CRV: Webspinna Battle! - Natural vs. Artificial

Spencer Plewe

Stephanie Cook

Everything we have ever created or will ever create will be produced from earlier experiences that we’ve had, or from the creations or ideas of others. We are basically remixing existing ideas to make a new perspective on something. And because we are the ones reshaping, our new creations will have a part of us in them, ready to be thrown out into the world for someone else to take our perspective and create something else.  

The webspinna battle’s process was really fun. Picking our themes at first felt difficult, but by the time we listed a few possibilities, we realized we could mix them all together to have Natural vs. Artificial sounds. The natural side explores sounds that are entirely real, and either without man-made or electronic alteration, or discuss natural processes. The artificial side is entirely composed of man-made materials or computer synthesization. 

Searching for each of the sounds for our battle took us to plenty of different sources like sound effects websites to songs to actual movie clips.  According to the article “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” by Jonathan Lethem, the practice of taking inspiration from pre-existing sources is what leads to every piece of media we know. He explains how taking existing things that might be considered plagiarism, is really a way of creating something new. In this assignment, we had been asked to do just this. Thanks to the use of the internet, we were able to portray something live that was beautiful and unique from already existing sounds and music. We were able to use the inspiration that Lethem explained to make something different. Our usage of the sounds of natural events and artificial creations overlapping each other created a humorous clash between two opposites.

Just as a glitch could be considered a mistake, we too ran into our own glitches during our performance. As we played our mix of sounds to portray natural vs. artificial, it wasn’t a perfect portrayal of what we had envisioned. Using the internet as an artist’s live medium created the necessity to be flexible and patient within that sphere. Yet despite these limitations, we still received a great round of applause followed by a sense of accomplishment in our live art through sound that we had created.

Hearing others perform was also very interesting. There were moments when they seemed content with what was happening, as well as when they ran into similar “glitch” problems. We didn’t judge their mistakes though. On the contrary, it made it much more interesting and made their piece more personable and relatable. Humans are not perfect, so any live performance that we give is bound to have some mistakes, and that’s what makes it special and unique to that person. I think even if we were all given the same sounds to play, each piece would have come out drastically different because of our own interests and ways of seeing the world.

Me: the Artificial side

1. Alarm clock 2015 (2nd sound): http://www.zedge.net/ringtones/0-5-1-awesome/
2. Walking on Metal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8yhFKVvoDE
3. Motorbike start-up (5th sound down) http://www.soundsnap.com/tags/start_up
4. WALL-E movie clip (skip to 0:25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnv-iFhdlqE
5. Derezzed, by Daft Punk (skip to 0:43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cgLL8JaVI
6. UFO Appear Examine (2nd and 3rd one down) http://www.soundsnap.com/tags/spaceship
7. Brewery Plant Packaging Equipment (2nd sound down) http://www.freesfx.co.uk/sfx/factory
8. Techno Jeep, by Julian Smith (skip to 0:16) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFybwg4wadI

CRV: Textual Poaching: Citizen Kane narrates my journal

It took me a very long time to figure out what to do for this project, as I not only had to select a video type that draws from an old piece of art, but I had to connect it with a specific aspect of my identity. The identity was the hardest to get down, as I didn’t know what examples to draw from that show remixing something for the same purpose. I knew the art I was to choose was Orson Welles’ classic film Citizen Kane, probably my favorite classic film ever. That’s not an aspect of my identity though, and neither is editing. I needed something that was close to me, something that I could never be without.

Yesterday, it dawned on me. I have kept two journals from my LDS church mission that record almost every single day of it. This can be an example of my religion, and my writing style. I just selected a sentence from one of the dates, then using that as a script, started searching through Citizen Kane to find the matching words in that sentence. Then, all I did was cut out those moments which say the words and arrange them in the right order.

This really was an example of taking something pre-existing and turning it into something personal, as Jenkins writes in his book Television Fans, “The boy’s investment in the toy will give it a meaning that was unanticipated by the toymaker.” I also found inspiration in different internet video artists such as Pogo, who takes different sounds and vocal gestures from movies, TV shows, and even real life interviews, and remixes them into techno songs to use at dance clubs. It is a huge thrill to see what different things can be produced from individual pieces of art we know so well.

CRV: Medium Specificity: Rock Painting

Painting is an artistic medium that doesn't require colored oils or a canvas. It simply requires a choice of tool, material, and color. I chose to look specifically into material and see what I can make out of something out of the ordinary. Then, I saw the bed of rocks that surrounds my apartment building, and noticed how the rocks come in at least 5 colors. I knew I was looking at a material that could be used to “paint” something. Best of all, I could just sit down and make it right then and there, without any additional equipment.

At first, for visual inspiration, I used a screenshot from an inspirational movie I’ve seen and based my first rock painting after it. Then, I decided I could take a step further in originality, remembering that I don’t need to recreate pre-existing objects to paint either. I thought of Jackson Pollock’s painting “Number 6”, which simply is splattered paint. The cover art to the single album for the song “Monogamy”, by the band Self, also came to mind, as it is just a bunch of different colored circles and rectangles against a black background. From that, I chose to create a simple image of colored stripes making use of the different colors I had.

This compliments the painting medium by adding another possible “canvas” to work on to express yourself on. In any location where rocks lay together, like a riverbed, one can make creative use of the different shades of rocks at their disposal. Different colors can still be controlled to make different designs, shapes, and movements. This even adds an element of depth to the artwork: by piling rocks to a certain height, you can achieve a custom topography that can enhance the painting, from bringing contrast between solid colors and thin lines, to fully encapsulating the shape of a person’s head.

The painting medium is an open book, not only for what you paint, but how you paint it. Scott McCloud states in his book, “Understanding Comics”, “Our attempts to define comics [or painting] are an on-going process which won’t end anytime soon.” The definition of art is an ever-changing blob of ambiguity, that is relative to style, subject, mode, or message. In this exploration to finding my own version of painting, I learned to be resourceful of my available materials, mindful of time (to use the natural light of day to see well), and respectful of my surroundings (not bothering the ground or disturbing other people using the nearby pavement).

Before:

After:

CRV: Historical Story: Confederate

Howie Burbidge:

This was an awesome assignment.  I learned a lot about the advantages of having a partner to work with when writing a script.  There is no way that I would or could have come up with something even remotely this good without having someone to bounce ideas off of and to get ideas from.  It truly is so helpful and makes stories and characters so much more interesting.  Speaking of characters, we worked hard on our main character.  He is in direct line of current political on goings at the time of the Civil War.  As a Confederate spy his beliefs are shown through his behaviors—and profession.  This correlates directly with the current political climate at the time.  Our Confederate spy enters a wartime mansion of General Grant.  The information we gathered about these locations was pivotal.

(http://www.oldhouseonline.com/preserving-a-civil-war-landmark/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Mansion)

This house would have been a perfect place for spies to linger around and maybe even sneak into during the war – as it was only seven miles away from enemy territory and General Grant and his generals stayed there.  The house proved to be the setting of our script and made our story more believable.  We chose this location carefully because of that very element of actuality.

Spencer Plewe:

The plot depended on this character maintaining his cover for as long as he could, as well as how his cover is blown. We needed a flaw in this spy’s plan that would expose his deception to General Grant, so we found a personal piece of his history, namely about his name being a moniker from his actual birth name.

(http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/ulysses-s-grant)

It was the perfect touch of detail that many people wouldn’t know about, as well as the Confederate spy in the center of the story. The story itself was actually simple to write, so long as we had a definite direction and ending to take it to. We decided off several possible endings, and the resulting one felt the most natural.

Using details in historical fiction is exemplified from Neufeld’s After the Deluge comic, which places fictional characters into the real world of Hurricane Katrina; before, during, and after the storm. The fictional characters give a mode of safety in learning about real situations, and even semi-autobiographies such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis give a simple, narrative glimpse at the past.