.

Sometimes we get dropped on the floor and swept under the rug.

But we get better with age.

Luis Bunuel can back us up on this: “Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.”

Unless you are a cheese! We must be cheeses! Pair us with fruit, crackers, meat, bread, wine etc. and we make delightful tastes and new experiences.  Who would think that a fine brie when paired with a pear (so it’s peared) would make such a wonderfully enigmatic flavor explosion?

What is amazing to us is that hundreds of cheeses have existed for hundreds of years and we didn’t invent them (actually, was cheese invented or was it discovered?), yet we are always finding new ways to present said waxy, creamy, buttery, nutty, edible mold.

We cheeses likewise adhere to this principle as we create art. There are so many preexisting ideas, that the notion of originality is ridiculous. With billions of thinking minds on the planet, there must be at least one or two overlaps in “creative” thinking. Is there not?

We agree that the creation of art is a Frankenstein and a smattering of random thoughts pieced together in new and exciting ways. We cannot create, only recombine and innovate. This was perfectly evident in our Round Robin experiment. Random ideas could be combined in new and exciting ways, which in turn yielded fascinating results. The beauty of the finished product lies not necessarily in it's cohesiveness but in it's concept.

DJ Spooky spoke of this in his article entitled The Exquisite Corpse:

“. . .the basic idea is that the idea of living multiple lives, games theory, and the moral relationship between individuals and society was linked to rules - it seemed like a good place to reflect on how games get "sampled" and remixed, depending on which culture they're in. Cut and paste the result, and the basic idea is that this is all about information, and how we play with it. It could easily be PacMan, Quake, or Halo2 it depends on your frame of reference. It's a thread that easily connect artists as diverse as Luis Buñuel, John Cage, Virgil Thomson, and Grand Master Flash. Yes, Grand Master Flash! The whole idea is to look at links - at connections that are unacknowledged but also undeniable: chance processes, and randomness do that - they scramble subjectivity in a way that lets the unconscious methods we've used to sort information in our minds become a filter for the way we engage the external world.”

Yeah, long quote. But it’s spot on.

“Creativity” is the recombining of literally ancient ideas.

On the other hand, if cheese gets too old, it can go bad, grow mold. . . etc. We are required, subsequently, to keep refreshing our cheese supply.

We have to stay relevant and informed.

This is what we learned. That we are merely cheeses, likely to mold and rot if we do not keep refreshing ourselves with new ideas and combining them together to innovate.

“Age only matters once you shrivel up and rot, so you better stay fresh.” -Not Luis Bunuel