Medium Specificity

                I knew I wanted to build a diorama for this project but I honestly didn’t know if the popularly educational medium would be passable as art. Following Scott McCloud’s lead I first sought to define the medium before approaching it any further. To my surprise, the word diorama can be used to describe a whole host of displays from the classic miniature environments housed in shoeboxes to collections of household items arranged in neat exhibitions. The first dioramas weren’t even three dimensional, they were scenes painted on transparent film that could be manipulated by moving the source of light by which the display was viewed. The dictionary’s definition lacked specifics and it became a messy business trying to create a definition that truly encompassed everything that a diorama is, and everything it definitely isn’t. After some considerable effort I arrived at a definition I believed was sufficient. A diorama is a static display of elements arranged in a coherent collection.

                Now I understood my medium it was time to produce art. I wanted to challenge the definition of diorama by somehow doing everything a diorama is supposed to be but adding or removing something that could possibly disrupt the identity of the medium. I chose to manipulate the coherence of the piece. Every diorama I researched, in any shape or form, was always a display of some collective concept or idea. Whether it was battle scenes, animal habitats, or ancient relics every diorama is made of individual elements connected to one another by an overarching idea. I decided I would stage a scene that was easily recognizable, a classic diorama if you will. In the case of my piece, I chose to replicate a safari scene with two lions stalking a zebra. All elements would be particularly arranged to create a single and cohesive identity for the piece, then, I would ruin it.

                First I made everything white. From the grass in the display to the animals themselves, everything would be stripped of color. Usual painted backgrounds would be rendered blank and the false depth of field would be eliminated. It may seem an odd comparison but I drew my initial impression of the stark white display from the Mocking Jay Part 2 posters that showed their characters arranged in full color before a white throne and blank background. But just painting everything white doesn’t challenge the cohesiveness of the piece; it is after all, still a safari scene with two lions and a zebra. I then began to label each element of the piece with completely unrelated words and symbols. I was creating something else with my labels; I was forming new identities for every element in the display and therefor challenging the idea that connects them. I didn’t choose words like “capitalism” or “war”, because some words are charged with more meaning than is prescribed in their definition. I wanted to bombard the recognizable scene with unrelated nonsense that leaves the viewer still searching for the cohesive concept that unites them.  

Historical Story

Group Members: Nathan Tanner & Graham Walker

Link to script:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlAYWykvgltZDdObXpXMGtkUFk/view?usp=sharing

Our screenplay explores the events and discussions surrounding the inception of the real-life vigilante group; the Baldknobbers. Born out of the lawlessness of post Civil War Missouri, the Baldknobbers were primarily Northern men focused on securing justice against ex-Confederates who murdered, robbed, and abused the prospering Union settlers. Information regarding these vigilantes and their exploits was scarce. We drew heavily from Gerry Darnell’s, Bald Knobbers: The Ozark Vigilantes and Kathy Weiser’s historical commentary Legends of America. Piecing together the information concerning the group’s key players and infamous methods we decided to paint a narrative that introduced the Baldknobbers as well as comically explored their true to life transformation from vigilante band to oppressive mob.

Generous liberties were taken to mold our story into a succinct and engaging exposition that scrutinizes the corruptive character of power but still somewhat genuinely describes legitimate facts. Nat Kinney, was in fact the founder and leader of the Baldknobbers. His name, and many others that we used for the script were borrowed from history. The real Baldknobbers actually met on the tree-bare, Missouri hilltops to negotiate and plan their acts of justice. To facilitate the concept of blind ambition and the blatant disregard for consequence that eventually lead to the Baldknobbers dissolution, we decided to write Nat as the embodiment of misguided enthusiasm and the majority of the assembly as the bloodthirsty simpletons. Choosing to frame their exchanges in a more humorous light, we decided upon writing one character, James, to be the straight-man. He is the only level-headed, educated brain in the bunch. Much like NBC's The Office, our screenplay portrays the ridiculous majority interacting with their energetic leader whilst a few sober characters look on in disbelief.

Our portrayal of the first Baldknobber meeting is a historical caricature similar to one of our readings from last week entitled, The Veil. This text uses the superimposed titles to tell the simple facts and uses pictures and comic dialogue as a critique and caricature of the events portrayed. We used a similar technique, with superimposed title and end cards to give the simple facts about this historical group. During the portrayed meeting, we have a representation of what it might have been like to witness such an interesting gathering. Of course, we threw in a comical twist and we took a few creative liberties, but that is what makes it art! The author of The Veil did the same thing and it makes the message and story more clear and persuasive. It was a joy to take these pieces of history and give them new life in this script! We hope you enjoy it.

Weiser, Kathy. "Missouri Legends The Fierce Missouri Bald Knobbers."Legends of America. N.p., Sept. 2009. Web. Feb. 2016. <http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mo-baldknobber.html>.

Darnell, Gerry. "Bald Knobbers: The Ozark Vigilantes." Bittersweet. Springfield-Greene County Library, n.d. Web. Feb. 2016. <http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/su79e.htm>.

Process Piece

Group Members: Jase Van Meeteren, Catherine Santos, & Graham Walker

For our project, we decided to use the form of an autobiographical documentary to express a complex process. The process of our project was that of social anxiety. It was inspired by thoughts or actions that we, or more specifically, Jase, has experienced in his life. We wanted to capture a real life situation and translate it into an audio form. Because of the nature of this process, it being almost entirely in the thoughts of another person, we had to recreate the situation with a simulated performance. There aren’t many ways to document human thought other than voice over; so we staged the vocalized thoughts of the subject by recording them in a controlled setting. In this manner, performance further developed our project into something more than a simple autobiography.  We felt that the he personal content of the process and the complexity of the idea could be conveyed most simply through a staged yet genuine reenactment of actual anxious thoughts.

                A major focus of our project was the genuine intimation of anxious feelings. The film Inception proved to be a great source of inspiration concerning the reflection of character anxiety in sound. In a critical scene in the film, Cobb tries to persuade Robert Fisher to trust him.  While the two are talking at the hotel bar, the background noise is faint and slowly gets louder throughout the scene.  During the conversation, when the people talking in the background are the loudest, a champagne glass shatters and distracts Cobb with memories of his past.  This is the moment when the conversations in the background are completely silenced, causing a heightened sense of anxiety.  It is this stark contrast that creates an emotional reaction in the audience.  In our audio process, we recreated this technique with a crescendo of sound by increasing the layers of voice audio, amplifying the amount of anxiety felt.  When the noise silences and the tension is released the listener is jolted by the by the abrupt change. As our anxious subject finds renewed peace in his isolation, the audience is treated to the comfortable quiet of his liberated mind.

                Since our process had to be fabricated to properly relate the idea of the piece, we had to construct our own version of the beginning, middle, and end to social anxiety. In the case of our process, we chose to document a choice of isolation and detachment. The process begins with the subject’s self-conscious thoughts and develops as he is admitted into a social gathering that further stresses his anxious mind. As he spends more time in the awkward situation; the craze of his worried mind quickly escalates until the subject is overwhelmed. Opting to leave the gathering than suffer more anxiety, the subject completes his trial by alienating himself from others. Like Borup’s My Mom the Taxidermist, not every attempt ends in success. Sometimes the beauty of the piece lies in the process rather than the product. 

Round Robin: Benjamin Thevenin, Jess Baird, Jase Van Meeteren, & Graham Walker







The various narratives created in our project do well at preserving the initial topics

addressed but vary widely in the thematic approach applied to the story. These themes or

emotional perspectives morph from playful, to sorrowful, to serious, and right back to playful

again. Each writer and illustrator took his own reading of the tale and redirected the narrative

according to his personality, preference, and initial impressions. No single writer approached

every work the same way. There wasn’t one of us who always made a story funny or always

made it moody and dark, each and everyone us took a fresh approach to each piece and added or

emphasized the emotional ideas we found most compelling or appropriate.

Writer Paul D. Miller commented upon these characteristics of collaborations by stating

that such practices make “the creative act a symbolic exchange between players.” A game of will

and control only to be exercised in specific parameters according to the provided material. The

Exquisite Corpse, or practice of finishing one another’s work to create a greater whole, is the

artistic example of human interaction. The piecemeal amalgam of ideas and inspirations show

both artist and viewer the lens by which they perceive and create. The fruit of our project is not

always the actual pieces, but the personal realization every artist comes to concerning their own

habits of synthesis and adaptation.

It was interesting to see that even though it was created by several minds. Some of the

stories actually flowed into a complete narrative. Some of the other round robins we saw turned

into something completely different than what they started with, so what is the difference? We

think topic is very heavily related, the more interesting the topic the more interesting it was to

contribute to the initial narrative. What was most surprising to us, was how the overall visual

style changed throughout. We think this comes back to the fact that when a topic for a narrative

becomes broad, it is more open to interpretation, and is altered by the different minds that

contribute.

.

Ryan Hinkson is an online graphic designer. He loves to do a simplistic illustrator style

for online graphics. The lack of faces or other details is typical of Hinkson’s work. This distinct

style created an internet phenomenon and reminded us of the round robin. Others would use his

style to create something with a different theme or expression, similar to how the round robin

assignment worked. This created a new development for both the narrative and the drawings in

the assignment. The story and drawing would evolve as it progressed.

Music Mosaic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKzWLUQizz8

Genesis begins with the dawn, heavy reverberating blasts herald the coming of a cosmic event; the birth of a new world. In my mind’s eye I could see the magma riddled planet emerge from the darkness of space. Similar thematic connections were popularized by Kubrick’s use of Also Sprach Zarathusstra in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like Kubrick’s film I wanted to establish a sense of reality to my narrative and thus employed the use of photography and fabricated miniatures to root my story in the realm of quasi-feasibility. With both the medium and stage for my narrative set I waited for my next musical cue.  

                The trumpeting planetary introduction of Genesis is short lived. Humming arcs and static sounds intermittently sweep through the drum beats and horn blasts, unsettling the quiet between notes. As the intro draws its last deep sound the audio dives into a screaming base. Now we are plummeting toward the red scarred planet. The music writhes and sparks with wriggling synthetic noise. I tried to evoke this idea by simulating, the best I could, the volcanic turmoil of the charred world. Bright reds and searing whites fill the spaces where only darkness used to be.

                The music retains this violent flavor as the song progresses almost as if the whole score is on its way to beat the crap out of someone. Shrill jabs quicken in rhythm and skewed electrical cuts rise and drop to create a further sense of discord. Something new is making the world violent; some other force is wielding the flame that forged the planet. Man has emerged; skipping the millennia of oceans and undisturbed woodlands, our tale follows violence and fire. Though the world has now cooled to the deep blacks and browns of night, the Cro-Magnon man wields a troch in his hunt for prey. Innovation has made man the new force of chaos, and as the music rises with the tine like hum of steel, we see him swallowed in his creations of wire and gears.

                Tension is starting to build as the music pushes toward its climax. We experience the same unsettling feeling that Annie Dillard described in her experience in the Virginia river bottoms when the dusk came and she began to realize some of the spectral horrors of night. Genesis’ dawn is over and dusk has come. The hissing whir of saw can almost be heard as the song spins into hysteria. Electric strikes transform the theme from its original bass to an alternating twist of shrill overtones and haunting gasps. War has come to man.

                The flames of early man have died and smoke fills the skies behind armed soldiers. The muddied landscape speaks of death and a ravaged world. Genesis closes as the music regresses to pounding piano keys and horn blasts, a funeral procession for a violent era. Colorless gravestones mark the burial of a chaotic life and as Genesis rolls into the next song in its album Let there be light, a sign of new life springs up between fallen snow and yellowed decay. 

Thinking & Writing

Alien Gods:

Does Dead Space Demonize Scientology?

                If you want to approach this question as strictly as possible, the answer is “No”. Nowhere in the Dead Space franchise is the Church of Scientology mentioned let alone accused of unleashing an alien menace that corrupts and reanimates necrotic flesh. However, the fictional Church of Unitology plays a huge antagonistic role in the Dead Space narrative, and fans and critics alike have acknowledged some stunning similarities between the suffix sharing organizations.

                Aside from the glaringly obvious “-ology”; roots of an extraterrestrial human origin, ascending levels of Church rank, and great sums of money required from members are widely recognized characteristics shared by the actual Church of Scientology and the quite fictional Church of Unitology (Kuchera). Keeping in mind that the aforementioned characteristics may be rumors or exaggerations of actual church practices, it remains a publically held perception that such similarities are indicative of Scientological beliefs. So is Dead Space demonizing the Church of Scientology through parody? MTV journalist Russ Frushtick had the same question.

                In an interview with the creative director of Dead Space 2 Wright Bagwell, Frushtick inquired about the assumed connections between Scientology and Dead Space’s Untiology. “For us, Unitology’s purpose in the story represents people’s illogical thinking about things they don’t understand. It was never really intended to be a jab at any particular religion.” There you have it, no harm done, but this doesn’t explain the uncanny resemblances between Scientology and Unitology. Frushtick pressed the question once more, this time specifically asking if these “similarities” were purposeful. Bagwell responded by saying no similarities were intended and that much of the inspiration behind Unitology derived from a book written in 1995 by Carl Sagan called The Demon-Haunted World (Frushtick). For the layman, Sagan’s book focuses on explaining critical and skeptical thinking to the average man and woman, very much along the lines of Bagwell’s first statement concerning “people’s illogical thinking about things they don’t understand”(Demon).

                So Unitology doesn’t draw its inspiration from Scientology directly, but the rather popular notion that some religious peoples often substitute hard answers for fluffy ambiguities? That’s fair, but Bagwell’s dodge doesn’t address the heart of the question, these presumed similarities are too close to dispel by the merit of generalities. Anyone having played these games with even peripheral knowledge of Scientology could see the resemblance.   It appears Dead Space uses a church modeled after Scientology to relate an idea popular amongst most religions, but calling Unitology an imitation of Scientology alone is far from the truth. Three or four characteristics connecting Scientology and Unitology don’t exactly make a watertight case, in fact, a further study of Dead Space’s new religion reveal inspiration drawn from several different faiths.  

                Take for example The Marker. The Marker is alien artifact resembling a tightly bound helix of stone culminating to pincer like points at one end. This Marker, first found on earth, is evidence of extraterrestrial contact in Earth’s history. Oh yeah, and it also drives people insane and forces evolutionary processes like the necromorph epidemic (Black). In the Dead Space universe, Unitologists worship and revere this artifact as a conduit of the creative powers that bring about rebirth and eternal life (Unitology). Take as an example the basic concept of worshiping religiously significant artifacts, does your mind jump to Scientology before — let’s say —Catholicism? How about the Unitological practice of adorning rooms and shrines with symbols resembling the helix shape of The Marker, a tradition very similar to how many Christians treat the Cross. Unitology may dress a little like Scientology but it really draws inspiration from many traditions and faiths.

                It is all well and good that Unitology is more of an amalgam of religious concepts than a direct parody of any one faith in particular, but can any individual really claim the right to say who can be offended and who can’t? After all, it’s ultimately up to Scientologists to decide if they want to be upset. But here’s the kicker, no one got angry. There’s maybe an article or two online addressing this topic, but no statements from the Church of Scientology, no picketing, and no protests (Kuchera). Either Scientologists are unaware of their assumed relation to Unitology or perhaps the Church isn’t acknowledging the “similarities” because there aren’t any. Maybe Scientologists are keenly aware of the uncanny resemblance but refuse to make a fuss over something they view as trivial, in that case, wouldn’t their Church further distance themselves from Unitology by acting less like the religious order that unleashes alien viruses on people?

                L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology and chief author of most of the religion’s canonical texts, once wrote about what he called the First Dynamic Principle of Existence. This first principle of SELF and the seven principles that followed would become the fundamental structure of Scientology. The principle of SELF or perhaps better understood as the principle of survival, outlines the basic human instinct to preserve one’s own life, identity, and sanity (Hubbard). In a weird sort of respect, Dead Space; a text book model of the survival-horror genre pays homage to this principle by creating a game with the sole intent of delivering the protagonist from mortal danger and spectral hallucinations. It’s an odd parallel that unites Dead Space and Scientology in a way that seems far less condemning and perhaps even commending.

                Dead Space isn’t demonizing Scientology or Christianity or any other faith for that matter. The designers simply organized Unitology from existing religious concepts and throughout the course of the game’s narrative the church demonizes itself. Unitology becomes a separate entity from any faith including those from which it drew principle inspiration. It remains to be seen whether or not clerics and pastors will be calling for the discontinuation of the Dead Space franchise, but if you ask this writer, there are more important things to do when an alien outbreak threatens the very survival of mankind.      

Works Cited

"Black Marker." Dead Space Wiki. Wikia, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.                <http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Marker>.

Frushtick, Russ. "Dead Space 2′ Creative Director On The Unitology Vs. Scientology Debate." MTV NEWS.              MTV, n.d. Web. <http://www.mtv.com/news/2462602/dead-space-2-creative-director-on-the-   unitology-vs-scientology-debate/>.

Hubbard, L. Ron. "Eight Dynamics of Life, Dianetics, Improving Life Harmony: Official Church of   Scientology Video." Eight Dynamics of Life, Dianetics, Improving Life Harmony: Official Church of Scientology Video. Scientology, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. <http://www.scientology.org/what-is-      scientology/basic-principles-of-scientology/eight-dynamics.html>.

Kuchera, Ben. "L. Ron Altman: Why Dead Space 2 Is a Direct Attack on Scientology." L. Ron Altman: Why                Dead Space 2 Is a Direct Attack on Scientology. Arstechnica, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. <http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/02/l-ron-altman-why-dead-space-2-is-a-direct-attack-on-     scientology/>.

"The Demon-Haunted World." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.                 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World>.

"Unitology." Dead Space Wiki. Wikia, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.       <http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Unitology>.