345 Final Project

Untitled.

Imagine waking up one morning, your mind full of the ideas that you will accomplish in the day. You head down to see your parents who greet you with the warmest of hugs and salutations. Your father then leaves to run errands, and you stay home with your mom to help with chores, or whatever she may need help with. Later in the day you hear menacing sounds of machine guns rumbling through your home, and then a sudden boom of hundreds of tons of TNT being dropped into your city, before you know it, you are waking up in a bomb shelter, confused as to what happened, who was involved and if the rest of your family is okay. When you are finally allowed to go back to the city, it not longer exists. It is a familiar area, but there are no buildings, no people, just rubble, and silence.
For this project I chose to do a Minecraft machinima to display a narrative of a family who is having a 'normal' morning, and by the end of the day, their lives are completely turned around and the most tragic and devastating of events has occurred: their city has been attacked by terror bombing. The previous story, albeit sad, may have just been a story to the general audience. Though for many people was a real life occurrence. An occurrence of the past as well as events that still happen today. This video was modeled after the bombing of Guernika. It was a Monday when it happened, which is considered Market Day, in which many people went into town to do their shopping. The Spanish, and Germans chose this day to terror bomb a city that had nothing to do with them, because there was a large population of people in the middle of town that could be annihilated for no specific reason to them. They also attacked hospitals, train stations, and armories so there was no way to combat back, or escape. In the end, the people of Guernika were confused because there was no reason for them to be attacked, which there was not. Terror bombing very often is just aimed at civilians which have nothing to do with the attackers. Those who survived had to continue living their lives, even though their loved ones has disappeared in the rubble and devastation.
I tried to show the confusion between the mother and daughter when they arrived and their father, and husband was nowhere to be found. Though, I was not only trying to convey devastation, my main purpose in this project was to take something that was innocent, and usually enjoyable (Minecraft), and make it seem real by changing the tone and mood of the atmosphere. Also, Minecraft is not usually an incredibly personal software or game for most audiences, making my main idea. Furthermore, I wanted to bring the idea of the distance between our understanding of events that occurred. As people in 2014, almost 2015, when we learn about events that happened in the passed such as the bombing of Guernika, or The Holocaust, it is almost a story to us. We know that it happened, but there is no connection to it, making it increasingly difficult to understand. A person must do a good amount of research on something, hear first hand experiences, and think about the events to feel an immense of emotion toward these circumstances.
Admittedly, this distance is incredibly frustrating when one wants to truly understand past events, or even events that are occurring now, but the distance is too far to feel a connection. Though, I feel that it is important to continue learning about these things, and study them in order to prevent issues in the future.

Triptych

Combined: https://vimeo.com/109792219

Left: http://youtu.be/7l1c2q0JQ9Y

Middle: https://vimeo.com/109794704

Right: https://vimeo.com/109792220

Artist Statement:

I wanted to focus on the concept of time and how things can happen very quickly, and get very jumbled and messed up rather quickly.With this, I decided to use the clocks as an inspiration for time, and I had the readers read the Aesop Fable of the Laborer and the Nightingale, which has the moral of not to sorrow or worry about things that are gone forever. Furthermore, I made the audio cut out at places that were uncomfortable, as time itself is very uncomfortable. Also, from the very short transition from color to black and white suggests at how fast things can change. I chose to not have the readers fully in view, because I didn't want them to be distracting from the clocks behind them. I also added the sounds to make it seem more eerie and creepy almost. I also wanted to keep it short for the reason of things that change quickly.

Artists Instrument:

Most of the artistic choice I chose are developed from the musician in me. I wanted to make something tonal with rubber bands due to the love I have for the sound rubber bands make. I chose to use a hollow wooden box that could act as a resonance chamber that could make the tones ring longer. As for the outside of the box, there really is no artistic choice for any of it. I wanted to focus on the rubber bands.

Played 2-D Score:

The score I played looked much like a constellation, with many dots and connecting lines. I looked at the nature of my instrument, and decided to use the bottom of the instrument as a drum and the tones of the rubber bands for the lines. I looked at the descending lines and tried to descend in the tones of the instrument. I tried to leave a lot of space for the empty parts in the paper as well. However, I got nervous, and lost my place through the middle, but I still tried to maintain the main ideas.

[Photo Pending of 2-D Score Made]
Made 2-D Score:

 I made the score 16x24" in size because I wanted it to seem kind of heavy. I also included dots because I wanted them to be hits. I also made them pretty equally spread apart to signify that they should be hit at a constant time. And the larger the dot, the heavier the hit. Eventually down the score there was a huge cluster of color and black, with this I wanted it to be more up to perception, but I obviously wanted the person playing it to go crazy on their instrument. At the bottom it finally lead to a wave effect. With this, I wanted the player to play very calmly and eventually fade out.