Fireside Chat

The belief I chose to share with the class in my fireside chat is that defining a family supersedes just blood relations. I chose to share this belief because it’s something I have believed for a long time, and for the personal reason of me and all my siblings being adopted.  I know that my family is a forever family because we have been sealed together in the temple.  But even families that are put together, and aren’t sealed, I believe will find a way to be together forever.

                One potential problem with this belief is the issue of homosexual couples. Personally I believe that constitutionally they have the right to get married and create whatever family they can together. There is a television show on ABC Family right now called The Fosters. This show exemplifies my belief very accurately I believe.  It’s about a lesbian couple, and the different children they’ve had, adopted, and hope to adopt. In my fireside chat I wanted to get across the message that some families can be chosen, and that even without blood tying them together, they can be as strong a unit as any other. I believe that this applies to homosexual couples.  It’s easy to get attached to people, and two people raising a family together, are of course going to feel love and care for each other. They’re going to love the children they are raising, even if there ways of attaining them are unconventional.  They are a family.  The only problem with this is that I still believe marriages and families should be created between a man and a woman, and on the other side there will only be families headed by a man and woman.  It’s almost crass to say statements like that in modern times, but it is what I believe. But I still believe that there isn’t one way to define a family, and families headed by homosexual couples are as much a family as the Walton’s are.  Unfortunately, I might have to leave you hanging. I don’t have a solution for the dilemma I perceive.  Just thought I’d share my thoughts. 

My family is so precious to me, and even with all the things that aren’t perfect about it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  When I was younger, this was a different story.  I was always bummed that I didn’t belong to a family who didn’t make me unload the dishwasher and clean my room.  Upon further examination though, I’m pretty sure they don’t exist. I think of the life I could have had with a young single mom, compared to the life I have with a loving mother and father, who have a secure way to provide for their family, and I feel so blessed.  I’m not one of those people that believe in fate.  I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, and that everyone in my life is meant to be there. I don’t think you can live like that, because then you’re always asking why, and sometimes there isn’t an answer. But in relation to my family, I know that they are where I’m meant to be.  I was supposed to go to the parents that I did, and be in the family that I am.  Why? I don’t know why.  That question might have already been answered with my life, or maybe it’ll be answered in the future.  All I know is that my Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister were planned before any of us came down to this earth.

Concerned Citizen

Concerned Citizen Film

Shaunelle Holyoak was the person of interest in Brittany and I’s concerned citizen documentary.  She works as a night manager at the Provo women’s shelter, interacting with homeless women and children.  In addition to that, she just recently got accepted into UVU’s social work program.  She honestly cares about people and their well-being.  Not only the women and children that she works with, but her friends and family, roommates, ward members, basically anyone she comes in contact with.  Because of the caring characteristics she exemplifies through her life, often putting others before herself, I figured she would be a wise choice for the Concerned Citizen project. 

            Unfortunately for us, as budding documentary filmmakers, Shaunelle is unable to disclose the location of the shelter to anyone.  Let alone allow people to film her while she’s there.  So we were addressed with the problem of having to find some other way to visually fill the time then just with her interview, since we couldn’t show her in the work environment she was talking about.  We decided to focus a little more on the social work program that she was doing at school, and what        she had learned from working in a social work setting. This was so that we could show her doing school work and have it make sense with what was being addressed through the dialogue.  I think ultimately this helped us focus the documentary on her, and her beliefs.  If we had been able to show her at work, I know I would have been tempted to include all her dialogue about her duties and jobs as the night manager, and left out the stuff that makes her story unique.

            Arlene Goldbar, author of Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland says,”Culture is key to creating the conditions that enable human rights and therefore security rooted in caring rather than correction.” The women that Shaunelle works with, who sometimes identify strongly with a culture, don’t have the means to express it.  This is because they are working to just to satisfy their basic human needs of shelter and food.  Their kids sometimes, don’t even have all the materials they need to do well in school, and find it hard to participate there as well. Shaunelle’s work tries to give these women a leg up, so that they can get a footing in the work force, or at least be able to provide for their kids. Once these women have their most basic needs fulfilled, they can share their experiences and culture with others.

Game for Change

play the game

In December of 2013 Ethan Couch, a 16 year old from Texas, was sentenced to rehab and 10 years probation. Not a big deal, until you realize that this is his punishment for driving drunk, from alcohol he stole, and then smashing his car into four people, killing all of them.  How did he get such an extremely, almost unbelievable, light sentence? His severe case of Affluenza.  The book “Affluenza : The All-Consuming Epidemic” describes the affluenza diagnosis as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” This was applied to Ethan in the sense that he had been coddled his whole life, never getting disciplined, always given what he wanted, and as a result his judgment was impaired.  His defense claimed that he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions because of it, and somehow, someway, the judge bought it.  If his parents are so incapable of raising a decent human being by not punishing him, wouldn’t it make more sense for society to step in and do so. I believe it would be a more reasonable response to give him the harshest punishment, so that the consequences of his actions could sink in a little bit for once, instead of the opposite. 

            Blogger Jessica Ann Mitchel responded to Ethan’s case, with the Diagnosis of Povertenza.  Her explanation of Povertenza is that it’s an illness that those from poor socioeconomic backgrounds suffer from.  They weren’t able to get a quality education or employment.  The result being that they’re development is stunted, their judgment impaired, and can’t be held responsible for their actions either.  To me, this seems like a more practical defense then affluenza.  In an underprivileged area, peoples options and futures are restricted, whereas Ethan had a huge amount of paths he could have taken.  His parents wealth could pretty much take him anywhere he wanted. But of course, no court would buy povertenza as excuse for breaking a law.  In fact, youth from poor areas usually get handed the toughest sentences possible.  Mitchel says,” Essentially, the poor are expected to be more accountable for their actions while the wealthy are viewed as inherently respectable (especially if they're white).” 

            Am I taking away some depth of understanding to Ethan Couch by telling this one single story? Possibly.  But what about another story of his that his defense lawyer shared in court to help, surprisingly enough, his case.  When Ethan was 15 he was found alone in a car, with an unconscious, naked, 14-year-old girl. I feel like it would be a favor if no more stories were shared about Ethan’s past.

            My game is meant to represent the two sides of povertenza and affluenza.  In the first level, you are one of the affluent, given everything you need to succeed.  In the end, when you kill the monster, you win the game.  The second level is the opposite. You’re faced with a bunch of challenges, given little, and when you kill the monster, you’re punished, and there’s no way to win (hopefully.) You get trapped in the jail cell, unable to get out. Is that justice? No, I don’t think so.  All I’m saying is if our justice system is going to rehabilitate the rich white kid, they need to do the same for the poor black kid as well. 

Glitch Art!

P&P I love, I love, I love you 1:55

Kiss Me :16

Sweet Home Alabama 1:00

That Sunday, That Summer :07

I care :13

Gabriel's oboe

If I ain't got you 2:33

I want you!

Brittany and I battled Together Vs. Apart.  The thought behind it was to compare sounds from the beginning of relationships, to the ending of relationships.  I was in charge of the “Together.” Looking for the sounds to represent my theme was fairly easy since I really really like romance in films. Performing what I had created in front of everyone was nerve racking. I was lucky enough to keep my hands from shaking so much that I couldn’t press the buttons. During my 2012 Christmas piano recital I was not so lucky.  I don’t have an exactly clean and shiny track record when it comes to being up in front of people.  Overall it was a good experience to be in front of the class sharing what Brittany and I had created.  As a result of my own experience performing in front of the class, I tried really hard to be a good audience member. 

Ever since I was little, I have made collages.  The binders I used to carry around in high school were covered with collages I’d made from pictures in magazines.  A whole wall in my bedroom back home is covered with a similar magazine collage, only much larger. Lethem talks about collages in his work A Plagarism. He talks about how a man’s song was influenced by multiple different things from history and his life.  The ending result, being a unique song, was still made up of the things that had come before it.  With this understanding of collages, parts of the bible can be described as collages.  The books Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the synoptic gospels because of how similar they are.  It is believed that the books of Mark and Luke drew from the Book of Matthew and another source.  However, the books of Mark and Luke have a different purpose then that of Matthew.  The intent of Matthew is to show Jesus as the new Moses to the Jews.  The purpose of Luke is to let gentile christians, who have been marginalized by Jewish Christians, know that the Jesus’s message is for everyone.  Seeing as how these are chapters in the best-selling book in the world, it’s clear that plagiarizing or, creating collages from other peoples work, can return some pretty amazing results.   The collage of sounds Brittany and I gathered from the internet, is admittedly nothing compared to the Bible.  But the same concepts were used with similar results.  Using elements already established, we were able to utilize them a different way, to tell a broader story.  

World Building

Pathos;  a city that has discovered the solution to the question of renewable energy. They harvest human emotion, controlling the incontrollable. Scientist discovered the 4 most potent emotions to power the city. They are exhilaration, depression, anger, and calm.  These emotions are harvested in different sections of the city.  Through architecture, lay out, services, sounds, and responsibilities the different sections are built to produce their certain emotion.  The emotion is stored and transferred from the bracelet on the subjects arm.  When one emotion is filled up they move to the next section of the city in order to feel another emotion.

                One aspect of these different sections is the clothing the people who are living in it wear. For my group I designed these clothes. When approaching these designs I tried to think of how I and others would feel when wearing these clothes.  Evoking a certain feeling from the characters in the story, and from the audience, was the most integral part of designing these clothes.  The one design I think I really got correct, was coincidentally also the easiest.  The people who live in the depression section of the city wear baggy, drab, uniform, grey jump suits.  I feel like this is the most correct one because I know that I and many others would be miserable wearing this getup.  Depression would be much easier to achieve if you have no control over whether you feel good about yourself or not.

                In Design Fiction by Bleeker, he references books in his studio that are there for inspiration.  When I am put into a situation where I have to create something, I often try my very hardest no to be influenced by anything else.  I fear that if I do, it’ll just end up being a copy of their work.  When designing the uniforms, I attempted to block out any knowledge I had of the futuristic  films Divergent, Tron,The Island, and other similar films.  It wasn’t easy, and maybe not entirely necessary.  It’s hard for me to draw that line between copying something and being inspired by something.  Bleeker allows himself to be inspired by what he sees and experiences around him.  Instead of trying to copy these films, I tried to be inspired by them and the genre they came from.  In the end I settled on styles that were also similar to the genre, but hopefully unique.   

Medium Specificity

No matter how much I wish I could, I cannot afford a new outfit for every day of life.  So, instead of switching up my wardrobe, I switch up the outfits.  What I believe defines fashion is the necessity of looking at something familiar, pairing it with something else familiar, and making something entirely original.  I love to get dressed in the morning . . . and afternoon . . . and evening. I have a tendency to change my outfit multiple times a day.  It’s just how I function.  I’ll be totally 100% behind my outfit in the morning, but by the afternoon I’ll think of one way or another to improve it.  In the evening I’m going to be doing something different from what I was doing in the day, so I better change up my dress for that as well.  As a result of my obsessive need to recreate myself, I have a whole heck of a lot of clothes.   As a result of the whole heck of a lot of clothes I have, I find myself recreating myself a lot. 

In Glamour magazine is a feature that shows how to mix and match the same few items of clothing over and over again into different outfits. The intent of this feature is usually to show how a person can pack light for an extended vacation.  On Pinterest in the past year, there’s been an explosion of the same topic—only done for sister missionaries.  Girls will share tips on what kind of blouses and shirts sisters should bring on their mission to keep their style exciting, even though it’s limited.  I recreated this idea, focused around one accessory—a pink bow belt.  The decision to focus on the bow belt was twofold: first I needed to do this assignment and second, the belt is a new purchase and I wanted to see how I could play with it.

Focusing on the medium of fashion and then refining that focus onto just the belt and how it can function in fashion definitely speaks about the resourcefulness available in fashion.  Not resourceful in the sense that I’m saving the planet, cause I’m not.  It’s resourceful in the sense that I can use the same clothing item over and over again for years and years, and still find a new way to wear it tomorrow.  

In Show and Tell by McCloud, he talks about how the idea of comics was first introduced in ancient times.  The same goes for fashion, in the sense that what was most practical was the most fashionable.  In modern times for lots of people, fashion has moved away from the practicality of living and more towards the practicality of what looks good.  But, thankfully people are creative and have the ability to rework an item of clothing into a different outfit and still remain enamored with their own personal style and clothing choices.  

Thanks to Ryan Running for the pictures.

Historical Story

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzUgpQb_VDRiOENkd3hBUm9fMk0/preview

In a recent documentary done by Piers Morgan on Donny Osmond, Donny remembers his teeny-bopper days as some of his happiest.  But he also regrets them; and if he could, he would go back to when he was three years old, before his family was famous and would live a totally different life.  He remembers having a sandbox, toy cars, and a best friend name Scott when he was three, and it was all taken from him when his family moved to L.A. His story reminded me of Vivian, Fort Barnwell. In that story the man had completely rewritten the story of a photo he remembered and had gotten it wrong. Donny has these clear memories of what his life was like.  Was it really that way? Or is that what he’s created from his memories?

                I got the idea for centering our story around this historical event because I remember watching a documentary about the Osmonds, in which this event was featured.  I remember seeing a clip of Alan, Wayne, Merril, Jay, and Donny (The Osmond Brothers) walking down a street that was blocked off to traffi and had barricades up and down both sides.  Behind the barricades were tons of wild fans, screaming and crying.  The brothers were smiling and laughing, spread out across the street, waving at their fans.  Donny was wearing a brown corduroy suit.  This is what I remember from the documentary, and an event I think about a lot because I would have loved to have been there that day.

                All these memories are part of history.  History’s truths are dependent on the person telling the story.  We got the chance this week to write a different truth into history.  However, this truth wasn’t based on our memory.  Since that is the case, there was no right or wrong interpretation to this story.  Adding our own mark on a historical event, unlike Vivian, Fort Barnwell, couldn’t be anything but right. 

Process Piece

https://soundcloud.com/madison-huber/duck-pond-1-1

My process piece is designed to show the transition one person goes through when leaving the busy crowded people world, to the busy crowded nature world.  He basically exchanged one chaos for another, because he prefers the second.  At the beginning of the process he’s in a crowded building.  He then walks outside and is on a busy street.  Eventually he makes it to a very loud, and disordered duck pond.  You hear the bag opening, and he starts feeding them bread.  When he sighs, you know he’s reached a state of peace.

                Something that influenced my decision to move forward with this idea, was the elemental narrative that was just discussed in my TMA 114 class.  Instead of doing a man-v-nature theme though, it was a man in harmony and peace with the nature.  This idea appealed to me, because it’s not something I really feel.  Now, I love to observe nature, and to be in the middle of it.  But being in harmony with it is not my thing.  I am honestly kind of terrified of nature, and all the horrible things it can do.  If I was a character in an elemental narrative, the likely result would be man being destroyed by nature.  However, I wish I wasn’t that way.  Representing someone who was willing to escape the hub bub of everyday living, for the hub bub of nature seemed a little bit brave to me. 

                 I was influenced most heavily by “The Smokehouse” short film we watched.  This was an amazing example of a man being at harmony with nature.  Not only that, he had learned how to use nature for his benefit.  Also, the sounds being highlighted in the film, were distinct to his world, and easy to identify.  At the beginning you hear birds juxtaposed against the sound of a chain saw.  This man was living in between both worlds, and doing it beautifully.  The main person in my process piece has  to go somewhere to find his fix of nature, and has to separate the two worlds.

Pt. 1

A bunch of kids found a butterfly and named her Kizzy.   Kizzy’s wing was broken, so to put her out of her misery, they stabbed her 3 times with a pin, and buried her under a tree. 

Pt. 2

After burying Kizzy, the kids climbed to the top of a nearby hill and saw a field full of beautiful butterflies. All the butterflies had a broken wing.

Pt. 3

Upon seeing these creatures from afar, the Butterfly King remembered the wrath which possessed similar animals; the very ones that caused the carnage amongst his subjects. “Never again,” he whimpered.

Pt. 4
"The Kitchen Aid kind of broke. Butter was flying everywhere. So much for cookies."

Pt. 5

“Yer gonna pay for that.” She saw the officer at the edge of the demo kitchen, handcuffs ready. “Just coz’ it sez Home Depot don’ mean it’s YOUR home.”

                

Artist Statement

Writing the tiny stories was more complicated than I anticipated.  Apparently finding something I wanted to say, and finding something I was able to say with the restrictions placed upon us, were two different things.  Creating interesting stories, with only 30 words available, seemed daunting.  How I ended up writing my stories may not have been the best method in hindsight.  I would think of a story, write it out, and then take out the most unnecessary parts, till I was within the limit.  A possible better way to have done this would have been to start with the most minimal aspect of the story, and add on parts till I reached the world limit.  This method would have made my stories more full to me, and I would guess I would have been more satisfied with them. 

The aspect I liked best about the tiny story project was collaborating.  I like collaborating, because it makes me feel more freedom to explore a wider array of options, then when I’m working alone.  Even to me this sounds opposite of what it should be.  The reason I feel this way is because I have a back board to hit ideas off of, in the other person I’m working with.  And in return I get to be their backboard.  This process allows for a bit of checks and balances, which for me, can help produce the greatest product possible. 

                For the majority of my tiny stories written, I was really influenced by the archetype of thriller stories.  Everyone else in my group was guys, and I figured this would be something that appealed to them.  I would put the characters in hopeless situations, and leave it for the next person in the line to hopefully get them out of it, comment on it, or plunge them into something deeper. 

        In the essay we read for our class, D.J. spooky talked about exabytes. The University of California Berkley understood it to be 5 exabytes of data approximately equals "all words ever spoken by human beings.”  I would never be able to go through every exabyte of data available to me, nor would anyone else.  This knowledge made my perspective of this assignment shift a little bit.  By telling my story in as few words as possible, I’m making it so much more accessible to so many more people.  It’s like a vine. Think of how many of those you can watch a day.  If I had a strong message I wanted to share with as many people as possible, and it would reach more people through a vine, then a full length feature film, I would probably chose the vine.  I got an opportunity to do that this week.  

Music Mosaic

The Winner Is- Little Miss Sunshine

The song I chose to do my music mosaic on is called “The Winner Is,” from the film Little Miss Sunshine.  Coming up with what I wanted to express from the song was a process that only took shape after I started creating my images. The first image is very different from the last image. However, from the beginning, before I even put brush to paper, I knew I wanted to blend two worlds.  I wanted to blend reality with something totally contrived.  This idea came partly from the sounds within the song.  For the majority of the song, there are at least two very distinct sounds.  One is almost industrial to me—that sound represented reality.  The other was lighter and more whimsical—and that represented the illustrated world around the real subjects.   Another reason I chose this approach was because even without looking that deep into the music, that’s the feeling the music inspires in me.  It makes me think of journeys and going places that I’ve never gone before, even if they are imaginary. 

                The film The Cider House Rules was something I thought about quite often when listening to the song.   In this film the main character leaves everything he’s ever known and goes to experience a little bit of the world.  In the end he returns back to where he came from, his home.   This story resonates with me and is something I think about in my own life a lot.  I’m now in Provo doing my thing; but whenever I have a chance to return home for a little bit, I jump on it.  The Cider House Rules and my own experience helped inspire my choices for images.  I wanted to express the virtue of exploration and adventure.  I wanted to show them as great blessings.  However, in all this adventure, I want to make sure I stay true to my roots and can always return to my home. 

                For me, seeing my images was similar to the blind patients in Annie Dillard’s “Observing the Ordinary.” When I saw these created worlds, I didn’t see details, or depth, or any distinguishing factors. I saw “color-patches.” These color patches were how I interpreted the worlds I created in my images.  They make the worlds look simple, but fortunately, they don’t make them any less wonderful or new.   I hope my music mosaic can resonate through the music and the images what a great adventure it is to experience something new and colorful.  

Desire to Learn

“It’s not what you have, it’s what you don’t have that counts.” This is the most memorable and repeated line from Mr. Westing’s will in The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. The Westing heirs are given their clues; and then with the fraction of information they have, are asked to solve a mystery. Only one heir finds herself capable of this act. Turtle is the one able to uncover the truth because of two main reasons. First, she collects all the information possible that is available to her. Second, she has the strongest most pure desire to know the answer. Driven by the “death” of her friend Sandy, she wants to solve the mystery for his sake, as well to ease her own ache over losing him. Turtle’s success is meant to inspire in others the desire for knowledge. Raskin hopes we won’t just be content with learning what we have to learn, but that we will pursue knowledge because we desire to do so.

There are many educated adults who are players in Mr. Westing’s game. There’s a judge, a doctor, business owners, and more. So why is it that a child, the youngest player, is the one who is able to discover the truth? Raskin’s message is that the desire to learn is most easily planted, and most readily received, in children. Children ask questions because they are curious, and therefore are open to receiving the most answers.

It’s easy, in our time, to think this means we should use the wide array of resources available. Nowadays, any question we have can be answered from a search bar—Google! However, Raskin wrote this book during the 70s, before Internet searching existed. She wrote The Westing Game with a little bit more intent than to just “google” what we don’t know. From the knowledge that we as learners garner, we must creatively ask questions that maybe haven’t been thought of before. “It’s what we don’t have that counts.” This is a predecessor to innovation. If any era was removed from our history, we would be that much further behind in the understanding of our world than we are today. The culture and people of the 70s were a product of everything that had come before them, and we are a product of everything that has come before us, including the 70s. Now in our day, we must ask ourselves what we don’t have, and what can we do to fill that gap.

Raskin loved learning and did everything she could to help further the education of students. Twice Raskin made offers of her manuscripts to the CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) and was refused. On her third attempt, she made it very clear that she wanted her manuscripts to be used to educate students. Rather than her manuscripts being preserved but never used, she wished for them to fall apart from use. The CCBC accepted this third time. Since her book was written in the 70s, it was an actual physical copy of her original draft. On it, students could clearly see the author’s revisions, and the roles of the literary and copy editor. It was Raskin’s goal for whoever viewed her manuscripts to walk away with a better understanding of how the writing process worked.

Raskin didn’t just stop there with her books. She went all the way, by designing her book as a finished product. She designed the cover and title page of her books, as well as all the other pages. The entire process from start to finish was overseen by Raskin herself. Doing more than the bare minimum, she’s an example of the lesson being taught—to always do as much as you can and learn as much as you can.

Some might say that this interpretation of the text leads people to never be satisfied with what they have. Instead of people being grateful for what they have currently, humans always pursue more and more. I personally think that’s okay for growth. Contentment doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, maybe just more comfort. The reason I’m attending BYU is that I wanted to be challenged in ways this particular school offers. Moving to Provo threw challenges at me because I was away from my family, friends, and everything I found comfort in. These experiences have made me who I am this year, and might even change who I am next year. Because I desired the opportunity to gain additional knowledge, I’m now blessed enough to be studying film. I don’t think that would have happened if I had stayed at home or gone to a different university. I’m grateful for what I’ve been given, and will make the absolute best of it I possibly can.

Turtle’s experience is an example to all of us of the good knowledge can do us. Because she dared to ask the question and get an answer, she benefited from a life-long friendship that otherwise she would have been without. A desire to attain more is healthy and should be pursued—it can help others as well as yourself. If we find the questions to ask, the generations after ours will take what we have and be able to find out what we don’t have.