WEBSPINNA BATTLE: EARTH AND SPACE

     

     How does one become the Earth? How do I embody the cultures, climates, and attitudes of a world filled with so much diversity and history? I found this task almost impossible as I attempted to discover and create my alter ego and webspinna persona of Earth. Rather than trying to embody all that the Earth entails, I chose to focus on the sounds and feelings of the natural world. The soft hum and loud crash of an Amazon rainforest taken over by a storm, the rushing water of a crackling stream, or the pounding of instruments fashioned by God’s elements. Although the natural elements comprise a large majority of what the Earth means to me, I chose to mix these sounds with the culture of the Earth’s people. I opened my performance with the introduction track of the popular show Planet Earth. The triumphant rise and climax of instruments embodies the majesty that is our planet and I felt like it was the perfect way to introduce my alter ego. Followed by the steady rhythm of the rainforest and the gentle pace of a rushing stream, these natural sounds led us into one of the world’s most iconic figures and songs: Michael Jackson’s Earth Song. Mixing the natural world with the digital world represented the two unifying worlds’ among us. I finished my battle with Toto’s Africa, a song that captures the cohesion of two juxtaposing world’s among Earth.

     While creating my alter ego, I found it strange to steal/plagiarize sounds and songs from the Internet and make them my own. Up until I read Jonathan Lethem’s article The Ecstasy of Influence, I believed that taking another person’s work and making it your own was wrong. However, Lethem argues that every form of art or artistic creation derives from a long line of triumphs by other people. It is natural for us to be inspired by the works of others and to create our own interpretations of what we see. That is how we continue to build the artistic world.

     After Hannah and I came up with our fighting alter ego’s of Earth and Space, we used our individual persona’s to create a battle that defined our locations but also worked cohesively as a unit. We used choreography to literally battle each other with fake punches and kicks to represent the struggle between Earth and Space, but ultimately ended our battle side by side to demonstrate Earth’s and Space’s reliance on each other. It was so entertaining to dress like our personas—Hannah in an all spandex “space suit”, and me in a fur vest and majestic eagle t-shirt—and to create a dichotomy between the two places that still worked together. The entire experience of creating this battle and seeing what creative personas the rest of the class came up with was in some ways entirely awkward (in the best way), but also important for us all to burst from our comfort zones and to show our creativity in a new way.

BATTLE TRACK LIST

SPACE

AMBIENT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8OJzAs7CB8

STAR TREK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4lCZoEo5o

GRAVITY + ADVENTURE CLUB: https://youtu.be/9g4Pi2GHLkU?t=1m2s

ZOOM ZOOM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MML1jNr_j8c

CAN’T BE TAMED 2:29: https://youtu.be/sjSG6z_13-Q?t=3m23s

EARTH

PLANET EARTH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlAtWG_mDIk

RAINFOREST SOUNDS: https://soundcloud.com/listeningearth

DRUMS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747hJQNJpeg

RUSHING WATER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgsdqGP1rc

MICHAEL JACKSON, EARTH SONG: https://youtu.be/XAi3VTSdTxU?t=1m26s

TOTO, AFRICA: https://youtu.be/FTQbiNvZqaY?t=3m28s

TEXTUAL POACHING: "SHAKESBRO"

     I like men. It’s as simple as that. My heterosexuality is something that defines me and something that I identify with. I still remember each boy I have “liked” from kindergarten to the 12^th grade, and could definitely write you out a list. I love love and that has been a significant part of my identity since I was a little girl. As I have gotten older and have become more aware of what love truly is, I have started to see qualities in others that I can’t live with and can’t live without. The physical appearances of men and women have changed throughout each generation, and along with this has come new lingo, new hairstyles and fashions, and new ideals of what is appealing at the time. My “ideal man” has changed (thankfully) since kindergarten, and continues to change along with my own personal growth. However, our pop culture has played a significant role in shaping the kind of person that we are attracted to. We see pictures and videos of celebrities that ignite an attraction and often give us unrealistic expectations when it comes to physical appearance. Something that I have come to identify with as I have gotten older is the fact that physical appearance changes and can be altered with. I have come to place less of a significance on physical appearance and more of an importance on personality traits, inner potential, and the unique, fundamental characteristics that make up an individual. 

     Anyone who knows me knows that I love William Shakespeare. It is definitely not something that I try and hide because Shakespeare has become a part of my identity the more I have read and understood his life and his works. I chose to take a very famous self-portrait of William (we are on a first name basis at this point) and remix his appearance to identify with a typical man of our current society, man-bun and all. The point of this weirdly intriguing remixed self-portrait of Shakespeare is to prove that adding a man-bun and some awful lingo (lingo I wish our generation could be punished for) to his appearance and person doesn’t change the fact that he is still William Shakespeare. If Shakespeare were alive and thriving during our time, I would not be surprised at all if he had a man-bun… I mean, look at his earring! The man had style. Despite all of these enhancements to his appearance, underneath it all he is still the most brilliant and influential writer/poet of all time. Our world has become so obsessed with physical appearance that we have sacrificed character for physical attractiveness. Being attracted to the man I choose to love is obviously important, but it is in no way more important than knowing that he is capable of loving me in return.

     In Jenkins’ “How Texts Become Real,” he quotes from the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit and reminds us that the physical appearance of someone can be altered, but our love for something deeper within them is what truly binds us together, “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand” (Jenkins 51).

MEDIUM SPECIFICITY: LONDON SONNET

A place that freely holds my heart in stone

And brick, that stops the beating of my pain

Each time I hear a clock with royal tone,

Or feel the comfort of a drop of rain.

A place where no one knows your name or face

But makes you feel like someone with a soul,

And tantalizes you with its embrace

Of scents that fill the cracks and make you whole.

A place where when you leave keeps hold of time,

Until the poppy runs its course and wakes

The sleeping core with memories of rhyme,

And leads you back with need to ease the aches. 

      This place is not a place one falls back on,

      This home, this heart, this being is London.

     Being an English major, literature is something that I am really interested in and something that I am extremely passionate about. I love the history of literature and the people who changed the world with their writings. While some people may become frustrated with extrapolating the unknown meaning from a text that has an infinite number of meanings, I relish in that challenge to think like the author and try and understand what he/she meant. The point of literature is that nobody knows the true meaning, except for the author, who is mostly long dead by now. It gives us an opportunity to look inside ourselves and interpret the world the way we see it. That may be entirely different from how the person next to us sees it, but that’s the point! Literature and the arts are not definitive. Someone may look at a Jackson Pollock painting and see a bunch of paint splatters on a canvas, but to someone else, that painting could invoke emotions of fear, hatred, love, serenity, etc. Maybe it is the physical state we are in at that point, or the capacity that we allow ourselves to feel, but any type of art or literature can influence one and pass by the other. Each interpretation becomes entirely special to that one person, which gives somewhat of a personal connection between author and audience. For me, William Shakespeare speaks to my soul like no other human being, dead or alive, has ever been able to. I genuinely believe that I have a relationship with him that no other human being does, and that is so unbelievably true. Humans are meant to feel, behave, understand, connect, and interpret the world in different ways, ways that are special to the individual. Shakespeare inspires me more than any other author I have ever read and will most likely continue to do so for the rest of my life.

     I chose to write this sonnet about London (my favorite place in the entire world), staying true to a typical Shakespearean style sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains and a couplet, holding fourteen lines total. He writes in iambic pentameter (ten beats per line), and has an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Shakespeare wrote one hundred fifty-four sonnets, all of them in lyrical form as opposed to poetry that tells a story or a witty observation. Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets surround the topic of love, which is common for the sonnet form. Because I did not really want to write a love sonnet to my mom (whom I love more than anybody at this point), I chose to write a sonnet to the city of London. I had the opportunity to live in London for four months over a year ago and was changed by its history, culture, people, and beauty. London shaped me into the person I am today and defined the kind of life I strive to live for myself. I will never be able to repay this city for the life that it brought into my soul or the light that now fills my mind and my heart. In a sense, this sonnet is an ode to the place that became a home and the person that became a friend through his own sonnets.

HISTORICAL SCRIPT: I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

     1963: The year John F. Kennedy was assassinated; the year Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech; the year the Beatles took over the world. As CBS news put it, 1963 was “the year that everything happened.” It changed how America functioned, it changed what America endorsed, and it socially turned the United States upside down. But what would this influential year look like from the eyes of a thirteen-year-old?

     We often examine history through a predetermined scope of factual information surrounding the most depressing, influential or transformative events. However, we forget that there are thousands, maybe millions, of different people and individual stories that surround one particular historical event. We see this clearly in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis as she examines a very serious historical event, the Iranian Revolution. She illustrates this through less examined issues, such as a woman’s need to veil her face. Exploring this time period through her own ten-year old perspective, we begin to see a different side of the history. We begin to emotionally connect with the event because we now know someone who lived it. Similarly, in our historical screenplay, we wanted to place our character, Timothy, in the historical arena of 1963. Instead of having him experience one of the politically striking events of the time, we wanted to explore something more relevant to him: The Beatles U.S. release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” 

     When the Beatles released “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, it was the beginning of the “British Invasion.” There had never been a song from the UK that had made an impact on the U.S. music scene until the Beatles released this hit. Researching the 1960’s world through toys, slang, and clothes, we tried to create a realistic perspective of Timothy’s world. A world that was filled with middle school drama and first crushes, but also a world that had been turned upside down by the assassination of JFK, the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, and the intrigue of the “British Invasion.” We were inspired by our research into the year of 1963 and wanted to give Timothy his chance to make his 7^th grade year “the year everything happened” as well. What was life-changing for Timothy, a thirteen-year-old boy from Michigan, wasn’t the political turmoil that went on around him; it was the middle-school drama that is the center of every kid’s world. Talking to his crush Peggy was his number one goal, and we wanted to reflect that within our script. The major historical events that occurred during this year may be the backdrop of our story, but it isn’t the story itself. Rather than remembering and memorializing JFK, Timothy is more concerned with Gary Thermopolis and his “satellite jumping shoes,” or with how he might never get the chance to talk to Peggy. With our script, we wanted to tell a story that anyone who has ever gone to middle school could relate to, but to insert that story into an accurate depiction of the very historic and influential year of 1963; a year that may have caused political upset within the world and wracked terror throughout a nation, but also a year that could have possibly made some teenage boy’s dreams come true because of a simple song by an up-and-coming British boy band.

"1963: The Year Everything Happened." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

"'I Want to Hold Your Hand' - 100 Greatest Beatles Songs." Rolling Stone. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

Slang of the 1960s A (n.d.): n. pag. Slang of the 1960's. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

"1960s Vintage Children's Toys with Prices, Descriptions and Images."Popular Vintage 1960s Toys including Photos, Descriptions and Prices. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

PROCESS PIECE: ELEVATOR PITCH

                                    

                                       https://soundcloud.com/addisonhunsaker/elevator-pitch      


           When we were first assigned this project, we were at a loss for what process to create. We felt overwhelmed with the infinite possibilities of processes we could duplicate. What would stand out more so than just duplicating daily, mundane routines? From our viewings, “The Smokehouse” and “Scriptures” were completely different processes, yet they both represented an event—whether it is something that occurs daily or infrequently—in a very creative way. While working with a partner, we were able to combine our creative minds to develop a process that was less common and more innovative. However, it is still a process that has a beginning, middle, and end and tells the narrative of an act of human labor, whether that act be quite rare.  We were inspired by our 30-second elevator pitch for our next project: The Historical Story. We recreated the process of entering an elevator, running into someone famous—in this case our made up film critic named Benjamin Thevenin—, pitching a 30-second pitch for a movie, and being embarrassingly rejected.

            Recording an event that does not occur often is interesting because it puts into perspective the unpredictability of daily life. While this process was staged, we tried to stay true to what a real chance encounter in an elevator may have been like. The fact that this process is only an audio piece makes it that much more difficult to clearly demonstrate our process. However, it forces the audience to personalize the process and create their own meaning. Similar to the silent film “L'arrivée d'un train en Gare de la Ciotat,” where the audience must imagine what the train would sound like as it comes into the station, our audience must visually imagine the scene we set up for them sonically. Just as everyone knows what the sound of a train sounds like, we can all imagine what an elevator pitch would possibly look like. However, each person has minute differences in what they hear or what they see due to past experiences they may have had with either a train or an encounter in an elevator.

            For our process, we found an elevator with typical “elevator sounds,” such as indicator beeping and the voice of a woman repeating the floors we pass. Because there was no elevator music, we decided to add to the ambiance and create our own elevator music, simulating the stereotypical elevator experience. We used an additional person to be the “pitch-giver,” who recreated the fake scene with their own improvised dialogue, adding to the spontaneity of this type of situation. After multiple takes due to unexpected outside elements, our finished product turned out to be truly representative of our chosen process. Every sound within the 60-second piece added to the visual authenticity of our process. Whether it is played out on a screen or heard through audio recording, our understanding of the given process and our creative imaginations inspire us to visualize the process in our own unique way.

Written by Addison and Zach