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.