Conceptual Contextualization, Tumblr/Blogger Sync,

(One of my goals this year, my last year of grad school, is to streamline my internet presence. I have been assigned to write 2 Tumblr posts a week for my practicum, so I'm going to start making a copy of the blogs I do on Tumblr and copy them into Blogger. That way I'll have everything in one place at some point. I prefer Blogger's format, ability to save posts and ability to embed video in blog posts anyway. It is a little complicated to make copies, but I think in the long run it will be worth it, if I ever get followers. Because of the vast amount of information I process every day, I need to start strategizing how I research, how I talk about it, how I organize it and how it relates to the work that I do. The practicum is organized into 4 parts: Tools, techniques and materials; precedents; art, craft and design theory; and related disciplines. )

I do a lot of research, in a loose sense of the word. To an artist everything is research. Looking out the window at the way the clouds move behind the trees is research. Looking at another person's art is research. I am also innately curious and almost obsessed with earth sciences and astronomy from a layperson's perspective. On top of that, I'm very interested in diet, exercise, the human body, health, natural medicine and "primal" eating and lifestyle.

(An example of how I aspire to eat. I nicknamed it the "Privileged American diet", because it's expensive and based on a society of plenty. But I'm a privileged American and my doctor told me to eat this way to get my blood sugar down. It's not my fault sugar and grain are the cheapest sources of calories.)

Out of necessity, I began to research the "barefoot running" fad after I discovered my feet don't hurt as much when I am barefoot, and I started making my own shoes because the fad is new enough that the shoes are all expensive and I can't find what I need. I am interested in homesteading skills like food preservation, gardening, survival skills and general DIY. I'm incredibly fascinated by dystopian fiction and the science, sociology, and cultural consciousness that inspire it. I think about ancient mythology and how it relates to our lives, how we as humans use archetypes, the kinds of stories that are told throughout human history and the similarities in the way the stories are told. My background, personality, personal history, and the environment I live in are all intrinsically tied to what I do and how. I probably spend about 10 hours a week absorbing information that I can definitively call research and cite. This ranges from watching science documentaries while I go to sleep (they help me sleep, that's probably worth it's own blog post) to listening to audiobooks while I work in the studio.

(Viking turnshoes and one of many tutorials on how to make them. ) 

I have several avenues of research that I'm looking at. First, the changes in the world around me on a global scale that inspire numerous fictional stories, debates, emotional responses, documentaries and scientific inquiries. Climate change, resource management, war, ecological destruction and cultural shifts all work together in a web of cause and effect. Second, storytelling itself as a powerful medium of looking at what is happening in the world and translating it into something relatable, using archetypes, myth-telling, folklore, etc. Third, the way I tell these stories using my artistic abilities: All kinds of storytelling will be explored in my research, but they will likely converge as some kind of hands on, physical medium like paint or puppets that are animated in some way. Fourth, I'm interested in music videos and similar kinds of abstracted filmic storytelling connected to the poetic medium of music. I'm interested in how to translate a song into a short film and the precedents of doing so. My final project will either be an animated short film, an animated webcomic, an installation including animation, or an animated music video. I'm open to performative methods of storytelling as well. All my animations will be created using at least mostly physical, handmade techniques such as stop motion puppet animation, paint or paper. If I find a band, my theme will depend entirely on the song and the desires of the band.

(earth 2100, a sensationalist ABC documentary about a worst case scenario of what could happen to our world if we don't make some changes as a species. Includes badly flash animated but aesthetically pleasing fictional story to illustrate the points they make. I found it incredibly compelling even though it was clearly sensational and over the top.) 

Most of the research I do, I would do whether I was in school or not, but I'm approaching it differently now. I'll be analyzing what I look at in a cultural as well as personal context, I'll be organizing my research into categories, and of course I'll be keeping a bibliography and keeping track of who, what, when, where, why and how of what I research. My categories will include general animation; storytelling and artistic techniques; music video; film theory; mythology; dystopian, apocalyptic, utopian and futuristic fiction and nonfiction; and personal context. I will also be looking at the psychology, philosophy and sociology behind these things, if possible.

(After the End: Representations of Post Apocalypse by James Berger. I haven't started reading it yet.) 

As an artist in an academic institution, I have to do this kind of research,. However it is really important to keep in mind that I'm not a sociologist, a scientist, a psychologist, a philosopher or an anthropologist, even though I will be doing research in all of these fields. People get PhD's in each those fields. It would be impossible to uphold the standards of each one of them. It's not my responsibility to keep track of the peer reviewed proof behind them, do statistical analyses, do my own real scientific research, etc. I'm merely translating what I experience into something poetic and learning how to talk about it. I'm learning what makes me tick and what makes my audience tick. I'm learning who my audience is and what it is I want to share with them.

Throughout my blog, I embed links within the text for context (they look like this). It is the reader's responsibility to click on them, because I use them in lieu of a description. I'm already writing twice as many words as I'm required to, if not more. I will also try to cite the most important sources in formal bibliographic form at the bottom of my posts from now on.

Mostly, I need to remember the reason behind the impetus to study art and design in the first place. To take such a risk as to go deeply in debt to study a subject that has no economic security in an economic downturn, I have to have a really strong reason. These reasons are not rational at all, and though I will attempt to make my research rational, the work I do will not be based on logic or rationality. As many artists, I have an intense drive to create. So intense, I'm willing to risk my own financial security despite knowing what financial insecurity looks like. I grew up with nothing. I've been hungry and homeless, I've struggled through low wage jobs, family dysfunction and illness all at the same time. I've been through hell, and I know that my current life is not guaranteed. I'm risking the possibility of falling back into that desperate world, of working low wage office jobs to get by just so I can get better at my art. It's a huge risk, and I've known it all my life. But the impetus to do this is so intense, I feel that I have no choice. It is what gives my life meaning, without which there is no point.

Therefore, what I do as an artist HAS to be authentic, otherwise I'm doing this all for nothing. Why go through all of this only to do something that I don't believe in? Why risk everything only to lose sight of why I'm doing this in the first place? I'm doing art so that I can make use of these things I'm compelled to do on an intuitive level. I was raised to trust my instincts, and when I don't, I've always regretted it. So the inspiration for all my artwork, whether I'm working for a client or not, will be guided by this instinct. It's not conceptual thought that I work from, it's gut feeling, because gut feeling is what I'm trying to process and portray. I can ask myself why I have an instinct, use it as a point of inquiry, follow it until it no longer serves it's purpose and find another path, but I have to follow the original intuition to get there.