Concerned Citizen Artist statement

http://youtu.be/esame_238ZE

        For this project we decided to create a short documentary film about Chris Baird and his project called Serve Daily. Serve Daily is a unique monthly newspaper publication based out of Springville, which is largely dedicated to spreading the news of service activities and opportunities within the community. Our short film focuses on Chris working in a predominantly LDS culture (a very service-oriented church) to reach out and help further this idea of helping others. Through promoting local fundraisers and service opportunities in his paper, he encourages the act of service rather than the mere thought of it, and has dedicated his life to spreading this idea. The “your voice, your community” slogan and the fact that anyone can submit articles for this paper is another service in and of itself, because it gives a “voice to the voiceless”; an outlet where people can express themselves on a wider scale than they might otherwise have access to.

        Although this project has flourished into large scale collaboration between Chris and several other members who contribute to the process, it is also important to consider Chris’s personal contributions. He chose to step away from a “monotonous job,” to a career path that he felt would bless the lives of others. While this specific career may not be the most beneficial income wise, for Chris it was the most rewarding. He chose to break the commercial trend, and start something unique that would leave his community better off each month.

        In the reading, Goldbard says that “anyone who wishes to make significant headway on a social problem or opportunity must engage with people’s feelings and attitudes about it.” As film students, we know that media in all its forms can be a very powerful way of stirring peoples feelings and persuading them to act. Therefore, Chris’s choice of using local media to spread his love for service, is a powerful way to get to the heart of the issue. This specific form of media to spread a good message of service relates very closely to the recent media campaign of Mormon Messages employed by the LDS church. Mormon Messages is a campaign aimed primarily at spreading knowledge about the LDS church, almost all of its short videos relate to service, and the importance of building a strong community. Both Serve Daily and Mormon Messages utilize contemporary media sources to spread their Christian messages of the importance of serving one another.

Artist Statement

         This week's activity was an interesting exploration experiment into social issues. Taking it a step further than simply studying the issue, this assignment pushed us to also imagine the life of a character bound within the restrictions of this social issue. In other words, rather than simply examining what this issue was, we had to apply it to everyday living and provide ways to confront and overcome the various difficulties our issues presented. The specific issue I decided to examine was poverty among young adults.

         Although I recognize that mine is a very limited presentation of the depth behind this issue, I tried to adequately touch on several aspects involved in the lifestyle of individuals suffering from homeless a state. Rather than presenting up front any initial reason behind the character's homelessness as an underlying cause, I tried to present a series of collective set backs that would have perpetuated the character's negative situation. Using the information from the sources I collected, I selected several elements common of homeless individuals and tried to weave them into my short narrative game. The main elements I chose to present were mental illness, addiction and lack of family support. While some of these aspects are obvious contributors to being homeless, research also revealed different insights regarding the issue—such as lack of family support arising from children’s sexual orientation, and the large percentage of homeless individuals who claim to be members of the LGBT group. For example, one source quoted almost 40% of homeless claiming to LGBT members, and almost the same amount to be under the age of 18 (dosomething.org). One other news article explained that the national unemployment rate doesn't help their cause, making over qualified people take low level jobs before any homeless person can be accepted (http://www.streetpulsenews.org//‘why-don’t-they-just-get-jobs’).

The last article followed a homeless couple as they struggled to survive selling newspapers for long hours just to get by ((http://www.streetpulsenews.org//day-life-homeless-person). In almost every case, each new storyline ended up with the same outcome, just a different hardship that led the character there. This was to fully present the endless cycle of homelessness, that it often can't be broken by a simple fix.

         In the talk we watched this week Chimamanda mentioned the dangers of single stories. She explained, “to only listen to one negative story is to flatten the experience.” I feel like this applies to the this week's assignment since we often see one side of the issue at hand. Media often presents homeless individuals as lowly characters, in a negative form. Rarely do we ever see homeless protagonists. This project relates to a French film called The Intouchables. This film presented the difficult lifestyle of Driss, a poor man from the projects. The movie studied the rich man's initial negative perception of Driss, and how it changed over time as they got to know each other. Learning more than just the initial “one story” Phillipe gained respect for Driss and accepted him.

        This assignment helped me to personally branch out and consider more than one story. By examining various sources and presenting this story through a different point of view than the common perception, I offered a new insight regarding this specific social issue. 

Sources:
http://www.streetpulsenews.org/?q=articles/2014/02/20/‘why-don’t-they-just-get-jobs’
http://www.streetpulsenews.org/?q=articles/2014/05/17/day-life-homeless-person
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-homeless-teens


Game: http://www.philome.la/ColtonElzey/roberts-life/play

World-Building Artist Statement

When we were given the task to create a world in which toes act as sexual organs, our minds immediately jumped to popular culture and fashion. What position would the toe have in this world’s advertising? Would people even walk around on their feet? Shoes and socks began to take on an entirely new meaning. The BYU Honor Code and other religiously-influenced rules and regulations would be different. As we delved deeper into our discussion, we began to see the extent to which our unique reproductive organs would affect our new world.

The most jarring social discovery we made during our world-building was how saturated with sexuality our media is. As we tinkered with the media we consume daily (i.e. television, advertisements, websites, literature, etc.) we realized most of what we came across, no matter how innocuous it seemed, alluded to human sexuality. These sexual references ranged from vague innuendo to combative measures against STDs to the “sex sells” mantra parroted by unabashed advertisers. Our society’s subliminal sexual messages (and let’s face it-- not-so-subliminal messages) connect with media consumers on a base, biological level; sexuality is the timeless, universal aspect of the human experience. Sexuality drives our politics and not merely by way of scandal. Many of the divisive political issues within governmental, religious, and social hierarchies center around gender equality and sexual objectification. Women are voted for and not voted for because of the internal placement of their reproductive organs; centuries-old religious customs are deteriorating as individuals question why anatomy must affect spirituality; a college student’s performance art regarding sex crime legislation gains international attention as she advocates local change.  We kept these hot-button issues in mind as we constructed our new world and quickly realized that altering the location of our genetalia does nothing to alter the spirit behind our reality’s ongoing sexual dialogue; in a world where toes are sexual organs, our eyelines, not our focus, changes.

In his essay entitled “Design Fiction: a short essay on design, science, fact and fiction,” Julian Bleeker discusses how products of design fiction can only present selections, or corners of this new, imagined world. The author goes on to explain that these objects complete these fictional worlds because they encourage imaginative thinking. These small “windows” spark our imaginations, and we naturally fill the social gaps they leave. Theodore Twombly’s (Joaquin Phoenix) world within the film Her (2013) is an excellent example of how design fiction products can reveal something about the social landscape they’re found in. Like our group’s fictional world, Twombly’s world is marked by its members’ needs for sexual fulfillment. A pocket-sized gadget that houses an Operating System provides thousands of men and women with companionship, but as the film reveals the scope of the humans’ dependence on these gadgets, it becomes clear that the Operating Systems are a symbol of the culture’s isolation and social deficiency.

As world-builders, we embraced Bleeker’s design fiction concepts by creating artifacts that drew attention to various facets of everyday life. These products introduced a world with a completely different interpretation of the term “modesty” and an even more insatiable demand for shoe donations than what exists in our reality. Although our artifacts represent only a sliver of what this new world has to offer, their pervasiveness makes them “totems through which a larger story can be told, imagined or expressed.”