Concerned Citizen

We went into this interview without a project -- or at least without a "cause" -- but instead we had a person we wanted to focus on.  Relying less on the "institution" and more on the intrinsic values or beliefs that one person -- Jesse Baird -- actually had allowed us to get to the meat of a problem he actually cared about instead of a cookie cutter "mission."  In fact we tried to prompt Jesse to talk about various topics that we thought might provoke a discussion (politics, abortion, feminism, female circumcision, etc.) but sometimes smaller issues take precedent over these universal issues and can provide a basis to build up to them.  Jesse's thoughtful critique of passivity in societal interactions relating to harmful behaviors actually does address sexism, racism, homophobia, rape culture, etc. but not in the rah-rah grandiose Big Topic way that we are used to in confrontational social settings.

Furthermore, our aim was to capture the actual essence of what Jesse cares about and finds valuable just by himself.  Our project is about how not everyone has to be the director of a food bank or spend their Saturdays volunteering at a soup kitchen to be an activist.  Jesse, in his everyday interactions with other people, stands up for a cause that isn't getting enough attention from media, politics, society, etc.  Moreover, not everybody has the societal influence to start their own campaign or charity, and not everyone has the opportunity or time to make a drastic global change. Thus, it's the everyday, human interactions that can actually start the ball rolling toward social evolution and away from antiquated paradigms of bigotry and injustice.

As for outside media, we referenced home videos to capture a more realistic aesthetic instead of a clinical and polished experience.  In home videos, you get the unedited truth and probably gratuitous material -- like Jesse on the broomstick and screwing around with a camera -- even though not all parts of those instances relate directly to the cause, they still relate to the individual.

Goldbard makes an statement claiming that "encroaching on the old paradigm, knowledge from many different spheres reveals how cul- ture is key to creating the conditions that enable human rights and therefore, security rooted in caring rather than coercion."  Jesse's project is not to be the next President of the United States and change the world that way, instead he just wants to add to the conversation to create "the conditions that enable human rights" and it's as simple as that.  

World Creating

Welcome to FLEA.

Population: 600 Billion


Year: 3209 A.D.

Swine Flu wiped out the human race in the year 2075.  After disrupting the life cycle of Earth, the only species that was self-sufficient enough to survive were the genus musmusculus (MICE).  After years of research, we come to the year 3209 where they have developed synthetic human bodies that they use as vessels to carry out every day processes more effectively and efficiently.

They do so while wearing visors.

They are: Mice In Visors ™.

They work together in cubicles within the pseudo-human skull.  Each body contains about 10 mice working together to control the central nervous system.

The mice use these bodies to do everyday life things that they had observed back when humans roamed the earth.  But despite their strides to be as human as possible, they still only care about one thing: obtaining food.

And so, in order to get food, they use items that they believed were desirable and beneficial to humans when they existed.  Things such as: uncharged iPhones, tampons, cigarette butts, etc.  These are all items that they saw humans interact with frequently, and therefore are thought to be important for trade.

The mice also can't seem to shake their animalistic desires like cheese and being warm, comfortable, and safe.  So these things are in abundance in their world: furniture resembles cheese, they wear a lot of sweaters and their houses are covered in fur.

The mice have a tacit agreement as to who is in charge.  So there is no government, they all just know what their place is in life, and stick it through.  This makes for a very peaceful world, and within the body they all work together to create a single mechanism.  

Artist Statement:

In the initial stages of conceptualization, the only thing we knew about this world was that mice were sort of like overlords. When we started considering what was and was not realistic, mouse overlords couldn’t possibly run Earth because of their general smallness and lack of know-how. But mice inside human bodies would be unstoppable. I literally cannot think of a single thing more powerful and sensual than a mouse in a human body. So we thought about how cunning mice would overcome their fragility to ultimately survive. The solution was relatively simple: of course mice would figure out robotics and put together realistic human host bodies so that they could thrive in the harsh conditions of a post-apocalyptic, humanless world. With their newfound access to things like Opposable Thumbs™ and legs long enough to reach the pedals in Cadillac Escalades, etc., mice could finally do all the things that they envied about human life, including (but not limited to): skateboarding, hot-tubbing, drinking beer, cat-calling at babes (RIP), flippin’ burgers at the local Five Guys, smoking weed, etc. Mice could do it all AND MORE!  

For outside media, we took the sort of obvious route and referred to the Pixar movie, Ratatouille. In the film, one rat figures out a way to control a human’s body by sitting on top of his head and pulling his hair (science?). Instead of this charming, albeit unrealistic approach to rodent/human control interactions, we decided to capitalize on a more pragmatic version of the same principle. Thus, mice would inhabit cold, humanoid shells that they themselves had crafted in their rodent laboratories, and they would have to work together inside the

After researching mice and their typical way of living, we began to see just how crazy a world controlled by mice might be. By finding their unusual habits, we realized just how different the society would be. For example, Mice prefer dark, and they do have their own type of “classes” among them. With just these two details, you would have a world in the dark and a new Anarchy system. Even the littlest changes could cause the most dramatic difference in a world.

From the reading Julian Bleeker said, “Design fiction is a way of exploring different approaches to making things, probing the material conclusions of your imagination, removing the usual constraints when designing for massive market commercialization.” This quote indeed expressed the different ways to approach in making a new world. We tried to figure out what one small detail would do to the rest of the world. For one thing, furniture would look like pieces of cheese. Cheese became the new barter system, which in millions of ways changes the world. We then had to approach a world that functioned without money, but instead cheese. How would this world actually function?

It was an interesting experience in trying to create a world that would actually function. In the end it brought many new ideas and pieces to the creative table.

Textual Poaching

Link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw8fCvlwgBI

The aspect of my identity that I chose to focus on for this week's assignment is my Indian heritage.  This is a part of me that I have always been at war with, because I was raised in the United States with little to no Indian influence.  While I am only half, I still consider myself to be (at least partially) a part of that culture.  And for a good part of my life, I didn't really realize what that meant.  I didn't understand that my dad was different than my mom, or that I was different from Blue Eyed Blonde Haired Suzie.  I was just like everyone else.  And then one day I wasn't.

I took inspiration for this through the film Slumdog Millionaire, because I loved the representation of the rural peoples in that film, and was hoping to find a similar atmosphere.  So with this in mind, I gathered a lot of different footage of Indian women off youtube, because I have always been fascinated by the culture surrounding women in India.  My dad has told me stories of his mother and how she was sold to marriage by her brother because she wanted to be a Bollywood movie star.  She is one of many repressed and silenced women of India, and I absolutely love the way that despite their circumstances they are so strong and proud and beautiful.  And then I found a video of a leopard attacking a bunch of Indian villagers that I thought really represented the way that I sort of fought with my own identity for a while.  The leopard lashes out because it is scared, because it is threatened.  And that last shot of it cowering behind a wall, and all you can see are they eyes, is very beautiful to me and means a lot.  So then, with these video clips, I recorded my father rambling and paired it with the video clips, which I think juxtaposes and correlates with the videos.  This in itself is a representation of my two different cultures in me.

I think the ultimate product turned out okay.  The overall message I wanted to get across with the video is that I love both sides of me, even though it is inconvenient.  The beauty is shown in the beginning, and the hardship is shown at the end.  And even though these two sides of me have given me grief, I love them both.  And I am happy for both.  And there are some days when I wish I was either just one or neither, I do love what I am made of.  The reading on the Velveteen rabbit really put things in perspective, especially when it talks about what makes something Real.  And I think that in my case, being real is accepting all the warring attributes in ones life.  Being real means being discriminated, it means being cheated and loved and lied to and cherished.  It means knowing who you are and not wanting to change.

Music Mosaic

Song: Sea, Swallow Me by Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd

The song I have selected for my music mosaic project is a song from the 80's from a band called Cocteau Twins.  The song starts off with a broken chord from a piano synth and then the drums and other synths come in.  It has a ethereal quality to it; the feel and atmosphere is a kind of dream-like and seems to capture the way the water moves.  Listening to the song almost makes you feel as if you are floating in the middle of the ocean, or watching your body float away.  The reverb carries you away from whatever you are feeling or thinking, and all there is is the echo of the synth and Elizabeth Fraser's non-sensical vocals.  It is a very pretty song, yet it almost has a dark feeling to it.  If you are watching yourself float away in the middle of the ocean, there is a melancholy and depressive connotation.  The song is beautiful, but beauty is not happy.

I took inspiration from photographer Kyle Thompson, who often uses water in his photographs.  He has many photos that depict the act of drowning or being captured by water.  His photography is very pensive and dark, and I wanted to capture that essence in my photos to show the same kind of angst and drama that he captures.  

I decided that the best way to capture the dark beauty of the song would be to take clay and paint and create the ocean on something beautiful.  The clay and paint taint the fair skin of the subject, and shows the contrast the way the song does.  It is deceivingly pretty, but there is that extra something that sticks out and is memorable, that extra darkness.  The colors are blues and blacks to represent the deep hues of the ocean.  The texture of the clay is rough and broken and cracked, almost like tree bark, to show the harshness of the ocean.  It is growing over her, taking over her life slowly, just as water would your lungs.  The red lines then come in, representing blood, showing the harm that is slowly creeping into focus.  Together, the cracks and the colors and the texture come together to show a physical representation as to how the water is taking her under.