Viewing List Response 3: This American Life

This week’s episode of the podcast This American Life—hosted by the mellifluous Ira Glass, as usual—featured stories about situations or things that seemed perfect, except one tiny little detail. For example, there was the young grad couple who purchased a beautiful walnut table and dining set off Ebay in the site’s infancy, only to discover it was made for a doll’s house. Or the man who was incarcerated for 13 years for the armed robbery of a Burger King, except he was living a reformed life outside the prison walls due to a clerical error.

These I felt were clever iterations on the show’s theme. As the podcast progressed, however, the pleasant diversions became almost unconnected to the story at all. I listened to the podcast only recently and already I am having trouble remembering what the other stories were because they seemed irrelevant to the week’s theme. Perhaps it was just because I am unfamiliar with the format of podcasts, but it felt like the remainder of the episode made almost a clean break from the professed theme. These additional stories were still entertaining and enjoyable, but they were just… less cohesive than they ought to have been.

If I were to change something about this podcast, I would take a little more time when introducing these latter stories to help connect them to the rest of the podcast.  I might have also chosen to cut a story or so to help the episode maintain its narrative momentum.

Viewing List Response 2: POV Podcast: “Girl Model”

P.O.V. is a PBS podcast that interviews documentary filmmakers about their creations. This particular episode interviewed the creators of Girl Model, a doc that follows a young Russian girl into the world of international fashion modeling. Instead of a world full of promised glamour and riches, she finds herself trying to negotiate dangerously worded contracts and situations where she can’t even understand what is being said. Her story is just one aspect of a larger narrative that explores the danger of an unregulated and often exploitative industry.                

The podcast itself was pretty useful. I felt like I got a good idea of what Girl Model was about without actually having watched it. The podcast did not tell everything about the film, however, but instead  encouraged me to watch the feature when it aired on PBS sometime after the podcast.

Most interesting were the filmmaker’s comments about when to intervene in their subject’s lives and when to sit back and watch. It sounds like a relationship of trust was most important to gaining access to particular scenes,  and an open discussion of what things and even days should or should not be filmed out of respect for the subject. They also discussed that how in trying to avoid conclusions or easy solutions in the end of their film they hoped viewers would question how they themselves were responsible for the exploitation of these young girls, and what they might do about it in response.  I found the podcast useful and think I am interested in watching the documentary as a result.

Viewing List Response 1: The Queen of Versailles

The Queen ofVersailles was an intriguing film. Director Lauren Greenfield’s approach to the film was effective. It didn’t feel like she was manipulating or exploiting her subjects, rather it felt like she was spending enough time with them to the point where they just ended up revealing them for who they actually were. David Siegel—one of the film’s protagonists—clearly felt otherwise, because he sued Lauren Greenfield for defamatory content (the courts ultimately ruled in her favor). I felt like most of the people in the film had a voice: the Siegels, their children, their nannies, their childhood friends.

One of the most effective scenes of the film in my opinion was a scene that took place after the financial recession hit. At this time, Jaclyn Siegel (David’s wife) was going through the house getting rid of things. She finds a lizard cage and interrogates her adopted daughter as to whether or not she has fed her pet. The piece of wood hiding the animal is pulled aside and as Jaclyn pokes it the blackened, shriveled chuckawalla flops limply. She exclaims, telling her son “Look, the lizard is dead!” to which her bewildered queries “We have a lizard?!?”

Footage used in the film included not only footage shot by Greenfield’s team but archival footage from news sources, old news clippings, and especially old photographs of Jaclyn and David from their newlywed glamour days.

Despite their exorbitant spending and occasional egregious obliviousness to their financial realities, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the Siegels. Like many other people, they were caught in a trap biting off more financially than they could chew, only their bite was $100 million more than most, their meal the memory of Versailles.

Food Is--

In the creation of Food Is-- I hoped to figure out a bit of what food meant to other people and to myself. To this end I went around and interviewed people I encountered with an audio recorder about what food was for them in a sentence, or even better, in a word. I was surprised and intrigued by the responses I received. 

The idea for the project came after I had an idea for some food I wanted to make--in this case, carbonated ice cream. I'd pitched the idea to a number of people; some told me it would work, some just sounded disgusted by it. It remained a vague project trapped in the "sometime I'll do this" category. It didn't seem feasible. A test batch at 1/3 my final batch seemed to prove it was too onerous for a large audience. Other ideas for the chat didn't appeal to me, unfortunately.

So I did it anyway.

The audio portion of Food Is-- I hoped would be something people would listen to and find something they identified with. After they had identified with something, they would also learn some of what other people felt and consider more deeply what food was to them.

I chose a basic French Vanilla frozen custard recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I like vanilla as a basic flavor. It gets a bad rap, but it’s a classic and is wildly popular for a reason. I love experimenting with other flavors—especially weird and crazy things—but decided while I was experimenting with the carbonation aspect of the ice cream I should probably choose a flavor I understood better.

Making the actual ice cream was something I hoped to do during my performance, but I instead chose to make it just beforehand, in order to make sure it remained carbonated for as long as possible, hopefully at least until people were able to eat it.

What I hoped to achieve by actually carbonating the ice cream—beyond just freezing it with dry ice for the novelty—was to play a little bit with people’s conceptions of a familiar thing—vanilla ice cream—and make it less familiar, to invite people to think about the food they were eating. This is an idea I have borrowed from haute cuisine restaurants such as Grant Achatz’s Alinea which plays not only with time-honored techniques but with molecular gastronomy. I consider Alinea the textual inspiration for this piece.

Were I to perform this piece again, I would give more thought to how I actually presented the audio and ice cream. I would have explained a little more, and while people were eating asked them to think about the food they were eating.

All in all, I really enjoyed my piece and was happy with the results. I especially enjoyed other people’s pieces and just had a good time that night.

Dean Wright--Committed to Change

Dean Wright--Committed to Quality

Artist Statement:

 “Artists expand social imagination, helping us envision the transformations we hope to bring about.”

In this statement by Arlene Goldbard, artists are seen as a catalyst for change: creating an alternate, improved reality within a medium or artistic space. I would add to Goldbard’s assertion that artists seek to capture and preserve the social transformations we perceive around us. Art is partly about creating, but it is first about seeing. As we each walk around, we act like a black suit coat in an apartment filled with cat hair—that is, we constantly attract and interact with the bits and pieces of life that never seem to be far away  (though most of these bits of life are vastly preferable to shed feline follicles). Perhaps a better analogy would be like some sort of mobile plant—soaking up light, air, nutrients, water, and synthesizing something new out of the disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

Sometimes artists create something new. Sometimes they act as storytellers, seeking instead to portray something that was there all along. Such was the case with Dean Wright, who I initially met at a panel regarding the future of food at the Wall several months ago. At this time, he didn’t have the time he would have liked to explain his role in making BYU Dining Services into the kind of operation he hoped it could be. He invited students to come and speak with him personally at a later time. Remembering his invitation, I took him up on his offer and went to go see him.

We had hoped to maybe see a kitchen in the MTC, but instead Dean took us on a full-blown tour of his pride and joy, the Culinary Support Center, or CSC. The CSC is a place where all of BYU’s food prep operations have been consolidated for efficiency, food safety, sustainability and quality.

It became apparent very quickly that we would not be able to adequately portray all the things that go on in the CSC in a short film, so deciding what we would keep ended up being very difficult. For brevity’s sake we were forced to eliminate several interesting side narratives about baking, soup and cheese making, and the creation of compost. In the end, we felt what we had gave at least an idea of how much goes on in the CSC.

I was impressed to learn that Dean Wright was the instigating force in favor of the CSC. Dean truly believes in its ability to improve BYU and Provo’s food quality, as well as its capacity to create a smaller carbon footprint. I am reminded of a quote in The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkein in which Frodo expresses to Gandalf his sadness that he was born to see times of uncertainty and strife. Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All they can decide is what to do with the time that has been given them.” Here, Gandalf emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility to improve where we are, when we can.
I feel Dean embodies this ideal, and I hope the short doc Mike and I created helps tell his story and the transformation in our society he has been seeking to bring about.

VERSUS

Artist Statement

The Webspinna Battle was much more fun, and more challenging, than I thought it might be. The idea to personify Western ideas of masculinity and femininity was Emily’s. I liked the idea, and so we went for it.

It quickly became apparent media representations of these two ideas were extremely varied. After discussing it a couple of times, we decided to portray a spectrum of media and ideas.

These would start out with fairly conventional stereotypes before escalating to media whose portrayal of men and women was the most superficial, the most dysfunctional, and what we felt was most damaging. After this peak (or lowest, low, I suppose) each of our media pieces was meant to move in the direction of boosting awareness of these issues and hopefully inviting introspection in the audience about what some of the pressures are upon men and women in our society.  We hoped to finish with a message of equality and harmony, reinforcing the inherent dignity in and importance of both.

To add another layer of ambiguity to our performance, we decided we would each wear clothes most often worn by the opposite gender. I am curious as to historical gender associations with trousers. 
I elicit this because it seems like it is more culturally acceptable for women to dress as men than vice-versa. Back to trousers. Were these ever traditionally menswear? I don’t know.
When approaching the swapped-clothing idea, we both felt it very important to do so in a respectful way. 

The actual Webspinna battle was very enjoyable. The ambiance of Studio A, the sweet tunes and high-fructose corn goodness-laced desserts all lent to an atmosphere where I felt very comfortable and felt like I got to know my peers better. All the same, performing was a nerve-wracking experience.  I had placed each one of my songs on this blog deliberately to counter specific songs Emily played. Emily decided last minute to omit a couple she didn’t fit. At the time, this frustrated me a bit. I had practiced on a very specific version of how I thought everything would go down, of course, as I hadn’t actually practiced this live with Emily things went differently.

Rather than being frustrated, I think I should have sought to just enjoy the moment and flow more with Emily’s ideas rather than trying to push my own too hard. 

I don’t know that we were effective in conveying our message. It was probably entertaining to watch, but I don’t know that the average audience member would have noticed or understood our artistic arc, and it probably felt like we were bolstering stereotypes instead of  challenging them.

Despite these challenges, I really enjoyed the webspinna battle, especially collaborating with Emily who is a great collaborative teammember.

Perfect Day

Hairdryer

California Gurls

Bedazzle that Bra
It's so fluffy

What a Girl Wants 1:14

Man! I feel like a woman

Where them girls at

Big Girls Don't Cry


MAN/The Mask You Live In
Regina says she hates you...
I'm sorry you hate me because I'm Popular.
Bikini-Ready Body!

Rapture Technologies

When creating these videos and ads we meant to, by suggestion, create a world much larger than the media we chose to convey it. They serve as a sort of design fiction, and in Bleeker's words are "totems through which a larger story can be told, or imagined or expressed. They are like artifacts from someplace else, telling stories about other worlds."  Jake Wyatt understands this concept intuitively and displays it in his webcomic Necropolis, where what is shown hints at a world of breathtaking and mysterious dimensions.

The world we created is set in our world, in the future. Technology and medicine have evolved to the point where aging and dying have effectively been halted...but population growth has continued unabated. In such a world, the Rapture Movement was formed to offer people an incentive to “pass on,” an experience heretofore unknown that in a perverse twisting of something like the Make-A-Wish foundation grants them their dying wish (or makes them feel like it was granted.) The way it is marketed makes it seem like the responsible, ethical, caring and adventurous thing to do, but there is a problem: The people who are being encouraged to “rapture” are not the aged, affluent citizens in their sixteenth decade of life, but the poor, the disadvantaged, the mentally ill, conveniently being “raptured” out of society, quietly, guiltlessly. Gavin, an internet personality that runs a channel called _Fallen_Empires_, smells something fishy. He is using his channel and substantial following to lash out and create a conversation to counter the sleek, appealing ads Rapture puts out.

The video was therefore designed to look like a webcast. Disheveled hair, scruff, shirt inside-out (Gavin doesn’t know!) but still relatively young, Gavin is meant to channel the disgruntled, suspicious, idealistic young citizen.His video is choppy and pasted together, coherent but not quite cohesive. As part of his image he wants to portray that he doesn’t care enough to film and re-film his segment (even if he did, secretly), he’d rather edit a single take to pieces and back together again. It’s his way of showing he trusts his viewers to trust him.

Drew represented the “establishment,” advertising Rapture itself. He meant to show Rapture in a positive light, making it truly an appealing option. Danny creates a more stylized ad that would appeal to the general population with its straightforward, hopeful, almost religious tone.

Now finished with this particular bit of work, I am left wanting to know more about this world we have glimpsed into. What we created may have been fiction, yet it finds an odd sort of reality in the folds of my imagination.