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marikaaajoy · 4 years

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my relationship with digital art and how BNHA salvaged it

I just wanted to let out my thoughts but I can only do it here :>

This might be a downer for some people but I’d like to share it with people here. BNHA means the world to me and this is why.

I first started drawing when I was 7 years old in 2006

I think it’s ugly now, but 7 year old me remembered being so proud of this because this is a drawing of my stepfather. This is the only drawing I have that was from my childhood. I think the aim here is to draw in anime style BUT I didn’t even watch anime back then. I had a classmate who loves anime and she taught me to draw in school. Drawing became a favorite hobby immediately after that.

Then it was 2013 and I was 14 years old. Drawing is still my favorite thing to do besides being on the computer. I love anime at this point too. My parents bought an iPad for the whole family, but I was almost always the one using it. I discovered an app called ArtStudio and thought “Wow, I can draw without making a mess and with only my fingers” because I was always too lazy to take out my drawing materials and clean up afterwards.

These were my first digital drawings. The pirate one was the very first. I got obsessed real fast. I can color so easily, undo any mistake, layers are a blessing too. There was just so much more freedom. I always sucked at coloring in traditional art and I didn’t like the mess (idk my hands get so messy traditionally)

The next year, it was 2014, I was 15. My birthday is in a couple of months and I knew my parents were planning to buy me something pricey (I think it was a laptop) so I approached them and asked if they could just buy the Wacom Bamboo as a present which was cheaper anyway and I even explained how it works to them and how it would allow me to draw on the computer instead of the iPad. I tried really hard to be convincing. I would have prepared a powerpoint presentation if I had to.

They did give me the wacom as a present. They even gave it to me months before my birthday so I could use it already. I thought I was the luckiest teen in the world with my parents.

These are a collection of my favorite works from 2014 to 2016. The middle one was my second drawing using wacom and Paint Tool SAI. I was a part of a lot of fandoms in those years lol

It gets downhill from there :/

April 2016, my mom and I moved to Japan, while my stepfather and siblings stay in my country. It was tough. For someone who is obsessed with anime, you’d think I’d be thrilled to live in Japan.

I was. Though only at the first few months. It’s not the same as it’s portrayed in anime (I should’ve known but I used to be blinded by anime). It was just lonely. The language barrier sucked and then lots of financial and family issues until my parents split. I got my first boyfriend too and I thought I was blessed by the nicest boy, but the relationship became extremely toxic but I didn’t have it in me to walk away.

All the shit that happened affected me mentally and emotionally. My biggest outlet which was digital drawing, was also out of the question because I did not have a computer/laptop when we moved to Japan. We left it in our home for my stepfather and siblings, even the iPad. I have my wacom with me, but no computer/laptop to use it with. I couldn’t draw.

I tried though. I used my phone to draw, but it wasn’t the same. Then the life problems got piled up, things got worse, and I just lost motivation in anything. Literally anything. From 2016 to 2019, I stopped watching anime, I dropped out of all the fandoms I’m in, I stopped watching my favorite TV series or movies, and I stopped drawing. I even got a bit disconnected with my friends who lived in my country (we talk regularly online). My family was broken so I gave all my attention to my toxic relationship as well which made everything worse too lol

I didn’t draw besides from a few scribbles and the drawings above. I did try digital art on my phone a couple of times again and even posted them on my IG, but they weren’t any good. Eventually, I got mentally and emotionally drained and dropped out of senior high school. I just stayed home for almost a year, leeching off of my mom. I felt even more worthless and my life had no direction at this point. Nothing mattered anymore.

April 2019 or so I think, my (ex)bf bought me a laptop. He says it’s a gift, but I think the real reason was to make up for something horrible that he did (which is stupid because money /gifts won’t resolve anything). I have a laptop. I can draw again, but I didn’t. I didn’t care, I wasn’t interested in drawing anymore anyway.

Welp. June 2019, I went back to my country. My (ex) bf stayed in Japan. The distance helped me end the relationship and my friends were there (they always were) to help put me back together along with two trips to therapy. I went back to finish my senior high school in my own country this time. That said, I have to stay in my country for school (but I was happy because I didn’t wanna go back to Japan yet when the breakup was still fresh and with going back to school, my life has a direction again.)

It was weird. I remember just being sorta lost and confused because I used to put my time, effort and everything into my previous toxic relationship, which was now gone. I was free and I had so much free time that I didn’t know what to do with it. I got so used to doing nothing and being nothing.

This is where BNHA enters.

Dunno when it started, but I started seeing Bakugou frequently online. It’s usually just Bakugou. I knew who he was because my friend suggested BNHA to me back in late 2018 I think but I didn’t watch it since I’ve lost interest in everything at that point in my life.

But ye I thought he hot af but I still didn’t watch BNHA.

But then for some reason he REALLY kept appearing in my social medias and it was really frequent. The last straw was when I saw a pic of him in UA’s gym uniform and thought “damn boi aight imma watch bnha for u” (y’all gotta admit he looks good in those colors with his combat boots XD )

I watched BNHA. Fell in love with Iida along the way. Then I switched to Tokoyami (but Shoji was hot too so aaaaa), but then angry emotionally-constipated sea urchin head caught my heart again. But oof. BakuDeku moments really made me feel some type of way I haven’t felt since I moved to Japan. It felt new but nostalgic. I fell hard in that ship.

I started obsessing. From memes to posts to fanfictions to buying merch to filling my room with BNHA posters. I realized I was reverting to my old self from the time I was still happy and it was thanks to BNHA (and the good people who helped me through the worst too)

Shit I wanted to draw BNHA, I thought.

I mean, I have a laptop, I still have my wacom and drawing softwares. I could totally draw digitally again if I wanted to.

But guess what

I can’t :c

My hand physically cannot draw. My drawings don’t look the way I want them too. 3 years of not drawing really destroyed any skill I had. I was back to square one.

September (yeah they’re ugly, I laughed at it). If you’re wondering why I drew on paper, it’s because, for some reason, I really CANNOT draw digitally. I mean it. I can barely sketch digitally at this point. The lines and shapes just doesn’t come to life. They’re just scribbles. But somehow, I can kinda draw on paper with a ballpoint pen. But yeah, that was the best I could do at this point in my life

After that, I still tried to draw, to regain my old art style, but it didn’t happen... It just doesn’t look or feel the same. Drawing used to be fun. But during this phase, it felt like my ugly drawings were just mocking me (probably was just too emo that time lol)

Weirdly, around a week or two I think, after my half-assed attempts at drawing, I managed to draw digitally somehow o.o

I did a Midoriya and Todoroki drawing like this too. It was my first post here on Tumblr I think. The annoying part here is that I cannot draw digitally unless I draw on paper first, take a pic, and then trace the lineart. I couldn’t draw directly on the computer. Granted, drawing on paper and drawing on digital is very different for me in the first place anyway. But it was still a pain. And it still looked like shit. I can only draw stiff poses :/ it seems like my brain decided to delete all data about anatomy and posture and backgrounds. My lineart here is even messy af. It still really not the same as my old style.

By 2020, I think I got my old art style back. On March, I made this. This took me 27 total of hrs to make.

Right now, I think it’s not bad, but back in March, I was disappointed with the result. This is when I finally broke down crying because it didn’t look good enough and I hated that it took me 27 hrs to draw “bullshit.” I was angry at myself for losing interest in drawing for 3 years when I could’ve used that time to improve. I had to start all over again and it still didn’t look good. (Current me thinks that the drawing above is alright. I was just a lot harsher to myself back then. Used to have a lot of issues but I’m doing great now)

I cried myself to sleep that night. Woke up wanting to cry again. I wallowed in sadness for a couple of days. Eventually told my friends what’s up. Got some pep talk. Even talked to my sister (she’s great, she always hypes me up with my stuff and sometimes I think she’s my biggest fan with how she appreciates my drawings and I’m really grateful for that).

My world turned a 180 and I was weirdly positive after all that crying because brain chemicals and shit. I had a revelation. If I hate how my art style looked so much, then I should have been putting effort in changing my art style, not trying to regain my old art style (that I don’t like anymore)

I researched a lot. I analyzed different art styles and anatomy again. I did everything I could think of to find a style that works for me. I might have even neglected school for a bit to focus on digital art lmao

After all that work, I posted a fanart of middle school BakuDeku in their classroom. I love that fanart so much even if I probably have better ones by now because that was the first fanart I made that I felt like I could be proud of and it was the first one I made in my new art style. It was a milestone for me.

March 2020, I moved back to Japan and without the toxic relationship, I’m a lot positive now. Happy. I’m myself again after the previous bad years. I’m still continuously learning though, trying to improve, but at least, now, I found my own art style :) I really suck at interacting with people online, but I’m always grateful for the support everyone has been giving my fanarts. I’m happy when my content makes people happy.

This is why BNHA is important to me. The series is great alone, but it’s not just that to me. BNHA is so much more. It’s what made me find the passion to create again, only this time, it’s focused on drawing (I used to write, but now I just draw, but maybe I’ll write again for BNHA).

My family is supportive with my love for BNHA, but I think they don’t know the deeper reason why I love it. Sure, I was fine living on with nothing much going on in my life. I’ll finish school, get a job, work until I die or something. It was okay. It was the way of life. But BNHA gave my life color again. I wasn’t just blindly going through life anymore. I have something to look forward to everyday now. BNHA even became a bridge to other things. Ever since then, I’m a lot more open to people, to try new things, to explore and not just live through life and waste away. I got better at leaving my comfort zone. I’ve never been happier in my life :D

Thank you for supporting my fanarts. Thank you so much for giving me a chance to express myself through BNHA. I hope to make more content in the future and improve even more :)

#plus ultra #<3 #personal

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altalksaboutstuff · 4 years

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My Top 5 Games of the Past Generation Youtube Script Plus Notes

This is, more or less, the script for My Top 5 Games of the Past Generation video that I just published on Youtube: With the Xbox One and Playstation Four about to head out of the door to make ways for the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5 respectively to lead us into the next generation of consoles were only Nintendo has been sitting comfortably with the Switch, the Wii U has been long gone and Nintendo also recently announced the official end of the Nintendo 3DS line cutting all the ties to this last generation. With that almost everyone is now releasing their lists of the best games of the current generation, myself included, I couldn't help but notice a lot of same-soundy lists such as Game Informer's top 5 list. I myself have to disagree with these, not to say that any and/or all five of those games on Game Informer's Top 5 aren't good, important or worth playing just that I don't think they are the best representative of this generation in terms of impact and wide appeal, so much as had the most money backing them. That these games on the list are more the best representative of the biggest Triple A titles. The games that I had in mind are more impactful on how this generation swayed and set new standards. I want you to keep in mind that while I liked some of these games, these aren't my personal top 5 of the past generation either but I think closer to what best represents our closing era of gaming, when I say the “best games of the current generation.”

First off I'd like to make an honorable mention of PT. PT or playable trailer was supposed to be a demo for the new Silent Hill S game that unfortunately never came to be for the Playstation 4 from Konami. A joint venture between film director Guillermo del Toro and the famous creator of Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, this demo spooked the pants off of everyone and was probably the reason a lot of people decided to buy a Playstation 4. Unfortunately Konami let Hideo Kojima go under less than favorable conditions and the demo vanished with him in time. Since then the immersive, first person perspective horror game demo changed the landscape of what survival horror could be. We then saw Resident Evil VII by Capcom, the Park by Funcom, Layers of Fear by Aspyr and Death Standing by Hideo Kojima's new studio Kojima Productions that were all heavily influenced by PT (this point made more obvious for Hido Kojima's Death Stranding) and the future of Survial Horror / Suspense games seems to be headed there with upcoming games like Resident Evil VIII: The Village. The only reason this isn't officially on the list is because, well, it was sadly never a game but its influence was too important for me not to mention.

Number 5: Sonic Mania. Ok so Sonic Mania isn't anything new but it is very important in the sense that it is a major franchise, Sonic, by a well established publisher, Sega, and they had officially given the keys of Mobius to the fandom to make a new game and it was fantastic. While that's oversimplying things a bit errr a lot, since Sega just didn't come out of the blue offering that opportunity. Rather Sega saw a Sonic game pitched by Christian Whitehead, aka Taxman, who worked on porting previous ports of Sonic games to Mobile platforms. Why I think it is important is that this validating the bridge between fandom and passion projects in world where game hacks and fangames are traditionally shut down almost immediately after gaining the slightest attention. While Sonic Mania isn't a fangame, its roots were deep from the Romhack community. This represents cracking the door between what the fandom produces and what the corporate offices allow being available to consumers in a world were popular fangames and hacks result in cease and desist orders - which is why I think is very important to put Sonic Mania as the number 5 game of this console generation.

Number 4: Rocket League. As of today, Rocket League is a now free to play game for better or for worse. Rocket League is high-octane fun, blasting balls across various courts and fields such as basketball and football with fast automobiles but what it is most well known for is basically soccer with cars. Rocket League is a lot of fun to play and has a large audience of in the streaming and esports field which would be reason enough to put this game in a top 5 but what this game marks maybe even more importantly is cross console online play. While other games have and do continue to have online play across systems, back in March of 2016 Microsoft was very interested in allowing online play between Xbox One and other consoles them being extremely hopeful for Playstation 4 in particular, however Sony was holding out. Sony was hesitant, citing their emphasis on providing a certain quality online experience but finally came to the party and in 2019 you could finally play Rocket League online with all your friends whether it be on PC, Xbox One, Switch, or Playstation 4. Since then we have had other games slowly roll out this feature such as Wargroove and the trend seems to be expanding. I hope to see all games adopt this in the future and since Rocket League “birthed” this concept coming to the table for cross console online play for us all to enjoy, this is why I think Rocket League deserves the number 4 slot.

Number 3: Bloodborne/Dark Souls III. This past generation and hell even to some extent decade, spanning to the PS3/Xbox 360, has lead us to compare every challenging game that comes out to Dark Souls. Cuphead is the Dark Souls of run and gun shooters, Dead Cells is the Dark Souls of Metroidvanias, Celeste is the Dark Souls of platformers, etc. While the meme of “X is like the Dark Souls of” is hard to find a concrete start, according to Google Trends this first seemed to spike in April of 2015 around the release of Bloodborne, the PS4 game created by FromSoftware. While not technically a Dark Souls game, it was made by the same team and the game play and feel is very Dark Souls in the sense that I feel the phrase is used today, in contrast to the first two Dark Souls games. Then we can see that in/and around October 2017 the trend has risen to its peak a little after a year and a half of the release of Dark Souls III. While this justification may seem more flimsy and ultimately the Dark Souls brand was established in 2011, I do think Bloodborne/Dark Souls III is more in the zeitgeist, if you will, of the “X is like Dark Souls” comparison that has shaped the conversation of so many games today.

Number 2: Undertale. Undertale is perhaps the darling of this generation. A game chock full of charm with multiple ways to approach it. Will you save everyone, sacrifice everyone, or something in-between? This game does look next gen, current gen or even comparable to past gen games until you hit perhaps the SNES or even late NES. Maybe a number 2 spot is too high on list – this game didn't revolutionize the industry in ways that the other games on this list did nor was it the first anti-RPG of its kind, that would probably go to MOON, but Undertale just had such a powerful impact on gamers when it came out and became so unforgettable. I feel like Undertale will be a game that we remember for a long time and to not include it in this list because its an indie game would be a real tragedy which segways me to my number 1 game.

Number 1: Shovel Knight. Shovel Knight is the indie game that, I think, lead to the current boom of retro inspired indie games we have been enjoying. A love letter to the NES games of the past such as Castlevania, Mega Man and Ducktales to name a few. Shovel Knight wasn't the first retro inspired indie games but I feel like the attention to detail in trying to stay as true to what the hardware could run in terms of look, color, sound and pixel art with its overwhelming success showed that there was a market for these type of games. Its success kickstarter in 2013 also showed that Kickstarter could be used as a viable platform to create indie games for a wider audience without having to rely on that Triple A model of good gaming synonymous with big budget corporate funding. I firmly believe that we wouldn't have the great retro inspired games like Celeste and Dead Cells or the Kickstarter'd Yooka Laylee and Bloodstained or games that did both like Blasphemous if it wasn't for the hard-work and ingenuity that Yacht Club Games paved with Shovel Knight.

To use a popular Youtube cliché to conclude this list, “At the end of the day” I didn't make this list to put Game Informer or anyone's personal preferences down. If you believe that they got the Top 5 games of the decade right that's perfectly ok and valid too, to have as your opinion. I also want to reiterate that those five games – The Last of Us Part II, the Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Zelda Breath of the Wild and God of War are all important to this generation coming to a close as well in their own way. While this list isn't my favorite games of the past generation, maybe I'll do that in the future, they are my subjective “best games list” of the past generation for what I think they did to the industry and you are free to agree, disagree, pick and choose between my list and Game Informers list or make a completely different list of your own. I'm personally excited to see what the future of gaming has for us in this coming generation and optimistic for what's both around the corner and late into the next systems' life-cycle. Happy gaming to you however you play.

Webpages noted: https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/17/21443683/nintendo-3ds-discontinued-lifetime-sales-hardware-software-units

https://www.fandom.com/articles/sonic-mania-just-nostalgia

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15807138/sony-playstation-cross-network-play-xbox-block-response

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/were-ready-microsoft-says-about-xbox-one-ps4-cross/1100-6438654/

https://www.rocketleague.com/news/full-cross-platform-play-now-live-in-rocket-league/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yachtclubgames/shovel-knight

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAngelo/20140625/219383/Breaking_the_NES_for_Shovel_Knight.php

Games shown/referenced in the video:

The Last of Us Part 2

God of War

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Red Dead Redeption II

Witcher 3

PT / Silent Hill S

Sonic Mania

Rocket League

Blood Borne

Dark Souls III

Undertale

Shovel Knight

Shantae: Half Genie Hero

Cuphead

Celeste

Yooka Laylee

Mega Man 2

Ducktales

Castlevania

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Blasphemous

Dead Cells

Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 8

Moon

Layers of Fear

The Park

Death Stranding

Bonus Footage:

Xbox Series X reveal trailer

PS5 reveal trailer

Also note: I messed up in the original video and said the phrase, “X is like Dark Souls of” spiked in April of 2015 when I should have said first peaked in January to April of 2015. I noted it in the video but wanted to note it again, sorry.

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angelofberlin2000 · 5 years

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Photo: Emily Denniston/Vulture and photos courtesy of the studios

Keanu Reeves has been a movie star for more than 30 years, but it seems like only recently that journalists and critics have come to acknowledge the significance of his onscreen achievements. He’s had hits throughout his career, ranging from teen comedies (Bill & Ted’s) to action franchises (The Matrix, John Wick), yet a large part of the press has always treated these successes as bizarre anomalies. And that’s because we as a society have never been able to understand fully what Reeves does that makes his films so special.

In part, this disconnect is the lingering cultural memory of Reeves as Theodore Logan. No matter if he’s in Speed or Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Something’s Gotta Give, he still possesses the fresh-faced openness that was forever personified by Ted’s favorite expression: “Whoa!” That wide-eyed exclamation has been Reeves’s official trademark ever since, and its eternal adolescent naïveté has kept him from being properly judged on the merits of his work.

Some of that critical reassessment has been provided, quite eloquently, by Vulture’s own Angelica Jade Bastién, who has argued for Reeves’s greatness as an action star and his importance to The Matrix (and 21st-century blockbusters in general). Two of her observations are worth quoting in full, and they both have to do with how he has reshaped big-screen machismo. In 2017, she wrote, “What makes Reeves different from other action stars is this vulnerable, open relationship with the camera — it adds a through-line of loneliness that shapes all his greatest action-movie characters, from naïve hotshots like Johnny Utah to exuberant ‘chosen ones’ like Neo to weathered professionals like John Wick.” In the same piece, Bastién noted: “By and large, Hollywood action heroes revere a troubling brand of American masculinity that leaves no room for displays of authentic emotion. Throughout Reeves’s career, he has shied away from this. His characters are often led into new worlds by women of far greater skill and experience … There is a sincerity he brings to his characters that make them human, even when their prowess makes them seem nearly supernatural.”

In other words, the femininity of his beauty — not to mention his slightly odd cadence when delivering dialogue, as if he’s an alien still learning how Earthlings speak — has made him seem bizarre to audiences who have come to expect their leading men to act and carry themselves in a particular way. Critics have had a difficult time taking him seriously because it was never quite clear if what he was doing — or what was seemingly “missing” from his acting approach — was intentional or a failing.

This is not to say that Reeves hasn’t made mistakes. While putting together this ranking of his every film role, we noticed that there was an alarmingly copious number of duds — either because he chose bad material or the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to do with him. But as we prepare for the release of the third John Wick installment, it’s clear that his many memorable performances weren’t all just flukes. From Dangerous Liaisons to Man of Tai Chi — or River’s Edge to Knock Knock — he’s been on a journey to grow as an actor while not losing that elemental intimacy he has with the viewer. Below, we revisit those performances, from worst to best.

45. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

The nadir of the ’90s cyberpunk genre, and a movie so bad, with Reeves so stranded, that it’s actually a bit of a surprise the Wachowskis were able to forget about it and still cast him as Neo. Dumber than a box of rocks, it’s a movie about technology and the internet — based on a William Gibson story! — that seems to have been made by people who had never turned on a computer before. Seriously, watch this shit:

44. The Watcher (2000) This movie exists in many ways because of its stunt casting: James Spader as a dogged detective and Keanu as the serial killer obsessed with him. Wait, shouldn’t those roles be switched? Get it? There would come a time in his career when Keanu could have maybe handled this character, but here, still with his floppy Ted Logan hair, he just looks ridiculous. The hackneyed screenplay does him no favors, either. Disturbingly, Reeves claims that he was forced to do this movie because his assistant forged his signature on a contract. He received the fifth of his seven Razzie nominations for this film. (He has yet to win and hasn’t been nominated in 17 years. In fact, it’s another sign of how lame the Razzies are that he got a “Redeemer” award in 2015, as if he needed to “redeem” anything to those people.)

43. Sweet November (2001) It’s a testament to how cloying and clunky Sweet November is that its two leads (Reeves and Charlize Theron) are, today, the pinnacle of action-movie cool — thanks to the same filmmaker, Atomic Blonde and John Wick’s David Leitch — yet so inert and waxen here. This is a career low point for both actors, preying on their weak spots. Watching it now, you can see there’s an undeniable discomfort on their faces: If being a movie star means doing junk like this, what’s the point? They’d eventually figure it all out.

42. Chain Reaction (1996) As far as premises for thrillers go, this isn’t the worst idea: A team of scientists are wiped out — with their murder pinned on poor Keanu — because they’ve figured out how to transform water into fuel. (Hey, Science, it has been 23 years. Why haven’t you solved this yet?) Sadly, this turns into a by-the-numbers chase flick with Reeves as Richard Kimble, trying to prove his innocence while on the run. He hadn’t quite figured out how to give a project like this much oomph yet, so it just mostly lies around, making you wish you were watching The Fugitive instead.

41. 47 Ronin (2013) In 2013, Reeves made his directorial debut with a Hong Kong–style action film. We’ll get into that one later, because it’s a ton better than this jumbled mess, a mishmash of fantasy and swordplay that mostly just gives viewers a headache. Also: This has to be the worst wig of Keanu’s career, yes?

40. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

Gus Van Sant’s famously terrible adaptation of Tom Robbins’s novel never gets the tone even close to right, and all sorts of amazing actors are stranded and flailing around. Reeves gets some of the worst of it: Why cast one of the most famously chill actors on the planet and have him keep hyperventilating?

39. Replicas (2019) In the wake of John Wick’s success, Keanu has had the opportunity to sleepwalk through some lesser sci-fi actioners, and this one is particularly sleepy. The idea of a neuroscientist (Reeves) who tries to clone his family after they die in an accident could have been a Pet Sematary update, but the movie insists on an Evil Corporation plot that we’ve seen a million times before. John Wick has allowed Reeves to cash more random checks than he might have ten years ago. Here’s one of them.

38. Feeling Minnesota (1996) As far as we know, the only movie taken directly from a Soundgarden lyric — unless we’re missing a superhero named “Spoonman” — is this pseudo-romantic comedy that attempts to be cut from the Tarantino cloth but ends up making you think everyone onscreen desperately needs a haircut and a shave. Reeves can tap into that slacker vibe if asked to, but he requires much better material than this.

37. Little Buddha (1994)

To state the obvious, it would not fly today for Keanu Reeves to play Prince Siddhartha, a monk who would become the Buddha. But questions of cultural appropriation aside, you can understand what drew The Last Emperor director Bernardo Bertolucci to cast this supremely placid man as an iconic noble figure. Unfortunately, Little Buddha never rises above a well-meaning, simplistic depiction of the roots of a worldwide religion, and the effects have aged even more poorly. Nonetheless, Reeves is quite accomplished at being very still.

36. Much Ado About Nothing (1993) Quick anecdote: We saw this Kenneth Branagh adaptation of the Bard during its original theatrical run, and when Reeves’s villainous Don John came onscreen and declared, “I am not of many words,” the audience clapped sarcastically. That memory stuck because it encapsulates viewers’ inability in the early ’90s to see him as anything other than a dim SoCal kid. Unfortunately, his performance in Much Ado About Nothing doesn’t do much to prove his haters wrong. As an actor, he simply didn’t have the gravitas yet to pull off this fiendish role, and so this version is more radiant and alive when he’s not onscreen. It is probably just as well his character doesn’t have many words.

35. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) GIFs are a cheap way to critique a performance. After all, acting is a complicated, arduous discipline that shouldn’t be reduced to easy laughs drawn from a few seconds of film played on a loop. Then again …

This really does sum up Reeves’s unsubstantial performance as Jonathan Harker, whose new client is definitely up to no good. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a wonder of old-school special effects and operatic passion — and it is also a movie in which Reeves seems wholly ill at ease, never quite latching onto the story’s macabre period vibe. We suspect if he could revisit this role now, he’d be far more commanding and engaged. But in 1992, he was still too much Ted and not enough anything else. And Reeves knew it: A couple years later, when asked to name his most difficult role to that point, he said, “My failure in Dracula. Totally. Completely. The accent wasn’t that bad, though.” Well …

34. The Neon Demon (2016)

One of the perks of being a superstar is that you can sometimes just phone in an amusing cameo in some bizarro art-house offering. How else to explain Reeves’s appearance in this stylish, empty, increasingly surreal psychological thriller from Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn? He plays Hank, a scumbag motel manager whose main job is to add some local color to this portrait of the cutthroat L.A. fashion scene. If you’ve been waiting to hear Keanu deliver skeezy lines like “Why, did she send you out for tampons, too?!” and “Real Lolita shit … real Lolita shit,” The Neon Demon is the film for you. He’s barely in it, and we wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t even remember it.

33. The Lake House (2006) Reeves reunites with his Speed co-star for a movie that features a lot fewer out-of-control buses. In The Lake House, Sandra Bullock plays a doctor who owns a lake house with the strangest magical power: She can send and receive letters from the house’s owner from two years prior, a dashing architect (Reeves). This American remake of the South Korean drama Il Mare is romantic goo that’s relatively easy to resist, and its ruminations on fate, love, destiny, and luck are all pretty standard for the genre. As for those hoping to enjoy the actors’ rekindled chemistry, spoiler alert: They’re not onscreen that much together.

32. Henry’s Crime (2011) You have to be careful not to cast Reeves as too passive a character; he’s so naturally calm that if he just sits and reacts to everything, and never steps up, your movie never really gets going. That’s the case in this heist movie about an innocent man (Reeves) who goes to jail for a crime he didn’t commit and then plans a scam with an inmate he meets there (James Caan). The movie wants to be a little quirkier than it is, and Reeves never quite snaps to. The film just idles on the runway.

31. The Bad Batch (2017) Following her acclaimed A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour plops us in the middle of a desert hellscape in which a young woman (Suki Waterhouse) must battle to stay alive. The Bad Batch is less accomplished than A Girl, in large part because style outpaces substance — it’s a movie in which clever flourishes and indulgent choices rule all. Look no further than Reeves’s performance as the Dream, a cult leader who oversees the only semblance of civilization in this post-apocalyptic world. It’s less a character than an attitude, and Reeves struggles to make the shtick fly. He’s too goofy a villain for us to really feel the full measure of his monstrousness.

30. Hardball (2001)

Reeves isn’t the first guy you’d think of to head up a Bad News Bears–style inspirational sports movie, and he doesn’t pull it off, playing a gambler who becomes the coach of an inner-city baseball team and learns to love, or something. It’s as straightforward and predictable an underdog sports movie as you’ll find, and it serves as a reminder that Reeves’s specific set of skills can’t be applied to just any old generic leading-man role. The best part about the film? A 14-year-old Michael B. Jordan.

29. Street Kings (2008) Filmmaker David Ayer has made smart, tough L.A. thrillers like Training Day (which he wrote) and End of Watch (which he wrote and directed). Unfortunately, this effort with Reeves never stops being a mélange of cop-drama clichés, casting the actor as Ludlow, an LAPD detective who’s starting to lose his moral compass. This requires Reeves to be a hard-ass, which never feels particularly convincing. Street Kings is bland, forgettable pulp — Reeves doesn’t enliven it, getting buried along with the rest of a fine ensemble that includes Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans.

28. Constantine (2005) In post-Matrix mode, Reeves tries to launch another franchise in a DC Comics adaptation about a man who can see spirits on Earth and is doomed to atone for a suicide attempt by straddling the divide twixt Heaven and Hell. That’s not the worst idea, and at times Constantine looks terrific, but the movie doesn’t have enough wit or charm to play with Reeves’s persona the way the Wachowskis did.

27. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Reeves’s alienlike beauty and off-kilter line readings made him an obvious choice to play Klaatu, an extraterrestrial who assumes human form when he arrives on our planet. This remake of the 1950s sci-fi classic doesn’t have a particularly urgent reason to exist — its pro-environment message is timely but awkwardly fashioned atop an action-blockbuster template — and the actor alone can’t make this Day particularly memorable. Still, there are signs of the confident post-Matrix star he had become, which would be rewarded in a few years with John Wick.

26. Knock Knock (2015) Reeves flirts with Michael Douglas territory in this Eli Roth erotic thriller that’s not especially good but is interesting as an acting exercise. He plays Evan, a contented family man with the house to himself while his wife and kids are out of town. Conveniently, two beautiful young strangers (Ana de Armas, Lorenza Izzo) come by late one stormy night, inviting themselves in and quickly seducing him. Is this his wildest sexual fantasy come to life? Or something far more ominous? It’s fun to watch Reeves be a basic married suburban dude who slowly realizes that he’s entered Hell, but Knock Knock’s knowing trashiness only takes this cautionary tale so far.

25. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

Very few people bought tickets in 1997 for The Devil’s Advocate to see Keanu Reeves: Hotshot Attorney. Obviously, this horror thriller’s chief appeal was witnessing Al Pacino go over the top as Satan himself, who just so happens to be a New York lawyer. Nonetheless, it’s Reeves’s Kevin Lomax who’s actually the film’s main character; recently moved to Manhattan with his wife (Reeves’s future Sweet November co-star, Charlize Theron), he’s the new hire at a prestigious law firm who only later learns what nefarious motives have brought him there. Reeves is forced to play the wunderkind who gets in over his head, and it’s not entirely convincing — and that goes double for his southern accent.

24. The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988) “You are like some stray dog I never should have fed.” That’s how Rupert’s older hippie pal, Carla (Amy Madigan), affectionately refers to him, and because this teen dropout is played by Keanu Reeves, you understand what she means. In this forgotten early chapter in Reeves’s career, Rupert and Carla decide to ditch their going-nowhere Rust Belt existence by taking his dad (Fred Ward) hostage and collecting a handsome ransom. The Prince of Pennsylvania is a thoroughly contrived and mediocre comedy, featuring Reeves with an incredibly unfortunate haircut. (Squint and he looks like the front man for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.) Still, you can see signs of the soulfulness and vulnerability he’d later harness in better projects. He’s very much a big puppy looking for a home.

23. The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) Every hip young ’90s actor had to get his Jack Kerouac on at some point, so it would seem churlish to deny Reeves his opportunity. He plays the best pal/drinking buddy of Thomas Jane’s Neal Cassady, and he looks like he’s enjoying doing the Kerouac pose. Other actors have done so more indulgently. And even though he’s heavier than he’s ever been in a movie, he looks great.

22. A Walk in the Clouds (1995) Keanu isn’t quite as bad in this as it seemed at the time. He’s miscast as a tortured war veteran who finds love by posing as the husband of a pregnant woman, but he doesn’t overdo it either: If someone’s not right for a part, you’d rather them not push it, and Keanu doesn’t. Plus, come on, this movie looks fantastic: Who doesn’t want to hang around these vineyards? Not necessarily worth a rewatch, but not the disaster many consider it.

21. The Replacements (2000) The other movie where Keanu Reeves plays a former quarterback, The Replacements is an adequate Sunday-afternoon-on-cable sports comedy. He plays Shane, the stereotypical next-big-thing whose career capsized after a disastrous bowl game — but fear not, because he’s going to get a second chance at gridiron glory once the pros go on strike and the greedy owners decide to hire scabs to replace them. Reeves has never been particularly great at playing regular guys — his talent is that he seems different, more special, than you or me — but he ably portrays a good man who’s had to live with disappointment. The Replacements pushes all the predictable buttons, but Reeves makes it a little more enjoyable than it would be otherwise.

20. Tune in Tomorrow (1990) A very minor but sporadically charming bauble about a radio soap-opera scriptwriter (Peter Falk) who begins chronicling an affair between a woman (Barbara Hershey) and her not-related-by-blood nephew on his show — and ultimately begins manipulating it. Tune in Tomorrow is light and silly and harmless, and Reeves shows up on time to set and looks extremely eager to impress. He blends into the background quietly, which is probably enough.

19. I Love You to Death (1990)

This Lawrence Kasdan comedy — the first film after an incredible four-picture run of Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, and The Accidental Tourist — is mostly forgotten today, and for good reason: It’s a farce that mostly features actors screaming at each other and calling it “comedy.” But Reeves hits the right notes as a stoned hit man, and it’s amusing just to watch him share the screen with partner William Hurt. This could have been the world’s strangest comedy team!

18. Youngblood (1986)

This Rob Lowe hockey comedy is … well, a Rob Lowe hockey comedy, but we had to include it because a 21-year-old Reeves plays a dim-bulb, good-hearted hockey player with a French Canadian accent that’s so incredible that you really just have to see it. Imagine if this were the only role Keanu Reeves ever had? It’s sort of amazing. “AH-NEE-MAL!”

17. Destination Wedding (2018) An oddly curdled comedy about two wedding guests (Reeves and Winona Ryder) who have terrible attitudes about everything but end up bonding over their universal disdain for the planet and everyone on it. That sounds like a chore to watch, and at times it is, but the pairing of Reeves and Ryder has enough nostalgic Gen-X spark to it that you go along with them anyway. With almost any other actors you might run screaming away, but somehow, in spite of everything, you find them both likable.

16. Thumbsucker (2005)

The first film from 20th Century Women and Beginners’ Mike Mills, this mild but clever coming-of-age comedy adaptation of a Walter Kirn novel has Mills’s trademark good cheer and emotional honesty. Reeves plays the eponymous thumbsucker’s dentist — it’s funny to see Keanu play someone named “Dr. Perry Lyman” — who has the exact right attitude about both orthodontics and life. It’s a lived-in, funny performance, and a sign that Keanu, with the right director, could be a more than capable supporting character actor.

15. Something’s Gotta Give (2003) This Nancy Meyers romantic comedy was well timed in Reeves’s career. A month after the final Matrix film hit theaters, Something’s Gotta Give arrived, offering us a very different Keanu — not the intense, sci-fi action hero but rather a charming, low-key love interest who’s just the supporting player. He plays Julian Mercer, a doctor administering to shameless womanizer Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), who’s dating a much younger woman (Amanda Peet), who just so happens to be the daughter of a celebrated playwright, Erica (Diane Keaton). We know who will eventually end up with whom in Something’s Gotta Give, but Reeves proves to be a great romantic foil, wooing Erica with a grown-up sexiness the actor didn’t possess in his younger years. We’re still not sure Meyers got the ending right: Erica should have stuck with him instead of Harry.

14. Man of Tai Chi (2013) This is the only movie that Reeves has directed, and what does it tell us about him? Well, it tells us he has watched a ton of Hong Kong action movies and always wanted to make one himself. And it’s pretty good! It’s technically proficient, it has a straightforward narrative, it has some excellent long-take action sequences (as we see in John Wick, Keanu isn’t a quick-cut guy; he likes to show his work), and it has a perfectly decent Keanu performance. We wouldn’t call him a visionary director by any stretch of the imagination. But we’d watch another one of these, definitely.

13. Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny is merely a pawn in a cruel game being played by Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, and so it makes some sense that the young man who played him, Keanu Reeves, is himself a little outclassed by the actors around him. This Oscar-winning drama is led by Glenn Close and John Malkovich, who have the wit and bite to give this 18th-century tale of thwarted love and bruised pride some real zest. By comparison, Danceny is practically a boy, unschooled in the art of manipulation, and Reeves provides the character with the appropriate youthful naïveté. He’s not a standout in Dangerous Liaisons, but he acquits himself well — especially near the end, when his blade fells Valmont, leaving him as one of the unlikely survivors in the film’s ruthless battle.

12. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009) In this incredible showcase for Robin Wright, who plays a woman navigating a constrictive, difficult life with more grace and intelligence than anyone realizes, Reeves shows up late in a role that he’s played before: the younger guy who’s the perfect fit for an older woman figuring herself out. He hits the right notes and never overstays his welcome. As a romantic lead, less is more for Reeves.

11. Parenthood (1989) If you were an uptight suburban dad, like Steve Martin is in Ron Howard’s ensemble comedy, your nightmare would be that your beloved daughter gets involved with a doofus like Tod. Nicely played by Keanu Reeves, the character is the embodiment of every slacker screwup who’s going to just stumble through life, knocking over everything and everyone in his path. But as it turns out, he’s a lot kinder and mature than at first glance. Released six months after Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Parenthood showed mainstream audiences a more grown-up Reeves, and he’s enormously appealing — never more so than when advising a young kid that it’s okay to masturbate: “I told him that’s what little dudes do.”

10. Permanent Record (1988) A very lovely and sad movie that’s nearly forgotten today, Permanent Record, directed by novelist Marisa Silver, features Reeves as the best friend of a teenager who commits suicide and, along with the rest of their friends, has to pick up the pieces. For all of Reeves’s trademark reserve, there is very little restraint here: His character is devastated, and Reeves, impressively, hits every note of that grief convincingly. You see this guy and you understand why everyone wanted to make him a star. This is a very different Reeves from now, but it’s not necessarily a worse one.

9. Point Break (1991)

Just as Reeves’s reputation has grown over time, so too has the reputation of this loopy, philosophical crime thriller. Do people love Point Break ironically now, enjoying its over-the-top depiction of men seeking a spiritual connection with the world around them? Or do they genuinely appreciate the seriousness that director Kathryn Bigelow brought to her study of lonely souls looking for that next big rush — whether through surfing or robbing banks? The power of Reeves’s performance is that it works both ways. If you want to snicker at his melodramatic turn, fine — but if you want to marvel at the rapport his Johnny Utah forms with Patrick Swayze (Bodhi), who only feels alive when he’s living life to the extreme, then Point Break has room for you on the bandwagon.

8. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) Before there was Beavis and Butt-Head, before there was Wayne and Garth, there were these guys: two Valley bozos who loved to shred and goof off. As Theodore Logan, Keanu Reeves found the perfect vessel for his serene silliness, playing well off Alex Winter’s equally clueless Bill. But note that Bill and Ted aren’t jerks — watch Excellent Adventure now and you’ll be struck by how incredibly sunny its humor is. Later in his career, Reeves would show off a darker, more brooding side, but here in Excellent Adventure (and its less-great sequel Bogus Journey) he makes blissful stupidity endearing.

7. The Gift (2000) This Sam Raimi film, with a Billy Bob Thornton script inspired by his mother, fizzled at the box office, despite a top-shelf cast: It’s probably not even the first film called The Gift you think of when we bring it up. But, gotta say, Reeves is outstanding in it, playing an abusive husband and all-around sonuvabitch who, nevertheless, might be unfairly accused of murder, a fact only a psychic (Cate Blanchett) understands. Reeves is full-on trailer trash here, but he brings something new and unexpected to it: a sort of bewildered malevolence, as if he’s moved by forces outside of his control. More of this, please.

6. My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Gus Van Sant’s landmark drama is chiefly remembered for River Phoenix’s nakedly anguished performance as Mike, a spiritually adrift gay hustler. (Phoenix’s death two years after My Own Private Idaho’s release only makes the portrayal more heartbreaking.) But his performance doesn’t work without a doubles partner, which is where Reeves comes in. Playing Scott, a fellow hustler and Mike’s best friend, Reeves adeptly encapsulates the mind-set of a young man content to just float through life. Unlike Mike, he knows he has a fat inheritance in his future — and also unlike Mike, he’s not gay, unable to share his buddy’s romantic feelings. Phoenix deservedly earned most of the accolades, but Reeves is terrific as an unobtainable object of affection — inviting, enticing, but also unknowable.

5. Speed (1994)

Years later, we still contend that Speed is a stupid idea for a movie that, despite all logic (or maybe because of the utter insanity of its premise), ended up being a total hoot. What’s clear is that the film simply couldn’t have worked if Reeves hadn’t approached the story with straight-faced sincerity: His L.A. cop Jack Traven is a ramrod-serious lawman who is going to do whatever it takes to save those bus passengers. Part of the pleasure of Speed is how it constantly juxtaposes the life-or-death stakes with the high-concept inanity — Stay above 50 mph or the bus will explode! — and that internal tension is expressed wonderfully by Reeves, who invests so intently in the ludicrousness that the movie is equally thrilling and knowingly goofy. And it goes without saying that he has dynamite chemistry with Sandra Bullock. Strictly speaking, you probably shouldn’t flirt this much when you’re sitting on top of a bomb — but it’s awfully appealing when they get their happy ending.

4. River’s Edge (1987) This film’s casting director said she cast Reeves as one of the dead-end kids who learn about a murder and do nothing “because of the way he held his body … his shoes were untied, and what he was wearing looked like a young person growing into being a man.” This was very much who the early Reeves was, and River’s Edge might be his darkest film. His vacancy here is not Zen cool … it’s just vacant, intellectually, ethically, morally, emotionally. Only in that void could Reeves be this terrifying. This is definitely a performance, but it never feels like acting. His magnetism was almost mystical.

3. John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter Two (2017), and John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019)

If they hadn’t killed his dog, none of this would have happened. Firmly part of the “middle-aged movie stars playing mournful badasses” subgenre that’s sprung up since Taken, the John Wick saga provides Reeves with an opportunity to be stripped-down but not serene. He’s a lethal assassin who swore to his dead wife that he’d put down his arms — but, lucky for us, he reneges on that promise after he’s pushed too far. Whereas in his previous hits there was something detached about Reeves, here’s he locked in in such a way that it’s both delightful and a little unnerving. The 2014 original was gleefully over-the-top already, and the sequels have only amped up the spectacle, but his genuine fury and weariness felt new, exciting, a revelation. Turns out Keanu Reeves is frighteningly convincing as a guy who can kill many, many people.

2. A Scanner Darkly (2006)

In hindsight, it seems odd that Keanu Reeves and Richard Linklater have only worked together once — their laid-back vibes would seemingly make them well suited for one another. But it makes sense that the one film they’ve made together is this Philip K. Dick adaptation, which utilizes interpolated rotoscoping to tell the story of a drug cop (Reeves) who’s hiding his own addiction while living in a nightmarish police state. That wavy, floating style of animation nicely complements A Scanner Darkly’s sense of jittery paranoia, but it also deftly mimics Reeves’s performance, which seems to be drifting along on its own wavelength. If in the Matrix films, he manages to defeat the dark forces, in this film they’re too powerful, leading to a pretty mournful finale.

1. The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

“They had written something that I had never seen, but in a way, something that I’d always hoped for — as an actor, as a fan of science fiction.” That’s how Reeves described the sensation of reading the screenplay for The Matrix, which had been dreamed up by two up-and-coming filmmakers, Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Five years after Speed, he found his next great project, which would become the defining role of his career. Neo is the missing link between Ted’s Zen-like stillness and John Wick’s lethal efficiency, giving us a hero’s journey for the 21st century that took from Luke Skywalker and anime with equal aplomb. Never before had the actor been such a formidable onscreen presence — deadly serious but still loose and limber. Even when the sequels succumbed to philosophical ramblings and overblown CGI, Reeves commanded the frame. We always knew that he seemed like a cool, left-of-center guy. The Matrix films gave him an opportunity to flex those muscles in a true blockbuster.

#keanu reeves #keanu reeves movies #ranking #vulture

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Behind The Album: A Moon Shaped Pool

Radiohead‘s ninth studio album was released in May 2016 through XL Recordings. Many of the tracks on the album had been written much earlier. The song “True Love Waits” goes all the way back to 1995, while it was also included on their live album, I Might Be Wrong. The band first conceived of “Burn the Witch” during their recording sessions for Kid A, while Thom Yorke actually performed the song “Present Tense” during a solo appearance in 2009. They had begun performing some of the tracks for this album as early as The King of Limbs tour in 2014. On that tour, they recorded two songs in Nashville, Tennessee, but the group eventually discarded both recordings deeming them too mediocre to keep. They began recording the actual album in September 2014 in Oxford with long time producer Nigel Godrich. The following year Radiohead moved to a studio in the south of France, La Fabrique. The facility had once been an art pigment mill, but now hosted the world's largest vinyl record collection. The band did not rehearse any of the new material at all before recording as Ed O’Brien said in an interview. “We just went straight into recording ... The sound emerged as we recorded." Rather than relying on computers, Godrich actually utilized analog equipment which meant they had the limitation of having to erase any previous take in order to record a new one. As Colin Greenwood observed, “It forces you to have to make decisions in the moment; it’s very much the opposite of having your album stored on a terabyte hard drive." Although analog was used, the group edited almost every track digitally. For example, Jonny Greenwood did so on the track “Piano Eyes” using the programming language Max. The song “Identikit” was created by manipulating several loops of Thom Yorke’s voice during The King of Limbs sessions. The song “Ful Stop” saw the group bring in an additional drummer Clive Deamer, who had previously worked with the band during the King of Limbs tour. The use of an orchestra was all arranged by Jonny Greenwood with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hugh Brunt. On the day they recorded the string arrangement for “Burn the Witch,” Nigel Godrich’s father passed away. The producer would have this to say about his death. “I literally left him on a fucking table in my house and went and recorded. And it was a very, very emotional day for me. He was a string player as well so it was one of those things where it felt like he would want me to go and just do this." Around the same time, Thom Yorke would announce his separation from his longtime wife, Rachel Owen. She would die from cancer several months later. Yorke would later tell Rolling Stone, “There was a lot of difficult stuff going on at the time, and it was a tough time for us as people. It was a miracle that that record got made at all." Upon its release, A Moon Shaped Pool would be dedicated to Godrich’s father Vic and stagehand Scott Johnson, who had died in a 2012 concert accident. In the middle of recording the new album, Radiohead took a break to do a song for the James Bond movie, Spectre. The song of the same name would be rejected by the makers of the film as being too dark. Nigel Godrich would say, “That fucking James Bond movie threw us a massive curveball. It was a real waste of energy ... In terms of making A Moon Shaped Pool it caused a stop right when we were in the middle of it.” Jonny Greenwood would say that the actual itself was probably recorded in about two weeks.

The music On a Moon Shaped Pool puts together aspects of art rock, folk music, chamber music, and ambient music. As with their previous album The King of Limbs, they relied heavily on electronic music, but also included many more string arrangements than ever before. The Guardian would comment that the record represents a very stripped down sound from the band. The lyrics on the LP focus on love, forgiveness, and regret, which many critics believed was related to Yorke’s recent separation from Owen. Spencer Kornhaber of the Atlantic said that A Moon Shaped Pool "makes the most sense when heard as a document of a wrenching chapter for one human being.” Other themes include the climate on “The Numbers,” while “Burn the Witch” takes a look at the dangers of authority. Yorke would mention that he really disliked using clichés like the system is a lie, but would observe, "How else are you supposed to say 'the system is a lie'? Why bother hiding it? It's a lie. That's it." The Guardian would write that A Moon Shaped Pool may have accidentally become the official soundtrack to the Donald Trump presidency, even though Radiohead had no intention of doing so. On “The Numbers,” Yorke sings, “One day a time, mate, you will be impeached shortly, mate. You are not a leader, love … You can't sustain this. It's not gonna work. One day a time. We ain't stupid." Once again, Stanley Donwood did the artwork for the cover of the album as he first began creating it while in France listening to the band playing in another room as to inspire his work. The final product represented a new approach, where he kept his canvases outside, so the weather could affect the finished product.

A Moon Shaped Pool was originally released as a download directly from the Radiohead website, iTunes, Amazon, and other outlets. Physical CDs and vinyl would come out a month later in most countries. The album was made available on Spotify, which emerged as noteworthy because Nigel Godrich had criticized the streaming service for not supporting new artists in 2013. The band did have discussions with the company about possibly making this album available for premium users earlier than the general public, but nothing ever came of it. Very little promotion of the album took place after its release including no interviews and no tour previewing the material. Ed O’Brien later said, "We didn't want to talk about it being quite hard to make. We were quite fragile, and we needed to find our feet." In April 2016, the band would remove everything from their website and social media profiles to be replaced with blank images. The move was meant to symbolize that Radiohead would be returning. On the day of its release, BBC6 Radio played the album in its entirety throughout the day. A Moon Shaped Pool would go on to become the band's sixth number one album in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the record would debut at number three on the Billboard 200 charts. The record would be certified gold in both countries becoming their most successful album since Hail to the Thief. Most critics applauded the new album. USA Today would say that it had been “well worth the wait.” Rolling Stone would write that the record was both beautiful and “haunting”at the same time. New Musical Express would call the album eerie , while Allmusic said that it was a “melancholic comfort” record. Like many of the other reviews after its release, Pitchfork noted the terrible sadness within the music. The New York Times would go so far as to call the LP the darkest one Radiohead has ever released. Entertainment Weekly said that the record represented the band's most epic release since Kid A. Other reviews would often mention the excellent arrangements done by Jonny Greenwood for the tracks using strings. Not all of the reviews emerged as glowing recommendations of the record. Mike Diver of Quietus would have this to say, “Certain tracks feel less than fully fleshed out, really given the treatment that their age warrants ... There's simply so little spark here, barely glowing embers and blackened dust where once Radiohead blazed a fascinating, furious trail for others to attempt to follow." Ryan Kearney of New Republic would write an even harsher assessment of the album saying it is “no coincidence that the only moving song on the album, 'True Love Waits', was written two decades ago.” The Guardian remained highly critical over the fact that A Moon Shaped Pool seemed even more sad, then it really needed to be. The saving grace of the record is that it emerged as an improvement over The King of Limbs. The record would be nominated for a Mercury Prize at the end of the year marking the fifth album with that designation for the group. The album would also be nominated for a Grammy as Best Alternative Album, while “Burn the Witch” would be nominated for Best Rock Song. Many end of the year best of lists included the release like Entertainment Weekly, AV Club, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and more.

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sinceileftyoublog · 4 years

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Interview: Electric Awe

Photo by Chantal Anderson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Like many writers, I’m guilty of (twice) calling Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith a “synth wizard” in past articles. With her upcoming album The Mosaic of Transformation, out tomorrow on Ghostly International, she shows that her skills and ideas are increasingly firmly rooted in the terrestrial realm, the spaces within us as much as the spaces surrounding us. 2016′s Ears was the soundtrack to “driving a spaceship through futuristic jungles,” whereas 2017′s The Kid (one of our favorite albums of that year) was “a concept album about four stages of life.” But her releases and endeavors since then invoke much more corporeal life. After releasing The Kid, she founded Touchtheplants, part record label, part publishing house from which she’s released the first volumes in her Electronic Series and books on listening as well as modular synth work recorded back in 2013 (Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga). All of this informs The Mosaic of Transformation, an album centered around her awe for electricity and how it exists within the body.

The music on The Mosaic of Transformation, simply put, feels alive, looking to burst from the seams. The appropriately titled opener “Unbraiding Boundless Energy Within Boundaries” begins with a tropical beat that dances into ascension. “The Spine Is Quiet In The Center” hovers like buzzing bees waiting to pollinate a flower. “Understanding Body Messages” is burbling and buoyant. At the same time, Smith captures life when the songs retreat into minimalism, like with the weepy strings and layered vocals of “Remembering” and dropped beat of the previously sprightly organ waltz of “The Steady Heart”. Elsewhere, tracks like “Overflowing” and “Deepening The Flow Of” are less than 30 seconds of pause between more major pieces, including 10.5-minute opus “Expanding Electricity” that closes the album.

I spoke to Smith over the phone last month about the record. The release of it wasn’t delayed due to COVID-19, but her tour with Caribou was postponed (and has since been rescheduled, including a stop in October at the Riviera). In the meantime, she’s used streamed performances on her Twitch channel as a way to reveal bits and pieces of the album. And of course, she’s been going on walks, trying to stay safely distanced from others but closer to nature.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: As you’ve said, a lot of The Mosaic of Transformation centers around your exploration of dance and the body and is contextualized in the music you’ve done for yoga and Touchtheplants. What else is some key inspiration or context for looking at the record?

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: A lot of it for me stems from my heart’s response to experiences I’ve had with electricity, feeling such a state of appreciation for all the many facets and capabilities of electricity. It’s my musical response to that admiration.

SILY: Are you talking about electricity from a scientific perspective or more metaphorically?

KAS: I guess there’s always elements of both. It’s such a potent part of all aspects of life, and our body’s made of electricity. I’ve been studying the nervous system a lot the last few years, and that really deepened my appreciation for learning about an internal experience of electricity, and I make music with electricity, so I have this external and internal experience. It’s been fascinating.

SILY: Where have you been studying the nervous system?

KAS: I’ve been learning about it from a lot of different teachers and readings. It’s kind of a self-study. I’ve done different online programs about electricity in the body.

SILY: When you think about the word “electricity,” people usually think of a light bulb or light switch. But like you mention, there’s a lot of electricity found in the natural world and in our bodies. To what extent are you trying to explore something natural with this record as opposed to electric objects?

KAS: To me, it’s the same thing, just in a different capsule. That’s where my admiration really started to expand. Having all these different experiences with electricity. It takes different shapes and can do different things depending upon the container that it’s in. It’s just a really interesting medium. It’s such a foundation for what animates life and objects.

You know when you feel so overwhelmed with awe at something? To me, that’s what inspiration is. You think, “I have to communicate this in a different way. I have to find an outlet for it.”

SILY: There are different ways to musically manifest electricity or what it sounds like, but to me, you seemed to skirt the cliche of buzzing or zooming noises. A lot of the time, your music is more fluttery. Was that a conscious decision?

KAS: It’s interesting you say the word “flutter,” because that was one of the first words I wrote down, because before I start a project, usually the moment I feel inspiration flooding in, I start compiling the words and images coming through, and they don’t all connect yet. “Flutter” was a really prominent word in that process. It was neat, because at that time, I was doing this residency with these wooden pipe organs and was recording a lot of stuff on those. That’s what gives it that fluttering sound.

SILY: I could definitely hear the organ on “The Steady Heart”, but I love records where the instrument that makes the sound is not the one you thought it did.

KAS: Me too. I had that experience with On The Other Ocean by David Behrman and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.

SILY: One thing that stood out to me about the new record is it’s about half short-form tracks, whereas other songs, like the closing track “Expanding Electricity”, are almost their own suites. How do you make the decisions behind when a track ends and begins?

KAS: I never feel like I’m really making the decisions. It’s kind of just what is coming through. It’s what the inspiration feels like. I remember when I was first writing down the words, one of the ideas was to make an opera, where it had reoccurring themes and felt like you were going through set changes. After set changes, there were these moments where characters were expressing themselves and communicating like opera. It turned into that structure.

SILY: You don’t sing as much on this one, either.

KAS: I sing probably half on it. I feel like most of my albums tend to be like that. The Kid was the exception. It’s just that my voice isn’t my primary instrument. It depends on what that piece is asking for. Sometimes, the thing that wants to be communicated just isn’t through the voice.

SILY: I definitely think of your voice as one being used as an instrument rather than a communicator of words, like on “Remembering”, where you layer your voice and it’s hard to decipher what you’re saying. At the same time, how do you come up with your lyrics?

KAS: It’s mostly what I hear. I don’t have a formula for the actual creation of pieces, but the way that I go about composing is always the same: I first get a really strong feeling of inspiration, and there’s an urgency that has to get communicated, and I can’t say it in English words. Then, I sit and listen with closed ears and don’t play anything. I usually get the full scope of what the sound is in an inner listening experience. During that process is usually when I hear the words. Then, I’ll write them down, and try to actualize what I heard internally.

SILY: I really like your use of space on the album, and you use it in different ways. On “The Steady Heart”, where the beat comes in, it’s fitting, and you realize what the track was previously lacking. On the flip side, on “Deepening The Flow Of”, the song momentarily empties out. How do you go about trying to inject a sense of space into your compositions?

KAS: It’s a hard question, because sometimes I honestly feel like I’m along for the ride creatively most of the time. It doesn’t feel like I’m making decisions. That process is happening, but I mostly am doing that matching process where I hear something internally and actualize what I heard. So it’s less of a conscious process of methodical decisions, “That part will communicate this and this.” It’s more, “I heard that inside, how do I match what I heard?”

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

KAS: It’s kind of a long story, but it’s a really big process of the album. When I first got the inspiration for the album, the full sonic listening experience of it, while I was having that experience, I kept getting these visuals of making these symmetrical shapes. I decided to give myself a physical symbol of me working through a transformation and through my body’s electricity while I wrote the album. The whole process of the album, each day, I would show up to working on the music, and usually, what would happen is I would experience a lot of challenges, frustration, and emotion matching what I heard inside, so my process to clear that out was to do the physical practice. They became this double practice that helped each other. I just kept track of my progress, and shapes were the end product of my physical transformation of being able to make these shapes with my body I couldn’t make before. The sonic version was to create what I heard inside. It went through a lot of different versions. I probably rewrote it 12 times.

SILY: What has been your approach to adapting these pieces to a performance?

KAS: The idea was to always make each performance different. It was always going to involve a more performance art vibe by having visuals and some sort of dance element to it. The live streams have been doing makeshift versions of that, but there are still a lot more elements that are going to be coming out as the album comes out. I’m performing using some Buchla gear, and I had written out parts for an orchestra with the hopes there would be some orchestral performances.

SILY: Why did you decide to release this record on Ghostly International instead of Western Vinyl?

KAS: That’s a really hard question to answer. Nobody’s ever asked me that question before, and it’s complicated. It’s like asking someone, “You were collaborating with this person, why are you collaborating with that person?” It’s not really a “this or that” as much as a “this and that.” You keep on growing. It’s not like one replaces the other. It expands.

SILY: How did the Ghostly relationship start?

KAS: We had been friends for a while, and it kind of just happened naturally. I shared the album with them.

SILY: Is anything else next for you?

KAS: A lot of things. I usually don’t have that long of a break before finishing something. I usually go right into making new music. I’m working on a lot of Touchtheplants projects right now. I’m writing the 2nd of 12 planned books on listening. Those are the main things I’m focusing on.

SILY: Do you have a favorite plant?

KAS: Ooh! Not of all time, but I have different plants I highlight at different times. Right now, I’m working a lot with rosemary and fennel. I like to put rosemary in all my water I drink. It’s anti-viral, and it’s got this lecithin that protects the fat around your cells, so it’s a really nice one to work with. But for all plants, like if you’re taking medicine, do your research! And fennel propagates really easily.

SILY: When you go to different cities, do you visit their arboretums?

KAS: Usually on tour, I try to find where’s the closest park or garden.

SILY: Pre- or during lockdown, is there anything you’ve been watching, reading, or listening to that’s inspired you, comforted you, or caught your attention?

KAS: I go mbira.org a lot and listen to mbira music from that website. I like to support the musicians on that website because the money goes straight to them in Zimbabwe, and American money to them is a lot of money. They don’t have a streaming thing, and you have to buy it from them. You can’t find it online or anywhere else. I’ve mostly been reading about the nervous system, but I just got this book I haven’t read yet called Surrendering. I’ve read a few pages of it and I’m really excited to read that. It’s not comforting, but I’ve been watching the Tiger King. It’s the opposite of comforting. It definitely caught my attention. I watch a lot of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. That, in a weird way, has been comforting. In a weird way, it’s helped me process everything that’s going on by learning about what’s going on. Whenever I go a day or two without staying updated, I start to feel a little bit weird. I like learning from The Daily Show because it’s delivered in a humorous way.

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royal-nation-empire · 7 years

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MAYA JEVANS INTERVIEW!

Shot by: Lenore Seal

Interviewed by, Monica P Brice

For those who are not informed of Maya Jevans, Maya is the BUKU Music & Art Project graphic designer and brand consultant & also a graphic designer for the Winter Circle Productions! Creating art for Buku she has inspired the world and branded BMAP with her talents. In this interview we will be discussing her previous experience and more.

Kind Regards, MPB

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Q&A:

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Q. Thank you so much for joining me on this one-on-one interview Maya. I respect what you do and you deserve the credit for all of your hard work, first off we’ll start with how old were you when you started graphic designing?

A. My mom was a graphic designer so the term was always in my lexicon, and I started playing around with the programs as a kid. I turned every middle and high school assignment into a design project, even in History or English class I found a way to turn my homework into an illustrated magazine or poster. I grew up with everyone in my life saying I was going to follow in my mom's footsteps and grow up to be a designer, which made me want to be anything but an artist. I moved from California to New Orleans for university and aimlessly studied a variety of subjects for the first few months until the BUKU lineup dropped and quite literally changed my life. The poster design made me see art and music in a new way, the way a brand could visually communicate the sound and vibe of an event to elevate and promote music. I called my mom that night and told her I was going to make these some day, 'some day' came quicker and more literally than I thought.

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Q.That’s awesome that you’re inspired from your mother. And I think it’s cool that you turned simple things into a huge art project, you’re definitely creative to be able to do that. It’s dope that you saw an opportunity with Buku and went for it, that’s the kind of passion I look for when I interview people, such a great trait to have. Now, what software's do you use for your art?

A. Adobe Creative Cloud, mostly Illustrator and Photoshop.

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Q. What inspires your art style, when designing what is your overall goal you want to represent for your audience to see?

A. My goal with my art is to take what is heard and make it seen.

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Q.That’s deep, to be able to make vibrations into a physical vision is a great way to approach art from preception and feelings/senses. What vibe do you assume people get from your art, how do you think it inspires them to want to come to Buku?

A. I've never encountered another festival whose brand has as much of a cult following as BUKU's does. It has become symbolic of a lifestyle, if you see someone in a BUKU branded tank you know they're part of the hip tastemaking crowd we market to. I've made friends in far flung places such as Portugal and the Bahamas just because someone wore a BUKU shirt and it started a conversation. I think it's this appealing and relateable to people because it's so alive, everything is made of living creatures and teeth and eyes. Also, all of the art starts by hand with pen and paper so the human element is stays present throughout.

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Q. I agree with that, Buku has a cult culture vibe to it, the way that the designs are and the colors that are used makes it very expressive and gives a great statement about the event. What's your favorite genre of EDM music, why?

A. Livetronica, anything with live instruments/vocals and an electronic influence.

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Q. Other then the beautiful culture, what do you love about Buku Festival and what has is taught you experience wise?

A. BUKU was my break-out job that got me started in the industry, the team is like family and the festival feels like home. I've learned as much about the music industry and marketing as I have about design. Working on the lineup posters taught me about high-stakes confidentiality, the pitfalls of print design, revisions and rush deadlines, but has shown me some of the ins and outs of the billing/booking world, and what coordination of a national marketing campaign looks like.

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Q. Marketing & booking are definitely important, good thing you learned about it for thins industry. When did you start working for Winter Circle Productions as a graphic designer?

A. I interviewed with Winter Circle at the end of 2014 and started as an intern for January to May. They hired me once that ended and I've been onboard ever since, working through my last year of college. After graduating in 2016 they created the new role of Brand Consultant for me to touch on creative areas beyond just art and design for the 2017 festival, such as Special Moments performances and overall on-site experience. 2018 will be my fourth festival on the team.

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Q. Interesting, How would you define your signature art style for Winter Circle Productions?

A. The brand of BUKU was created by illustrator Young & Sick in 2013, together he and I use this style to create a new but consistent brand for each year of the festival.

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Q. That’s awesome, I love that you and I both have the same driven passion when it comes to graphic designing, what advice can you share for other graphic designers trying to build a brand in the industry?

A. You have to be extremely passionate about design and music to keep up with the demands of both industries. Let that fire be the thing that powers you through tough critiques and late nights. Let that passion speak for you because potential clients/employers will see it. Let it inform your style and brand, don't just make what seems trendy but instead make art that you love for music/musicians you care about.

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Q. That’s great advice, I like when you mentioned “let that be the thing that powers you through tough critiques and late nights” because I stay up all night creating art, you know many people won’t like the art that we make because people have different styles, critism is huge in this industry and position as an visiaul artist. Creating something that does not exist is a huge mission and it’s created based off of our experiences. What have you learned overall from being in the EDM industry and how has it shaped you into the person you are today? Why would you recommend other people joining the EDM music scene?

A. The music scene has become my career network, my social circle, my passion, my pastime. It's my work as well as my play. I would recommend people break into the industry if they truly care about being involved and believe they can contribute something substantial and meaningful. That contribution doesn't have to be some groundbreaking innovation, I believe genuine passion and drive are the best things someone can bring to the table.They say if you do something you love you'll never have to work a day in your life, that's a load of bollocks. You'll probably end up working all the harder because you love it, but that work will be both the thing that keeps you up at night and the thing that gets you out of bed excited and inspired every day.

Well hope that you all learned something new about Buku Music & Art Project and found this inspiring. Ty so much for your support! -Monica P Brice

#MonicaPBrice #rne #royalnationempire #art #edm #graphicdesign #graphics #designer #designing #selfexpression #MayaJevans #Buku #BukuMusicAndArtsProject #Interview #Popular #Trending #New

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doomedandstoned · 8 years

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Italian Wrecking Ball NAGA Emerges With “Worm”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

We’ve got a double-whammy for you today! Celebrated Naples threesome NAGA are back with an exclusive track and are opening up for their first interview in a while. If you’re new to the music of Lorenzo De Stefano (vocals/guitar), Emanuele Schember (bass), Dario Graziano (drums), I can’t think of a better description than their own: “…distortion, heaviness and nihilism to your ears. No concept, no bullshits, no happiness, just sound anger and frustration to exorcize and reflect the greyness and despair of contemporary world.” Now that’s something I can really raise my horns to.

Naga’s second album, ‘Inanimate’ (2016), is absolutely crushing (I raved about it in our quarterly ’Doom Around The World’). Since its digital release, the band has been picked up by Everlasting Spew Records, which is releasing Inanimate on CD on March 25th (you can order it here). For this special edition, NAGA has recorded a new single, which Doomed & Stoned is premiering today.

“Worm” opens with sparse textures. A dissonant theme is introduced in single string plucks. Soon, this erupts into a storm of cacophony. The vocals are ravings of madness. The dense atmosphere is one of opaque gloom, with sheets of rain pouring down from blackened, low-hanging clouds. NAGA has orchestrated a mood of perfect doom, something that echoes entirely throughout Inanimate.

Give ear…

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An Interview with NAGA Frontman Lorenzo De Stefano

By Mari Knox

Doomed & Stoned Italy)

You started playing music together almost 15 years ago, in the beginning with a band called KTER (Kill The Easter Rabbit) and later, in 2013, you have founded Naga. A long evolution that brought you good feedback since the debut album 'Hēn’ (2014). Your musical path is clearly the result of a strong partnership, something that’s hard to find. What does unite you? And what pushed you to start a band?

Basically, we are friends, kind of brothers, so it was completely natural to stick together and start up a band. We just share the same idea of music and life in general. We met in Lyceum and, at that time, in Naples it was not that easy to find someone to share the same idea of music with, and still this is the case. We both liked heavy stuff like Motörhead, Melvins, Slayer, and Electric Wizard so It was natural to come by and say “hey let’s start a band together.” Basically, we feel music in the same way and that’s what unites us. Then we found in Dario the natural 3rd part. I’ve played with many drummers, but Dario is the best one. He shares our musical tastes, he’s a really clever and skilled musician, and above all a dear friend. Now we have a clear idea of how our band has to sound, and that’s it.

Staying on topic, tell us how your songs come to life and what inspired the 'Inanimate.’ Is there a theme, a concept, to your song writing and how do the lyrics tie in?

We have to distinguish the musical composition and the lyrics. The writing process is really natural like, “Hey guys, I have this riff. What do you think?” A major impulse comes from Dario, who I always say is the best guitar player of the band. He’s amazingly creative and our ideas really fit together. Basically, we develop every song from a riff then we add parts to that. I organize the structure and only at the end comes the vocal part.

I am the only writer of the lyrics since we started and, no, there’s no concept. Maybe I’d like to write a concept in the future, but right now I’ve got no time. The only remarkable theme of our lyrics is nihilism, but sometimes with a sort of bright side outside the Abyss. I am mainly inspired by my personal life and my lectures.

'Inanimate’ was initially released by Lay Bare Recordings in 2016. This year, you have chosen to reissue it whit a new track, “Worm,” on the thriving Italian label, Everlasting Spew Records. How did you get in contact with them and with this repress, what kind of improvement you have brought to the album?

The EP sold out in just a month. Lots of people asked us for a repress, so we just looked for someone interested in re-releasing our work. Luckily, we found Everlasting Spew, thanks to our manager Tito Vespasiani, who set up everything with the label. We have found in Giorgio from Everlasting a really helpful and cool guy. The label is young and ambitious just like us, so we can grow up together.

Obviously, we want to reprint to be something special, so we recorded the new track “Worm” that sounds more death metal oriented, in order to increase the impact of the album, and decorated everything with a brand new master by the almighty James Plotkin. You can’t go wrong with him.

Talk aboute bands or the records that have influenced you most as musicians and helped you develop your personal sound. Are there other kinds of influences, like art and literature, as well?

Speaking of the bands or albums I love, I have to mention, of course, the first five LPs of Black Sabbath, 'Abbey Road’ by the Beatles, '1969’ by The Stooges, 'Hell Awaits’ by Slayer, 'Bleach/In Utero’ by Nirvana, Celtic Frost’s 'Morbid Tales,’ 'Transylvanian Hunger’ by Darkthrone, Carcass’ 'Necroticism,’ Sonic Youth and, naturally, Neurosis and all the doom, sludge, and black metal stuff. We like also old Swedish death metal and some newer stuff from God City studios, Converge Nails, H.O.F. and so on.

But I have to say that no particular band has inspired us in our style. We try to be personal and evolve by ourselves in shaping the sound and in the creative process. Then, I really like to see live bands, most of all I am a music fan, and I like to capture here and there things I like in order to incorporate them in our music. It’s an important part, I’d say pedagogical, in developing our style.

Apart from music, I read more than I play guitar, so of course my interests in philosophy and literature are a huge part of my life and give me inspiration for my lyrics and atmospheres. I am not really into this occult or movie stuff, it’s just a cliché of our music genre. I prefer to write about my personal life and something that really touches me or that has influenced my life path, hybridized sometimes with philosophical themes. Nietzsche, Jünger, and Heidegger are a big influence for my lyrics, just like Sabbath are for my playing. I am just tired of bands that sings about voodoo magic, weed, barbarians, and fantasy stuff. It’s a little prosaic, or at least it does not work with us. Instead, I like Neurosis or Amenra’s lyrical approach. “Thrives,” “Hyele,” and “Worm” from Inanimate are a good example of that.

Photographs by Francesco Guerra

At the moment, you’re ready to play with Candlemass in northern Italy and this summer you will play in a big festival in Iceland (with a lot of important acts like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Neurosis, Sólstafir, Misþyrming and many more). How do you feel about playing live? Are there any past gigs that you think have been more important than others, something you still remember as “special”?

Playing live is the most important part. I really dig bands that kick ass live. We just try to be natural, to play at the loudest volume possible, and to be violent. We stay simple. We aren’t the band that takes too much time to sound check monitors and stuff like that. We like to be “in your face,” to come out and play. That’s why I regard NAGA basically as a punk/hardcore band, concerning the approach and attitude. We do not have any filter -- we like to play straight and direct, that’s all.

Concerning the past live shows, I would mention the Watchtower Festival in Pisa with Napalm Death, Church of Misery and The secret, where we met those amazing guys Michael, Lorenzo and Marco (from the Secret/Hyerophant), the Glue lab in Ancona, Tetris in Trieste, and two concerts in our city Naples, the first at Cellar with Marnero, and another on a harbor in the middle of Naples’s gulf called Molosiglio, two D.I.Y. concerts, fully packed with 200-300 people and lots of friends. Do not ever underestimate Naples’ scene. We belong here. It’s a lot better and hotter than others although not publicized.

During your musical career, you have seen lots of changes, first of all the “social-media” revolution, which can help bands to expand their possibilities outside their own country. What do you think about this and have you noticed some differences between past and present? What do you think about the current musical scene in Italy and abroad?

Social media are a double edged sword. It allows bands to spread their message and music around the world, but it’s something that could saturate the scene too. The problem with social media is that now you have to take care of lots of other stuff apart from music, the image, the posts, news and so on. I do not really like this aspect. Emanuele is a little more skilled than me in this, I am not good at it. But, of course, Facebook and Bandcamp have been helping us a lot, same goes with Discogs and eBay where you can spread your music worldwide. I knew our first record Hen was in the hands of Tad Doyle of Tad/Brothers of the Sonic Cloth or in the ones of Mike Scheidt of Yob and it was pretty amazing, since I’ve been listening to these bands since I was 15.

About the scene, I think that now there are many good bands around not only in our genre, the problem is sometimes the public and the live culture. In Germany, where I am at the moment, people go to see live shows buy merch and so on. In Italy, things are going slower, you have to plan carefully every event and so on. But I can not complain about Naples and Italy. In general, we have always had an amazing audience and a good feedback.

Speaking of Italian bands I’d mention above all Grime, Hyerophant, Messa, Caronte, Profanal, Fuoco Fatuo,Zippo/Shores of null, La Casta and Marnero, there are many others but these are the first coming to my mind right now.

Any closing thoughts for the Doomed & Stoned readers?

No hope, no joy, worship Naas.

Follow The Band.

Get Their Music.

Pre-Order 'Inanimate’ on CD.

#d&s debuts #d&s interviews #naga #naples #italy #doom #blackened doom #metal #everlasting spew records #mari knox #doomed & stoned

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tinymixtapes · 8 years

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Music Review: Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me

Mount Eerie A Crow Looked At Me [P.W. Elverum & Sun; 2017] Rating: 5/5 “Everybody, it’s gonna happen. You know it’s gonna happen. It happens every day. Billions and billions of people have already died. You too will die. Sing along with us, won’t you?” – Daniel Johnston, “Funeral Home” We are always dying. We die because we fight over shiny stuff. We die because we drive with our eyes on our screens or swallow the wrong things. We die because we extract ancient dead things from the ground that in turn pollute our lungs and synthesize the hydrocarbons that do us harm. We die because our country told us to, because sometimes our stomachs are denied nutrition, because sometimes it’s easier to die than to engage in culture. Of course, we most often die because our cells stop dividing — a phenomenon we equate with ageing. We get old, we die. But sometimes these cells express the opposite: uncontrollable growth and division, which can then lead to a lump, the potential for spreading, and then, sometimes, death. When my wife told me in October 2013 that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, my first thought arrived as a question. It wasn’t about what type of breast cancer, how advanced it was, or which treatments would be required. It wasn’t about how to tell our son or our family or our friends. None of that crossed my mind. As I stood there shocked and unable to mutter any sort of consoling platitude, wrapping my arms around her as she sobbed, the only thought I had in my mind was: Is this person I’m hugging right now going to die? --- My wife is fortunately still alive, but Phil Elverum’s is not. On July 9, 2016, Geneviève Castrée — Phil Elverum’s wife, artist/musician, the mother to their daughter, and his 13-year companion — died from pancreatic cancer. A Crow Looked At Me is Phil’s open-letter tribute to her, an 11-song album that details loss and grief wearily and pensively, but with a clarity of mind. Similar aesthetically to works like Dawn and Little Bird Flies Into A Big Black Cloud, Phil presents his thoughts here with stunning candor, using just a laptop and a microphone to capture his characteristically amorphous guitar lines and thin yet comforting balm of a voice. It was recorded in the room that Geneviève died in and performed mostly on her instruments. The lyrics were written on her paper. But the specifics of its sounds and details of its creation feel as irrelevant and unimportant as any “review” of it (which is why the rating above means absolutely nothing). This isn’t just an album about death. It’s an album that lives death. Death, here, isn’t simply a cessation of bodily functions; it’s an implied process: the process of dying, the process of grieving, the process of performing these processes of death and grief. It’s a testament to how death paradoxically roots itself in life, smudging our desire to concretize abstractions and couching our anxieties in the very human tendency toward wonderment: What is death? What is life? Why does her body look this way? Why do I feel bitter? What do I do now? Rather than wailing existential poetry about the universe and anthropomorphizing the elements through his typically keen, self-aware wisdom, Phil has adopted a no-bullshit, matter-of-fact lyrical approach whose trailing musings and minimalistic narratives resemble those of a diary, a memento mori that acts more like a generous reminder of death’s impact than an artful expression of it. The resulting lyrics are shockingly simplified, but utterly disarming because of it: “I can’t get the image out of my head/ Of when I held you right there/ And watched you die,” he sings on “Swims” over swaying electic guitar, strummed as if it were a nylon. On the gorgeous “Ravens,” he softly croons over broken chords: “I watched you die in this room, then I gave your clothes away/ I’m sorry.” Because Phil deliberately foregoes using metaphors and “big-picture reflections,” much of the album’s strength lies in the excruciating specificity of the domestic and the mundane: old underwear, bloody tissues, her squeaking chair, taking out the garbage, logging time and place with a journalistic rather than artistic flair. The latter loosely brackets off various moments in Phil’s grieving process, as if to ensure their transience. Reflection here is more about remembering than ruminating, Phil shifting from lyrics like “Our daughter is one and a half/ You have been dead 11 days” (“Seaweed”) to “Do the people around me want to keep hearing about my dead wife?” (“My Chasm”). There are some truly sublime moments — the verses in “Ravens,” the refrain of “Soria Moria” — that join some of Phil’s greatest melodies, but it mostly sounds like he’s feeling his way through the chords and, ultimately, letting the words shape the songs. As a result, the melodies feel decidedly less worked over, oftentimes arriving loose and lopsided, almost indistinct. This approach, coupled with his avoidance of the towering, expansive textures of his recent work, ensures we don’t get too absorbed by our own thoughts, that we don’t get overly seduced by its musicality lest we forget that “death is real,” the album’s pseudo mantra. Which is fitting: we don’t sing along to this album, we cry to it. There’s an entrenched realism in play here, a constant, weary reminder of our soggy corporeality and our oftentimes futile attempts to transcend it. Because, for Phil, it’s not just that grief flails under a “crushing absurdity,” but that it also manifests physically, with knees failing, brains failing, faces contorting, bodies collapsing. Geneviève, too, is not just a dead wife and dead mother. Before becoming “burnt bones,” “dust,” and “ashes in a jar,” Geneviève is depicted as a dying face, a body transforming, a wife chemically reduced to something “jaundiced and fucked.” Because cancer kills, sure, but the destruction happens over time. I don’t know what it was like in Phil’s household, but ours was constantly on alert, self-isolating ourselves from the world because we were terrified of germs that could derail any progress. There were unexpected allergic reactions and multiple emergency trips, fallen hair gathering in the corners of the wood floors, trivial fights and overbearing guilt and bitterness that we are still working to get through. Intimacy was replaced by hospital gowns and premature goodnights, the body ravaged by toxic medicines, the body dismembered and, later, reconstructed. It all weighed on our then three-year-old son, who at first couldn’t understand why Mom was always sleeping and why she couldn’t play with him. But time can be an asset, and on this album and in my own life, it acts not to heal, per se, but to deteriorate memory, to exploit its imprecision in order to make us remember less clearly. Death implies replacement, substitution, a clearing of space for someone else to breathe the air we breathe or buy the shit we buy or do the other ridiculous/awesome/mostly ridiculous things that humans do. But trauma, devastation, loss — they’re not things that just go away if you’re still breathing. They linger, reduced in severity over time only because they become less functional to the social whole and therefore less necessary to dwell on once grief is internalized, once it changes our composition, effectively allowing us to be “post-human in a past that keeps happening ahead of you,” as Joanne Kyger put it in the poem gracing the album’s cover (RIP Joanne Kygerb, who sadly died this week). It never feels right to “move on” from death, whatever that means, but the world does anyway, seemingly indifferent to our pain. So, we too join in — sometimes without realizing it, sometimes with an unbelievable awareness. As Phil sings on “Toothbrush/Trash”: “Today I just felt it for the first time three months and one day after you died. I realized that these photographs we have of you are slowly replacing the subtle familiar memory of what it’s like to know you’re in the other room, to hear you singing on the stairs, a movement, a pinecone, your squeaking chair, the quiet untreasured in-between times, the actual experience of you here. I can feel these memories escaping colonized by photos, narrowed down, told. My mind erasing.” I took a couple trips recently, one to visit my cousin and another to visit my aunt. But both trips were actually painful, awkward goodbyes: roughly a week after each visit, my cousin and my aunt would be dead, both due to cancer. “Auntie Shenshen died,” I told my son shortly after it happened. He paused, then replied, softly: “Don’t tell me that kind of stuff.” --- It’s not easy to hear about death, which is of course why A Crow Looked At Me is a challenging listen. Because unlike some of Phil’s earlier work, the album isn’t a simple aestheticization of death. “This new album is barely music,” said Phil in an interview with Pitchfork. “It’s just me speaking her name out loud, her memory.” But although the lyrics are ostensibly about his own experiences with death, Phil’s documentation from the frontlines of tragedy acts, in the end, as a selfless reflection of love, carrying Geneviève’s memory in and through song, letting his admiration for her override anxiety about who he is now and how he and his daughter fit in a world without her. As he put it in a note released with the album: The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. As listeners, we are implicated through knowing, with the understanding that interpretation and value judgments here are essentially irrelevant. The album defies being used as an accessory for identity construction, and the words — most of which are written to Geneviève herself, except the faint glimmer of hope expressed in the final track to his daughter — are too direct, too intimate, too real to foster casual or interpretive listening. With A Crow Looked At Me, Phil — who had kept much of his family life private until last year’s GoFundMe campaign — has laid himself bare, sharing a dark, devastating moment in his family’s life with an open vulnerability that’s complemented by the strength and generosity required to give voice to it in the first place. Over many songs and many albums, Phil’s primary aim has been to communicate grand ideas, to be understood, and his own perception that he’s been unable to do so without misunderstanding has always haunted how he writes — sometimes awkwardly so. As he put it in an autobiographical essay, “[T]he truth is that I am sensitive to any thematic or lyrical misunderstandings because I actually do want to get my idea across, beyond just me, and I continue to try to get my blade sharper.” But by plummeting into the depths of his own cavernous pain on this release, relinquishing the obscuring metaphors and telling “everything as it is,” he has transformed personal grief into something like a universal sorrow, grounded in a loving, caring lucidity unlike any of his other works. Those who have suffered through loss will have much to relate with on A Crow Looked At Me, but it won’t be a salve for your despair. There are no instructions here on how to deal with grief, no moralistic epiphanies or clever grandiose poetics. But it could, at the very least, help some of us better understand how grief functions in our own lives, how being reflexive about loss can help us accept that “We are all always so close to not existing at all” or offer insight into how we too can function when “someone’s there and then they’re not.” In the context of our own narcissistic pretenses and the technologies that mediate our interactions — our constructed identities, our social media performances, our avatars and their simulations — the act of being brutally honest, of being uncomfortably direct through the highly flawed, imperfect thing we call language becomes an act of boldness and, for me, a source of inspiration. This is why I’m writing not as “Mr P” in this review, but as Marvin Lin: a longtime admirer of Phil’s music and a fellow caretaker, griever, and father, scared about the future but overwhelmed by feelings of openness and kinship. And it’s helping. http://j.mp/2mX2miL

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kamillapeter96 · 8 years

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Question 1: Describe and discuss Isadora Duncan’s (1877-1927) approach and key ideas about dance, the body and womanhood.

One could argue that the turn of the 20th century saw a revolution in the art of dance. Three American dancers: Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan introduced new ideas and new discourses about dance and the use of the body (Reynolds, 2003). Duncan (1877-1927) is known and remembered as the “Mother of Modern Dance” as the website, Biography.com (2016) states. She was the first individual who thought that ballet is unnatural and dance should come from nature. As she states: “It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations”. (Flitch, 1912, p.105) Therefore her dance was anything but “else” and against of the previous appearance of dance. The “new dance”, as Duncan referred to, was forged, practically and discursively, out of three American movement traditions: social dance, physical culture, and ballet. (Daly, 1995, p.31) This essay will describe and discuss her key ideas about the body, dance and womanhood.

Firstly, it is needed to discuss her main concept of impression and look of the moving body as her other ideas developed from this. Barefooted, barely something light (Greek apparel) on her to prevent nudity, like an excited Greek statue, obstinately look like a shape, a movement from a Greek vase, statue or relieve. Her dreams belonged to the Ancient Greek world but she saw clearly that: “To return to the dances of the Greeks would be as impossible as it is unnecessary.”(Duncan, 1928, p.54) Related to the Greek philosophy, her idea’s main factor was nature. As she mentioned at her speech called The Dance of the Future in Berlin:

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body… She will dance not in the form of a nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette but in the form of a woman in its greatest and purest expression.

(Duncan, 1903, p.24-25)

Therefore her choice of clothes stood out from other dancers at that time and Duncan was very aware of that. It was not an object to desire nor was it aiming to attract, instead it was just a kind of naturalness that she was very keen on. She had an earthy, natural style. It can be deduced that she was very interested in taking nature as a source of inspiration. The human body is something to be celebrated and not hidden away. There is a harmonious relationship between the mind and the body. She loved that the ideal person in Ancient Greek was an Olympic athlete who was also a philosopher. (Vitányi, 1963, p.244)

Secondly, to follow her ideal body it is necessary to describe her idea of dance itself. On the website, burgeononline.com Valerie Durham (who is a direct lineage Duncan Dancer according to the isadoraduncanarchive.org [2014]) describes that Duncan believed that the human’s soul is housed in our solar plexus, that mushy place where the ribcage begins to separate and therefore, she felt that all of true human movement that showed dance as the true luminous manifestation of the soul as she called the dancer, must stem from that place and undulate outwards. Her technique developed from that theory and from the time of her earliest choreography each movement she did began in the solar plexus and spread throughout her body from there. While her technique changed throughout the years as she matured and as the subjects about which she danced changed that motivation stayed constant. The movement of the body and feet were replaced by pure terre á terre, performing on or close to the ground or floor, few jumps, static poses inspired by nature (for example: the movements of wind, ocean and earth). (Vitányi, 1963, p.250) To express feelings she used her face, arms and Greek apparels. Her dances were performed by herself and “no one else could perform it” acknowledged by Valéria Dienes, Hungarian dancer who was taught by Raymond Duncan, Isadora’s brother. (Dienes, 1978, p.32) Unfortunately, there was no time for her to be clear about her movements as she died early in a car accident caused ironically by her beloved Greek draperies. Her nostalgic longing from the era of her own headed to the denial of ballet known from decadence. What can prove more her denial that she escaped from ballet practice after three lessons? (Vitányi, 1963, p.245)

Thirdly, it desires to discuss her ideas about womanhood as it resonates with her main idea as well. Dance can and should be an expression of the dancer’s soul. Women should dance their true identity. The human body is natural, not shameful (as the Victorian era clearly believed).

She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into one another. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of women.

(Duncan, 1903, p.25)

Clearly, Duncan believed in womanhood as equal and strong as manhood. In that time most women were at home (raising up children, cleaning the house and cooking) but more and more of them started to work (as the website, striking-women.org states [2013]). Perhaps this was the factor which gave her the motivation to fulfil this desire to be just as strong as the other gender. “She evoked wholeness and unity as a woman at one with her body through dance.” (Francis, 1994, p.32) She changed how people saw women. Not like an artificial being but like a naturally beautiful creature of our world without untruth covering.

Finally, it is crucial to explain her technique and other’s point of view of Duncan’s moving body and performances. To begin with, the tragic death of her – unfortunately – prevented the productive ideas to be well experienced and practiced. Her dance did not have much system in it, but she left us with an enormous amount of motivation to fulfil it with. She was not a creator of highly intricate technical movements and a lot of times she improvised. The audience could get a sense that her work were not generally choreographed very tightly, they were very improvisational. It was not her movements themselves that were interesting it was her performance. People in the audience talked about a kind of charisma, energy and authenticity emanating from her. She had a spiritual presence that people in audience really could respond to. (Vitányi, 1963, p.245) “It was not simply a matter of what dance should be, but what it should do – what it should accomplish within the social sphere.” (Daly, 1995, p.26)

According to The Guardian (2002) George Balanchine (ballet choreographer) who saw her on the stage - when she was forty - acknowledged: ‘Drunk fat woman who for hours was rolling around like a pig’, in other sources other less impolitely words from him can be found: If she practice every day from early age, she would be a great dancer. (Vitányi, 1963, p.246) This paradox just illustrates that Duncan’s purpose was to destroy the rotten traditions. “You do not play the piano with gloves on.” On duncandancers (2008) website Valerie Durham deduced that:

Moreover, as much as Isadora criticized ballet, ballet has grown tremendously in its breadth of expression. And much as Balanchine criticized Isadora… his choreography was profoundly influenced by the artistic breakthroughs Isadora made throughout her career.

Tamara Karsavina (Nijinsky’s partner) had written

“In her strictures on ballet, which she termed a “false and artificial art,” Duncan blindly attacked the essential element of all stage art - artificiality. Like a child who knows the alphabet but cannot yet read a book, in her limited sectarian vision, she laid down the principle that the art of dancing must return to its natural state, it is very alphabet.”

(Karsavina, 1961, p.170)

When she saw her again she admitted: “She moved with those wonderful steps of hers with a simplicity and detachment that could only come through the intuition of genius itself.” This suggests that years later it turned out how much she affected the people who denied her as well. Her phenomenon effected a whole world incredibly even decades after her death. Surprisingly her name can be found in unlikely sources such as one of the well-known Jewish director, Woody Allen’s books, Mere Anarchy.

It can be suggested that Isadora Duncan achieved her ideas of herself as a moving body and women. Her naturalness influenced the audience. Someone (like George Balanchine and Tamara Karsavina) would say her dance was nothing but poor improvisation, precisely because she wanted her movements to look natural created in the moment without any untruth step, gesture just like a wind or river. Anyone can see there are two sides of every question. But no one can deny her life work’s importance in the dance world. She was a revolutionary, she broke down boundaries for women, for dancers and for humanity. She changed how we perceive the art of dance and she is in many ways directly responsible for what we call dance today.

Bibliography:

Biography.com (2016) Isadora Duncan Biography Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/isadora-duncan-9281125#difficult-personal-life (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

Daly, A. (1995) Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America

Dienes, V. (1978) A század nagy tanúi Translated by K. Péter for the essay

Duncandancers (2008) 10 Myths About Duncan Dance Available at: http://www.duncandancers.com/10myths.html (Accessed: 29 January 2017)

Duncan, I. (1903) The Dance of the Future

Duncan, I. (1928) The Art of Dance Edited by Sheldon Cheney

Flitch, J. E. C. (1912) Modern Dancing and Dancers

Francis, E. (1994) American Studies

Isadoraduncanarchive (2014) Valerie Durham Available at: http://www.isadoraduncanarchive.org/dancer/123/ (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

Karsavina, T. (1961) Theatre Street The Reminiscences Of Tamara Karsavina

Reynolds, N. (2003) No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century

Striking-Women (2013) Women and work in the 19th century Available at: http://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

The Guardian (2002) Dancing queen with feet of clay Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/27/biography.features (Accessed: 04 February 2017)

Vitányi, Iván (1963) A tánc Translated by K. Péter for the essay

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asiahgray-blog · 6 years

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Month 5 Journal Reflection

This month course was Design Research and provide to be a challenge but the experience was very insightful. Research is very important to the branding process and the design process overall. The course gets you to research almost everything and explain how it inspired the design. The research makes you have to think about what it is that you are designing and how to explain what is and back up the claim. Coming from an undergrad program where you didn’t have to research anything but instead going right into designing this class is very important for me. While I did struggling with some of the ideas and concepts the course is helpful for me and shapes my design process. Every assignment it is important to synthesize the information, solve the problem I have, use innovative thinking and acquire competencies. I want to give some examples of how I used those four things one certain assignment and how it helped me.

Synthesizing: During this month the assignments would prove to be a challenge but in the end, there are lessons that I have learned to help. One assignment that allowed me to strongly synthesize material was during week three. During this week the assignment was web development trends and finding the connection between Steve Krug and Amber Leigh Turner writing. This assignment was eye-opening because I had never seriously looked into web design so it was important for me to seriously research and understand what I was reading. After reading a chapter from Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2013) and reading the three trend articles from Amber Turner it was important to find a connection between the two to show that while trends change over the years the trends will always work with web usability. During my research, I started by reading Krug’s first chapter to see what his suggestion was for web usability and took away what I thought were major key points. After that, I looked into what Turner was talking about for the web design trends over the years and then I started to look back at Krug’s information and found. I decided to make the connection between Chapter one Don’t make me think! of Krug’s book states “ For instance, it means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.” (Krug, 2013) and the statement Turner made “We struggle to figure out exactly the best way to showcase this important piece of content to make it usable no matter the screen it’s being viewed on.” (Turner, 2016). For me it was important to take the first usability feature Krug talks about and connect this to something that Turner speaks about. Synthesizing plays a big part in working with clients understanding the clients and making connections are very important. The course helped me understand how to synthesize and connect information because there is so much research that helps shape the design projects. Below is a profession example from turner and how I used the information to shape my own design.

Problem Solving: The hardest design problem I faced this month was doing the vision board. In the beginning, I thought for my brand of Kyoto would be romantic but it was hard to get the narrative and get the design together. What helped fixed the narrative problem was the assignment of week three dealing with theme, voice, and tone. On the other hand, the vision board still needs work but with continue, the vision board will get better. To solve the problem with the narrative I had to figure out what key attributes make a good city and what does Kyoto have to offer. The next thing for me was to talk aloud as if I was speaking to a friend and I’m telling them a story. Once I got the narrative down the rest fall into place it was easier to find a theme and find the voice and tone which started to help the design come together. The vision board design would prove a challenge when trying to write the narrative and come up with the look that also helped tell the narrative and give a feel of the overall brand that I am trying to sell. For me, the look of the vision board was never terrible but always need some work. The only way I could fix this is by constantly looking at other vision boards and style guides to help. Along with that I just had to sit and play around with the different elements and images until everything started to flow. The experience with the vision board is eye-opening because if you don’t know what you are selling it becomes hard to design for it. Along with that researching helps out a lot and with this class being a research course it opens your eyes to new information and things to consider when designing. Below is a vision board I first looked at and a few different versions of my vision board during the course.

Innovative Thinking:

When doing a vision board there is many standard design choice that came into play for me. Typography was one of the major elements that I wanted to work with and not fail at. In the Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird and James George (2014) stated “Let’s face it: the core purpose of all web design is communication. Whether we’re talking about an online retail store, a web presence for a Fortune 500 company, or a profile for a social networking site, typography is a vital component of your message.”( Beaird & George, 2014) I felt that it was important for me to find a safe and readable font but not use a default font that comes with the programs. Since typography is an important way to communicate with the audience I did a lot of research into what fonts work for certain people. What slowed me down was trying to find what colors worked for the font and the brand as a whole. “Color is one of the most powerful of elements. It has tremendous expressive qualities. Understanding the uses of color is crucial to effective composition in design and the fine arts.”( Jirousek, n.d.). Color is very tricky if you use the wrong colors then the brand gets the wrong audience attention and once I changed my narrative the audience changed as well but I didn’t want to change the color. Originally I planned for the brand to be romantic so I used pinks and soft pastel colors but images different reflect the softness I wanted. My next step would be changing the colors to fit the images I thought helped sell and communicate the brand. It was a better reputation but it still was not all the way there yet. Once I changed the narrative it was important to change the images but I still didn’t change the logo color. It was pointed out that the logo colors give off a different meaning than what I was talking about so I went back to researching colors and looking at what colors dominate my vision board already and went with those instead. While I feel like the logo and colors together might not be as strong as they can be I do feel that I am going in the right direction. I am starting to understand how to get every element to come together. I understand how research plays a major part in the design process.

Acquiring Competencies: With each course, I learn something new that improves me as a designer. During this course, the concepts and/or techniques that helped me were first the concept of wireframing. Wanting to get into web designing I never really knew how to even go about this. It was very interesting to learn what wireframing was and how to go about doing this. Since I didn’t know anything about the concept I had to do a lot of research to understand what I was doing. This was an eye-opening assignment that I know will help me in the future to expand my own brand. second, the concept of web usability also applies to me wanting to get into web designing. Not only thinking about what I like in website usabilities like easy to find information and easy navigation. It is important to see what has been proven to work and see what changes and stays the same over the years. When making the wireframing I found it extremely important to consider and incorporate easy usability into my wireframe sketches. Wanting to choose something I have never done the concept for me is to understand what I am selling and how do I brand that. In the beginning, I thought I had the idea of what I was doing but that would prove me wrong. If every element does not add up it is hard to brand and sell anything. By finding the theme, voice and tone helped me tell a story that grabs the attention of my audience. By targeting my audience, they feel more comfortable and welcomed and want to use the brand more often. Knowing how to speak through the design is very important to selling an idea, concept, brand whatever it may be and I have learned how to go about doing so. The first image below is from a style guide that helped me with the narrative, Theme, Voice, and Tone for my vision board. Along with that are wireframing from me and an example i found to be very helpful.

Reference:

Beaird, J., & George, J. (2014). The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (3rd ed.). Retrieved August 29, 2018, from https://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/web-design-and-development/9781457174353

Charlotte Jirousek, C. (n.d.). Art, Design, and Visual Thinking. Retrieved from http://char.txa.cornell.edu/language/element/form/form.htm

Krug, S. (December 24, 2013) Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Third Edition. Publisher: New Riders. Retrieved from: https://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/web-design-and-development/9780133597271

Turner, A. (2016) 10 Web design trends you can expect to see in 2016. Retrieved from: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/01/01/10-web-design-trends-can-expect-see-2016

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 6 years

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DURING AND AFTER the Cuban Revolution, many US poets and artists who came of age in the Lower East Side art and poetry scene of the 1950s went on to express sympathies for the Latin American political left. Yet, only a few went beyond faddish appropriations of revolutionary style in order to sustain a literary culture of deep transnational social commitments. One such figure is Margaret Randall (b. 1936), whose remarkable six decades of work as a poet, translator, editor, activist, and scholar include her direction of the renowned bilingual literary magazine El Corno Emplumado (The Plumed Horn, 1962–1969), founded with her then-husband Sergio Mondragón in Mexico City, where the Mexican student movements left profound marks on her political outlook. Soon, she became a fixture of the Latin American literary left during a decade of residence in revolutionary Cuba (1969–1980), followed by four years in the Nicaragua of the Sandinistas (1980–1984). When US authorities attempted to deport Randall upon her 1984 reentry into the United States, her five-year legal case, defended by the Center for Constitutional Rights, helped to end the 1952 anticommunist legislation known as the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act.

In March 2018, I sat down with Randall and her partner, the artist Barbara Byers, at their modest home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from where Randall grew up. They had recently returned from Ciudad Juárez, where Randall was the second US citizen to receive the Medal for Literary Merit from Literatura en el Bravo, and from Cuba, where they travel frequently for literary collaborations, talks, readings, and exhibitions. As our conversation unfolded, I became increasingly astonished by the prolific pace of her most recent publications as a cultural historian (including books on Che Guevara, Haydée Santamaría, and Cuba’s global solidarity programs) and especially as a literary translator. These translations, many published by underacknowledged small presses, include dense multi-voiced books such as The Oval Portrait, co-authored by 35 Cuban women and edited by Afro-Cuban poet Soleida Ríos. We conducted the following interview about her translation work by email from April 15–25, 2018. This interview also continues a conversation we filmed at Northwestern University in spring 2017, about Randall’s place in the Mexico City and Cuban avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s.

HARRIS FEINSOD: It is hard to keep up with your stunning pace as a translator in the last few years. I count at least 10 standalone collections of poetry in print since 2017 and several others on the way. I hope we can talk about many of these projects, but would it be fair to say that your renaissance as a translator begins with your anthology Only the Road/Solo el camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry (Duke University Press, 2016)?

MARGARET RANDALL: It’s an interesting question, and one I’ve asked myself. It’s true that my renaissance as a translator, as you put it, began with Only the Road/Solo el camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry. I’d been translating on and off for years, beginning in the 1960s when we had El Corno Emplumado and wanted so much to make poetry in Spanish available to an English readership and vice versa. I’d translate a few poems by one or another poet. Back then, I rarely attempted a whole book. Exceptions were Otto René Castillo’s Let’s Go!, published in London by Cape Goliard in the early 1970s, and two book-length poetry collections that never saw publication: Carlos María Gutiérrez’s Prison Diary that won the Casa de las Américas poetry prize in 1970 — I was on that jury, along with Ernesto Cardenal, Roque Dalton, Cintio Vitier, and Washington Delgado — and a book about Vietnam by Roberto Fernández Retamar; I can’t remember the name of that book right now. In any case, neither the Gutiérrez nor the Fernández Retamar books were ever accepted for publication. Back then, I thought of myself as a very occasional translator. For years I concentrated mostly on my own poetry, as well as on doing oral history and essays.

What led you to conceive of an anthology of Cuban poetry today?

In the 1990s, I began returning to Cuba, first to take groups of US women down, and then to attend cultural events of one sort or another. I had long been interested in Cuban poetry; I’d produced two collections. In late 1978, Colorado State University brought out These Living Songs, a compendium of 15 very young Cuban poets. In 1982, a small Canadian press published Breaking the Silences: 20th Century Poetry by Cuban Women. Two and three decades later, I could see that Cubans were continuing to write very fine poems. The small island has long produced a great number of excellent poets, especially considering the size of its population. And I wasn’t only interested in the individual poets, but also in their development within a very different context from our own. In Cuba, as you know, the arts are very well supported. Despite tremendous economic problems, poetry is respected, and poets are encouraged to write, perform, and publish. I myself, when I lived in Cuba, had been part of that poetry scene.

So, I found myself excited by what I was reading. I can’t even remember the precise moment in which I decided to do the anthology. I do remember that when I presented the idea to my editor at Duke University Press, she was immediately enthusiastic.

Did you feel a particular political imperative to take on this project?

I’d say it was more of a literary imperative with political dimensions.

One of the most groundbreaking dimensions of Only the Road is the representation of women poets. These women represent an extraordinary diversity of standpoints — from poets of bourgeois elegance like Dulce María Loynaz to Afro-Cuban poets like Lourdes Casal and Nancy Morejón to younger writers like Anisley Negrín. Did you build on previous translations like Breaking the Silences? Can you tell us how your experiences in Cuba have shaped your commitments to feminism?

I’m glad you noticed the high percentage of women included in Only the Road. Almost half, which is extremely unusual for a national survey of this kind. Of course my feminism has something to do with this; I see and hear women, which not everyone does. Still, because using a different measure would have been unfair to the anthology as well as to the poets in it, quality was my first criteria. There’s an interesting story linking Breaking the Silences and Only the Road. The youngest poet in the first book was Chely Lima, 19 at the time. When I was reading for Only the Road, I wondered what she was up to and looked for recent books. I learned she had left Cuba and I didn’t track her down in time to include her in the new book. Later, I did find Chely, now living in Miami but as a man, and still writing groundbreaking poetry. One of the individual books I recently translated, and that The Operating System in Brooklyn published in 2016, was What the Werewolf Told Them. It’s an extraordinary collection about Chely’s own transition, and The Operating System produced a very beautiful bilingual edition.

Anthology projects require you to translate in so many different styles and registers. Chely’s transition suggests how voices might change in the arc of an individual life. I’m reminded of Octavio Paz’s remark that every poem offers a unique and unrepeatable expression of “something lived and suffered.” How do your translations negotiate between so many different voices?

I think poets can be very good translators of poetry, but there are dangers. The first thing one must avoid is imposing one’s own poetic voice. The challenge is to find the voice of the person you are translating and to figure out how to present it — with all its syntax, rhythms, inflections, and other characteristics — in an entirely different language. One of my biggest challenges in this respect was actually a book I recently translated that wasn’t poetry but prose. It’s The Oval Portrait, published by Wings Press in 2018. This anthology, which appeared in Cuba several years earlier, brings together 35 Cuban women, each of them writing in the voice of another: sometimes an imagined character, sometimes a historical figure. I had to find the writer’s voice and then also that other voice in which she chose to speak. When approaching a translation project, whether poetry or prose, I first read the book several times. I familiarize myself with the writer’s culture, time, and mode of expression. Then I experiment in an effort to see how I can best reproduce all that in English.

People you’ve met during return trips to Havana and Matanzas have inspired some of your recent translations. How have these encounters led to the projects you’ve taken up? I’m thinking of books like Transparencies, by Laura Ruiz Montes, who edits Ediciones Vigía. Did that arise from your work with Vigía?

In 2013, when I was in Cuba to do the fieldwork for my book about Haydée Santamaría, I asked a friend to take me to visit Vigía. The handmade book collective is famous far beyond Cuba’s borders. Many poets would love to have a book published there. It was on that trip that I met Laura Ruiz. She gave me a book of her poetry, and I fell in love with her work. That led to my translating Transparencies. On another trip to Cuba, this time for the 30th anniversary of Vigía, I met another excellent Matanzas poet, Alfredo Zaldívar. I translated a book by him, and Red Mountain Press published both those collections. Coincidentally, Alfredo was one of Vigía’s founders. He now directs Ediciones Matanzas. But I should make it clear that I don’t translate people because they are friends. It’s the work that inspires me.

Vigía has also published poems by you in translation, has it not? What have been your experiences with translators bringing you over into Spanish?

I’ve had the good fortune of having had two books of mine produced by Vigía: La Llorona in 2016 and When Justice Felt at Home/Cuando la justicia se sentía en casa in 2018, both in gorgeous hand-made limited editions created by Elizabeth Valero, one of Vigía’s talented designers. The first of these was translated by María Vázquez Valdez, a fine poet in her own right, who has been generous in rendering several of my books into Spanish for publication in Mexico. The second was translated by the Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and the North American Katherine M. Hedeen, literary giants who have also been very attentive to my work over the years. Recently, the fine Cuban poet and translator Israel Domínguez rendered a collection of my poems into Spanish for publication on the island. I’ve been very lucky that such sensitive talents have taken an interest in my work.

Translating Cuban literature has always been something of a family affair for you. Your mother, Elinor Randall, produced some landmark translations of José Martí. Can you tell us about her work? Did she come to translation through you, or did you come to it through her?

My mother devoted a great many years of her life to translating. Although she worked with several authors, José Martí was her passion. She was still polishing some of those translations a few days before her death at almost 97. I was actually the one who suggested my mother translate Martí. When I went to live in Cuba, in 1969, I was asked to translate an anthology of his work. At that point, he was much too difficult for me. I passed the task on to my mother, and she flew with it.

Perhaps the first translation of yours that I encountered was Let’s Go!, your collection of poems by the slain Guatemalan revolutionary Otto René Castillo. Recently you translated another militant poet, this time a young woman named Rita Valdivia, who was radicalized in Europe, trained in Cuba, and killed in Bolivia in 1969. How did you come to Valdivia?

I’ve actually translated quite a few of the “guerrilla poets”: Roque Dalton, Otto René, Carlos María Gutiérrez, among others. I came to Rita Valdivia purely by accident. I was on tour with my Cuban anthology, and in Chicago met a young Venezuelan poet named José Delpino. José mentioned Rita over lunch one day. I had never heard of her, but several years earlier, I had written a book about Che Guevara, Che on My Mind. It’s long bothered me that when speaking of Che, people almost always ignore the women who fought alongside him, Tania being the token exception. I knew that the 50th anniversary of Che’s death in Bolivia was coming up and decided to research Rita’s life and find and translate what I could of her poetry. By the time I had that little book, The Operating System offered to bring it out quickly to help commemorate the anniversary. Rita’s poems surprised me. They are not your typical “guerrilla poetry,” but rather lyrical in nature, almost surreal at times. She died at the age of 23 without having published a book. Had she lived, I have no doubt she would have become one of Latin America’s important poets.

In a short biography you’ve written of Valdivia’s life, you reflect: “How many unremembered men and women took part in the social justice struggles of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s?” Do you view translation as a means of remembrance for writers and revolutionaries like Castillo and Valdivia?

I think we must remember them in many ways. Translating and publishing their work keeps their legacies alive. We must be vigilant, because the history we are given is sometimes very different from the history that happened.

In the 1970s, testimonial literature offered writers a path toward vigilance for historical truth. I’m thinking of your books Cuban Women Now (1974) and Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle (1981). Both testimonials and translations are often evaluated in terms of “fidelity,” whether toward history or toward another language. How do you think about the problem of fidelity in translation and/or testimonial?

Fidelity is key, but fidelity is not always simply a telling of “facts.” Real fidelity depends upon being able to recreate context, culture, the deepest meaning.

You mentioned your translations of Roque Dalton. I’ve always admired the Poemas clandestinos he published in newspapers and magazines toward the end of his life. This topic brings us back to the question of multi-voiced texts, since Dalton invented five distinct revolutionary personae with their own biographies and literary styles. You once told me you thought you could hear your own conversations with Dalton inflecting the persona of Vilma Flores in the Poemas clandestinos. What were those conversations like?

In our last conversations, before Roque left Cuba to return to his homeland and take part in the revolutionary struggle there, we had a few heated discussions stemming from what I perceived as his very male-centered gaze and my burgeoning feminism. When I read his Vilma Flores poems, I thought I heard echoes of those conversations.

What are you translating now?

I’m involved in a very exciting project, a book by another Cuban poet, Gaudencio Rodríguez Santana. He’s also from Matanzas, and I met him on a recent trip to the Book Fair there. I read his book, Economía nacional (The National Economy). It uses the collapse of the sugar industry as a metaphor for the problems currently confronting the Revolution. Producing sugar in Cuba was important, as you know: central to the country’s identity. The industry’s demise has affected thousands of people whose way of life was intimately linked to its production. Gaudencio’s poetry is profoundly original and very powerful. He is able to capture images, sounds, smells, a whole way of life that is dying. His are the kinds of poems that make me want to keep on translating.

Harris Feinsod is the author of The Poetry of the Americas: From Good Neighbors to Countercultures (Oxford University Press, 2017), the co-translator of Oliverio Girondo’s Decals: Complete Early Poems (Open Letter, 2018), and the director of Open Door Archive. He is associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University.

The post Historical Fidelity: Margaret Randall on Translating Cuban Poetry appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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Oscars: The Race to Succeed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as Academy President Takes Shape (Exclusive)

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/12/oscars-the-race-to-succeed-cheryl-boone-isaacs-as-academy-president-takes-shape-exclusive/

Oscars: The Race to Succeed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as Academy President Takes Shape (Exclusive)

At 6 p.m. on Aug. 8, exactly four weeks from Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 54-person board of governors, which represents the organization’s roughly 7,500 members, will convene for its first meeting since last month’s annual board elections. Most governors will participate from inside the regal board room on the seventh floor of the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters; others, who are based or traveling outside of Los Angeles, will be piped in via telephone or video-conference. Few ever skip the board’s monthly meetings, but it’s doubtful that any will miss this one, not only because it is the first one that newly elected board members will be attending, but also because of the main item on the agenda: choosing who will succeed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as Academy president.

Boone Isaacs is retiring from the board after a quarter-century of service, the last four years of which she spent as the Academy’s leader. Only the third woman and first person of color ever elected to the top job, she held power during one of the most controversial and consequential periods in the organization’s history — a time dominated by fiery debates about diversity and inclusion, a bumpy campaign to build the $400 million Academy Museum and a perfect storm that led to the biggest debacle ever to occur on an Oscars telecast as the wrong best picture winner was announced.

Now, as Boone Isaacs steps aside, her headaches are about to become someone else’s. And though governors are asked not to discuss board matters outside of their meetings, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exactly who that “someone else” might be: Oscar-nominated actress Laura Dern, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy or casting director David Rubin.

The Academy and Kennedy declined to comment for this story; Dern and Rubin could not be reached.

At the Aug. 8 meeting, the governors will weigh candidates for all officer positions, but the position of president will come up first. There is no advance campaigning for the job, in the conventional sense. Any governor who wishes to nominate any other governor for the top post will have the opportunity to do so, and once one does, a call will go out for another governor to second the nomination. If the nom is seconded, then that candidate will be added to a list, and other governors will have the opportunity to nominate and second others.

A nom sometimes comes as a surprise — in 2009, Tom Sherak went into one of these meetings planning to back someone else, only to leave as president — but usually there has been some quiet, behind-the scenes coordination between a governor interested in the post and supportive colleagues. Once the window for nominations has closed at the meeting, the nominees each will be invited to make a statement before the full board; those interested in the position usually lay out an overarching agenda, while those who are not tend to beg off, as Tom Hanks has done several times. The nominees are next asked to leave the room so the other governors can hold a discussion, after which the nominees return and everyone privately casts a vote on a keypad. The Academy’s general counsel, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, then tallies the results and announces a winner.

At the moment, THR can report that Dern, Kennedy and Rubin each have numerous supporters and will embrace a nomination when it comes on Aug. 8. It is possible that other candidates also could emerge on the night of the meeting, a la Sherak’s case — perhaps someone with greater experience on the board than the aforementioned three, who joined it in 2016, 2015 and 2013, respectively — but it would be very surprising if anyone can muster enough support to hold off all of these popular candidates for the opportunity to become the 34th person to lead the organization.

Rubin, the proprietor of Firefly Casting, has spent decades casting films such as The English Patient and Men in Black, and recently cast the HBO limited series Big Little Lies. He was instrumental in lobbying the Academy to create a casting directors branch in 2013, and became one of its first three governors that year. During his four years on the board, he has made a name for himself as a hard worker and articulate advocate for causes ranging from increasing diversity within the organization (something he has also championed in casting) to recognizing a casting director with an honorary Oscar (he succeeded and his trailblazing mentor Lynn Stalmaster was one of the honorees at the 2016 Governors Awards, which Rubin also produced, and at which he was among those who toasted Stalmaster). A close ally of Boone Isaacs, he spent this past term as the board’s secretary and chair of its Membership and Administration Committee, which oversaw the extension of a record number of invitations to members of the community last month. And, like Boone Isaacs, he finds much of his support from governors representing the “below-the-line” craft and technical branches who feel safer with someone from their ranks leading the organization and safeguarding that awards for their categories will continue to be handed out on the Oscars telecast.

Dern, a highly respected actress who has accumulated two Oscar nominations (Rambling Rose and Wild) and who is likely to receive an Emmy nomination on Thursday for her performance in Big Little Lies, is as well-regarded off screen as on. The daughter of two Oscar-nominated Hollywood legends, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, and a single mother of two, she has won many admirers among her fellow governors for never letting her busy acting schedule get in the way of her commitments to the board — and, in fact, taking on extra work as a member of the Kathleen Kennedy-chaired Museum Committee, for which she has been an effective fundraiser. Dern is understood to be the preferred choice of Academy CEO Dawn Hudson, who was hired in 2011 to oversee the organization’s 350 full-time staff, and quickly clashed with Boone Isaacs; Dern and Hudson go back many years, to when Hudson ran Film Independent and Dern was coming up as a darling of the indie film community, and Hudson tapped her, this past February, to call the roll at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon.

Kennedy, meanwhile, comes to the race with a similar reputation for humility and nose-to-the-grindstone hard work on the board. The married mother of three is the youngest child of Ethel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy and has used documentary filmmaking — through Moxie Firecracker Films, the company she and Liz Garbus co-founded 19 years ago — to follow her parents’ example of calling attention to important political and social issues. Among her credits: she was a producer of the 2011 doc short Killing in the Name, an exec producer of the 2005 doc Street Fight and directed the 2014 doc Last Days in Vietnam, all of which received Oscar nominations (though she was personally recognized only for Last Days). During her two years on the board, Kennedy has served alongside Dern on the Museum Committee, worked with her fellow doc branch governors to clarify the distinction between film and TV documentaries and this year co-hosted an Oscar Week event featuring clips from — and conversations with the filmmakers behind — the Oscar-nominated feature and short docs.

Clearly, these three governors share a great deal in common in their approach to board service. Due to their busy work schedules, any of them likely would function as president in the way presidents did until fairly recently — namely, as a ceremonial figure who presides over monthly board meetings while overseeing a select portfolio of side issues, not as someone who comes into the Academy headquarters daily and gets involved with the day-to-day management of the organization, as the last three presidents have done. Sherak, who died in 2014, had an office at Paramount, but was retired and spent much of his time at the Academy; Hawk Koch was around a lot, as he had only one year to see through his agenda before term limits forced him off the board entirely; and Boone Isaacs was a mainstay in the president’s office on the Academy’s sixth floor, which also houses the CEO’s office, a situation that sometimes proved too close for comfort for her and Hudson.

But while the three governors vying to follow Boone Isaacs are in many ways alike, there also are some important distinctions between them. Rubin fits the profile of most recent Academy presidents: highly respected within Hollywood, but not known to the general public. Many earlier occupants of the job were “names,” like Douglas Fairbanks, Bette Davis, Frank Capra, Gregory Peck, Robert Wise and Karl Malden. While they were not necessarily as committed to board service as Dern and Kennedy have been, they were important to the organization for symbolic as much as substantive reasons, and either Dern or Kennedy would bring with them that same added value. In fact, some feel that the Academy once again needs a name at the top of its roster — both to bring a fresh sheen and semblance of protection to an organization that has taken quite a bit of incoming fire over the last few years and also to help attract financial support for the Academy Museum over the next few. It will be interesting to see how the votes shake out.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Art F City: Pulp Friction: Deborah Castillo on Her Politically-Charged Fotonovelas

Deborah Castillo wears a lot of hats as an artist. And wigs. Originally from Venezuela, Castillo often blurs the lines between performance, video, photography, publications and even jewelry making. What binds these endeavors together is a sharp, critical wit (usually trained on political institutions) and flair for the dramatic. That might manifest as necklaces in the shape of misogynist slurs in Spanish or over-the-top fictional narratives involving art world kidnappings and embezzlement.

I met Castillo (who now lives in Bushwick) at her book launch at Mexico City’s Aeromoto, an artist-run library of contemporary art and artist books. She was celebrating the release of “La Dama Profunda / Profoundly Yours”, the third installment of her “Dramas Museísticos” series. I was immediately drawn to the format of the publications—they’re fotonovelas, comic-book like novels that use photography instead of illustrations. They were a popular form of mass media in Latin America, but are less known in the US. They’re fun and extremely approachable—even though Spanish is my second language, they’re easy reading, and the third book contains an English version of the story.

The books follow the soap-opera-like story of Castillo’s alter ego Profunda Mol, an ambitious woman who social climbs through the art world of her native Venezuela. Profunda navigates (often through seduction) a world of corrupt officials, along the way becoming the Venezuelan Minister of Culture, an Ambassador to the United States, and ultimately Donald Trump’s fourth wife.

We talked about fotonovelas, sexuality in the art world, and the crappy political climate.

vimeo

“El Secuestro de la Ministro de Cultura”, Dramas Museisticos II 2013. from Deborah Castillo on Vimeo.

How would you summarize “Dramas Museísticos”?

La Dama Profunda is a project I have been working on for eleven years and counting. The saga comprises 3 different books (“El extraño caso de la sin titulo,” 2006 ; “El secuestro de la Ministra de Cultura,” 2013, and “La Dama Profunda / Profoundly yours,” 2016).

The book is a parody and critique of the roles of women throughout history who have used their sexuality to raise their social stature and manipulate figures of power.. In the first two books you can see how Profunda Mol’s uncompromising ambition took her from a life as a gallery cleaning lady to becoming the Minister of Culture.

In the third book, she was named ambassador and shocked everyone with her life of luxury, excess, and debauchery in New York City. It was here that the golden imperial doors opened in all of their splendor, giving her access to the greatest world power; something unimaginable to the maid-turned-minister.

You’ve mentioned that a lot of North Americans have never heard of fotonovelas. It’s seems like such a logical medium for artists right now—especially considering the boom in small publications and the frustrations that come along with video. Personally, I really enjoy the fotonovelas because Spanish is my second language but they’re so easy to follow! How did you end up using the medium?

The fotonovela is something that is in my Latin “genes.” Remember that from Spain came the “novela folletín” (serialized novels) of the 19th century. This was a more commercial than literary writing, elaborated in small leaflets or in the lower parts of the newspapers. Many of the engravings had sensationalist scenes with improvised plots and this influenced the industries of the soap opera and telenovela (Venezuela, my country, was a leader in this field for decades). Some of these audiovisual productions were condensed, through still motion photos, in small periodical magazines called “fotonovelas”. These publications were very popular in the ’60s and’ 70s and even the early ’80s.

I remember them in my childhood, when I saw them for sale in the kiosks, curiously situated between pornographic magazines, lottery tickets and sweets. Later the production of these magazines disappeared and they remained like vintage objects with a cult following. At the beginning of the 2000s I found a street club of readers who exchanged these magazines as if it were the store Blockbusters, and this activated all my childhood memories. I immediately recognized in this medium a perfect platform to spread my work.

Could you talk about how Profunda uses her sexuality? I think it’s brave to tackle issues of gender and class through this almost “drag” persona. Profunda “The Sexual Dame” has been an excuse to explore a parody of a stereotype that’s common in Venezuela [the power-hungry woman], and many other countries of the world. My work has always been a response to these systems of sexual power. The desire for power and the power of desire have been frequent themes in my work from the beginning. Profunda is a platform that provides an analysis of issues of gender, desire, power and corruption in our society—issues that are impacting our society more than ever before.

And yes! You are right: I have taken a path that has not been easy. I do not soften my work and I think sometimes this is annoying to the public. Do you think dealing with sexual stereotypes is especially a challenge for women in the art world? Women face a lot of challenges —not only in the art world, but in any industry. However, to be honest, I do not like categorizing artists as “women artists”/”male artists”. I know this is something that exists, but I just do not want to accept it as it perpetuates lots of cliches.

You also make jewelry (I really love your necklaces with different Spanish words for “bitch”). Could you talk about that project? I have worked with the theme of stereotypes with different media. “Free Speech” is a body of work that addresses the stereotypes attached to immigrants and those without power. I analyze the way women have been socially labeled. I propose a way of writing from a performative approach using the body.

Speaking of which, you said it’s so hard to be funny in your second language. That’s a problem I can certainly relate to! But I have to say, your English language fotonovela is hilarious. I love the scene where Profunda is on the phone arguing about a Frank Gehry-designed museum she’s embezzled the funds for. Where do you think your dark sense of humor comes from?

I think my dark sense of humour comes from a sense of frustration—having to face some idiosyncratic characteristics of your own culture that you do not accept. Corruption, bad education, social climbing via robbery, some behaviors and relationships in the art world…..all this creates a nasty landscape that is unacceptable for me. I choose a dark laugh instead of a bitter cry.

(Are we allowed to talk about this?) I’d like to mention that I have a stack of your books because you didn’t feel comfortable bringing them back to the US through customs, given all the recent problems people have had with materials considered subversive to the Trump regime. What’s it like being an artist who left a country with a repressive regime, only to find this new political climate shortly after your arrival? Do you think people will start self-censoring?

The scenarios and social contexts in Venezuela and the United States are very different and perhaps not comparable. However, I can not help but feel great concern. I lived in Venezuela when all this began 17 years ago, and have seen it degenerating into an increasingly violent and conflictive scenario. In fact, the wild repression of freedom of expression was one of the main reasons I came to this country.

I was a victim of this repression in 2013 when I was publicly denounced on the government television station for having exhibited a work that criticized the abuses of power by military dictatorships and their iconography. The journalist who talked about my work suggested I receive some violent form punishment. This generated a threatening public response by government supporters which made me recognize the imminent physical danger for me and my family.

I closed all my social media accounts, I stayed at home for a couple of weeks and I stopped any spread of my opinion or images. In a few weeks I had moved to NYC and I left my country with a deep sense of fear despite the fact that nothing physically had happened to me. Being intimidated in public by someone who represents a criminal power is a very effective silencing tool. Self-censorship is one of the most subtle forms of violence that a government can exert over the population. It is a way of controlling the words, actions and even the thoughts of people without being noticed: something quite Orwellian. However, I have faith that the institutions in the United States are strong enough to withstand and combat any excess of authoritarianism that may arise in the future.

I worry a lot about the United States becoming increasingly culturally isolated given how international travel seems to become more and more difficult. Do you see a power shift where Latin America’s art scene is emerging more from the dominance of New York? Like every chapter in history, nothing is completely good or bad. I believe that a market in Latin America is consolidated where high quality work is being done. It is beginning to see inwards more than outwards and that is positive for us. I think power centers are moving, and maybe I want to believe that Trump is giving us this opportunity!

From my brief experiences and outside perspective, it seems the art world in Latin America is much more tied to politics. So much artwork tends to be political, and yet it seems there’s much more of a relationship between governments and arts funding than in the United States. Do you find this to be true? What’s the political game like that artists play? I believe that this strong tendency towards political art is due to the terrible social reality that we have faced in Latin America historically. Those experiences have informed the lines of production of contemporary art. For my part I am interested in exploring sexual stereotypes; questioning the values of social organization; questioning social climbing within the art world; and the relationship between desire, power and the political mythology of today’s society.

On that note, is there any wisdom you can share with Americans based on your experiences dealing with Venezuela’s own fucked-up leadership?

Yeah. I would say, “Just be aware”. Especially the young people.

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kalachand97-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Globeinfrom

New Post has been published on https://globeinform.com/angara-to-govt-enhance-internet-to-reinforce-jobs-in-rural-ph/

Angara to gov't: Enhance internet to reinforce jobs in rural PH

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April sixteen) — A senator is urging the authorities to fast-track its development of internet connectivity within the country to assist create greater excessive-price on-line jobs in rural areas of the Philippines.

In a press release issued Sunday, Senator Sonny Angara stated higher net connectivity inside the united states’s a ways-flung region could help the government Improve its Rural Impact Sourcing Program, which ambitions to target unemployment in the rural Philippines through higher get right of entry to internet-primarily based jobs in disadvantaged communities.

“At the same time as the IT-BPM (IT- business procedure management) industry keeps to thrive as one of the USA’s pinnacle career carriers, there seems to be a developing disparity in opportunities provided to human beings dwelling in our essential cities, in place of the ones in far-flung provinces,” the Angara stated.

“We ought to bridge this gap and convey opportunities in the geographical region where they are wished the maximum,” he added.

Effect sourcing includes growing to get right of entry to virtual markets and commercial enterprise manner outsourcing (BPO) in some distance-flung regions of u. S . A ..

The rural Effect Sourcing Application, which becomes applied in 2013 and is now below the Department of Statistics and Communications Generation (DICT), goals unemployment in excessive-populace rural areas with low employment because of loss of investors.

The Angara stated higher internet access in those areas will bolster this system and help provide possibilities to Filipinos within attain of their homes.

“Dapat maroon din sang portunid a kanji-kana lang mag probity. Hindi Na adapt will kailan gang punta pa as Metro Manila o a Cebu para Maka Kuh a ng online jobs [They should also have opportunities in their own provinces. They shouldn’t have to go to Metro Manila or Cebu to get online jobs]. They need to be able to live in which their families are and feature significant paintings,” he stated.

Numerous Impact sourcing operations have been established in the Philippines.

The Touch Middle Affiliation of the Philippines stated there are Impact sourcing operations Kapatangan in Lanao del Norte, Puerto Princesa in Palawan, Balanga in Bataan, and in San Nicolas in Ilocos Norte.

Angara stated the IT-BPM industry, which employed some 1.15 million Filipinos and generated USD22.nine billion (Php 1.14 trillion) in revenue in 2016, can pave the manner in the direction of more inclusive increase in the Philippines.

“The internet does now not only join us with our pals and cherished ones. It’s also a way to create jobs to make our economic system more inclusive. We must work collectively towards starting up extranet opportunities for all of our countrymen,” Angara stated.

3 fast and Easy Approaches to reinforce online Profits Right Now

From time to time in our haste to earn more money from anything we’re promoting at the net, we neglect to do a little simple math. Although it is often proper that the more you sell, the extra you’ll make – it is not the handiest way to growth your “backside line”.

The subsequent are 3 time-and-tested (and On occasion omitted) Approaches to quick and without problems double or even triple your income on-line.

1) Reduce your costs and expenses.

Appears apparent enough, however, what a number of human beings sincerely are doing this? Heck, huge corporations know this and do it often.

It is easy math. The less your expenses, the more you get to hold. In case you’re pulling $50,000 a yr from your on-line commercial enterprise and feature fees of 20%, then that’s a total of $10,000. Your commercial enterprise truly most effective made $forty,000. But, If you Cut your costs by way of the half, all the way down to 10%, then that’s $5,000 more you get to put in your pockets! Your earnings simply went from $forty,000 to $45,000.

Here are some brief and sensible Methods to lower your internet-related charges and fees.

A. When you have an internet website, get cheaper web website hosting. This could now not make much of an Effect If you only have one web website. But, In case you run a couple of websites, the charges can add up speedy. less expensive web hosting is money in your pocket.

B. If you do have a domain, learn HTML and update it yourself. Are you continue to paying a person to do your site updates and preservation? How a great deal is it costing you? What could you do with the cash you’ll save? Html isn’t always difficult to learn all. It’s now not a programming language. If your web page calls for complex programming, then, yes, pay for it. However, if it’s miles simply HTML, you may shop a package simply updating and preserving it yourself. So, just go to a bookshop and choose up a duplicate of HTML four dummies. You may not regret it.

C. Consolidate your phone offerings (cell telephone, house cell phone, ISP, cable) underneath one centralized plan. You can additionally want to recollect using a telecom networking advertising and marketing organization wherein you may use your very own telecommunications services and in reality, get paid to accomplish that. It is able to upload as much as some satisfactory more money for the usage of belongings you already use and commonly wouldn’t get paid for.

D. Pass up on buying the state-of-the-art tech devices unless they’re definitely essential to the fulfillment of your commercial enterprise. You’ll be hesitant to do that ultimate one, but you may nonetheless make cash on-line the use of a cheap, vintage computer within the equal manner you could with a present day one. I recognize, due to the fact I’ve revamped $100k in revenues with just one internet web site the usage of the identical dilapidated laptop I bought returned within the late 90s!

2) Get Free Advertising

Though advertising prices can logically be coupled with business costs, I area this in its very own magnificence, as you cannot absolutely place a charge at the blessings you get from it.

Everyone in advertising must realize that “word-of-mouth” is the maximum effective form of Advertising and marketing. Why? As it’s Free! And since it expenses you nothing, your commercial enterprise can only gain from it. This, of the path, is assuming that what is being advertised approximately your commercial enterprise is tremendous; no longer poor.

Adequate, so how are you going to go approximately getting Loose Advertising and marketing? Right here are 3 Methods I have accomplished so with wonderful achievement.

A. offer excellent customer support. Does this appear surprising? One satisfied patron can move a long manner inside the shape of Free Advertising. As many as 50% of the customers who visit and make a purchase on simply one of my websites are referred by their friends. Why? because I try and make it a point to maintain my clients satisfied. glad customers identical Unfastened Marketing for my websites. Does this take effort and time? yes… And It is nicely well worth it.

Here’s a quick tip: Whilst someone makes a buy from you, include for your ‘thanks’ page or their e-mail receipt a word thanking them and asking them to tell their friends approximately you. I’ve located that this has labored better than the ones ‘advocate-our-site’ scripts.

B. Take part and put up regularly on boards. Whilst doing so, be sure to area your ‘signature’ at the bottom with every publish. Your signature should have a hyperlink to your internet web page (if any). The hyperlink’s anchor text must additionally be a keyword that is applicable in your website. I wager you knew this one!

C. e-mail your friends (no spamming!) the ultra-modern and most thrilling information, jokes or occasions that you recognize that they had like. Inspire them to the percentage it with their online friends. encompass a hyperlink inside the email in your internet website online within the signature phase. The key is to send them something you know they may be inquisitive about. This works like an attraction. As your e-mail spreads virally in a spam-Unfastened way, humans will see your hyperlink, click on it and visit your web page.

The cease end result of applying these Loose Advertising strategies will be dozens, loads, and perhaps thousands of site visitors for your site that you in any other case might now not have had. I’ve given no mathematical figures Right here, because ‘valuable’ is the handiest word I will consider totally free Advertising.

three) Purchase for much less

This one’s specifically useful for the ones individuals who Buy wholesale and sell at retail, buyers and every person else who incorporates products.

Hi there, you are in this to make the most money you could. That said, why now not get your merchandise for less and pocket the financial savings?

Good enough, allow’s do a little brief math…

In case you’re promoting items that fee you $10 and you are selling them for $15 after markup, then it really is a $five profit for you. But, If you’re capable of getting the ones same objects for $7 and nonetheless promote them for $15, then this is an $eight income for you as an alternative! In other words, you just gave yourself a raise of 20%. it truly is like getting a further $20 for every $100 in items you sell. And they’re still the very same objects. You simply had been able to purchase them for less!

Over the years this can translate into thousands of more greenbacks in your pocket: $a hundred becomes $120; $1,000 will become $1, two hundred; $10,000 will become $12,000 and so on.

properly, it’s it. those are 3 validated, short and Easy Ways to get your Earnings hovering. There may be nothing complex or resourceful approximately them. put this sensible know-how to use Proper away and shortly.you will be able to see AND remember the greater bucks for your pocket. — Copyright 2006.

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muzaffar1969 · 8 years

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Evan Denmark acted in a lot of high school productions. Looking back, the biggest challenge of his theater career in Sandwich, Massachusetts, wasn’t performing in front of an audience — it was sticking to his scripted lines. He caught himself improvising constantly. Now, as the president of Roadkill Buffet, MIT’s premier improv comedy troupe, the MIT senior has hit his stride.

“Roadkill Buffet is the greatest thing that I have done at MIT,” says Denmark. “It has taught me that you have to be ready for anything. You have to be able to take any suggestion and turn it into something funny and entertaining. And it’s forced me to really think on my feet, all the time. That has kind of transitioned into my life mentality.”

A technique critical for Denmark when he performs improv is “yes, and-ing” — agreeing with and building on the suggestion of his improv partner. “That is kind of a life thing too, just ‘yes and __.’ And trust your partners. Trust people around you to support you, and vice versa,” he explains. Denmark takes this approach with creative projects, research, and international travel, through which he exposes himself to new experiences and often documents them on camera.

Perfecting portraits

Denmark took his first coding class in his first semester at MIT and decided he wanted to be a computer scientist soon after. Now a senior majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, Denmark has focused much of his time on applying computer science to computational photography and computer graphics.

“In the future I want to be an innovator of the visual arts, with respect to technology. To become a technical artist, if you will,” Denmark says. While interning at Pixar Animation Studios last summer, Denmark built tools for modeling artists to use to when creating animations.

“So I wasn’t directly making each frame the movie, but I was allowing for the artist to make the features that you see in the movie. I like to do things like that. I have always liked to draw, and I have always liked to explore in the visual arts. Combining that with computer science is a really powerful, cool, tool,” Denmark says.

Denmark also spends a lot of time building tools at MIT. As part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) with Associate Professor Frédo Durand of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Denmark built a tool for detecting the angle of someone’s face, which could be used, for example, in portrait photography.

Depending on the shape of a room or environment, and the pose of a subject, a camera flash can bounce off the surroundings and produce unanticipated shadows, often making for a poor picture. Professional photographers combat this with intuition, pointing their flash a certain way for the light to “bounce” predictably.

Denmark’s tool was part of a larger effort to discern the best lighting for shooting portraits by understanding the space, finding the face, and automatically pointing the bounce flash. One part of the team built a sensor that could detect the geometry of the room. Denmark focused on building a tool that could detect facial orientation. “When you look around the room we can see exactly where your face is looking, so we can point the bounce flash in the correct direction,” he explains.

The project was presented at the 2016 SIGGRAPH conference for computational photography and computer graphics. “Maybe in twenty years, when you have your camera, you could press a button and it would automatically point your flash in a certain direction. Similar to how now on a camera when you hold it down, it autofocuses,” he speculates.

Filming the unfamiliar

When interning at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution the summer after his freshman year, Denmark worked with fellow interns from around the world. After realizing that he had never actually left the Eastern time zone, he came back to MIT determined to travel, and to travel somewhere challenging. He decided to go to India. “I was like, ‘put me out of my comfort zone and make me feel uncomfortable. Challenge me. Let’s go,’” he says. “I think being uncomfortable is pretty exciting.”

Working with the MIT-India program in MIT’s International Science and Technology Inititatives (MISTI), Denmark interned at Infosys, a technical consulting company in Bangalore, the following summer. There he developed a tool for reading text from very poor-quality images.

He also launched his YouTube channel, Grape Soda Pin, a name that comes from one of Denmark’s favorite Pixar movies, “Up.” In the movie, one character gives her more timid husband the cap of a grape soda bottle, mounted on a safety pin, inviting him to join her on future travels and declaring “Adventure is out there!”

“I tried to structure each video on a certain aspect. One was about food, one was about customs in India, one was about an adventure I had the past weekend,” Denmark says about his YouTube videos. “I wanted to focus it on things that were different about India than the United States, in not just a silly way.”

“Once I went to India I got hooked on traveling. I got hooked on this cultural exploration. Then I went to Jordan, because I was like, ‘I want to get part of a region that everyone is talking about, but no one wants to go to. I want to be on the ground, I want to be in the Middle East.’”

For his last Independent Activities Period, Denmark pitched a plan to combine travel with video-making. He returned to Jordan and traveled to Israel to film promotional videos for the Global Teaching Labs. He then journeyed to Nepal to film a short documentary about MIT alumnus Ram Rijal ’12, who founded the Bloom Nepal School in 2013. The school was devastated by the 2015 earthquake and is still in the process of rebuilding.

Denmark met Rijal over Skype several weeks before he left the United States, and began planning some of the aspects he wanted to capture in his video. He spent his first several days in Nepal without pulling out a camera, observing the school, the teachers, and the students. He interviewed and filmed members of the school community, and felt his interview style loosening up over the course of the trip.

“I really learned how to manage and create my own project on a global scale. It is amazing that two years ago, if you asked me to do that, I would have had no idea what to do. It’s amazing what MISTI can do in that sense. At the same time, I became a much better director and filmmaker,” Denmark says.

Eyes open

This semester, Denmark is taking a new D-Lab class, EC.750/EC.785 (Humanitarian Innovation), which focuses on places in the world where humanitarian aid is distributed, such as Syrian refugee camps, and working with people affected by war, conflict, and natural disasters to use innovation and design to improve their lives.

Denmark credits MISTI with opening his eyes to perspectives and problems outside of his experience. “If I didn’t have MISTI, I wouldn’t be taking that class. It has allowed me to see the various problems of the world, a very small fraction of those problems, and now want to be a part of them,” he says. “MISTI has changed my life, really.”

Denmark will return to work at Pixar after he graduates in May. “I am very excited to go back to be in an environment that is really a combination art and tech,” he says. “It’s a pretty unique place. Similar to MIT, at Pixar people are incredibly diverse in the sense of their skills. They do a lot of really cool, different things.”

March 29, 2017 at 09:18AM http://ift.tt/2nfCb6M from Kate Telma | MIT News correspondent http://ift.tt/2nfCb6M

#AI

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