Hold onto Your Butts

It’s one of the famous lines from Spielberg’s 93 classic Jurassic Park. Technology, the driving force that brought the park into existence by means of various different sciences, has malfunctioned and shut down. As Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) smokes his cigarette to the filter and shuts the system down I find myself wondering what would happen if technology shut down here, not a remote island in the pacific but throughout the entire United States.

Programs like this exist. March 31 hosts Earth Hour. The goal is to have everyone across the country, across the world, turn off their lights for one hour. So far the program, which started in San Francisco, has been a success. The problem is, it’s only one hour.

There are tons of things a willing individual can do to save energy, so why wait an entire year for one hour? Plug your multiple appliances into a power strip and turn the whole thing off when you’re not using it. Turn off lights you aren’t using. Use compact fluorescents. Wash your clothes in cold water instead of hot- it reduces energy costs and washing your clothes in cold water helps them to stay vibrant and last longer. Do these things every day, then go even further and pull a Jurassic Park and totally unplug. No TV, no phone, no internet. Yep, sit in the dark. See if you can do it for one hour.

The END OF THE WORLD

Hello internet.

I've been doing a lot of reading on you lately and some of it is not so good. There seems to be a rather hostile contingent that agrees that the internet will spell the end of the world. I'm a pretty big Terminator fan so I gotta agree, you machines make me nervous. How not? With your blinking lights and your electric chords... no way man, no way.

However, lately I've also been reading some interesting things to your defense. There are online communities that are making a pretty significant difference on how people interact and communicate that isn't all that bad. Hell, I used to go to chat rooms and stir up trouble, and I'll never forget the time me and some high school buddies got drunk and played chat roulette in my sister's princess castle. Fun times. So lately I've been thinking you've been getting a bad rap.

Now, I'm an earth hugging hippie chick bent on destroying the cold and truncated means in which we communicate but if information will save the world, this is the quickest way to get it. Patton Oswald calls it ETEWAF (everything that ever was, available forever) (Wired mag, citation pending...) and that seems okay, lots of sifting. But even if everything that ever was, was available I doubt that most people would care to look it up. I guess it comes down to who you put your faith in these days, humans, or machines.

If you're reading this, you are the resistance.

In Sum

So, veganism.

It's been a week since I quit. Mom's grilled cheese tempted me away. Sometimes no matter the circumstance, close at hand is close at heart. If comfort is what you crave the best thing may be to simply go home. Or no, depending on where the bread's coming from I guess.

I didn't exactly make it the whole month, either. It wasn't really that big of a deal, one day I stopped eating meat and dairy and another one I started again. I guess even I could argue that the whole thing was pretty pointless, except I learned a few things, and I found in the week that has past that I have questions. I could argue both sides.

First of all, a diet that consists mostly of produce is expensive. Fake meat isn't cheap either, and you need to eat a lot of it. Nuts and beans will only get you so far. This is a part that I wasn't that great at. Another thing is that you have to be able to cook a lot. Not well necessarily, but you need to at least have the patience at the end of the day to do the prep and then cook the actual meal. Sometimes this works ok, sometimes not. On-the-go food is pretty hard to come by and a lot of on-the-go stuff for vegans is crap. I have to thank Sil's here for being the fastest way to a vegan dog and supplying me with quick junk that's probably still pretty healthy for me. I did not ask if the bun was vegan.

That's another thing I'm a little unresolved about; that there is so much stuff out there that contains egg, or dairy, that doesn't really necessarily have to be in there. I find this troubling. If indeed these things pose some future threat to humans in the long run, be it through existence of free radicals, or growth hormones, or just lots of fat, then WTF? Are they really a threat or no? What about all the claims about soy lately? Is there really a better way to eat?

In some ways, I did like the way this diet makes you think about what you're eating. I looked at nutrition facts all the time. It really narrows the amount of options you have, kind of simplifies decision making. I didn't mind that. I also can say with 100% confidence that eating this way made me feel great. A week and a few buckets of chili later I'm back to the regular problems with my guts. I actually think I may have discovered that I'm lactose intolerant, something that I have yet to come to terms with.

In some ways I kind of miss it. Since quitting, I've looked for ways in my day to eat vegan, the discipline just isn't there. Maybe it's something that I'll move back to. My mother showed me an article, shortly before I caved and ate the grilled cheese, about a woman who went vegan and took several years to do it. Obviously I did not do this, but I think that if I were to again, for real this time, that I would do it in this way.

Meat by Vegetable

So it's been a few weeks, one week to go. By far the most daunting obstacle presented by veganism is the common hangover. Most hangovers require protein to cure. Buttery, cheesy, meaty protein. Oh, how I've pined. Beans and potatoes are a ready enough substitutes, but lack a certain punch. Maybe it's just that this experiment has an expiration date that makes me dwell on such solutions as superior, maybe not.



I have found love for a few vegan specialties; vegan butter is barely distinguishable from its counterpart, and vegan mayo is roughly the same. Admittedly, I don't use mayo often, so if that is your condiment of choice you may notice but I don't. Vegan cream cheese is ok in consistency and texture, but it is less tangy than real cream cheese, a mild minus. I also have grown fond of vegan staples like seitan and tempeh. Seitan is a wheat gluten based protein that walks and talks like the real deal especially in soups, stir-frys, and rice dishes. It's easily seasonable but has soy sauce in it so it's noticeably salty to begin with. Tempeh is a little more difficult to describe. It's a bean based protein that usually comes in a brick. It's very firm and kind of curd-y. I ate this with rice and didn't like it. I put it over a salad and loved it. I also hear that it's good for making faux BLTS (called VLTS) but I have not tried that yet. There is also a lot to be said for the Smart "Meat" or Simply "meat" products. I can't tell you exactly what they're called because I've eaten them all. These guys really know what they're doing. I like their (not) dogs and their "sausage" and "ground beef" products and used them before this experiment to make vegetarian tacos and so on. Texture and taste is great for not being actual meat. I do think the irony of vegetarian products making things that taste like meat for non-meat eaters is ironic and amusing, but you can't beat that it cuts down on cholesterol and other assorted yada yada known for being in most meat.

Some things I've found surprising, however, is that this "diet" has done almost nothing to clear my skin. I've attributed past problems with this to eating lots of cheese and meat which turns up on my skin. Turns out this is not true, sorry Grandma, but it has entirely cured the problems I was having with my guts. I haven't had a stomach ache all month. At this point I would recommend veganism to anyone suffering from food related allergies (except wheat and soy), stomach problems, and people looking to in a sense "clear out their system" after the heavy eating holiday season ect.

Comfort Food at a Premium.

I can tell my caloric intake is suffering when...


Everything I eat is a damn vegetable. This is healthy, this is good, this is just a temporary experiment to see what I would feel like if I were a vegan. Today, however, the heat was out at work and it was shipment day. So all day I was putting away stock to raise my body heat (the store was just over 50 degrees) and now, I would about kill for a hot cheese anything. I even made a preemptive attempt to quell this post-work feeding frenzy by going to the local vegetarian deli and getting a delicious looking tofu stir-fry and a mint chocolate vegan cookie. Then I realized I forgot my wallet at home. I'd walk back, but it's 15 degrees and I have had it with being cold for the day. Now I don't know whether to console myself with peanut butter or wait for the "sausage" to thaw so I can have some with more rice. There is a greater side to this: I'm noticing a habitual trend to eating, especially when it comes to comfort, wherein lies a fruitful dialogue on consumption and habits and stress... but I don't wanna think right now I wanna eat.

Elements of Seasonal Change

Greetings inter-space,

Minor computer failure and some complete updates:

A tip of the hat to Richard P., who saved my computer from the brink of utter destruction. If you have (or had...) AVG anti-virus software, that 2011 update is a doozie. Unless you are a friends with a computer savvy individual or are one yourself, you might as well hit your computer with a car. It's cool though, worlds end all the time. We're still kicking.

Two months have yielded some good tidings, some bad. The holidays are over, that's a relief, now what to do with all this free time? Go back to school! The classes are interesting and the resources are handy. Let freedom ring!

I am now a published journalist! Check out my green living page at Examiner.com All articles are to be posted in a format relevant to living in Milwaukee, so my next challenge is to not sound like I'm advertising all the time.

Here, however, will be the platform for my next experiment: going vegan. Vegans have been assimilated into such groups as idiots, extremists, and PETA, company that I assure everyone I do not keep. Aspects of veganism include not eating any animal products including honey, dairy, meat, and so forth; not wearing any animal by products like leather or fur; and sometimes includes a frowny attitude toward pet ownership. My version, or what I'm paring it down to, does not exclude pets, honey, or leather (I just bought a rad pair of keens for the extensive Wisconsin weather, it's practical, ok?). This is more of a dietary experiment, in honor of my forefathers, and greatly in the key of greater physical harmony. As a disclaimer, I'll mention that I do not begrudge philosophical vegans their distaste for leather, honey, pets, whatever; I know all about the meat and dairy industry. It's sick and wrong and should be regulated by ethical peoples with concern for the well being of all beings. I continue to hope and aspire toward such Utopian times, as is my lot in life, while I enjoy Stilton bleu on rye sesame crackers. Life is too short. But this month, I fast.

So far, I think I'll only really miss cheese, which I put on almost everything; and yogurt, which I use to help regulate intestinal problems; another reason for this move. The vegan butter I had this morning on toast was pretty comparable. Butter to my knowledge isn't one of those things most people can readily discern from one brand to another unless it's margarine, which of course is not butter. We'll see, this is only day one.

Bring me to your leftovers

Oh yeah, and you thought Thanksgiving happened only once a year.



For the record, that's cranberry juice. Yep.

This is the dark part of the year. With Thanksgiving over and the next holiday being mass marketed to death, I find this time of year useful for one thing; hibernation. My cats don't care if I want to stay in bed all day, so why bother? If being a human didn't call for having a social security number and required a paycheck (in part funding my netflix addiction) at this time of year I would be positively bedridden. That's not to say I haven't been getting my fair share of things done. It's mostly just prep work though, and I am in a prep work induced torpor. Maybe it's all the starch and turkey I've been eating.

So, What is the Rainbow Vortex? Well, it's a land carved by a bike trail, near a county highway in Burlington, WI where you leave M&Ms for the faeries and the elemental guardian spirits that dwell there. There are giants, too big to be seen, and ghosts. There are also angels, aliens and sometimes, if you're in a state of rare luck, the devil stops by just to say hey. I know how this sounds. You think "a $25 flimflam fest into the woods so some hippy freaks can blind you with repetative camera flashes and shout at you while you freeze your holy parts off?" Well, skeptic, I say onto you, can you explain this?:

Lies, Decit, and Updates

Another notch in the unfinished category; I absolutely bailed on nanowrimo (or National Novel Writing Month as the gifted call it). It seems forcing myself to do something is no way to get it done. On the other hand, I've managed to post two blogs this month! (The first says it was posted Oct 26, but it was Nov 14, this being the second) Experiments with pace shall continue. I did, however, find an interesting relic yesterday while I was rummaging through my art stuff I found a notebook from about two years ago, full of intriguing ideas. Not much of it makes any real sense and yet, it's probably some of the best stuff I've written so far. Makes me think I should try poetry, except I hate poetry. And painting. But these things are beside the point. Here is a sample from the book:

Heat, buzzing and pulsing with streetlight and insect wings. Luke-warm beer, the unmistakable lake funk of algae and refuse. Surreal darkness beyond lamplight. Out across an unfathomable horizon a series of lights drawn together hovering in the darkness just before the vanishing point on the horizon. Sedate churning of waves. Occasional nocturnal disruptions. A conversation on the edge of not existing. Two characters in search of a setting. A moment outside of the self, reality, perception. Dreamlike. Metadream. The gross thickness of warm bitter beer. Two isolations waving at each other across the void, two people isolated in thought connecting in a dream-scape unobserved. Disconnected. Isolation breeds familiarity. And there's rocks.

Now, if I could only figure out what the hell I'm talking about and why I wrote this I might be able to claw myself out of this hole.

Ready! Set! ...

So, I realize I may have been a little hasty with my last deadline. Alas, I simply may never be able to adhere to a daily commitment aside from bathing but damnit, I've got to try. I did, however, mark some major accomplishments in my absence.

The first was that I entered a time sensitive art contest and coped with actual deadlines for the first time in a while. For this I was able to get up in two galleries. I was immensely stressed but after a while I began to enjoy the pace of my activities. The limitations of my ambitions I'm happy to report are healthy but fade in a matter of days without exercise. I'm devising a new plan for November. I'm very excited to be participating in National Novel Writing Month, and I'm sure to be a whiny incomprehensible b-word for a good thirty days.

The second is that I finally signed up for belly-dancing class. I'm so excited to be taking on another hobby but damn, do I ever have a lot of hobbies stored away in the closet.

Right.

So.

Here's a little overview of what I've been up to so far:

Ended October with a rash of awesome shows; Glasser, a harpie/she cat fronted jungle-indi act that goes well with the band they were opening for: Gayngs. The Minneapolis based indi super group is rumored to be too complex to tour often, which is too bad because they were awesome. This is after hours music for pot-smoking programmer freaks that can get dates to come home but don't stay awake long enough for the pay off. It's good, but the lyrical content describes more loss and longing than actual love-making. All the same, songs like "The Gaudy Side of Town" and "Crystal Rope" are undeniably sexy without crossing the threshold into utter spank rock. Also I developed an instant baby crush on Mike Noyce, who fronted the operation in a dinosaur hoodie. Thanks Mike. Here is my most favorite song: Faded High

Not one week after I also had the very good fortune to catch Murder by Death a longtime favorite of mine. It was an intimate show with a lot of older content and extras that left me satiated, but sad. I'd been anticipating the show for two months. Now what? Samantha Crain opened up, she was definitely awesome and worth a look if you're into acts like The Blow, Florence and the Machine, and oh I dunno, Cat Power if she was less dour?

Finally, the results of the Rainbow Vortex are being sifted and will be on display by the end of the week. Let me end by saying that Burlington, WI is quite a slice of Americana and if you have the impulse you should go check out the SciFi Cafe

Ah haha!

Score is 0 and 2 now. Feeling strong.

Today was a miraculous fall day, yessiree. The sun glasses the lady at the bus station gave me from the lost and found have just enough amber tint to them to really pick up the reds. I'll have to show you some how what it looks like to see things through those glasses, descriptions are paltry when it comes to these kinds of sights. Semi-successfully navigated the day. Saw friends and fed the plant-life. All nods to the affirmative. Tomorrow will be huge.

Love.

Time for Another Infamous Update!

And now for another installment of "Let's do this Shit!"

This life these days is a slow progression of bugs be we're not stopping for your melon rinds, no no. We're on to far bigger buffalo this time. A challenge! I have a friend at work, who has a friend, that paints two pictures a day and then posts them here (wait for link). So let's play that game. Let's do this everyday.

Here's my very opinionated review of a movie I saw recently:

The other day I watched The Horsemen with Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang. Patrick Fugit and Peter Stormare also make (weird) appearances, as does the guy with a foot fetish from 6' Under. It was directed by Jonas Akerlund, who before this directed and worked on a host of music video collections for acts like; Metallica, Madonna, and Blink 182. This movie, for all intents and purposes, looks to be his directorial feature debut, which I don't think is the problem here, not totally anyway. The Director of Photography, is actually pretty good. He (I forget his name and really, this is a waste of time anyway) did an alright job creating atmosphere, (It's winter in Michigan) and had some lovely, though maybe a little canned, exposition shots. The tight close ups worked well with the soundtrack to push how the mind can freeze in moments of extreme tension, however, probably one too many of these moments where time slowed down just to show how overwhelmed Dennis Quaid's character is supposed to be. His character plays a hard-boiled detective type that recently lost his wife and is having trouble connecting with his kids. Classic noir archetype, but this is not a noir movie. This is a tale of horror! Of the psychological kind! With biblical references!! For at the same time that he is having trouble being a father (lo, even communicating in complete sentences), he is also trying to solve a series of murders in which the victim is suspended, bled to death, and then some sicko writes "Come and See" all over the walls.

Interesting side note: I was actually googling the Apocalypse when Netflix suggested I watch this movie. Fucking Algorithms.

The real core problem in this movie is the writing. This is what happens when the first draft goes to print. The script is terrible. Example:

Quaid:
"But Sir! The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse are here to bring HELL on Earth! And it's coming TOMORROW!"

Captain:
"OK! You have 24 hours!"

That is so on the nose it's a booger.

The plot scenarios and devices are obvious and crappy. Here's an example. A woman is found, dead, by one of three daughters. In the scene where we first meet them they are sitting on the couch together crying; two blond White girls in red and one older Chinese girl in black. Yes friends, she is adopted. Something about her just doesn't fit. You'll never guess why. It has nothing to do with her adoptive father either. Seriously. And speaking of weird parent/child relationships, there's the relationship Dennis Quaid has with his sons and how that stupid deal ties in with the climax of the movie.

I'd give it away, but I have some stony scruples about film etiquette.

What the hell, I hope nobody watches this movie.

So finally, Eighty-three minutes into this atom-bomb of a movie, we find out that Dennis Quaid's older son is having a teen-aged meltdown. A real, "I hate you dad!" tantrum and why not? All Dennis Quaid had to do was step into the dumb kid's room and this entire horror show wouldn't exist.

I'm done talking about this. Don't watch this movie.

play it again, Sam

So I lost one of my jobs. Circumstantial yet, disappointing. I thought I had a free pass to carry on my existence, selling things to people as a means of procuring my lifetimes supply of comfy, semi-worn couches and spacious 2-3 bedroom units with hardly any water damage and only a few in house pests (but appliances are included!). This has proven to be not so. Not only have a lost one peddling job, I've found it to be in my most dearest and fervent interest to be doubly enthusiastic about my first job, which holds its charm only so long. This is bad. Horrible in fact. I was getting used to the idea of becoming lazy, fat maybe. I stopped going to the gym because I was just going to work more and look great doing it. I figured that the spider-veins could tell me much about when it was time to stop moving and sit down to my netflix queue and while away the hours in between getting off work and having to go back. How suddenly disappointing. What an unforeseen slap in the face. Now I find myself plucking at the gentle sting as a stranger to these climates might dab at a water droplet that has just marked his or her's first introduction to snow, and posed an inaugural question: "what is this?". It may be so that I am not made for talking. I am an anxious speaker and a careless listener, but this has not always been the case. I have been crafted that way to make the interested buyer agree with me. This product is useful. It will help you become what you've been wanting to become. This will make you a better person for buying it. These ideas have been contrary to my experiences. Experience is almost always a better purchase. Items are made to be destroyed whether it be by consumption, wear, ill-fated accidents, or the un/just hands of fate. It will not make any difference if you have it or not because at some point of time in the future (or past) you will have had it and it will be gone or you will never have had it and never known the difference anyway.
So there. It is said. I have one job less and a few days more to spend less money on things I would have ignored if I had the time to look in to them anyway. A less superstitious person would be at a Lark's envy to tell you the things they would and will or maybe won't do but I feel strongly that turning points are to be studied as well as tested before a destination is sorted out. Most times you find that your first impulse is correct, you just had to conquer doubt before proceeding.

Save more water goddamn it.

One of the hands down most agreed upon places to have awesome ideas is in the shower. I was thinking about this between my washing and rinsing routines, feeling my muscles relaxing in the hot spray from the shower; why doesn't somebody invent a better shower head? Furthermore, why don't all shower heads come with a switch at the top to pause your shower and not lose that perfect temp you wasted so much water finding? Some shower heads have this, but they're usually the sucky ones that some jerkoff put a watersaver disk into that makes sure your shower is aggravatingly slow. Therefore, I think the best solution to this would be a mist setting on all shower heads. Think of the possibilities: Ten minutes into your shower, you done splashing around and ready to get down to the real business of bathing. Pausing the shower means essentially turning off the water and risking getting cold. Nobody except the indulgently challenged likes being cold in the shower so instead, what if there were a mist option? Hot mist would cascade upon you while you wash your hair, shave yourself, and perform all other tasks necessary to being in a quiet room where for forty damn minutes nobody can bother you.

Somebody should pay me for this shit.

The Shits Just Keep on Coming

The other day, unbeknown to me, I stepped in a huge pile of dog shit. I walked over to the smiling happy couple with their three giant hairy dogs and politely made conversation while I petted the dogs and then made my way home. I live close enough to work to walk and usually the little bit of exercise I get on the way helps me decompress before I get home. Lately I've been spending my walks trying to hatch different plans to motivate myself back into the working world. At present I am a shop girl at a retail store. I wear an apron and have been classically conditioned to greet anyone at the sound of the bell. Most of the day I think about Socrates in his prison cell and at lunch I read Dante's Inferno. It's not so bad as all that, at least I have a job. But in the grand scheme of things, if anyone asked me what I was planning on doing after college I don't think I would have ever planned on responding with a sigh and a contempt filled 'nothing'. I don't think I've even taken a picture since July and I'm beginning to wonder what the hell I'm waiting for. When did it get so difficult to do what I'm supposed to love doing so much it should be compulsive? When was art ever a forceful activity? And when in the fuck did I start putting off writing until the goddamn dishes were done?

I get home, pull off my shoes and turn on the news, it at least makes me feel better to know something. The couch is saggy and comfortable, but after standing for only seven hours I have enough energy to stretch. I move my shoes and put my head in their place so that I can push my legs against the wall and I notice the glaring unmistakable stench of dog shit. My shoes, which are so close to my head that their laces are touching my hair, are covered with dog shit. Both of them.

Shit.

Waiting for my ship...

Things not to do:

You should probably not be a student in a foreign country unless you are absolutely sure of the facilities and faculties of those in charge. As it stands, I spend half my time either waiting for instruction or facilities, like a computer, or a printer, or some other piece of frustrating, unreliable technology.

I know I'm not the only one. As I'm writing I'm watching my instructor hurry around the room trying to help six different people at once while also trying to clean the only good ink roller, and explaining over and over again how to make solar and lithography plates. He didn't know what he was getting into, signing up for this, and neither did I.

I'd try to come up with someone to blame, but around here if something goes wrong or is inconvenient the general consensus is that it's supposed to be that way.

It's supposed to be that way.

...

Respectful to toward all who prescribe to some sort of organized religion, I am one who leaves very little up to fate. Death sure, even love when it hurts is better left in the capable hands of time. But school supplies?? Fuck no.

Other than that, and a small bout of insecurity driven depression, this has been one of the most provoking experiences I have ever had. Not only am I in another country, sampling all the goodness my meager pocket can manage, I am on the cusp of a new phase in my life. The time I've had here perusing the architecture and eating gelato has given me the opportunity to sort out some very important guidelines that should pull me through the next year or so. At least, that is the hope.

In any case,

Here's to it and to it again. If you don't get to it when you come to it, then you won't get to it. So here's to it, and to it again.

Killing mosquitoes

So I'm trying to be less of a failure. Here is an example of that. I made this in photoshop, tomorrow I'll shoot solar plates and make a print with ink and paper. I like this; photography made out of ink and paper. It speaks to me. Yeah.



Anyway, Italy is hot and one thing I can't do here is sleep. It is currently 1am and my roommates and I are camped out around the dinner table telling stories from behind our computers. Tomorrow I'll get back to it. I should really go to bed, sometime.

The House of the Rising Sun

What have I learned so far...

It's hard to make art without communication +

I am painfully but unabashedly an English speaking American +

I am not an artist without words which means visually, I'm shit =

I am a shitty American artist

Frottage

N: a technique in the visual arts of obtaining textural effects or images by rubbing lead, chalk, charcoal, etc., over paper laid on a granular or relief-like surface.

AKA, not the middle school version of the definition.

In an effort to get myself back on track with this printmaking gig, I decided to go back to basics and follow my instincts, my mentor would be proud. I've been following this street artist named David Baptist Chirot for a minute now and recently had the pleasure of making his acquaintance in my home-base. He's an interesting sort, you can find his blog here:

Anyway,

he uses several different processes to accomplish his pieces, including making prints using a variety of stamp techniques and rubbings. I dig this low tech method, as I dig all low tech methods and I decided to give it a try.

I chose a variety of infrastructure emblems (they're so cool here!) and juxtaposed them against one another with a little momento mori just to keep perspective.

This is just the original collage, the real deal will be in print later today:


Cheers and beers to the American way, I'm going to visit a cemetery today.

Results to follow...

FLORENTINIAN STREET ART

I promised myself I'd get better at this. Good thing I'm more patient than I am active, I guess.

Here I am in lovely Firenze, Italy, spending the month of July (Luglio) getting fat and taking an art class. I'm determined to make the most of it. Somehow I ended up in a photo printmaking class, when I know nothing about printmaking. I can do photo fine, but the facilities here are kind of hard to access and get around and well, I'm just not a printmaker, not in this sense.

Anyway, I'm playing with this printmaking stuff. It's ok on the surface, I just lack the finesse and I can tell the instructor is getting as frustrated with me as I am with this class. I intend to make some darkroom prints, tracing certain elements of those images onto polyplates and making collages. Sounds rad, but so did the last idea I had and that might as well be at the bottom of the River Arno.

Current score is: Printmaking 3, Me 0

Upside of it all is that I'm taking way more pictures and that always makes me happy, even if I can't use them. This city is full of art. Every kind of art. Check this out:



This kind of thing is illegal where I come from (for some reason). Sorry for the blur, one day I'll either be a better or artist, or start selling insurance.

Engagement with the Real

In Simulations and Simulacra, essayist Jean Baudrillard engages in a discourse in what it means to be part of reality today. He argues that we as a society are in essence experiencing the after effects of reality. He terms this the experience of hyper reality. “It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it.” For film 319 I took an in depth look at Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster, Jurassic Park, and Gordon Douglas’s 1954 film Them and compared these two movie greats in terms of how each presented a disrupted reality and how the directors succeeded in conveying that reality.
In Jurassic Park, genetically engineered dinosaurs escape a specifically designed containment facility during a power outage and additionally are discovered to be breeding outside of the engineer’s knowledge though previously believed to be strictly female; The opening statement itself breaths of a simulation of another reality for several reasons. First of all, humans and dinosaurs obviously would never inhabit the same location, let alone time period, (whether be it over competition for resources or being a food source). These two species were not meant to co-exist.
“The world is changing so fast, and we're all running to catch up. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but look. Dinosaurs and man... two species separated by 65 million years of evolution, have suddenly been thrown into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea of what to expect?”
Secondly, the majority of the film takes place on an island in the Caribbean, already removed from general society. The island setting is hyperreal in its essence for being so removed and often inhabiting species not found elsewhere, as is the case in Jurassic Park. Additionally, there’s a storm on the way, and Dennis Nedry happens to be on a mission this night to steal precious embryos from the genetics complex. Both of these factors contribute to the remainder of the film to ‘not of your normal everyday’ variety. Combining these factors results in the charging of a reality or situation that would not otherwise exist.
In reality, people only dig up dinosaurs. Doctors Ellie Sattler and Allen Grant are some such types and they are the bridge between the real world, and the simulated world of Jurassic Park. John Hammond lives on the other side; he inhabits a world where dinosaurs can exist. Doctor Ian Malcolm, on the other hand, is important in pointing out this bridge and the paradox it presents: two realities may not exist at the same time if the factors within them are volatile toward each other. This film further contextualizes simulation in a monster movie context by removing the monsters and bringing society to them. Society becomes part of the hyperreal by consenting to be part of the experiment, i.e.: John Hammond’s control group.
Them on the other hand, introduces society to the hyperreality of its experiments. In this film, giant radio-active ants infiltrate the lower southwestern states causing havoc and with the military down there while everyone involved tries to keep things a hushed up as possible. The ants, said to be abominations of nature, are thought to be the result of nuclear testing that occurred in the area around 1945. Since Them takes place nearly ten years later, the creatures would be the manifestation of mutations in earlier generations of its species. As Dr. Medford Sr. proclaims: “We may be witnessing a Biblical prophecy come true - 'And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation and the beasts will reign over the earth.'” Nuclear testing was still a nascent science at this point; these people had no idea what they were dealing with.
In this film, the southwest already brings to mind another reality due to its proximity to Hollywood and the movie industry in general. In Simulations and Simulacra, Baudrillard makes a point of indicating that Anaheim CA, also prescribes to this hyperreal recognition by being the birthplace of Disneyland, the granddaddy of all romantic pastiches. The threat of tampering with nuclear elements was new to the public’s conscious, adding to the sense of altered reality. Fear of this unknown was a key element in this time period and the Cold War was going on ten years, which additionally contributed to the sensitivity the nation conveyed in the film would have to its new monstrous enemy. Finally, the presence of women in male roles is conveyed in this film. At this time in history, many male dominated work places were beginning to take on or recognize women in their fields. This strange new development, in addition to the paranoia many men suffered in response to the perceived threat nuclear sickness posed to their reproductive systems, also contributed to the altered state of this reality.

Society in Them has created the hyperreal by engaging in nuclear testing, a field many people at the time knew nothing about. The public then becomes frightened by the results of this reality and searches desperately for a way back to the way things were. These fears are quelled by the good old fashion victory of American military forces over the dangerous ants.
Both of these films were state of the art in their time with regards to special effects. As Telotte writes in his essay on special effects, the arrival of technology that could effectively bring to life things we had just before only imagined was a milestone for the science fiction film.
“The development of special effects has lately been crucial to the form’s development. Although trick photography and image manipulation have always been central to cinema’s fantastic vision- from Melies editing tricks in A Trip to the Moon (1902), to the stop motion animation of The Lost World (1925) to the computer controlled linkage of models and cameras in Star Wars (1977) to the creation of convincing digital dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, computer generated imagery, CGI, is a relatively recent yet also quickly dominant influence on the science fiction film.” (Telotte pg 252)
Curiously enough, The Lost World is one of the primary inspirations for Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Them too dealt with special effects and was noted for its large animatronic versions of the monstrous ants.
Baudrillard say that “the real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models…” Nowhere is this more true to life than in the artifices of film. Designers and model makers on the sets of Them and Jurassic Park created sensational representations of the creature they were desired to make and in doing so, became part of the hyperreal themselves.
“It no longer has to be relational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is hyperreal.” (Baudrillard pg 170)
Spielberg was one of the forerunners of this age to push on digital technology to help blur the lines differentiating reality from its mirror. These images that skate on light and glass are pastiches, variations of our own histories and experiences. Once these creations meet the light they exist in a reality of their own. A reality we engage in most often with the push of a button.

Bibliography:
Simulacra and Simulation, translated by SF Glaser, J Baudrillard - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994
Telotte, J.P. A Trajectory of the American Science Fiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Pages 116-118
Jurassic Park, 1993, Steven Spielberg
Them, 1954, Gordon Douglas