Inquiry

This week as we explored the topic of inquiry and watched They Might Be Giant’s music video anthology Here Comes Science, I questioned the effectiveness of children’s media such as this at actually educating children with scientific principles. The lyrics and accompanied animations aim at simplifying scientific facts and making them accessible and fun. However, while the music was energetic and exciting, it wasn’t always the clearest explanation of the thing. For example, in one song the band sings the names of planets and other space objects, not clarifying the difference or what exactly it is they are identifying. In another song they claim the sun to be made of gasses, but then correct themselves in a follow up song claiming the sun is made up of plasma. But what is plasma?

Which brings me to the topic of this week, which isn’t “information” or “education” or “precise answers for children,” it’s inquiry. Here Comes Science seems to leave its audience with more questions than answers, and I think that’s kind of the point. Media such as TMBG’s album, address very basic ideas in science that serve as a kid’s gateway drug into science. Children’s media that serves an educational purpose tends to foster an interest in the subject rather than quickly fill kids’ heads with all the information. These music videos address various areas of scientific inquiry and presents them in bite-sized bits (most songs are less than two minutes long) in order to give kids a taste to pique their curiosity. If this is indeed the purpose, then the simplistic aesthetic of the music videos make sense. The band sticks to primary color schemes, simple shapes, and animations that match sound cues to make their topics as accessible and exciting for kids as possible.

This aesthetic contrasts with the complex, detailed style of Cathedral. If Here Comes Science is the gateway drug, then something like Cathedral is the hardcore stuff. It’s more interested in answering questions, providing deeper knowledge on a subject, hence the aesthetic of the detailed black and white line drawings. Something like Here Comes Science might introduce children to something, whereas something like Cathedral is where they would go to better understand their interest.

The educational style of Here Comes Science assumes that children trust what they are told, rather than needing to always see it for themselves. If children are in fact truly learning science from these dudes in a band that they can’t even see or verify the credentials of, there is something about how kids learn that goes beyond empirical evidence. In fact, this article from the Child Development journal explores the idea that how children think about science is a lot similar to how we tend to think about religion. “Children appear to conceptualize unobservable scientific and religious entities similarly,” the writers argue. They rely on the testimonies of adults to understand the unobservable world, which is perhaps why a large portion of children’s media is dedicated to teaching moral, scientific, and religious principles.

Morality in Pinocchio: Bridging the Gap Between Childhood and Adulthood

Teaching morality to children is kind of like explaining that the earth is round to people in 1000 BC. We are convinced we are right based on fact and experience, but they haven’t figured it out for themselves, so being didactic might not be the best approach. The lessons I gleaned from this week’s viewing of Pinocchio have little to do with the cut and dry messages intended for children. Instead, I learned a lot from the character of Geppetto, from the choices in animation, and I learned a lot about ignorance.

There is a trope in children’s media that often empowers children by making the adults seem stupid, clumsy, and goofy. The children in these stories know better and can often outsmart the adults. Instead of dividing child and adult, we need to be bridging that gap, and I think that the relationship between Geppetto and Pinocchio does this. Before his wish, Geppetto is a kind and nurturing caretaker. He loves his cat and his fish, and he is a masterful creator: giving attention and detail to each of his wooden creations of which there are hundreds.

Geppetto is full of love, and his wish isn’t riches or glory, but rather another soul to look after. He wishes to be a father, and because of his pure intentions, he is granted his wish. Geppetto’s unconditional love is almost childlike, which bridges the gap between child and adult. He isn’t ignorant or clumsy, but rather he embraces the aspects of childhood that Christ asks us to embrace: meekness, simplicity, the ease to love and forgive, and joy.

While Geppetto embraces the virtues of childhood, he has also learned the balance of maturity. Pinocchio’s sin that causes the conflict in the film is ignorance: he is new to existence and like Adam and Eve, is unaware of consequence and must make mistakes in order to progress. Pinocchio has not yet learned the difference between what is good for him and what is not so good, and he is easily persuaded by the snakes of the world. But when he gets in trouble and is taken away from his home, he with the help of his “conscience” Jiminy Cricket can only do so much to save himself. He is able to escape Pleasure Island only when he understands the consequences of his action, and through his mistakes he is able to shed the ignorance of childhood. As he sheds this ignorance the gap between child and adult is further narrowed. His ultimate redemption is when he seeks out Geppetto (it should be clear now that Geppetto is a Christ figure in this narrative) and they are able to escape the stomach of the whale and they receive their ultimate desire: for Pinocchio to become a real boy.

There are some obvious parallels to Christianity in this morality tale, which is interesting to me because a very preliminary reading of this film was that it is a simple black and white right versus wrong story. But if at it’s core is a Christian allegory, how can it be so black and white, when human morality goes beyond Christianity? Perhaps it seems straightforward for a WASP audience, but I am glad that children’s morality tales, while still stemming from traditions such as the wolf narrative, are showing signs of more nuance for a contemporary audience born in an age of diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. This weekend I watched Zootopia, which struck me as a fitting morality tale for our age, as it embraces ideas such as diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. I am fascinated by this evolution of the morality tale, which goes back to our discussion on how old fairy tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, are revisited and remixed as deemed necessary.

Son of Rambow: What is "Children's Media?"

The kids in  Son of Rambow are most likely the kind of kids that will be the first to tell you that they aren't children. Yet, as adults we see this film as being one about childhood. Perhaps it's because we understand that children deal with hardship in a very different way than we do, and that's what this film is about: it's about kids kind of doing self-therapy for hard stuff. First we have Will, who doesn't seem to have any friends, doesn't have a dad, and is held tight to the strict guidelines of religion. He isn't allowed to watch movies and then the first movie he sees is Rambo, which is hardly a movie for kids. Yet, it is more important for him than what we might deem an "age appropriate film" would be. Then there is Lee Carter, who is mostly left to his own devices and has an inclination towards filmmaking and manipulates Will into helping out, most likely using him as a way to exercise control over someone the way his brother is able to over him. The third is Didier, a foreigner in a new land, seemingly bored by everything except his desire to be a movie star. It's clear that the common denominator among these three is that they aren't properly equipped to handle this middle ground of being a kid yet having adult problems. It makes sense for them to cling to a film like Rambo, where the hero is able to handle anything that comes at his way with absolutely no problem. It makes sense that Will fancies himself as the son of Rambo, since his father was killed by something beyond his control, whereas Rambo is the master of control: physically and emotionally. it makes sense that Lee takes on the role of director and producer, assuming creative control of the film and becoming frustrated when that control is taken away from him. It's like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, frustrated with his mom and escaping to a land where he gets to be in charge. It makes sense that Didier wants to be an actor: his whole persona seems like an act. He puts on costumes and says lines as if in a script. Probably because he is not sure who he is, and he is teased back home in his school in France.
So is this film media for children? Media about childhood? Or media consumed by children? As we determined last class, it's not really a question that can be easily answered. This film is unique in that it is about children and media. These kids basically work through their problems by creating a response to a film they have seen. It's a productive way of working through things and is teaching them how to take a situation and react to it in a creative way. Sometimes they slip up and deal with things through violence, but they are also learning empathy by trying to recreate scenes they are familiar with and by building relationships with each other, so the violence is always met with guilt. Ultimately, what mends the relationship between Will and Lee is the completion of Son of Rambow and it becomes a testament to friendship, the joy of being able to exercise creative control over a project that has a final product to show for, and being able to experience closure with the problems they unconsciously worked through with the making of this film. This film prompted me to do research on publications about how filmmaking might be beneficial for children and I came across a wide range of examples and theories about how kids can develop better thinking skills, awareness of space, overcome illness, and control emotions through media. This particular article does a good job of exploring what I expect this film is suggesting.

"Some educators believe that
 reading and language are directed most
 effectively when they are used in action.
 Jerome Bruner argues that when language
 conveys the content of experience, there is,
 . . more often than not a requirement of
 developing correspondence between what we
 do, what we see, and what we say. It is this
 correspondence that is most strikingly in-
 volved in reading and writing, in school learn-
 ing, and in other abstract pursuits."
 If this is true, then filming and role
 playing are ideal ways for children to em-
 ploy language and reading actively, and to
 make reading and language live. George
 Spache calls this kind of activity "active
 reacting to reading"and maintains that
 it is a key aspect of good reading compre-
 hension. It is my belief that there are few
 activities elementary children would find
 more interesting, stimulating, or active than
 filmmaking."

Fireside Chat

I interpreted this particular assignment as a kind of micro-capstone for this class. A chance to say anything I didn’t have a chance to express over the course of the semester, but also kind of summing up an underlying value that can be traced in doses throughout my TMA 112 collection. I’ve explored a lot of ideas about identity and gender, so that seemed like the natural focus for my project. I also wanted to treat the Fireside Chat as more of an art performance piece, that way I would be forced to creatively convey a particular issue, as we do with previous projects, rather than didactically preach, treat this as a therapy/confession session, or exploit personal experiences in order to achieve some sort of desired response.

I can’t remember the exact moment I knew what I was going to do, but after writing out my feelings on the subject, brainstorming some lackluster performance ideas, and talking several people’s ears off, I knew I wanted to deconstruct a box of tampons on stage. I have been concerned with the stigmatization of  feminine hygiene products for a while now. My own experiences dealing with being comfortable and not trying to diminish all evidence of this natural occurrence had a lot to do with the conception of this performance piece. In the piece, I bring a box of tampons on stage, hidden in a plastic bag. I open the box secretively, and quickly hide a tampon in my jacket. But when it falls out, I am forced to deal with the fact that my audience now knows of its existence, and the implications that come with having a tampon on you.

I think this is a big reason why women try to hide their tampons and periods in general. We think that if someone knows that we are menstruating, then they can assume we are also grumpy, having a difficult time, aren’t sexually available, and may be suffering from improper hygiene and weird smells. I believe in breaking this fear, and these assumptions. In my piece, I wanted to celebrate tampons in a way that broke people’s discomfort, or at least made them aware of it. I chose Bjork to dance to, who encompasses both the power as well as the nuances of being a woman. In my performance, I expected that the men, whom some of may have never seen the inside of a tampon package in their live, would experience some discomfort with the subject, and the women, who all have very personal experiences with this, would cringe at the money and valuable resource I was wasting. Believe me, I know.

There was an unexpected piece of my performance that I hope translated to some people, and that was the very end, where I had to clean up the mess I had made. I believe that this whole issue of women not being comfortable with publicly acknowledging their menstruations is them “cleaning up” their tampons for the sake of other people. Bleeding isn’t embarrassing, unless it’s associated with gender. I suggest that women stop carrying their entire backpack with them out of class when they go to bathroom. I suggest that we walk up to the checkout line with the male employee without a second thought because we have tampons and chocolate in our basket. I suggest we stop taxing products that we literally need in order to function once a month. I suggest that we just be more open with our bodies in general, and embrace and love our bodies.

Finally, there is the third layer of my performance: the flash poetry. I was inspired by Pipilotti Rist, a artist and filmmaker who explores similar themes about gender. In her feature film Pepperminta, Rist goes as far as to have her characters drink menstrual blood. It’s so beautiful, lyrical, and celebratory, I wanted to do the same. So to accompany the music and the performance, I included a piece of my own poetry about gender, sexuality, and identity. The poem uses phrases and words to paint a picture of confidence with ourselves and to encourage a movement towards being okay with our bodies, our genders, and the nuance and ambiguity in our identities.

Now that the performance is done, I am interested in exploring it more, and perhaps will replicate a similar performance elsewhere.

Concerned Citizen

Artists' Statement

The readings this past week talked a lot about how humans interact with other humans. It focused specifically on human rights but it also discussed what one group of people thought about another group of people. This goes well with the direction our documentary took. We decided to interview Courtney Kendrick. She currently works in the Provo City mayor’s office as a creative director. She works closely with a lot of the departments in the city and tries to help support the arts and major creativity aspects of the city. She also helps to plan and execute the rooftop concert series every year. She is very involved with the music scene here and local artists.

In the documentary, Courtney talks about the problems she sees around the city, and then about ways she has worked to remedy them. She says a lot of the problems in our community have to do, at their core, with Provo being a very non-diverse city. A lot of the people have the exact same upbringing and background, so people don’t work to make necessary changes to support those who are oppressed. Courtney works specifically to help women and those in minority groups to have a stronger voice in local politics and in business settings.

Courtney's attention to Provo's lack of diversity is really important for our community. She is one of many women in communities throughout the world striving to make change in regards to representation of women and people of color in politics, media, and the workforce. As Media Arts students, we should look to what she is doing and see how we can apply the same thoughtful, respectful, and diligent work into our own field. In December of last year, American actress Jessica Chastain wrote an essay about the production she was currently working on, The Zookeeper's Wife, directed by the female filmmaker Niki Caro. She says "I can't tell you-- it's amazing. I've never been on a set with so many women. We're not even 50 percent of the crew- we're probably something like 20 percent women and 80 percent men-- but it's way more than I've ever worked with before. Thee are female producers, a female screenwriter, a female novelist, a female protagonist and a female director." Chastain talks about how she strives to add to diversity in Hollywood, and acknowledges that while you want to work with people based on talent, some talented people have a much bigger hill to climb. 

And that's true here in Provo. As humans, we find comfort in the familiar. It's difficult to be surrounded by people with a different set of values and beliefs, we naturally homogenize. However by doing that, we are missing out on a world of growth and peace. So when Courtney talks about making Provo a safe zone for the 2% that don't fit into the white/LDS category, she is talking about making Provo better. And that might go against a lot of people's views, but that's part of being a concerned citizen- considering views that aren't your own, and working to make your community a place that isn't just about you. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xstn7l1AIz8&feature=youtu.be

Game for Change

On a thursday last month I attended a TMA forum that was led by BYU Gaming, a track within the Animation department. Throughout the presentation I oo’ed and ah’ed over what students could do, but there was a large noticeable gap indicative of the greater problem in the gaming industry. I brought my concerns to my partner, an avid gamer, and he agreed. “Mainstream industry video games are all about playability. Storylines, social issues, that sort of thing, aren’t given priority, because when it comes down it it it’s all about spectacle.” But when it comes down to it, all video games really are about is agency. You make a path in a narrative through decisions, ultimately resulting in some sort of conclusion. Text-based video games get at the very core and basic nature of games. It makes sense that we use such a format to exhibit a societal issue, because in order for video games to take that leap forward, they need to take a step back. If you strip back the spectacle and focus on the basic elements, maybe we can build up to something great again. So in my simple, text-based video game sustained, I focus on the issues of sustainability, resources, and consumer responsibility by giving the user a set amount of daily limits of water, and they must make it through the day sometimes sacrificing things such as watering their dog or growing food in order to take a shower that day.

I wanted to show how high the stakes are for sustainability in the real world by raising the stakes in the virtual one. You start with 75% of the average use per day per person, and if you make it through that one, you move on to 50%, until you are down to days where you don’t even have electricity and your water and food supply are scarce. I draw a lot of my inspiration from Bird on Fire, a book written by Andrew Ross on what he calls the “world’s least sustainable city,” Phoenix, Arizona. However, having lived in both Phoenix and Provo, Utah, I am equally scared for both. Provo’s air quality, recycling programs, energy suppliers, and food sources are not up to par with a truly sustainable model. If things continue the way they are, sustained will be come a stark reality. I am hoping that living in a virtual world where resources are limited, will urge players to find out more about how they can prevent this from happening. (I even provide links at the end.)

I wanted to keep my facts in line with stats of resource use for the average person in America, so I used websites such as USGS, the US Energy Information Administration, and Duke University’s Center for Sustainability. But I wanted the game to be engaging beyond using information based in reality, I wanted to make aesthetic decisions that would help a block of text become more inviting. So I started with lot’s of choices, but ended up scaling back a lot. I wanted to bring the user face to face with the kind of restrictions that water limitations could face them not too far in the future. The minimalism of text also strips away the coating that society uses to get away with overusing resources.

I’ve often heard people use the religious argument that God made the earth for us, and it is there for us to use as we please. The problem with this argument is that it is a single story, that is dangerous like the ones that Chimamanda Adiche warns against in her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” This argument contradicts other religious teachings within Mormon and Christian doctrine itself, as well as shows a lack of engagement and responsibility with the issues.I hope this game encourages users to come face to face with the realities and stakes with the issue of sustainability, and realize that these easy write-offs that we hear and repeat are dangerous, and the rhetoric needs to change.

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html

World Building

https://soundcloud.com/enthusiasm-1/demo-along-in-years

Artists' Statement:

Our activities in class prompted us to begin this assignment by creating a little bit of history for our world. Our world was a simple: a world in which elderly people are seen as beautiful in the way that young people in our society are seen today. So why is youth seen as beautiful? Youth is equated with a sharp mind, healthy body, and a sign of more years to come. So in order for old age to be seen similarly, it would have to represent those same things. In this society, old age is equated with having survived something others have not. So in our world, nuclear devastation created defects and illness in the newly born. Young people are sick and afflicted, whereas their elders are healthy. Their age indicates affluence, a long life, and wisdom.

With a backstory in mind, we were able to better imagine what kind of physical artifacts would manifest themselves in such a society. It was hard for us not to focus on things that we see in our own world. The glamorization of youth is often seen in the fashion, beauty, and advertising industries, and the artifacts we created are indicative of this. In a society that values age over youth, these industries which value the outward appearance and pocket change of individuals target the group that is most influential and affluent. They project the type of people that everyone wants to be. So in our magazine and advertisements, we catered to that group by using simple designs, easy to read text, and images of wisdom and old age. It is an aesthetic that is created out of an underlying principle of society, inspired by this week’s viewing of La Jetee, where production design and aesthetic choices matches this pioneering science fiction film, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where fashion is based on caste systems and products such as Soma are born of a deeper cultural implication.

      We strived to make ourselves a part of this world. While, yes, we were only able to create things that  we have seen or experienced, we were able to arrange them in a way that was new and tailored for our new environment. This, in a way really blurred the line between science fiction and science fact. We had to ask ourselves questions that sometimes we never asked before to enter into this new world. Questions such as: »If I was driving down the freeway, what would I see?« »Would they really wear that?«. What makes this even more interesting is that we all have our own vision on what this world would be like to us, which in some ways was challenging but in others gave our artifacts some dimension. Afterall, it would be strange if every magazine in our society is the same, but there is a common thread that illustrates a cultural trend.

       There is still so much room to grow with this project. In our brainstorming of ideas we talked beyond advertisements and fashion, and discussed how this might affect the value of art in general. In a society devastated by nuclear war, would art even exist in the same way? Would magazines still be a practical way of communication? Or even advertisements? Our advertisements reflect a value of homeopathic remedies over perhaps more complex medications. In a simpler world like the one we imagined, perhaps our artifacts would be of mediums that are completely different than that ones we experience in our society. If we were to further explore this project, we would like to completely change the medium conventions reflected here, but with the same emphasis on the affluence, wisdom, and beauty of age.