Medium Specificity

 

            I chose to focus on the way words are displayed on a page for my medium specificity.  I am not fantastic at prose and that was part of the reason I chose this medium.  This is the most personal piece of any type of art I have ever made.  It allowed me to really focus on something I have a passion for.  One outside piece of work that impacted me was the book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer.  In the novel Foer uses the printed word as art as well as the choice of his words.  Some chapters there are edits in red pen over his writing and in other chapters the words will bleed together.  He would also put just one word on a page to make sure that the tone of the book was exactly how he wanted it. 

            The reason I chose the topic of depression is because it is something very close to me.  In our culture today people want to be continuously happy.  While we all know that being happy all the time isn’t something possible people with depression can go through long periods of time thinking that they will be never happy again.  Even though several people want to help someone who has depression, the person with depression may not want to talk about it.  I wanted to show this through the piece by obscuring some words.  I also wanted to show the anger I have towards depression.  It can become an obstacle within everyday life.  Keeping every negative word and the word depression in red emphasizes the intensity of the language and creates a link between the two.

            Another part of the page that I wanted to change was the background.  Through out the piece it is starting to become more and more positive.  Having the background change from black to white also helps that change be more prevalent.  At first the words are very stark against a black background, but as the vocabulary becomes more positive the words start to work with the background instead of fighting it.

            The choice of keeping one font was also an artistic choice.  I thought about changing the font for emphasis, but decided to keep the same font throughout the piece.  I did this because I didn’t want any one word to draw away from the message that was being written.  Every word holds the same amount of weight.  The reader may see some words pop out due to the color, but it is easy for the reader to start at the beginning and never miss a word because a word later on the page is so much bigger than the rest.

Historial Script

This assignment was much different from the assignments we’ve had previously.  It was less art intensive than the others as this had a little more grounding in logistics and reality than did the Tiny Stories or the Music Mosaic which could be much more abstract.  Though different, it was something with which we are more familiar.  The collaborative aspect of this project was very helpful.  When writing the story, we all had different ideas about how to craft it and what direction the plot should follow.  This allowed for many more ideas to be passed around and a lot of decisions to consider.  Though at times it was tough to decide whose idea to go with, it was beneficial overall because of this collaboration.  

When Josh first thought of this idea, he was inspired by two different and unrelated sources.  A few years ago he watched the HBO series Band of Brothers which made him find an interest in WWII.  He began to learn more about it in school as well and he watched more war movies and documentaries simply because he found the stories incredible.  When given this assignment, straight off he knew he wanted to create a story that was somehow involved in the second World War.  However, he wanted to do something a little different that he had not seen before.  First he thought of a pilot in one of the B-25s and the perspective that pilot had during the Doolittle raid in 1942.  While this idea was formulating, a friend of Josh’s went to the theatre to watch the film Prisoners.  Just the name of the film changed his idea for the story to something about POWs and he didn’t want the perspective to be one of a prisoner but rather of the guard over them.  

            Though we know relatively little about the Hell of war, we felt that the perspective of this piece is one that many don’t consider, especially from the point of view of the enemy.  Most of the time people view the enemy as evil and inhuman but this is not true.  The enemy is usually just a normal person who doesn’t want to be doing what they are doing. He is complex and so are we. This story has aspects of a psychological narrative. There isn’t a clear bad guy or good guy.  This is what we wanted to show.  We felt that it would be most interesting to look at an unwilling Japanese guard dealing with the horrible things that he’s had to witness.  We didn’t want the effect investigated in the Fort Barnwell story to be part of this story.  The script shouldn’t be romanticized and it shouldn’t be seen through a modern lens.  A story such as this should be viewed in the same light as the time.  It should be, what you see is what you get. We feel this is much more powerful than showing it in a different and manipulated way.

           To write this script, we utilized the power of the internet with Google Drive.  Before writing, we got together to discuss what we thought the story should do and just to flesh it out a bit.  We then went to our respective homes and began writing on the same document on Google.  We found this to be very effective because we could all write at the same time and we could observe the others writing without having to be looking over their shoulder.  It allowed us to change things very quickly. The chat function also made it possible to discuss aspects about the story that we thought were good or possibly unnecessary.

Process Piece

For this project we wanted to focus on something that could be relatable to everyone.  Anyone who has been a student knows that there is this automatic routine that we go through when we hear a school bell ring.  We finish up whatever we are doing and pack up as quickly as possible.  We wanted to capture all of the sounds and textures of this typical mundane task. 

            I loved Mr. Rodgers as a kid.  In the clip of Mr. Rodgers showing how construction paper is made I was brought back to that child like curiosity of how things are made.  Even though we couldn’t use images in this piece I still wanted to focus on something that could inspire that child like curiosity to the listener.  I really enjoy the sound of the pencil writing on the paper.  I like it so much because it is such a unique sound.  Every student has used a pencil and paper, but how many people actually listen to the sound it makes with each stroke.

            Another show that influenced this piece is “How Things are made”.  In each episode they show how typical things are made in factories.  A lot of the show can seem very repetitive within an episode or through out the whole series because there are a lot of shots of just machines moving.  I still enjoy watching the show because I love how there are so many moving pieces to mass-produce something so simple.  While in our process piece there is nothing being created by machines, the student is working and creating what ever he needs to pass his class. 

            The way we created this was very simple.  We recorded someone being a normal student and then had them pack up.  We did add extra sounds such as the bell and the crowd of students later to create a more diverse background, but most of it was recorded off of one take.  I think that also helps our piece because the piece is not over produced.  We wanted to have people focus on the typical and mundane and we stuck with that throughout the creation of this piece. 

           

           

Not Enough Time (Audio)