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.

Fed-Up Khan: You Should Have Let Me Sleep!

Artist Statement

In the making of Fed-up Khan, I sought to remix a representation of Khan from Star Trek: Into Darkness and remake him from a homicidal, slighted, murderous alien and transform him into someone more familiar, someone who I identify with. I took a film and remixed it into what the kids these days call a meme, which to fulfill the laws of meme-ness must have both a set-up and a punch line. I would like to emphasize that I have not merely made variations on a meme someone else has created, rather, I have created an entirely new meme of my own with an original premise. In the way Kalman makes iconic figures or pictures his by attaching new meaning, for a couple of moments I feel I have made these images mine.

This theme was born out of my frustration with a process I have heard termed “clickbaiting,” a tactic employed by many online media entities that intend to drive impulse web traffic to their websites via sensational headlines like “This 8-year Old Made A Gift for A Soldier Who Just Came Home. What He Gave Will Make You Cry;” or maybe “21 Things That Remind you of the 90s” or perhaps “What this Student Said Back to her Racist Teacher Will Blow You Away.”

Articles like this, and the websites that manufacture them, have become increasingly prolific in the past year or so. I initially found them amusing, then bothersome, and finally offensive: I feel these sorts of articles are aimed specifically at me and my generation: the people whose demographic dominates Facebook, the first to grow up with the internet (albeit not in its pervasive form.) We should be the most web-savvy adults out there, yet we are constantly pummeled by these articles that assert that we need not think, merely react. We don’t have to think how we feel about something, it’s been prescribed to us already: “Shocked!” “Angry!” “Blown Away!” “Awesome!” “Sad!”

Feeling patronized and indignant, I decided to create Fed-up Khan, who I consider an embodiment of my emotions. He is exposed to the same inane drivel as I am and is not happy about it. Khan is the dragon of Beowulf, awoken from a worthy slumber by the petulant meddling of the media peasants. Awoken, he intercepts takes each new intruding headline with a raised eyebrow and a sharp tongue, proclaiming to each new offender with a questioning blast of scorching finality: “Is that so? YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME SLEEP.”

(Rereading the assignment description on late Monday, to my chagrin I realized the text in question was supposed to be older than I was. I realize Star Trek: Into Darkness is certainly not 24 years old, but alas, this observance came far too late for me to be willing change my idea, and I accept the fate of a deviant with gravitas and a touch of resignation.)

Medium Specificity: Leave Your Cares Behind

Medium specificity is a term which discusses emphasizing or exploring the defining characteristics of a given medium. For this piece I chose to explore the collage. I enjoy how in a collage things can coexist in ways that might be difficult to pull of otherwise. Mixed materials might be employed, or sense of perspective distorted, and objects might be placed together in strange juxtapositions. Granted, these concepts exist in many other types of media--sculpture, photography, drawing--but only in collage are they physically part of the creation, a clear border delineating where one thing ends and another begins.

Mike Alcantara’s Atom, for instance, showcases pieces of comics remade into a comic homage of sorts. Layers of meaning and information are left in layers, and can be perceived at different depths. A beginning close-up look reveals words, pictures and stories. A step back reduces these to splotches of color and texture, revealing a different image.

It is interesting to me that even though the individual pieces are easily identified as coming from separate sources, they manage to form a new meaning through juxtaposition, where the whole is different than the sum of its parts. I do not mean "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,"  where 2+2=5, not 4. I mean it is different. In collage, 2+2=potato, maybe, or 2+2=The Shining.

This particular aspect of collage, then, is what I have emphasized. (In the interest of focus I have decided not to use media such as macaroni noodles and stickers in this particular piece to avoid too much visual clutter.) An elderly bride and groom stand too large in a desert landscape, unknowingly pasted over a much smaller, younger, proportionate couple of newlyweds. An Italian pasta frolla rises luminously behind them like the desert sun, so out of place it somehow fits.  Stopping at this point would have yielded a 2+2= a strange, but harmonious, maybe slightly awkward scene. Yet a couple of things were missing. The addition of Jacob and Edward's faces--adolescently sultry in their former wholeness, discomfiting in their current, incomplete state--change the whole tone of the piece. 2+2= something very different. I enjoy having words in the picture itself. According to Scott McCloud, this is the “additive combination where words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa.” The suggestion to "leave your cares behind" acts as an artistic lacquer, sealing in the (decidedly creepy) tone of the piece. 

Historical Fiction

Squeaky Milk

Artist Statement

I love cheese. I have occasionally considered eliminating animal products from my diet as matter of experiment, and then I remember cheese and despair. I won’t be going anywhere—the cheese is right here. A multiplicity of flavors, textures and colors comfort my senses; in its magnificence I wonder how cheese first came to be.

 In the article Earliest evidence for cheese making in the sixth millennium BC in northern Europe by Mélanie Salque et. al notes findings of what appear to be cheesemaking pottery in 8,000 year old sites in present-day Turkey and even some findings of cheese residues that indicate cheese could have been consumed as long ago as the Neolithic period in widespread sites in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, with Europe being regarded as the first among these. Based on this, we decided Neolithic Europe would be the ideal setting for Squeaky Milk. It would be Neolithic men, then—primitive, but daring—who would be the first to try this strange, now commonplace delicacy.

 

What would this first cheese have looked like? In Europe’s first cattle farmers quickly added cheese to menu, by Robert Lee Hotz, the first cheese is thought to have been “a soft, watery concoction resembling a cottage cheese…” Might these watery curds have squeaked when eaten, like fresh cheese from a dairy? Spencer thought so, and so it was worked into the script. 

Spencer was the primary writer for the Squeaky Cheese rough script. Jacob, Spencer and I then discussed the rough draft together in order to refine it into a finished, targeted product. It was clear we all wanted a light-hearted tone in our final product. While our characters were Neolithic, we wanted them to be easy to empathize with. Spencer had the idea of including references to modern-day phenomena, specifically coffee dependency, inability to admit alcohol dependency, and on a lighter note mood swings and cravings associated with pregnancy in Ug-Ug’s (the main character) wife, Lesley. 

Ug-Ug and Oo-Goo are buddies like you might find hanging out at the local sports bar after work, best friends who get each other into—and out of—trouble. Their language is rudimentary and brusque but occasionally hints at deeper intelligence in the midst of monosyllabic grunts, choosing words like “homicidal” and “acquainted.” Despite their fear of Lesley’s mood swings, she is revealed to be a precociously well-spoken individual probably responsible for most of the improvements to life the cavemen have had or will have. As in many households, the ultimate determinant of what becomes part of daily life (the cheese) in Ug-Ug’s tent was the woman of the family. 

At the charged conclusion of the script, Ug-Ug and Lesley’s banter is light-hearted but belies a deeper sincerity and honesty like that demonstrated in Satrapi’s Persepolis—a world of possibility is open to them, and they have not the least idea—not yet.  

 

Process Piece

Cryogenic Freezing

          When I first heard of the process piece, I thought perhaps this was more of a documentary and should be as true-to-life as possible. As it was clarified it "didn't need to be a process on this planet" I understood I had been given more creative latitude than I previously expected. I teamed up with Elizabeth Elieson and we both readily agreed we wanted to do something we didn't hear on a regular basis, something futuristic. Elizabeth suggested cryogenic freezing, and we both enjoyed the possibility. In order to assuage our concerns that cryogenic technology might be a cliche choice, we sought to make each sound that would be heard in the film a deliberate choice, rather than trying to justify sounds that didn’t quite fit.

          Fortunately, we had no idea what cryogenic freezing even sounded like--since it hasn't even been done yet (or so we think! :o ) this allowed ample artistic latitude. Each sound we used was made on site in the apartment where we recorded it. We sought to establish a clear room tone before the operation by paying attention to what appliances and devices were on, and created a cast of characters--patient, nurse, doctor, nurse in the future--who we hoped could be easily identified by the things they said.

          We also created two separate room tones—one for the day when the cryogenic freezing takes place, and another for the day in the distant future when she wakes up. In a Rip Van Winkle fashion, our character is unaware any time has passed at all, evidenced by her continuing her slow countdown as she awakes in the future. This particular aspect was influenced by personal experiences with anesthesia and also films like Avatar—we didn’t feel she would notice the transition into the future.

          Like the many microprocesses that take place in the creation of sushi in Hiro Dreams of Sushi (If you haven’t seen this yet, you do not yet know sushi.) or the slow construction of a smokehouse in Smokehouse that form a cohesive whole, we hoped the disparate pieces of our piece would fit together in such a way that immersed the listener in the narrative we had created.

          Reflection is important in creating narratives of any sort. Looking back on Cryogenic Freezing, I enjoyed the sounds we had made but wish we had manipulated and distorted the sounds we created—particularly the sound of the actual cryogenic freezing—to move it solidly out of a college kitchen and into a futuristic realm where our technology felt more plausible.

Tiny Stories

My bit:

excavation crew broke through entered cave STOP blue light unknown source STOP shadow scout patrol MIA recovery troops also now MIA advise course of action STOP

Madi Huber:

advised course of action go towards the blue light STOP there is nothing we can do for you STOP you are on your own STOP hope to see you back at headquarters soon STOP

Danny Hunt:

He walked towards the light, but drew no closer to it. He did not know how long he walked, nor how far. It no longer mattered.

Max Johnston:

It was cold outside and it was late in the morning, but if he went out and practiced for a couple hours he'd be warmed up for the game in the morning.

Daniel Kellis:

The mourning eventually ended and he had nothing left to do. He thought about playing bingo with his neighbors, but he didn’t feel ready.

Artist’s Statement:

Creating the series of tiny stories was an interesting endeavor for me. In creating these I was really mostly looking to have fun, which is nice when it intersects with an assignment. I thought for a while about how I wanted my story to start. I decided quickly that I didn’t want my part to be told in third-person. Second-person was also out. What about narration? This seemed promising but then I alighted on an idea I liked even better: a telegram-style letter from one character to another. I felt this would convey a maximum amount of information about the time frame in which the story takes place.

Now I had decided a format and a time, I thought of what the story could be about. I wanted something that had substance and mystery to it, something with unexplored, rough edges. In the end, I settled on doing something underground, since caves have always fascinated me.  When I had finished writing the first part of my story, to me it conveyed an expedition to a cave where some unknown, supernatural force was at stake. After breaking through into a cave, the expedition came across a strange blue light. When their armed shadow scouts set out to explore, they disappeared. The backup crew went in search of them, but they, too, disappeared. The commander of the whole outfit is now very unsure of what to do and telegrams back up to the surface for feedback. The illustration I chose was of blue lights in darkness, evoking countless eyes. I hoped to convey a dark, foreboding tone with this pairing.

I was very interested to see what Madi would do with the story from this point on. I was happy to see it continue in the same vein I had begun it, as a reply from the commander’s overseer somewhere on the surface. I thought maybe it would continue on in the same fashion, but then things changed dramatically as the story changed hands once again. The story changed wildly and left the original plot line behind—or so I first thought. When I re-read the conclusion, this time it seemed to be less about the voyagers below and more about to the commander on the surface. Having lost all contact with the missing underground contingent and the expedition declared a gaping failure, he sought to find comfort after the funerals they themselves could not attend, yet could find none…

Like the Exquisite Corpse parlor games mentioned by DJ Spooky, these stories took on a life of their own, where compared separately they seemed to be dissonant notes. Looked at as a whole, they oddly formed a cohesive narrative that was more than the sum of its unknowing parts.   Viewed as a snapshot, like Dorothea Lange’s “Destitute Mother,” they create a window into a world much larger than explicitly defined, limited only by the imagination.