Georgie Porgie puddin and pie kissed the girls and made them cry; when the boys came out the play Georgie Porgie ran away

This little piggy went to market...

i do lots of group work. lots and lots and lots of it. my gmail has about 6 or 7 different groups just for my business classes for the past 2 semesters. i've spent more nights in tyler trying to make a collective and cohesive paper and/or presentation with 3 or 4 other people than most w&m students do buying their outfits at the bookstore.

my point is that i've learned some tricks along the way. the best number for a group to get things done efficiently is 3. any more and there tends to be a lot of social loafers or just so many people that it's really, really difficult to coordinate and meet. and for some inexplicable reason my group for this class consists of 10 people. it's crazy! i'm sure it will benefit us in the end to have so many people (our performance will undoubtedly kick ass) but the scheduling thing is kind of troublesome. I don't think there is any one specific time outside of class that every single person can meet. on top of that, it seems like at least 2-3 people from our group are missing each class (and it's never the same people missing, which would make it somewhat easier to progress, but rather a rotation of missing people, so we seem to always be on different pages). anyway, i hope it works out, but it's just a little difficult when people go a missing.

and this little piggy

went wee wee wee

all the way home.

25 mph 40/25

i have a court date for tomorrow at 9 am and it's the last thing i want to do right now. i got caught speeding 40 mph in a 25 mph stretch (it's literally a stretch, because i got pulled right before the 35 mph sign). it's that road right next to the rec center that i travel every single day to and from my apartment, so it's just kind of frustrating having to go through this whole court process. the officer wrote "speeding 25 mph 40/25" on the summons... does that even make sense? i hope he meant speeding in a 25 mph zone by going 40 out of 25, rather than miscalculating the actual number of miles i went over. i took some pictures of the road today, and hopefully those plus some careful wording will get me off the hook!


I DON'T WANT TO GO!

art/craft ideas

i'm not sure exactly how feasible, interesting, original, or creepy these ideas are, but...

- using spam messages as inspiration to create a form of art to make a statement about technology / communication / business marketing ...

- collecting hair from each of your own haircuts and sorting by date, then making a timeline of haircolor/changes to make a statement about waste / time

- filming time lapses of people creating art to make a statement about what is the true work of art (art created within film vs actual film itself)

- taking a memorable quote, line of dialogue, lyrics, statement, etc and using a series of pictures / shots to depict each word in succession ...

- somehow documenting humans' interaction with current technology from an outsider's perspective (possibly a much older generation that is unfamiliar with current technology) to try to capture how complex and "advanced" young people's lives have become ... also possibly trying to show how we as young people will eventually be surpassed by our youth in terms of technology and a much different culture. btw, when do we as people become "outdated"? is it when we begin to doubt new inventions and hold onto our soon-to-be-technologically-defunct way of life?

- is there a means to display / discuss visually our current way of life? how have we as people changed with the invention of the internet, the online community, the online rating system, the online purchasing system, etc, etc, etc? I can barely remember life without the internet, without computers. There was a significant portion of my life in which I didn't know what email was. The same goes for all of you. It's much different for those growing up now. How will they as people eventually surpass us technologically? Do they have some sort of edge with living with computers, the internet, etc for their entire lives? Which was of life is necessarily "better" and will we as people continue this path towards greater reliance on technology for our day-to-day lives, our jobs, our education ? I remember the days in elementary school when we had to use floppy drives to save our documents. I remember playing Oregon Trail and that Alice in Wonderland game during our computer class and being completely amazed at how good the graphics were. I don't ever want to get disillusioned with the latest technology, but I'm terrified that there will be a point in my life when I'll simply give up on what's new and trendy and stick with my older "outdated" way of life. And eventually, hopefully long down the road of my life, all of the young kids will live life in strange new ways that I cannot even comprehend right now, and we old folks might still have an Ipod touch instead of the next latest technological wonder, and we'll slowly become more and more technologically defunct. My parents don't really understand/trust wireless internet. My grandparents still had a rotary phone up until a few years ago. These inventions, they were once as innovative and top of the line as the Ipod touch, but now they're archaic relics from an outdated and almost incomprehensible way of life (ie "how could people even EXIST without... i don't know... any major invention?") This road to being outdated in a world of younger, more technologically savvy generations is perhaps my biggest fear. Bottom line -- Never stop learning.

Well I don't know how I got here, but the stream of consciousness is ending. Thinking about these things for too long makes me feel insane, and I need to go edit my movie.

(visual) art i like:

Arno Rafael Minkkinen's Self-portrait, Helsinki, Finland, 1975 -->

I saw this photograph for the first time when I was a senior in high school. It's part of The Photo Book, and for some reason amidst the hundreds of famous works, this one struck me. I love Minkkinen's ability to photograph his body in such a way that contorts it into looking impossible. Notice the positioning of his arms so that the distance between them and the wall are indistinguishable. Also the notion that this is ultimately a self-portrait makes me wonder about Minkkinen's perception of himself. This photo inspired me years ago to try to recreate it, but my version doesn't look nearly as cool.


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The Sultan's Elephant
by Royal de Luxe

This video is astounding. It blew me away when I first watched it, and each time I see it again I am thoroughly impressed with not only the craftsmanship behind creating such a large and beautiful puppet but also the communal aspect of the puppeteers working together to perform this exhibit for a larger audience. The amount of effort put into taking the Little Girl Giant from conception to performance must be unbelievable. The street theater group Royal de Luxe is known for creating such enormous puppets, and their mastery of the craft is apparent. This movie in all of its creative storytelling and psychedelic genius made me want to pack my bags and fly to France to see this show in person. I especially love it when the girl licks the ice cream with her extendable tongue. Is that so weird?

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Unnamed Brilliance by Man in Glasses
http://www.clublaugh.com/es-items/712.swf

This flash object gave me a head trip. It's a discovery out of the amazing Firefox add on Stumble Upon, which i highly recommend to anyone that likes to surf the web searching for bizarre gems. Selma and I did a polaroid photo project involving a process of making a piece of art which was comprised of the polaroid photos that we were taking of it. Did I explain that correctly? If you don't understand we'll show you. Anyway, this web object reminded me of that, but took it to that crazy look-in-a-mirror-with-a-mirror-behind-you-so-that-it-looks-like-you-go-on-forever type of level. I think I stared at it for a good 5-10 minutes just wondering how in the hell this man did it. I still am not quite sure. I love that type of art where it's difficult to understand the entire process behind it. It makes it seem almost impossible to reproduce, and I feel that with art that's a good thing.

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Since I've spent too long on this post already (or so I feel at least), I'm going to try to wrap it up and figure out what's the general trend here...
I must think of art as a visual form of expression. Deep down I know that music, literature, concepts, and other non-visual forms are all art in themselves, but if a psychiatrist for example were to ask me what the first thing to come to mind when the word "art" was mentioned, I would respond that I imagine a painting or photograph. Is this so solely because I am a visual learner? Is that what it means? Do other people think of art differently? What constitutes good vs bad art?

I think in terms of processes, conceptualization, invention, effort, intention...
I've had the hardest time watching movies recently. I look at one scene, one shot even, and analyze it to shreds. I think "where did that photograph in the background come from?", "who played that extra passing by in the background and are they in the credits?", "how many people are crowded outside of the camera's line of sight?" "how many hours, days, takes did this scene last?", "how much did someone pay the actor on screen?", "who logged and captured all of this footage and was it the same person who made the rough cut?" , and some much else that is almost overwhelming to think about and comprehend the amount of effort, attention, detail that goes into making this one shot out of one scene out of one movie out of one medium. Speaking of which, watch the movie MAGNOLIA. It's pretty brilliant, and the script will blow your mind. It's one of those movies I can analyze to shreds but it all leads to a deep fascination and respect for the director (and the script writer, cinematographer, editor, etc, etc, etc) who were behind the making of this film. I want to be on this level of filmmaking.

thanks sravya!

inhibitions

We need to break down our shells. I think at this point in the semester many people in the class are content with keeping in their small circles (their "small groupings within the larger community" as Francis would put it). I am no exception. It's hard to go up to someone, act completely out of character (or perhaps outside of how society suggests we behave around relative strangers), and interact in such an unusual way without even properly introducing oneself. It's difficult to act foolishly (that is, like a fool, and not meant in any way to take away from the seriousness of the exercise), especially for me, having been conditioned to think of introductions as a formal, firm hand shake types of affairs. I NEED TO CHANGE THIS PRECONCEPTION!!!! I am learning, however, that there are many different ways to meet and interact with others in class, whether from huddling in a group and chanting, or by pretending to fight and/or mate as monkeys and warriors, or by being birthed by Francis. This class is wonderful.

It's funny how pretending to be a baby makes me feel so good. Usually I reserve such behavior only for my partner (as we both often consider it adorable), but I don't think that I have ever once behaved as such in the classroom setting. Thanks Francis!

I went to the meeting today with Sravya at 6. Selma, Sam, Christine, and I were the only ones to show up. Where was everyone? I filmed Sravya doing all of the movements we've learned so far, and currently I'm waiting for the finished video sequence to save. Once it's ready I'll figure out how to post it so everyone can hopefully take a look. It's not exactly a  cinematic masterpiece by any means, but it works. maybe in the future I can add transitions with the actual names of the moves, because at the moment I know I'd misspell all of them. Anyway, look for it soon!