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.