Remix Project: Bat-Cage!

   
     My remix was born out of a comedic love for Nicolas Cage quotes. I had originally planned to take a cartoon and a Cage movie, and have Nic and a cartoon character have a "conversation" with only lines they had spoken in the show and movie. Unfortunately, my already tight schedule didn't give me enough time to download, search through, and edit multiple different videos together, and so I had to rethink my plan. I obviously still wanted to use funny Cage quotes, but how? One day it metaphorically hit me in class: Batman/Cage memes! Partially inspired by Cage's character in the film Kick-Ass, I would take Batman comic pages, erase the words in thought or speech bubbles, and replace them with well-known Nicolas Cage lines to change the meaning of the artwork.

     The most difficult part of the process was finding short enough quotes that would fit the tiny speech bubbles, yet still carry a laugh. Many of Cage's famous lines are long, and, taken out of context, don't convey the same comedic gold, in my opinion. To get around this limitation, I often had to make the font size very small, which may be a hindrance to the project as a whole for anyone with poor eyesight. Another setback was the cohesion of each comic page. Would these bizarre and insane movie quotes possibly work together in a single plot? I think my final product assembles a plot nicely in each individual photo, but it may require a certain amount of "turn off your brain and laugh" appeal to fully enjoy the work. These Bat-Cage pages work like memes, so on one hand there has to be cohesion, but on the other hand, a certain sense of stupidity can abound in the words.
     "Bat-Cage" taught me a lot about the puzzle piece nature of creativity, and not just in the "taking someone else's work and reworking it in your own style" way. The puzzle pieces didn't always fit together for me, so while I may have thought a certain line worked best with a certain picture, I often had to sacrifice that laugh in order to make the rules I had set forth in my project work out. For instance, in the comic page with the armed robber (top-right photo at the bottom of the post), there were MANY Cage-worthy lines I wanted to use from his film, Ghost Rider. In the end, however, the lines were too long, and didn't flow well to make the punchline.There's a lot of sacrifice that goes into remixing pre-made content, sometimes meaning a change in your original idea altogether.
     I honestly wish I had even more time to continue this project. I had a blast sifting through quotes and matching them to panels, and had some pretty good laughs out of many possible combinations I toyed around with. This is definitely one project I would consider expanding upon in the coming final project.

To view a larger version of each Bat-Cage image, please click on the image.

#UPJremixed: Class Memes

     Artistry is totally collaborative, especially in the modern age of the Internet. With the ability to easily share, download, and edit from almost any computer, tablet, or smartphone, how do you track the "original" artist? So much of what we have been exposed to in this time has been copied or redesigned in some way, that I think it's safe to say that original thinkers are very difficult to come by. Not that this is a bad thing, far from it. Collaboration can help our creativity in ways that couldn't be expanded if we were left by ourselves to make something new. For example, I was greatly influenced comedically through my classmates' photos and captions. Putting words to photos in a way that was funny to me helped me to think outside of the typical meme: a stupid picture with a quick one-liner. My "found contributions" were used in the photo of the skeleton at the bottom-right, which used words that I shared, which I heard in a song by Marilyn Manson.
     I'd say the only way to maintain originality in memes is in your ability to "put the pieces together." That is, you're using your own logic to put the text to picture. The critical thinking seems to be the main original content in many art forms today. We see it in movies, music, and games: the same basic story or premise, with a few bits here and there to "make it new" or differentiate it from the rest. In this way, creativity is "maintained" through familiarity. Is this still creative, though? That may be for future scholars to decide.

Nerd Calculator: 1+1=3

     What if stories could be made with a calculator? No, not the "5318008" type of calculator story.
     I chose a journal page that involved breaking down something into the parts that created it. For example, Austin Kleon gives the idea of "Jaws + Space = Alien," which is essentially what the film Alien is about: a singular creature setting out to kill the humans in space. Thinking about films, technology, and daily life activities that I'm familiar with helped me to really consider the small things that are molded and mixed together in order to create a new idea or innovation.
     This gave me the idea for a Story Calculator, which would work sort of like Mad Libs to help users create stories based on numbered buttons. Each number would correspond to a certain character, place, verb, or object that would be inserted in between linking words to create a sentence, and, ultimately, a story. It might even be tailored to fit a fandom. If you like Harry Potter, have a number board with owls, wands, Quidditch, and Severus Snape. Make a Star Wars board with Tatooine and R2-D2. The possibilities could be endless, and might be worth a second look in the future when designing my projects.
   
   

Collaborative Narrative: Feet of UPJ

     My group decided to create a blog titled The Feet of UPJ, inspired by Danny DeVito's own obsession of taking photos of people and places with his feet. Our aim was to document the daily life of a UPJ student through the things that take us to our destinations: our feet. We believed that a narrative would form itself as enough photos were submitted to the blog; the more frequently a foot is photographed in a certain area, the more likely it was that that location was a part of the students' daily lives. We found that it was most natural for us to take pictures in dorm rooms, cafeterias, and computer labs, simply because we spend so much time there anyway. This made it easy for us to archive "a day in the life," so to speak. Consious participation was utilized, since everyone had to willingly put their foot in view of the camera for the photo to be taken.
     The most difficult decision for us as a group was the formatting of each blog post. In the end, we decided on a simple format: names of photo participants, the date the photo was taken, and a "fun fact" about the interaction. The title of each post would be the location in the photo. This way, it would be easier for viewers to search through and see how many times each location is featured on the blog. The hardest challenge for myself personally was the extroversion. As someone who generally hates interacting with strangers, it was a challenge for me to try to ask people outside of my friends to collaborate on this project. Add to that the fact that the project needed me to ask these strangers for pictures of their feet, and the interactions became even more awkward. However, I feel like it led to some interesting conversations, such as with Brad and the nonfunctional computer. I enjoyed the project and hope to see feet continually added to grow the "college roadmap."

"Lights weren't enough to escape darkness"

     Lights weren't enough to escape darkness. We hid our beams of fire in broken jars, waiting for the right time to finish the cracks in their surfaces. Peaking glimmers of hopefulness pierced a night sky that was blank, save for the lone stars fading as morning drew near. This lofty game of hide and seek we played with ourselves only took us further from the light we so desperately hid. In trying to push back the darkness, we welcomed it even closer.

     This is not to say that we weren't tempting fate in bringing the dark to us. Far from it; we knew the risks we faced. There were no dangers unknown to we fateful two who stared at the riverbank in the blinding darkness. We stood frigid in our shoes, cracked jars so close to our hearts we could feel the fire coming from the wick and wax it held inside. It was quite a contrast, the flame near our chest compared to the frigid, peeling red bridge our feet had planted themselves on since early dusk. We never looked at each other, her and I, as we stared off across the blackened sky dotted with white specks. Not a word was said to one another. Our jars were too fragile for small talk.

     Time passed, and I could feel my flame starting to grow colder in the tiny jar. I turned ever so slightly to catch a brief glimpse at her own jar, still burning as bright as I remembered it. Why? What did her jar have that my own didn't? She didn't look much different than me, didn't act strangely compared to my own personality. Yet her jar was warm. I could tell just by looking at it. Her jar had something coming soon, something that I wasn't sure I had in return.

     Dawn was beginning to appear now. In my peripheral, I saw her smiling, her jar reflecting her face. I turned to face her just as my own jar sputtered to stay alive with the warmth of the dying embers inside of it. She opened her mouth, gasped in air, and paused. She seemed timid and shy, yet curious and pondering. What was she thinking?

     She opened her mouth again, and I knew. The words rushed out, and with each syllable the jar grew even brighter than the pink morning sun. She didn't seem afraid or anxious at what she was telling me. I was a complete stranger just mere hours before, and yet she spoke to me as if she had known me since we were six. She was alive, and, I assumed, she had never felt so alive before. She kept talking at such an excited pace about her hopes and skills and future plans. I doubt she even noticed the jar finish breaking in an unassuming crack. Her hands naturally grabbed for the candle inside as if it had always been in her hands, or within reach. She stopped talking, faced me, and embraced me. We hugged for what felt like minutes, but what must have been seconds. Finally, she released me, and, candle in hand, left the red bridge to continue on down the road.

     I turned my gaze back to my own jar. Funny, I hadn't noticed that particular crack in it before. I smiled. She had something now, some optimism or warmth that had only been undercover before. That knowledge was out there now, and she had loved every second of the experience. I stared deep into my own jar, wondering if I would ever have the same chance as she had. I could barely feel the rising heat between my two hands. Lights weren't enough to escape the darkness, but the darkness sure couldn't put out our lights. I smiled out over the bay beneath the red bridge before I turned to watch another one like her approach me, flawless jar in hand.

     

Photo Credit: W. Eugene Smith, Monongahela River from Mount Washington, 1955-1957

6-Word Story Credit: @KiriMcCoy