It's Here! The Slideshow and stuff!

Slideshow:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24792002@N07/sets/72157627762764494/show/

Full stream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24792002@N07/

Reflecting on the Visual Rhetoroic Project

Alright, so after days of brainstorming and hours of work, it's finally done, and all in all, I rather enjoyed it.  It was a unique challenge coming up with little scenes to try and explain my point, and even more fun to set them up.  The biggest obstacle was definitely the brainstorming portion.  So much of the topic I chose is abstract ideas that are better explained with words accompanying them, if not with words entirely.  But again, it was more of a fun challenge, and the only truly frustrating part was some of the execution.  For example, for the photo depicting the traditional damsel in distress, I wanted to do a picture-in-picture of Arcee on the screen of a monitor being looked at by Hot Rod.  However, GIMP was not co-operating with me and I had to scrap that version of the idea.  Also, for the shot where Arcee is squaring off with my cat, it took forever before my cat would stay still enough for a photo. 
If there's anything I would have done differently, it would have been more prep time.  I would have fooled around in GIMP more, written down more ideas for scenes, and just overall do more ahead of time. 

As for the personal function, well, for one, it helped me think more about the issue, and the paper portion especially let me vent a lot of my frustrations with the tropes I talk about.  And, of course, it gave me an excuse to play with my toys. 

If there's anything I want other people to take away from this, it's that what I'm asking for is not hard, by any stretch of the imagination, and if you feel the same way that I do about this, it's not out of line in any way to ask for change or even try and make change with your own art.  And also, that toys are fun. 

So, this Visual Rhetoric Project deal

I decided it's going to be about the portrayal of female characters in children's media. mainly western animation.  It's something I feel passionate about, although I'm not exactly sure why.  It's probably the years of being around my Good-Kind-Of-Crazy Feminist mother finally getting to the core of my brain.  Regardless, The argument I'm going for is to try and convey the importance of such characters in children's television.  Millions of kids watch TV every day, and it has a major influence on their perception of what is "normal" in the world.  Having shallow female characters, aside from being annoying from a writer's perspective, isn't doing gender relations any favors.  And beyond that, I really believe in not talking down to kids in their cartoons and despise the "it's just for the kids" excuse for poor writing. 

I plan on using the copious action figures that my nerdy crack-habit of a hobby has given me access to, in order to do some scenes which satirize a lot of tropes associated with female characters in cartoons.  I suppose that aspect specifically wold be using pathos to a degree, as it makes people laugh at the absurdity of the issue and draws more attention to it that way.  And of course, the ethos of using familiar characters.  
Also, I wonder about possibly using more of a photo comic format, as I feel it would convey the message better.  But by the time you read this, I'll have already asked you that (LOL, fourth wall, what's that?). 
The biggest obstacle (besides any technical difficulties) will be with inventing scenarios that properly convey what I want to say in a concise manner. 

 

This is Pac-Man.  You probably knew that already, though, which is how both you and I know that this is using ethos to its full effect.  The context is that of our current pop culture climate, which celebrates the nostalgic in a way that has never really been seen before, and given the generation that produces most media, "nostalgic" generally means 80's pop culture.  The result is a whole lot of homages to classic video games among other things.  I already talked a bit about this two entries ago, so I won't dwell on it too much, instead focusing on how I feel about this specific venture.  

There's nothing I can really bring against it on an objective or aesthetic level, as it's well done and I really enjoy the look of retro games, but part of me wishes it was something besides Pac-Man.  Not that Pac-Man is a bad game, but I personally never found it as appealing as some other classic games like Galaga and Dig-Dug.  And there's also the fact that I'm not very good at Pac-Man.  Which means when I look at this, I more think about repetitious failure than addictive fun.  But that starts to enter into realms of heavy, heavy bias, which are not that interesting to read about.  So instead, I'll comment on he image's placement.  It's fairly high up on the window of a tall building, which makes it a bit tricky to spot at first, but hard to ignore once you do, which is a very good way of letting your art grab someone's attention (we can argue about weather or not this is "art" all day, so let's just say the term is a short hand for whatever this is).  It certainly worked for me, and was effective enough to make me write a blog post about it. 

Thoughts of Asimov (Among Other Things)

Out of all the photos in the MoCP, the ones that struck me the most were the "Selenography II" Series by Jenny Äkerlund.  According to the plaque, they were not photographs per-se, but painstaking re-creations of old astronomy textbook pictures of the moon done in graphite and made to look like photocopies of the pages.  Knowing this made them much more impressive, as I had initially though they were photos of the textbook pages.  The attention to detail alone was enough to impress me.  More than that, though, it reminded me of the works of Issac Asimov.  The kind of science fiction that's more about technology and discovery than characters or story.
This makes sense in the context of what the plaque says was Äkerlund's intention; to show how things that were once novel and fascinating are now just relics of the past.  Similarly, what the pieces show to me is how given the passage of time, things that were once educational or scientific can become fantastical.  They seem to evoke a sense of mystery that implies a deeper mythology than what is seen in front of you.  Like Egyptian Hieroglyphics, what was once just another means of recoding information has taken on a whole new level of mystique.  A sense of, again, mythology.  I look at them and it makes me feel like there's something more, something unknown to something that is very well known today, the moon.  Like perhaps there is life there, little green men scampering about the surface, or perhaps an underground civilization of seven foot-tall lizard-people with piercing red eyes, razor-sharp teeth and four-inch talons on their hands and feet, which are only used for when they are deprived of their high tech-weaponry.  An assortment of laser guns with varying degrees of power and 80-foot tall Theropod-shaped mechs that breathe fire and shoot plasma missiles from their--ahem.  Sorry, got a little carried away.  But that does give you an idea of just how much these pieces fire up my imagination.  And really, I'd say any photography that take me from old-timey pictures of the moon to giant robot dinosaurs is successful in my book.

Adventures in Visual Rhetoric with Video Game Fandoms (That I'm Not Actually Part Of)

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I've played The Legend of Zelda games exactly twice in my entire life.  Both times were only increments of about 5 minutes each.  First was at my sister's friend's house, which inexplicably had a Gamecube (or was it an N64?) with a copy of one of the early 3D Zelda games.  Ocarina of Time, I believe (which would mean my assumption of N64 was correct).  I think I got to a boss level and gave up out of frustration and then fact that my family was leaving anyway.  The second time was fairly recently.  The original on a free online NES emulator.  This time, I gave up because I kept dying and had no idea where the fuck I was going.  

Regardless of my very limited knowledge of the Zelda games, I've always enjoyed the imagery of them.  A terrific blend of classical Tolkien fantasy with 80's pop sensibilities.  And going off of the sheer amount of people who dress as the main character Link alone, I'm not the only one.  Above, you see one such person.  A woman.  A very attractive, red-haired woman.  Dressed as a character who is supposed to be a young blond boy.  It really goes to show just how far-reaching the appeal of the franchise is.  Which I suppose is the context it's intended to be viewed in.  A show of someone showing their admiration of something they love.  It invokes both the ethos of a familiar character like Link and the pathos of nostalgia that a long-time fan of the series would feel.  But even outside of this context, it invokes a different kind of pathos, the kind that is sparked by almost any fantasy imagery: a sense of awe and wonder, a simple but effective way of unleashing the viewer's imagination, conjuring up further images of riders on horseback, epic battles, dragons, and princesses.  It's a very well-composed image that inspires a very visceral reaction in me and anyone else who enjoys this type of imagery. 

And there's also the fact that it's a really, really good costume.

One of those Introductory Deals

To be honest, I've never been big on writing about myself.  Ask me to write a 12-page epic about a beaver who saves the world from a TV repair man and I'm all over it.  Ask me to write two paragraphs about my favorite middle-school memory and I freeze up.  I'm weird like that I suppose, which is a decent one-word descriptor for myself.  Not good, not bad, not smart, not dumb, just weird.  First thing you should know about me is that I am a gigantic fucking nerd.  Reading comic books more often than novels, collecting action figures, memorizing exchanges of dialogue from my favorite movies, the whole deal.  I've even been to a few conventions, including one which I attend annually.  I'm active on several message boards and even have a YouTube channel littered withsure to be classics for at least one eccentric loner.  Although my main geeky passion is arguably film, which I have the uncommon ability to both take seriously as an art form and mock relentlessly.  Must be too much MST3K.  I could sit here and bore you with sob stories about the various tough times I've had in my life or depress you with my family's current financial situation, but we just met, and I'd prefer to keep things lighthearted so, look! Ponies and video game references! 

Ahem.

Right, so why am I here?  At Columbia?  I want to be a filmmaker.  A director, specifically.  I've got a head full of ideas buzzing about like angry Waspinators and I'm ready to pour them out onto the silver screen and see what happens.  This means that I would be writing most of my own films, so naturally, I do like writing.  Although, as I said, I'm more adept at fiction than non-fiction.  If anything, from, this class specifically, I hope I can at least get more experienced with writing as a whole. 

I suppose that's all I have to say here, but trust me when I say there'll be a lot more to come.