For A Guatemalan Romance

            Ever since I returned from my mission in Guatemala, I’ve felt a responsibility to share the stories of those that I met while I was there.  When I first arrived in Guatemala, I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the difference of lifestyle I had to adapt to during my time there.  In this twine game, I thought I could replicate part of that experience of enveloping oneself completely in a new world.  This is especially important to me, because I feel that once people can better understand their counterparts all over the world, there would be less blind hate or blanket stereotyping of other cultures.

            To narrow the topic down to a smaller concept that could be communicated in a simple game, I chose the issue of the oppression of women in Guatemala, specifically in the home.  A google search of “women in Guatemala” which reveals them as victims of many sexual crimes, violence without consequences to the offenders, and small charities raising money.  The women of Guatemala are represented as faceless victims without a second side of the story. 

Like Chimamanda Adichie discusses in her TED Talk, it’s not fair to only accept this single story for a whole group of people we don’t know about.  While many people are fed by the stories about the starving children, genocide, violence, and “tribal music” that characterizes the entire continent of Africa, Chimamanda proves that this is only one part of life in Africa, and more specifically in her case, Nigeria.  The same thing is happening here, with the women and people of Guatemala, though that is not to say that all those stories are not true, the other side of the story is not told.

            The documentary “A Dollar a Day,” is another representation of a first time experience in Guatemala, where a bunch of college students live there for about 6 weeks with the goal of gaining a better understanding of what it’s like to live in poverty. Now what one of the big lessons they learn on this exhibition is that in a life of poverty, everything revolves around obtaining food.  While the men are expected to go out to work and bring home money to buy food, the women are responsible for preparing the food for the men. 

            In my game, I represented the relationship between a husband and a wife based on how well a woman does her work in the house and if the food is ready for the husband in the evening when he returns.  It is this cycle that women are usually stuck in that we, as Americans don’t often understand.  A woman does her work to support her family, which is the most important thing to her.  Though she is stuck in a cycle that usually keeps her in poverty, she is not usually thinking about how she should be treated better, or that there’s better life for her over the horizon, she’s thinking about keeping her family alive.

Play here:
http://philome.la/Cathrhine/guatemalan-women

For World Building

            Picture this: You’re at your thirteenth birthday party. It’s a bowling party and as you’re about to impress everyone with your “supa sweet” bowling skills, your feet suddenly morph into fins. You faceplant onto the ground while your crush and the rest of your “friends” laugh at you. In a world where puberty is replaced by becoming your spirit animal, experiencing random morphing is just part of being a teen.

There are of course good and bad aspects of such a society. While some find the spirit animal a liberating, necessary part of themselves, others see it as something to be kept personal, almost hidden. Although a fictitious world, there is nothing new about these views. We as humans have debated for centuries about social expectations and etiquette. Agonizing over what to do and what not to do. In our artifacts, we have represented a society in which morphing into a spirit animal is an integral part of society. Even so, there are mixed opinions and implications concerning whether it is accepted or even acceptable. Such questions ignite a new and unknown conflict, one more question of human rights, like race or gender, political opinions or social standing. In each artifact we chose to explore this question and design pieces of such a conflicted world.

As we created our own new world, we opened our minds to this pressing question, but also to what life would look like with spirit animals involved. Creating snapshots of everyday life through newspaper headlines, political posters and photos of city signs, we designed a fictitious world that came to feel real. With each artifact we seemed to uncover a new story about the people, places and things that this world contained. Like Julian Bleecker says in his article, Design Fiction, “ [Design fiction] objects are totems through which a larger story can be told, imagined or expressed…” There was no way we could explain every portion of the newly discovered spirit animal world, but we could craft our own perception and provide a base for new stories.

We can see this phenomenon of new worlds and stories in our own world today. When the novel, The Hunger Games, was released, the imaginary world of Suzanne Collins began to take form. Following the detailed book, was the professionally designed world of Collin’s imagination in film form. Helping the reader and the viewer to see Katniss’s world as real, the specific choices in design became a trademark of that world. People everywhere began to dress up like people from the Capitol.

District 13 or maybe even like Katniss herself, delving deeper into the newly created world.  Although our world may not spark a phenomenon of people dressing up as spirit animals or making movies about awkward transforming teens, it has made us more aware of how design holds the power to open an avenue of creativity. That each photo we created or political poster we staged contributes to the creation a completely different and magical world.

--Catherine, Hannah, Grace, and Morgan

For a Webspinna Battle

The inspiration for our Webspinna battle was the result of a long chain of ideas, but eventually came down to a desire to explore the different cultural sides of music. Our characters, a Rock Star and a Pop Star, attempted to embody the sorts of stereotypical associations that go with each genre. We explored that for a while (the Rock Star playing the angsty bad girl and the Pop Star milking the crowd while tossing her hair), then went on to represent how each style as affected other genres of music, including each other.

The Pop Star started with strictly pop music, but eventually used electro-pop, and then later represented Korean culture through K-Pop. The Rock Star showed her versatility through heavy metal, hard rock, and symphonic metal. At the very end, we included a rock-pop fusion by Mr. Jackson himself, because both genres, though different, have influenced the other. Earlier in the Webspinna we gave an example of this. When the Rock Star lets out an angry war-like cry, the Pop Star sees an anime influence and takes the idea of Asian culture, makes some adjustments, and then responses with K-Pop.

This brings us back to our discussion in class and how other artist’s work often has a direct influence on our work. Jonathan Lethem, author of The Ecstasy of Influence, said, “Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” As artists, our ideas come from so many places they are hardly our own. Just how “The Grey Video” by Danger Mouse was root of our inspiration for the idea of a battle between two music types in his representation of two music types coming together to create something new.  It was from this root that we were able to explore the different types of sounds associated with rock and pop, as well as the harmony they could create when combined together. 

Truly, the exploration of sounds coming together is in harmony with the idea of taking one work and creating our own interpretation with it to create something greater.  To quote Isaac Newton (in true nature of our ideas being a collaboration of outside sources) we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we sit on centuries of art and work to provide us with creative inspiration. 

--Catherine Santos and Emily McNey

Cue List

Pop Star Chilling with headphones—Sugar Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vw84EkHOlY

0:1-0:06s

Rock star opening—Fall Out Boy, Where did the party go?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20KcK0OhOGo

0:03-0:10s

Pop Star Reacts—Karmin, Crash Your Party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOorxvAVqb4

0:00-0:09

Rock Star response—Revving

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnNnWctXhf8

1:07-1:10

http://soundbible.com/tags-engine-revving.html

(engine rev inside car)

Pop Star response—crowd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i9ilHpPko

0:00—whenever

Rock Star response—Explosion

http://soundbible.com/tags-explosion.html (have two tabs of this open)

(big bomb & granade explosion)

Rock star takes the stage—Twisted Sister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppzuyYA43I

0:06—whenever you’re interrupted

Pop star—Madeon

Madeon

https://vimeo.com/28501488

0:13-whenever

Rock star—love song, Rolling Stones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQSGw0hMd_I

0:15--whenever

Pop star—moves like Jagger

Moves like Jagger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vz5HBbRH4M

0:41—Whenever

Rock star—international with some layer

Top 10 Best Anime Fights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGWiZWBXbD4

2:23--2:33

Pop star— kpop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3dezFzsNss

0:00--whenever

Rock Star—fast, Afterlife - Avenged Sevenfold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNpy2K27PKU

4:14-4:34

Pop Star—Michael Jackson

“HEY!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzZ_urpj4As

0:17--0:22

Rock Star--conclusion

Black or White

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FbkTX2bnis

0:04--0:50

For Mixing Cultures

            Because my father is a first generation immigrant from the Philippines and my mother is the product of a genealogy of pioneers from Europe, as I child I struggled to understand under what race I would be categorized.  When my little friends would meet my mom for the first time, they would see her blonde hair and blue eyes, and would be unable to make the connection of mother and daughter between us.  With my dad, I felt more comfortable with introductions; our connections were more obvious.  Now I’ve realized that I don’t specifically identify my appearance to either one entirely.  I believe I’m a complete mix.  Though the brown of my eyes are easily seen as a reflection of my father’s, the lids that house them are in the form of my mother’s.

            It is in my genealogical roots that I wished to find the answers of who I was.  I would daydream of what life was like in the Philippines, with only idealistic photos from travel books and my own imagination to guide me.  In this piece, I wished to represent what that sort of looked like in my mind.  When looking through a bunch of paintings, I found the work of Vicente Manansala, who is a cubist from the mid 1900s.  The bright colors and basic forms he uses to create a pieced together world are similar to the visions I often try to form in my head.  I specifically chose the piece “Prayer before Meal”, because there are only a few details that my father would share with me, including the fact that his mother was very strict about prayers as a family and the Sabbath day observance. 

            For me this piece became the physical representation of the imaginations I’ve had since I was a child.  Like Jenkins says in his article “How Texts Become Real,” I formed an immediate fondness to Manansala’s type of painting, because it replicates the feelings I have created for myself in my own mind.  To me, because of this connection, the original intent of the painter may be lost on me now that I have my own purpose of viewing his work.

            To combine this idea with my feelings about my mother’s heritage, I found a more realistic painting of farmland landscape on which she grew up on and that her ancestors had been accustomed to.  This image is more realistic to me, because I’ve visited the birthplace of my mother and seen the landscapes she had seen when she grew up.  Overlaying this image with the painting by Manansala, emulates the feeling that I am not defined by one culture or the other, but rather an exploration of what the two become blended together.

For A Life Check

            While considering each form or design that a language would use to record sounds or thoughts, I was interested in what is actually considered writing.  For example, hieroglyphics are collections of picturesque symbols that are meant collected together to make meaning, which isn’t unlike the system of writing that the Japanese use in their characters. Like McCloud’s book “Understanding Comics,” I would like to explore the medium of writing that exists beyond the surface stereotypes that are established through the record of language.        

            Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines writing as “something written as letters or characters that serve as visible signs of ideas, words or symbols.” When considering hieroglyphics as a type of writing opened my mind up to the fact that writing could made up any type of form that could be represented as characters. Characters could be dashes, pictures, circles, etc. as long as together they could be interpreted as an idea.  I then researched more about the forms of writing in different languages, including Sanskrit, Laos, Arabic and cursive English to consider further how each used different symbols to create meaning.  Looking over these types of writing, I noticed that each had a certain rhythm to them, which reminded me a heartbeat monitor.

            I was especially inspired by the writing on the Declaration of Independence, seeing the highs and lows of the letters separate in each line to express not only the work of 56 delegates, but also the vision they all had in their hearts for the future of the United States of America.  Their writing was representative of the lines generated by a heartbeat monitor, not only in their form but also in the content.  Applying this to myself I thought I would create a record of my own heartbeat almost as a journal entry of my heart “thoughts.”  What this writing would communicate is my activities throughout the day, if I was nervous, resting, running, excited, and so on, depending on the rate of my heart.  Now what is special about this type of writing is that it transcends all languages, because all of humanity knows what the rhythm of heart means to them.

For a Revolution

Francisca Zorrosa Diaz was born in Oaxaca in 1911 and moved to Mexico City after the revolution. She is Pepe’s grandmother and “Las Soldaderas” was inspired by her. However the story is completely fictional and draws inspiration from many stories of the strong women called Soldaderas.

During the Mexican Revolution many women were involved in the action, whether it was through force, or by free will. Fighters such as Petra (Pedro) Herrera, Maria Quinteras de Meras and Angela (Angel) Jimenez were some of the most notable women who fought in the war and were actually part of Pancho Villa’s army. Inspired by both the true stories of these women who fought in the revolution and the story of Pepe’s great-grandmother, we put them together to highlight roles of women in the war. Francisca, the main character, represents not only the women that became soldiers, but also how she was forced into it through the need of protection, which also applied to the women who left with the rest of her male family members to avoid being left behind alone and vulnerable to attacks. With Carmen’s character, we wanted to portray how women also played a part in the war through their medical support. This was especially important for the revolutionaries, because during the war, the Red Cross refused to help the revolutionary soldiers.

There are many stories about the Mexican revolution, the book Los de Abajo (The under Dogs) gives the revolution a less heroic treatment and portrays soldiers raping women and braking into civilian houses. This book was one of the first sources of inspiration, and after some research we found an article that quotes the work of Gabriela Cano called Soldaderas y coronelas this was one of the major sources of inspiration, learning about this brave woman gave the main character more realism and a purpose and also helped us set the environment in which the story takes place.

Creating the dialogue was the most challenging part, we wanted to keep it simple and authentic. We decided to use some Spanish words and phrases that helped us give a foreign feel to the story. We wanted to be as accurate as possible in regards dates and places. We wanted to use real battles and that’s why we wrote about La toma de Zacatecas, one of the fiercest battles of the revolution, but also one of the most important. According to the chronology published by the Mexican Senate in 2010. After the victory over Zacatecas, Villa went to Mexico City in December of 1914.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_OCzssdDida2NFWmJvbDhwWkk/view?usp=sharing

For Party Anxiety

For our project, we decided to use the form of an autobiographical documentary to express a complex process. The process of our project was that of social anxiety. It was inspired by thoughts or actions that we, or more specifically, Jase, has experienced in his life. We wanted to capture a real life situation and translate it into an audio form. Because of the nature of this process, it being almost entirely in the thoughts of another person, we had to recreate the situation with a simulated performance. There aren’t many ways to document human thought other than voice over; so we staged the vocalized thoughts of the subject by recording them in a controlled setting. In this manner, performance further developed our project into something more than a simple autobiography.  We felt that the he personal content of the process and the complexity of the idea could be conveyed most simply through a staged yet genuine reenactment of actual anxious thoughts.

A major focus of our project was the genuine intimation of anxious feelings. The film Inception proved to be a great source of inspiration concerning the reflection of character anxiety in sound. In a critical scene in the film, Cobb tries to persuade Robert Fisher to trust him.  While the two are talking at the hotel bar, the background noise is faint and slowly gets louder throughout the scene.  During the conversation, when the people talking in the background are the loudest, a champagne glass shatters and distracts Cobb with memories of his past.  This is the moment when the conversations in the background are completely silenced, causing a heightened sense of anxiety.  It is this stark contrast that creates an emotional reaction in the audience.  In our audio process, we recreated this technique with a crescendo of sound by increasing the layers of voice audio, amplifying the amount of anxiety felt.  When the noise silences and the tension is released the listener is jolted by the by the abrupt change. As our anxious subject finds renewed peace in his isolation, the audience is treated to the comfortable quiet of his liberated mind.

Since our process had to be fabricated to properly relate the idea of the piece, we had to construct our own version of the beginning, middle, and end to social anxiety. In the case of our process, we chose to document a choice of isolation and detachment. The process begins with the subject’s self-conscious thoughts and develops as he is admitted into a social gathering that further stresses his anxious mind. As he spends more time in the awkward situation; the craze of his worried mind quickly escalates until the subject is overwhelmed. Opting to leave the gathering than suffer more anxiety, the subject completes his trial by alienating himself from others. Like Borup’s My Mom the Taxidermist, not every attempt ends in success. Sometimes the beauty of the piece lies in the process rather than the product.