Building a Meme Community around Dysthymia

As I near the end of my senior year of college, I've found that I am most concerned with the presence of unnecessary suffering in the world. One of the ways this manifests is through mental illness, which  is what I chose to focus on for my relational aesthetics piece.

My own experiences with depression has led me to be interested in the experiences of others, and conveying that experience in an accurate, poignant, and artistic way. For this project, I snooped around the clinical depression forum of PsychForums.com, which is a useful online resource for anyone looking for support. I read through topics and picked quotes from anonymous users that I felt that I, and other people suffering from depression, could resonate with. All of the users were anonymous, and the comments were all made in a public forum, making them free for public use. Specifically, I looked in the topics related to dysthymia, which is also known as chronic depression. Though the symptoms of dysthymia are less severe than those of major depression, the symptoms often last for a greater length of time and the effects that it has on a person's life can be equally devastating. 

I was absorbed into this project, and it allowed me to reflect on my own experience with dysthymia. It also revealed to me that many aspects of my experience were similar to those of other people, which helped to validate some of my thoughts as well as make me feel less isolated. This project was a great way for me to express my interest in hand lettering as well. I hope in the future to do more art projects related to mental illness since it is one of the biggest inspirations behind my art. You can see the rest of my works here.

My Proposed Arena of Exchange

The internet is a place where tons of micro communities are formed through social media outlets. These forums allow a private space for people to share their thoughts anonymously. Though these forums can be negative and result in cyberbullying or a general reduction in the collective IQ, there are many forums that are formed with the intention of helping one another. One of the most touching example of these that I have found  are forums that are built to support people with anxiety and depression. These mental illnesses can be extremely isolating, but one has to only look around the internet to know that they are not suffering alone. For example, the depression comic of Hyperbole and a Half has resonated with a shocking amount of people. Because I'm also a comic artist, I also appreciate the way illustrations can bring people together. For my project, I will attempt to extract some of the common thoughts of loneliness and pain that people express on the Internet and illustrate them in a way that makes them relatable through a small cartoon. This cartoon figure will be someone that anyone suffering from anxiety or depression can relate to, like the narrator of Hyperbole and a Half. I intend to do about 25 of these, and then post them on Flickr.

The Growth of a Global Village

"Electric circuitry is Orientalizing the West. The contained, the distinct, the separate--our Western legacy--are being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused."
The Medium is the Massage

This project was created in the vein of my previous stop motion project, because I was intrigued as to how much further I could take the idea of stop motion and origami. The emphasis of Eastern culture in modern art and modern technology made it easy for my to create a visual analogy for the digital revolution through the construction an origami icosahedron from sonobe units. If you are interested, below is a diagram of the individual unit. 

I'd be lying if I said this project wasn't a pain in the ass. I spent about 7 hours taking pictures in the studio. However, I am fairly content with how my project turned out, and I've certainly enjoyed my time in Digital Processes.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The American Prometheus

Oppenheimer at age 40.

"There are children who are playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception." The Medium is the Massage

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an enigmatic genius that led a tragic life that has inspired an opera, Doctor Atomic, and that continues to beguile historians. For better or worse, Oppenheimer will forever be remembered as the mind that birthed the atomic bomb. The creator of weaponized death on a massive scale. As he said after the successful trinity test at Los Alamos, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

The Manhattan Project was a research and developmental project that was convened during World War II due to the fear that Germany might gain access to nuclear weaponry before the Allies, securing their victory in the war. Oppenheimer was named director of The Manhattan Project, and under his leadership America successfully acquired the atomic bomb before the Germans. Oppenheimer knew the destructive force that he had created, and he feared its use in military strategy. He proposed that there be strict international regulation of atomic weaponry and favored the idea of diplomacy over combat. Ultimately, Oppenheimer was ignored, and President Truman dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in response to Pearl Harbor. The military necessity of this move was questioned by many and Oppenheimer was burdened with guilt as a result. As payment for his contributions to America, Oppenheimer was ultimately accused of communism and died an early death from throat cancer, a broken and discredited man.

Hiroshima after the bomb.

In McLuhan, the use of technology is greatly debated, and some great ethical and societal implications are made. One of those being that the technology that we use shapes the way we use and process information as a society. For example, linear science caused us to think and progress in a linear fashion.  Formal education and societal influence, in turn, results in restrictions upon our technology, causing it to be used in a non ideal fashion, or, at the very least, not to it's full potential. Men and women who often seek to innovate technology or a way of thinking are then met with obstacles imposed by society, education, and the law. Oppenheimer represents an innovator whose technology was ultimately abused to fulfill a desire for revenge rather than to facilitate progress. His story serves as a cautionary tale as to the consequences of technology. It pays for society to open their eyes and think with a mind of their own.

"Something Is Happening" Exhibition

Setting up the art exhibition was an unusual experience in itself. Typically, I hate having to deal with the details of ANYTHING, so I just usually leave the tedious minutia to everyone else. However, responsibility was inescapable this time. I, along with everyone else, needed to frame my pictures, line up on the wall in near-perfect symmetry, and arrange them so that the mind's eye was led around the whole room. I can't pretend that I like making sure that labels were lined up with the bottom of each frame, outside the edge of the shadow, of course. However, the act of creating an intriguing exhibit was an artistic process in itself, because it required knowing how your own pieces flow thematically with the others. Putting things together to make a cohesive whole is something that I was able to appreciate when the exhibition was done.

The Song That Never Ends

"The ear favors no particular 'point of view.' We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us. We say, 'Music shall fill the air.' We never say, 'Music shall fill a particular segment of the air.'"The Medium is the Massage

To me, the radio is a way that our minds can get trapped in the web of song. Pop songs are often designed to be "ear worms," songs that are impossible to forget. They act like a virus. You listen to a song and it repeats itself over and over in your head. Viruses enter the body, infect cells, reproduce, and continue this cycle indefinitely. These are the songs that never end, because they are impossible to get out of your head. To me, the song "Wonderwall" by Oasis is an example of one of these ear worms. I have a developed a visceral and passionate hatred for the tune due to the fact it was played so often on the radio. I couldn't go anywhere without being assaulted by it. Thus, for this project I attempted to recreate the song to demonstrate how it makes me feel and expose it for the monster that it truly is. I incorporated an out of tune guitar and the sound of knives being sharpened to create a grating and not-easy-to-hear atmosphere. Then I repeated a verse of the song throughout, while also adding vocal transformations at some points. This was my first time working with sound, and I am not yet sure how I feel about the final product. It gets my point across, but I hope I never hear it on the radio.

Lauren Semivan

What can I say about Lauren Semivan? A former Lawrence student, Lauren’s photographs remind me of the work of early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, with her soft focus, flowing fabrics, and black and white imagery. However, Lauren is in no way a portrait artist, unless you consider her work to be portraits of inanimate objects.

She appears as a subject in a few of her photos as well, but she never looks at the camera directly. Instead, she appears to only inhabit the image briefly, like a ghost intruding upon the space and then promptly disappearing.

Lauren is able to achieve this look in her images by continuing to use a very old camera that has a shutter that moves slower in the winter. The medium behind Lauren’s work defies the point of the Digital Processes class, which is to show how modern technology can be used to create art. Nevertheless, Lauren’s work serves as a reminder that good art can still be created utilizing the technology of the past. Check out her website here