Weez Blog

Kinda like my Whoaaa! After I wrote it I thought to try to discuss what it was I like so much. I wrote a bunch of different sentences but none of them explained what it was about the piece that moved me.

I gave it a lot of thought even after I posted that reply. It didn't hit me until just now, reading this current post, why it was I could not describe what I wanted to. I didn't have the language - the jargon - the terms you mentioned that you would have liked to have seen discussed instead of "effing awsome".

And I suppose that is why you don't get the feedback you want. The majority of the population has not received education (formal or otherwise) in the very terms you mention - visual iconography, implied meanings and mystery, the subjective and the form and the media, reference to the visual language and history within which we are immersed.

You said, "I speak an alien language."

And that is precisely the point. It is foreign to most of the people who see the work you do for public consumption. We just don't have the words you want to hear.

But that doesn't mean that the work is not significant to us on a level other than the verbal/intellectual. When I watch something and say, "Whoaaa!", that is an emotional reaction. I would hazard a guess that effing awesome is the same thing.

Some people are going to be struck at the emotional level by your work and just leave it at that. Others who may have education similar to yours in the visual arts may have the reactions you would like to hear.

Hopefully, during the lifetime of the piece on the website, someone with enough vocabulary will praise you with the words you would like to hear.

In the meantime, Whoaaa! and effing awesome may be the best most of the viewers can do - and it certainly is a level above, "That is a piece of shit!"

Perhaps a forum wherein visual artists lurk would be a great place to submit a link to the piece and receive the kind of critical thought you seek.

Confusion says, "Do not seek white truffles in the package of sliced mushroom pieces at Wegmans."

Thanks, -g-

Your comment helps a lot. (Feeling funk evaporate as I type...)

Elouise,

Your entry here prompted reflection that helped inform a thread about writing to and writing in a given medium. Chuck's entry began as a meditiation on duration and television.

quote>
On a tangent, you might want to take a look at Elouise's blog entry on "praise".
http://www.rit.edu/~eroics/MT/WeezBlog/archives/000346.html
There is there a theme about fluency and the degree to which a critical language for talking about multimedia is not terribly wide spread. That triangulation you are looking for may reside in language expressed in a given medium and expressed about in another medium about a given medium (aka as expertise of the appreciators). The existence of such languages surely affects the temporality of the experience.
<quote

http://chutry.wordherders.net/archives/000896.html#1487

Weez - The intro is phenomenal! The images, text and music are exciting, intriging and just make me want to dance! The visuals echo the energy of the music in a powerful, enticing way. The powerful simplicity of the chartreuse text sandwiched with the dancers images and the 'dance' text w/ their variations of coloring are a great. It's very euro.

I hear what you're saying about metaphor, visual iconography, syncopation, etc. As a visual artist, also, I work a lot w/ visual/textual puns. Some folks get it, some don't. If they don't, hopefully the image/s stick somewhere within their consciousnes anyways, and then someday -poof!- it clicks with some newly inputed info.

We have the ability to see a larger picture, to create a context within which to frame it and a set of skills with which to implement it all into a context for the public eye. This is exactly why we are the artists, and the teachers.

We have unique abilities with information, language and vision. And the roll of creatives culturally and historically is to take those abilities and put that info into an accessible form. Even if the nuances are missed, the images get tossed into the pond of public consumption and a ripple is initiated. And making that ripple is why we do what we do.

I'm not a techno gal, but I am a "(#1)it's gotta look great and (#2) its gotta function well" kinda gal, so if you just want to kick around the artistic/visual stuff just holler!

Phoenix

Oh, you wanted a more artsey critique? ok. Well I'm not so into that green circle. It's a good element, but the green is too intense and the circles are too sharp. Could you do a little radial blur on it to make the motion more intense? Also it would blend in better with your other image. It seems to dominate everything else so I don't pay so much attention to your other images and text.

Also all the photographs seem to have a black box around them. Normally this isn't a problem, but there are times near the end where the box overlaps other photographs and this just looks a bit odd to me.

I really like the flow of the piece though. You images generally seem to sink up well with the audio.

Thanks Phoenix.

And you too Timmy. Despite your disclaimer, this is solid and specific feedback. You do have an eye, the language to explain what you see and definite notions of quality and what would make something better or worse. That's it.

That's what I'm looking for, critical discussion. While I love discussons like Phoenix's (and we go elsewere), what you said gives me hope that people aren't passive viewers- that they're thinking about the media they consume.

I've thought about this for a while and completely agree with the Alien Language idea.

I liken this to a blog found at livejournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mylastsigh

The photographer, Bruce Barone, takes and posts some wonderful images. He has a great eye and the ability to convey a lot with his images.

Lots of people (largely within the LJ community) check out his blog on a regular basis. Many leave responses and Bruce always responds to each and every person who comments on his images. Clearly his blogsite takes up a great deal of his time.

What gets me about all of this, however, is the fact that most of the feedback that he gets is very surface stuff. Facile, even. While "This made me feel happy" is certainly a valid statement, it seems to me that as an artist you want to hear WHY it made that person feel happy. What is it about the image that evoked that feeling? Was it the color? The lighting? The angle? The way the lines worked together or apart?

My feedback to his images is always fairly precise. I know something about photography, about images and about composition and design. I may well have a better vocabulary with which to express my appreciation for his images and the gifts that he offers an anonymous public who checks out his blogsite. If so, then I'm hoping that my more specific appreciations are read by others and may serve to educate them in understanding the visual image better.

Years ago when I was teaching I developed a course on Media Literacy. My unapologetic goal was to change 5th grader's minds on The Brightly Colored Pleasure Box known as Television. I did so by giving them an understanding of what television was, why it existed and why it wanted them to watch. By giving them an understanding, I also gave them the language to express themselves in different ways.

Prior to that class, most of the kids didn't have a concept of television beyond it's role as The Brightly Colored Pleasure Box. My guess is that most younger people viewing the web don't see it as anything other than The Brightly Colored Pleasure Box's cousin.

Try presenting a series of web pages/flash animations to your Into to HTML classes at the beginning and the end of the semister and have them describe/critique them. Then let them pass it on.

F*ckin' Awesome, indeed.

...

The why is important to me.

Pleasure, stimulus...sometimes it is fine - good- to just be and give oneself up to an experience. I'm over the need for feedback of this particular thing and on to that notion of awareness as to how we are manipulated by media...for good or ill.

My students are consumers (we all are) of stimulus. Many of them aren't aware of how media manipulates their emotional states. 5th grade? earlier?

I ask my seven year old if that toy really is the greatest thing that the commercial says it is? He's slowly getting it...

Actually, I did the same Media Literacy class with a smaller group of 2nd graders one year. They were an exceptional group and completely got it.

I always started with a two-class review of a former teacher, Doug Gomery's scholarly definition of Television:

"Television is an Industry whose primary goal is to maximize profits given the restraints of history and technology."

After two classes not only could they recite it (who cares) but they understood it.

From there I started a de-construction of commercials. Mix some pop culture history, mythology, and long-winded rants with an acknowldegement of Fear, Humor and Sugar-addiction, various stories about my son growing up as a TV and Sugar addict (payback is truly a b*tch) and a videotape of commericals and a remote control go to through them frame by frame and you get the idea.

The first commercial I'd do was for an old video game cheat software package. After the Mythological deconstruction of the commerical I'd always ask kids if any of them had bought it. Typically several had. I then asked them if it lived up to their expectations. Most had very disappointing stories to tell. That made the notion of "television is lying to you" an easier sell with the kids.

One of the best moments in my teaching career came at the beginning of my second year. Several sets of parents came in wanting to meet me and ask what I'd done to their kids. The kids were no longer as interested in TV as they had been and they thought it was wonderful.

...

hey, nice site, perhaps youd like to check out mine: Acyclovir

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.