Concerned Citizen Documentary

Creativity has the potential to change not just ourselves as individuals, but entire societies. In his article, “Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland,” Goldbard discusses how media can not only portray social change, but encourage such changes itself. This project was our small attempt at both. We wanted to focus on someone who made a difference in people's lives and was motivated by faith. But we wanted to focus on a demographic that might be frequently overlooked in an LDS-dominated community like Provo. After a quick Google search we found seven in-town churches we could explore and try to find someone willing to talk to us. Hannah went to The Rock Church during a Friday service at 7:24 pm (from the verse in Matthew about the wise man who builds his house upon a rock), and it was obvious how friendly and inviting they were.

The next Sunday  most of the footage was shot, including the interview with, Steve McInroy, better known as Mac, one of the pastors at the church. He was noticeably nervous and didn't have much time, but was incredibly open-hearted and didn't even consider turning down the interview. With the footage we got, it was harder than we thought to focus on the individual over organization simply because Mac seemed to want to talk about himself as little as possible. But we learn much more about someone through observation than hearing them talk about themselves anyway.

The context of our mini-documentary is pretty unmistakable as it was filmed here in Provo. The montage of churches at the start makes it even more explicit; clearly Mac makes up part of a minority in our community and we wanted some reflection of that. This project truly was a growing experience for me. Even though I've spent most of my life as part of a "theological minority," its so easy to become oblivious to others in a similar situation when suddenly we are surrounded by those whose beliefs more closely resemble ours.  My impressions while working on this project definitely overlapped with those from last week, and the exercise in empathy this coming week will probably do the same thing. I was again reminded of the TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story," as I worked on the documentary. In the end I came away with two things: knowing more about someone doing the best they can with what they have to improve their community, but a renewed desire to make changes myself. As Goldbard says, when we make an effort to channel our art this way, we can take steps forward in overcoming prejudices, informing and empowering others, and even transforming lives and communities.

Game For Change

Play the Game

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” — Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom

With this project I wanted to explore problems with news coverage in the media and the problems a typical viewer faces in trying to discern facts and arrive at his own conclusions about world issues and current events. It’s something that I personally struggle with and that I thought must be a problem for many others whether they are aware of it or not. It was an issue on my mind even before I watched the TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story” from this week, which just served to reinforce the importance of seeking out multiple perspectives as we form our opinions.

Originally my idea for the project was to take on the perspective of a news anchor. The character would have to choose top stories to air of a period of time, with pressure from the network, and over time the game would show how the decisions affected income and popularity. ButI quickly realized that my idea was a bit ambitious for the limited time and recourses I had. So instead I decided the player could just run around and kill things. 

As the player professes through the levels he tries to overcome some of the issues that I researched, like media bias, sensationalist journalism, and echo chamber effect. Despite being a very simple game, I tried to model the various stages to reflect these kinds of problems. I had never considered video games as a feasible medium for promoting social change until I played Half the Game this last week. It’s obviously unique in being an interactive virtual experience and can potentially be one of the most powerful ways to put a player in the perspective of another human being. Playing a video game may not do any direct good, but it can educate, offer alternate perspectives to an issue, and encourage players to take real-world steps. This week’s project made me more aware of the possibilities in media of creating positive changes in our society. 

Webspinna Battle: Artist Statement

Our webspinna battle was a doomsday scenario mashup. If an alien invasion and zombie outbreak occurred simultaneously, which would prevail? We wanted it to be fun like the pulpy genre-clash it was. In putting it together I had a lot of b-movies culture in mind. I had a blast from the beginning, from the concept to designing costumes, to practicing, to our performance. But I learned some interesting things along the way.

As we started to develop our characters we noticed that we automatically associated each with a different kind of music. Aliens we associated much more with technology and artificiality, so we tried to represent it musically with electronic music, synthesizers and and current pop. With zombies, it was more chaotic and visceral, and that side leans more towards rock, metal, and punk. It was one of the more interesting things I was reminded of while working on this assignment--just like in doing the music montage when we were able to take a piece of music and represent it visually, but with this we found ourselves doing something of the opposite. At first unconsciously, but then intentionally, everything about these personas--from the costume, to the music, to the way we performed--was linked to the same idea.

I like to DJ and I like sound design, but I had never worked with this kind of limitation--that we could only stream audio from online and it had to be mixed on the spot. We practiced our battle several times, but on the day of performance we still expected some improvisation, which is what happened. We tried to make eye contact, be flexible, and follow each others' cues. We ran into a couple of issues with buffering, dealing with ads, and at one point I accidentally closed my blog page completely that had all the links on it. But there were no big problems and I think the little hiccups added to the spontaneity of the performance.

It reenforced and took from a different angle the themes we've been exploring for a several weeks now: where our ideas come from, consciously or unconsciously. Of course direct influences were genre films like Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, Indepencence Day, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1982 version of _The Thing, _to name a few. But like Lethem argues in The Ecstasy of Influence, so much of what resulted in our finished project was spontaneous because of how deeply ingrained the genres and themes were were exploring are in our society. Even better to share it and enjoy it as a "communal art-making experience." I've had fun doing a lot of assignments this semester, but this one was the biggest blast I've had so far.

Webspinna Battle Links: Zombies vs. Aliens

YT Zombie Sounds 3
YT News Report

YT Astro Zombies -- The Misfits

Shaun of the Dead Soundboard 2 (I Don't Care What the Telly Says)

Zombie Soundboard 1

YT Undead -- Hollywood Undead

Zombieland Soundboard (Remember Mad Cow?)

SC Kernrkaft 400 -- Zombie Nation

Shaun of the Dead Soundboard (Judgement Day, Removing the Head, Phillip Has)

Zombieland Soundboard (USofZ)

SC Living Dead Girl -- Rob Zombie

YT Radio Segment

SC Zombie -- The Cranberries

Zombie Sounds 2

YT Thriller -- Michael Jackson

Zombie Sounds 1
Evil Dead 2 Soundboard (Groovy)

Sirens Soundboard

Explosion SFX

SC R.E.M - Its The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

World Building: World With Respawning

World Building: Artist Statement

Prompted by a simple question, "what if when we died we just respawned rather than actually dying?" the first thing that Bronte, Max and I had to do was to establish the rules of the world we were creating. Deciding how it would work logistically had to happen before we could know how it would affect the world.

The more questions we tried to answer the more came up: Under what circumstances could someone actually die and pass on? Would it be painful? When someone respawns, do they retain injuries or illnesses? Where do they come back? Is it all technology-based or is it a naturally-occurring phenomenon? It was an interesting challenge because each different answer would affect this society in different ways.

We tried to produce "artifacts" that would give a pretty good spread of perspectives on how this world might be affected. One of the most obvious things we began with was that in a society like this, obviously "dying" would not hold the same weight as it does in ours. People could easily become desensitized to the idea of death and even create more and more extreme forms of entertainment in order to compete with that. Early on, Max suggested the idea of a kind of extreme olympics in which death was almost an inevitability in the course of extreme competitions.

We tried to create something of a political or ethical division within our world. The question came up, what if killing yourself was just used as a means of teleportation because of the ease of getting from one place to another? Most would be dissuaded from this because of the pain and discomfort associated with death, but if someone created a painless way to die, would people use it? Bronte created an article around that concept, including arguments from both sides about the potential ethical implications.

One of the last questions after considering entertainment, ethics and other topics was, how would we educate our children? How would they adapt in a world like this? So we designed a few pages of an informative booklet for kids, the kind you would find in a pediatrics ward, giving some advice to kids from an adult's perspective.

This was definitely an interesting project. We drew inspiration from sources in our own world, like political debates, advertisements, and the gladiator fights of ancient Rome, and adapting it to a new world with new rules was interesting and challenging. Considering the ramifications a single change could have on society was eye-opening. It was really apparent the kind of cyclical nature between a society and the kind of art and other aspects of culture that it produces. Everything man has created in our world is a response to our needs and values as a society, and vice-versa. Julian Becker's article talk about how stories and fantasies like these can tell us a lot not just about how changes would affect other worlds, but that they go a long way in helping us understand our own world as well.

Textual Poaching