We have been watching noir films and forgive this quirky mind but it got distracted with these matches all the flawed heroes in the films have. What were they? I had never seen them. No box. Just the match and it lights up. I asked on Twitter but nobody cared about noir matches ( I wonder why…) I started to think about a commercial for these matches. First I needed to do some research. (Have I lost all my friends, yet?)
So they are called friction matches, but the famous brand is Strike Anywhere Matches. And yes, there are other eccentrics out and there is a web site with the history of matches.
Then there was the matter of the script. I remembered one line from Double Indemnity that started my current obsession ‘They always explode in my pockets’. I looked at various scripts and then decided to adapt the Double Indemnity dialogue:
I bit off the end of my cigar and put the cigar into my mouth. started tapping my pockets for a match, as usual I can’t find one. I hear some smart alec in the distance: They give you matches when they sell you cigars, you know. All you have to do is ask for them. Heck, I know I say. I don’t like them. They always explode in my pockets. In truth I just don’t know how to light them.
Strike anywhere matches. Extra Thick for longer burn time ….but you need to know how to light them.
And yes, somebody has uploaded to You Tube instructions for how to light Strike Anywhere Matches. This is what I like most on the web, I can always find someone who seems more eccentric than I am! So, we download that via Clip Converter. Then pop it into MPEG Streamclip to remove the audio and trim it.
New iMovie is pretty cool. But before that, GarageBand to the rescue to change my voice and record the script. It does female to male, deep and soulful, but there was no femme fatale…
Then, audio and video into iMovie, via an image of the matches. And yes, I think I need to get a life. I had such fun though. I plan to record this for our Radio show as a radio commercial but I am going to ask for help with the voices – Dogtrax does a mean noir hero voice, I need to get my femme fatale though. Any nominations? She just needs to record the last two lines.
Learnt about matches, about how you can find any script movie online, learnt a few more tricks in iMovie. Getting the style right is interesting: black and white not enough, you need high contrast. The transitions matter, I remembered seeing the circle open/close transition in some noir films. Used that. And others details I will bore you no further with.
…and I still laugh when I watch it. Never underestimate the value of a daily smile!
I have not written one of my long reflective posts for a while. I have enjoyed just making stuff without words. Still, the time has come.
I am not sure how long ago I was entrusted with making sure there was a Daily Create prompt for us all every day. I can say it has been the best job I ever had. I would do it for free. Wait. I am doing it for free! Except that not all that counts can be counted. The joy and creativity I get back from driving the DS106 daily create bus, I cannot measure. If what I do supports the DS106 community and is of use to some people, it is a real privilege to be in the driving seat.
This reflection was prompted by the lovely tweet from Jim Groom posted at the start of this post. I did have a big smile on my face when I read it. I have not said very much about the process or about how I see what I am doing because I am afraid that if I talk about it the magic will go; kind of like when we have a gift we do not understand but treasure. We may fear losing it by bringing conscious attention to it.
In this post I want to face the fear and just talk about what the experience has been like. The joy of seeing what people produce as a result of a prompt, the stream of drafts I find when I go to edit the site as people keep submitting ideas, seeing the web in a whole new way as a ground to harvest potential ideas for daily create prompts, trying things out myself to ensure what I am suggesting is doable and the one downside: I no longer get the joy of the surprise of the daily prompt. It is a little like I get to see into the future so when it comes up, I have seen it and I might be working on the next month’s set of prompts.
But it is a small price to pay for such a precious creativity source. The rest of this post explores the process as I see it and why I find it so precious.
Who?
I notice that one of my guiding principles has to do with inclusion. I always check a submission for content but also for who submitted it. I want to make sure if somebody is new or rarely submits an idea, that idea gets used somehow.
I am also always on the look out for people’s ideas in the DS106 community (and sometimes outside) that might make a good prompt. I ask for permission to use and then try to let them know when it will be published so that they can see what art is made from the prompt.
There are different audiences to consider too, the University of Mary Washington students are always a joy to interact with. The open participants come and go, some (like me) never go! Then there are those who are doing the open course with their students in different universities around the world. There are customised versions of DS106: #youshow15 is focussing on digital presence through digital story telling tools, 3MDS106 is applying the open course to develop enterprise social networking skills in a large corporate and I am sure there are others I have not kept up with. So the prompts have to be general enough that anyone can use them and also be inclusive so that people feel they are part of the community – I must confess to bias my choices to the ‘young ones’ as I describe them in my head. UMW students make my Twitter stream come alive with fun and ideas when there is a run of DS106 there, I do try to think of prompts they will find fun to do. So, I am heartened to hear what Jim says in his tweet above.
What?
Then there is the ‘what makes a good prompt?’ question. Alan Levine spoke with me at length about this when he decided to let me drive the bus: Simplicity, not an assignment, balance of type of prompt, not just what I like, possible to adapt ideas for use more than once, remembering when last one is….but if there is a blank day, Sandy will always remind you!
All of above is sound advise and I was glad to have it as well as the behind the scenes information of how the site works. But there is more. Here is where the ineffable comes in. I saw it in Alan when he spoke, I see it when I talk to creative people and I have done my best to teach it most of my career. Playfulness, risk taking, experimentation, connecting the not obviously connected, willingness to fall on my face if something does not work out… It is quite a public choice and it is daily. Thankfully Talky Tina taught me how to futz.
Beyond the cognitive creative strategies, there is also the love of the process. The flow that engaging in the process requires and the joy that brings. I have had days when my mental state has been less than ideal, I have sat down to work on the daily create and after an hour felt like I had been on a day’s meditation retreat. I keep saying, DS106 is cheap therapy.
Then there is the practical what, making sure I have ideas stored up to create prompts as needed. I have a secret Twitter list and a community in Google Plus with just one member: me. I store up possible ideas as I come across them when I am doing other web type activities. Sometimes I don’t even know how it will become a prompt – just that it can become one.
Why?
A public service? Yes, it is that. A fun way to learn digital storytelling tools and find ideas? Yes, it is that. A way to make friends? Yes, it is that too. But my why is different from all that.
My why has to do with finding myself lost in the midst of the mystery that is the human imagination. My favourite writer on creativity and the soul, Thomas Moore puts it better than I can,
“The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”
The daily create prompt creates a tapestry of stories that brings the imagination alive. And that brings me alive. I am honoured to be part of the tapestry.
My first creative edit for #noir106. It is tough to work in black and white! Original poster by Jessica Parker, new DS106 logo by Martha Burtis, I think. And adorable puppy is Eric. Tried mixing Metropolis and Typewriter fonts to see how they blended. Enough.
long ago, long before any of us were alive or thinking or walking or breathing, when our souls were swirls, and long before the stars and the sun had any idea of what to do with themselves, there w…
This is my first #artonthecouch critique for 2015. I took a break for the holidays and have a renewed enthusiasm for this project. I have, however, made some changes for this year. I am not going to put myself under pressure to do one critique per week, last year it started to turn into a chore and I did not like that. Guilt is not part of the DS106 ethos – and I felt guilty if I missed a week.
The other interesting thing is that people are choosing to not submit any art for me to critique. Just an observation not a judgement. I have to keep choosing the art myself. So I will choose art that speaks to me and that, paraphrasing Jeannette Winterson, I want to spend time with.
Without further ado, let’s spend some time with some awesome web art!
‘Three Seasons’ is a story told in a web page; not a photo or something I can reproduce here. You have to go an read it before what follows can make sense. And trust me, it will be worth every minute you spend with it.
What first struck me when engaging with this piece was the multi-modal nature of it. This may seem a detached and technical observation, but I think that this web page shows some of the possibilities in the future of composition. It uses audio, written words, video, animated gifs in the service of the story and it does so beautifully.
I clicked to read from Twitter one day last year when I was rushing to finish my chores for the year. It made me stop and attend. It made me stop and connect with my emotions even when I did not have time for that. That is powerful.
I am a writer so my attention on second reading was drawn to the written word. I noticed that Kailey (@kaileyck) did not capitalise any of her paragraphs. She does not use paragraphs in the traditional sense either. It is as if she is using space to mark the places where she would like her reader to take a breadth. The effect on me of the lack of traditional markers was to draw me in and make me want to attend to the story that much more…I did not know where to pause so I just focussed. As you read you think you are settling into a story told in the written word and then
and then Kailey starts to work with other media and draws the reader in further. The use of the animated gif was particularly powerful. As those of you who read The DS106 Shrink regularly know, I am obsessed with the animated gif. I have a sense that it is evolving into a medium to ‘carry’ the content of our communication that is carried by body language and gestures when we speak face to face. Humans have such ingenuity when it comes to overcoming limitations. The ‘text mediated self’ that is our digital presence is limited and favours those of us who have ease with the written word. Some people, like Kailey, are creating a new language. We all need to ask ‘do you speak gif?’ and Kailey shows us how. The animated gifs in her piece bring the written word to life. They are done beautifully: smooth precise moments picked meticulously to add to the words.
And just as you start to think that this is it, she adds sound. First in the form of a dramatic video clip, which makes us transition from the visual element to audio and then to audio only. This to me is what lifts this story from the just good to the simply exceptional. I click on the audio file and keep on reading. Just the same attention to detail as in the rest of the story. The sound blends with the words as if Kailey was there telling me the story and playing the sound on a piano. It keeps playing as you read. Foley sounds create images in your mind as you read the words
and your emotions engage with the words in ways that plain text could never do. I read to the end and have tears in my eyes as I finish reading, hearing, seeing Kailey tell me a story.
I think you can say, British understatement coming, that I quite liked the story.
My critique has focussed on form not content because this is what struck me the most and what connected with my own interest in mediated communication. Yet none of this would work without a beautifully crafted story. Do yourself a favour. Switch on clutter cloak and spend a day in Kailey’s company. It will restore your soul.
Yesterday’s daily create prompted us to reflect on ‘the one that got away’ and I struggled with the prompt for all sorts of reasons.
Today I put the two creates together.
A few years ago, when I was too old (according to whom?) to buy pink Timberlands, I bought a pair. I loved these shoes so much, but I rarely wore them. I was worried that people would think I was just ‘too old’ to wear such shoes.
They stayed in their box for a long time. One day a friend was searching for a pair of shoes for his daughter and we happened to be the same size. I gave them away.
I still miss them.
So my pink Timberlands are the ones that got away and also my ‘shoefie’ for today. I wanted to add a flavour of the ‘worst possible taste’ which we also had on the Daily Create this week with our worst album covers remixes. I searched for the ugliest frame I could find to add to my creation. Voila! 3 Daily Creates in 1:
What strikes me on first seeing this lovely gif are the changing colours of the flower which pick up the background rainbow colours. The lines of the rainbow flow in the same upward direction as the flower and complement it. I notice the colours as they seem other-worldly and contrast strongly with the neutral flower stem and leaves. The rainbow adds depth to the composition. As your eye is drawn to the changing colours in the flower and the rainbow, the caterpillar surprises you and appears to create balance. A 3-way attention point: Rainbow, flower, caterpillar against the neutral stem. The fine threads in grey around the flower add contrast in stillness as the flower inside bursts with life.
The movement of the caterpillar seems important and adds realism to an otherwise ethereal composition. What gives it the ethereal quality may be that the colours chosen by the artist do not exist in nature. We recognise a flower and a caterpillar yet the colours do not belong. It seems as if the natural elements put a barrier up for the viewer, we cannot reach the end of the rainbow. This effect is added to by the blurry nature of the rainbow. Then there is the creation of depth by the caterpillar appearing in the corner and seeming to go ‘into’ the picture nearest to the viewer. This makes it seem like the flower is behind the caterpillar and this in turn adds to the sense of the rainbow being unreachable.
Given the title one assumes the choice of colour was intended to give the composition a pop-art style. The flower is out of any context, there are no frames to locate the work, adding to its detached feel. I imagine it as a flower that would belong in a biosphere 2 experiment of the future or a science fiction movie. My alternative title: ‘Life thrives anywhere’.
There are no Commandments in art and no easy axioms for art appreciation. “Do I like this?” is the question anyone should ask themselves at the moment of confrontation with the picture. But if “yes,” why “yes”? and if “no,” why “no”? The obvious direct emotional response is never simple, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the “yes” or “no” has nothing at all to do with the picture in its own right.
“I don’t understand this poem”
“I never listen to classical music”
“I don’t like this picture”
are common enough statements but not ones that tell us anything about books, painting, or music. They are statements that tell us something about the speaker. That should be obvious, but in fact, such statements are offered as criticisms of art, as evidence against, not least because the ignorant, the lazy, or the plain confused are not likely to want to admit themselves as such. We hear a lot about the arrogance of the artist but nothing about the arrogance of the audience. The audience, who have not done the work, who have not taken any risks, whose life and livelihood are not bound up at every moment with what they are making, who have given no thought to the medium or the method, will glance up, flick through, chatter over the opening chords, then snap their fingers and walk away like some monstrous Roman tyrant.
#artonthecouch #ds106 A great read to learn more about art critique. There is really so much to learn to do this well. Tentative steps to concluding that this may be a way into developing one’s emotional intelligence. Awareness of our feelings and an ability to describe without attributing what we feel to an external stimulus seem key in what I am reading. Takes courage.
Fearless Reflection by Sandy Brown Jensen I thought I’d have a wee go at Mariana’s Art on the Couch process. Mariana is carrying out the project to learn about critiquing art, and: Critique is ofte…
This is relevant to my #artonthecouch project. What did I think of this episode? It was [fill blank with overused superlative of choice] I will write more on this soon. I wanted to post it here so as not to lose it. Some kind soul on Twitter directed me to it, but I found it in a tab at end of the day. Thank you whoever you were. You were…I can’t even…literally…
