Concerned Citizen

Artist Statement

I was fortunate to show up in Provo to find the man in the video as my roommate.  It amazed me how great of a guy her is and how busy he always was.  I wasn't your normal busy of chasing girls and watching football games though, he is the vice president of a few clubs on campus (Neurology, Kennedy Center Study Abroad to name a few), he volunteers at the hospital weekly, hosts multi-cultural dinners for friends and others non-United Statesians he meets to join in.  It really blew my mind how much he did.  Then a couple semesters after living together and him having backpacked around South America for 6 months, he decided to start a non-profit organization.

As our piece indicates, Taylor Ottesen helps young people in India pay for education in order to further their careers and thereby help them to provide for their families and escape the clutches of extreme poverty and hardship.  The biggest reason we wanted to feature Taylor is that he is a college-aged young adult that figured out a way to help other people on the other side of the world after one simple act of kindness.  Because most of us don't have the money necessary to travel to India to have a similar experience, we wanted to show that experience to other people to hopefully motivate them to look for ways to be more concerned citizens, not necessarily with Taylor's foundation KVM, but even in their own communities.

Reflecting on the videos we saw in class, we wanted to show parts of these destitute Indian villages to help those that view this video get an idea of what these people's lives are like.  We show harsh conditions, but we also show smiling people.  Taylor showed us many photos of himself with the natives who look happy and content, even amid hardship.  While the video about porch-sitting didn't show neighborhoods quite as destitute as these, it does reflect a similar sense of community.  Just like the people featured in that video, Taylor has helped people and accomplished much, even though it may not seem like much to a citizen of the United States looking from the outside in.

While considering our reading from the last week and the differences between Storyland and Dataland, we feel like what Taylor is doing is combining the two ideas to make considerable contributions to a community.  Not only do we consider the Storyland aspect of the satisfaction of helping people and inspiring others to action by getting a glimpse into their lives, but we also get an idea of a Dataland aspect of his plan because he lets us know exactly how much we can help and how little we have to do to do it.  His story motivates and inspires us, makes us want to believe that even small acts of charity can help people, and he gives us a concrete and physical plan to do it.

Protest Poster

Artist Statement

Supreme Court Justice, Dallin H. Oaks, in February of 1992 gave a discourse on how the constitution of the United States is divinely inspired.  It is a base of organization, order, and balance which with time, is added to or adjusted with new revelation as are the scriptures.  This is an idea that is not initially common throughout most of America, however.   Whether one believes it is inspired or not, there always seems to be a reverence for its greatness nonetheless.  Even so that a politician would never straightly say that he is against it and when governing, he is always held in check by it.  New laws and old laws are constantly contrasted with the writings of the constitution and, if not congruent, are dismissed without further opinion sharing of man.  Likewise, many can argue that holy scriptures play a similar role in the life of the religious individual and family. 

Now, outside of the pattern of the two inspired texts being displayed as guides and bounds for government and its constituents, there is another demonstration of how church IS state in this poster as well, which is actually the greater part of the issue I wish to engage.  It is that of the juxtaposition in the images of the government and the family.  Many articles have been written about the family unit being basic unit of government.  An English writer, Charles Caleb Colton in fact states, “The family is the most basic unit of government.  As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.”  Likewise, in an blog essay by Dr. Clark Jensen he further addresses that “no matter what the teacher does, no matter what the school system does, no matter what the state and federal government, if the family is weak, the child will struggle to a much greater degree than if the family support system is solid” showing that the family unit, in the end, has a greater effect on the nation than a couple politicians do.  Should the definition of America be placed in the few politicians that represent it or the millions of families that comprise its populace?  Now, considering that most of those families are God-fearing, is there really separation of church and state.

This poster ends up being a display that 1-God is guiding America through the inspired texts upon which it is based 2-No ruling will necessarily rule out that America has actual separation of church and state and 3-families should realize their potential still be God fearing though it may be against the words of a small number of government officials.

Webspinna Reflection

The webspinna was a lot more difficult than imagined it was going to be.  I am one who beat boxes and can loop noises to music like nobody's business so I thought that this would be a piece of cake.  What surprised me though was the need to find only clips that related to my character and then to make sure they had the right volume to be played simultaneously one with another.

Josh and I wanted to choose a subject that would be very easy to represent and thus we chose the blatant enemies of light and dark.  At the time it sounded like it was going to be a piece of cake but then once I started looking for sounds, all of the preconceived sounds in my mind ended up seeming like they would go better with dark then with light.  I first began to look at figures of truth and wisdom from Gandalf, Yoda, and Dumbledore.  They only had some lame quotes and I wanted my clips to each be clearly about doing good or making right choices rather than just having any phrase by the person and because it was said by that person of light, it was fine.  Quickly, Morgan Freeman also popped into my mind and I remembered a song by B.O.B. that was a narration of Morgan Freeman in it in which he talks about the war between light and darkness and if it will ever be one.  I was very excited for this epic piece of audible joy but then realized it could go with both of our topics so I talked with Josh and we said we would use it as our intro piece.  He then shared a song by Fall Out Boy with me that spoke mostly of darkness and so he wanted to use it but then the chorus spoke of light.  We talked and figured that we could play the different parts of the song one after another and I would be "fighting him with his own medicine."  We thought we were pretty clever.

Now that we had a little direction of where to go with our clips, it was battle time. I found difficulty in adjusting the volume of YouTube videos while live and they would be too loud for my other sounds to be heard in the mix.  That would have been nice to consider and practice beforehand but Josh and I were super busy and had no time to consult and practice before the show.  However, with the few things we had already planned out (as explained above) we fashioned our performance to not always be in contrast with one another or and ambiguous but to have some structure like the introduction and the matching songs.  We didn't want to be like the readings from DJ Spooky and be hard to follow and ambiguous.  I feel this more organized and relevant approach is more like how a real battle would go down in real life.  I don't think if someone came at you with a sword, you would fend him off with football (just an example of non-matching ambiguous battle techniques that we tried to avoid using).

All in all, I enjoyed the experience of the webspinna but wished there could have been more performance to match the hype of the event.  Maybe if we could have pre-organized our sounds and then had a dance battle to our pre-made song, it would have been more engaging for the audience.

Webspinna Battle - LIGHT vs. Dark

Sounds

3 Flights up

child laugh

morgan freeman light vs dark

shine the light EFY

angel chorus

independence day

yoda sound board

halleujah chorus

lite ‘em up

killer time

let there be light

I saw the light