Cos-playing Around

I went to Dragon Con earlier this year, and saw a lot of great cosplays. It never seemed odd to me, growing up with Halloween, to see people dressed up as fictional characters. But with all of the talk of simulation, and simulacra, I realized how odd it was. Someone created a fake character in a fictional world. And here in the real world we spent hours upon hours to re-create them in real life. Some cost hundreds of dollars and countless hours

Baudrillard describes simulacrum as a terrible denial of reality. However, in this case it seems as a creative way to show your interests. While dressing up as fictional characters is simulacrum, its definitely doesn't have the negative aspects Baudrillard describes  And its kinda cool to walk around in a giant spec-ed out suit of armor. 

How naive can I be?

This I Believe

I don't feel it necessary to post the rough draft here, but rest assured, I will talk about it again when its fully polished. This was mostly a last minute, thrown together version of it, done at midnight. However, that doesn't change the central message, which is "I believe people are good." I have always held this belief. People have stolen from me, betrayed my trust, and so on. But i for the life of me still find myself more trusting than most. When I meet a random person, even if I don't see anything about them, I feel they will be nice and helpful to me as long as I am nice and helpful to them. It's hard to put it into words, but I see people volunteering or donating millions of dollars, and I wonder how "humans can be selfish creatures." I just don't see it.


Also I do stuff like this.
http://www.4000saturdays.com/rak/
C'mon. That's like it. Its gotta be.

The Mask

So reading Reality Hunger and On Being Authentic got me thinking about masks and such. I don't like the word mask. It makes it seem fake, and a cover. I think of it more as a side than a cover. While the sides may seem unconnected, they are all part of our true self. Any time we pretend to be something different, it becomes a part of us, our true self. Sometimes we don't even realize it, but eventually it will be just another side to you. The 'me' from class isn't a cover for the 'me' in my dorm, or anywhere else. They are all really me, just in different lights.

Retro Reality

There's a big move towards "retro cool." Not sure if this is a new thing, or it happens every generation. But there's a feel that retro is more "real" or more authentic. So much of today's world is fake and manipulated by the media, people seem to believe that things from earlier times are more real and authentic. A coke from a can is processed and a drain cleaner. But put it in a glass bottle, and its retro, and therefore awesome. I don't agree with retro. Just because something was cool at a previous time doesn't mean that it is more authentic. Things were just as commercialized back then as they are today. The only difference is that people are more aware of it now. Or at least that's how it seems to me. I wasn't there after all.

Back to Work

Finally back from Fall Break. Went to North Ga for an apple festival, and enjoyed the break with the family. Time to get back to work. I keep reading Reality Hunger hoping that eventually it will all tie together and make sense. It doesn't (yet). It still seems like an alphabet soup of jumbled ideas thrown together and bounded. It's really hard to sit down and read a book like this. I could get through it if I tried in small short bursts, but I prefer to sit and read for hours, and that seems impossible with this book. On Being Authentic is better. Still hard to follow at times, but better. I don't really get the emphasis on individuality. The implications made are true, but it seems like a odd focus.

The World is an Egg

I was surfing the web when I came across this story.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

I love this story. First, I'm skipping the religious implications. I always find belief systems very interesting, and because I was raised believing in reincarnation, it was a very interesting idea that all people were the same single soul. Even more interesting was the idea this was this world was just an egg for us to develop. It makes you pause and wonder about our world. Even though it doesn't have much followup, I still think its something to wonder about. We know so very little about our reality and the bigger picture (if there is one) it is a part of.

Keeping it Real

Real Talk
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0llYSYodMAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0llYSYodMA

So here's a link to my video focused around a dialogue with Yuvraj. First allow me to say that for a project called "real talk:," the video is not extremely real. That being said, it was fun to make. Working with Yuvraj was awesome, and he had lots of great ideas. The idea to have people fighting in the background was one that someone originally said as a joke, but we liked it so much we ran with it, and it came out really nicely. I also have to credit Yuvraj for the editing, because it to was spot on. Overall, I did like the final video was awesome, as was the process of making it. Probably one of my favorite projects all year. The actual dialogue was... odd. I generally don't talk to fast when it comes to intellectual conversations, so trying to keep a good pace was hard for me. Even though I knew what I was saying it was hard to get it out without adding a "you know", or a "well..." every other word.

Looking without Seeing

This class has talked not only about what reality is, but how we perceive it as well. However one thing that we didn't discuss is how much our perception is based on our knowledge. What we know makes a huge impact on what we see, and more specifically, what we notice. My favorite example of this is movie poster colors. [warning: once you read the next part, you will start seeing this everywhere, and movie posters will no longer look as cool] All movie posters aim to catch people attention, but do so subtlety; after all, making it too obvious would make the audience move on, and defeat the purpose. The way most graphic artist do this is by putting in contrasting colors, while keeping the colors seem natural. There are 2 main pairs that can do this: green and red, and blue and orange (yellow works as well). Since green and red yell Christmas, most graphic artist will try to add blues and oranges to their posters to add that POP. Here's a few examples:

As soon as someone told me this, I immediately began seeing it everywhere. Everything from the new Avengers posters to the Hobbit seems to have thrown in some extra color here and there. It's been happening for years, but I only noticed once I knew about it. I feel that this is the case many times. We don't see things that should be obvious to us until we know to look for them, at which point we can't help but notice. Our perception of reality is just as much determined by what we know as by what is actually there.

Learning from Video Games? Eww...

So first post. Not sure exactly how I expect this blog to turn out, or how it will. Guess I might as well jump straight into the first topic. So last Wednesday I had to do my presentation on the Rhetoric of Video Games. I feel my presentation went pretty well and got the essence of the topic. The article was by Ian Blogost about how video games can and should be a medium to deliver a message. He talked about how previous forms of rhetoric lacked the audience participation that video games have, and how the processes the game makers use can lead to delivering a message. While I like the idea, and definitely think it has potential, I find it unlikely to happen in the near future. The main obstacles to VG becoming a common rhetoric device is where they are now. Any video game made today to teach a lesson has to compete with other video games that are made for pure enjoyment. Most games are bought for how fun they are, not how well they deliver a message. Just like it would be tough for nonfiction stories to compete with fiction on topics of pure interest, the same will happen with video games. What needs to happen is people start seeing video games as a medium.


My Prezi