Sunday, March 28, 2010
Fantasy: A Purple Crayon
{{Following is an essay I wrote for Stephanie Jansen's final capstone book, themed "Flights of Fancy." It doesn't have anything directly to do with inde study, but I'm posting it here in case anyone wants to take a look:}}
My first art instruction was given to me by my babysitter and involved step by step instructions on how to draw a princess. I would practice on my magna-doodle: circle for the head, a smaller circle on the side represented upswept hair, rectangle neck and arms, two circles for the pouffy princess sleeves, a rectangle ending in a point for the bodice, and a giant half circle skirt. From there I expanded my repertoire to religious figures: Jesus on the cross--complete with crown of thorns and pierced side--was a popular subject in my 6 to 8 year old work. I was allowed to draw in church and would give my latest masterpiece to the priest after mass every Sunday in return for hard candy...quite literally my first taste of the artist/patron relationship.
My interest in art gave the adults in my life an easy out on gift ideas. Birthdays without fail included newsprint sketchbooks and a never-ending stream of crumbly watercolor wafers. I lusted after scented magic markers in skinny white plastic casings, sharpened ebony pencils and the dusty curves of pink pearl erasers. At some point, I acquired a picture book called Harold and the Purple Crayon that quickly became one of my favorites. The story is simple and lovely. Harold has a purple crayon with which he draws the ‘reality’ around him: from pies to dragons to a boat for the ocean that he inadvertently draws himself into. I was drawn to Crocket Johnson’s spare illustrations and the softly expressive lines of his crayon-wielding protagonist. I’d almost forgotten about the book until recently when I Google image-searched “imagination” on a whim for this essay and a thumbnail of Harold popped up. Upon rereading the story, I noticed for the first time the other less obvious creative tool that Harold suggests to readers: fantasy.
Fantasy is a bit of a loaded word...its associations run the gamut from innocent daydreaming to Freudian fetishes. The word has an interesting etymology. It’s rooted in the Greek phantasia, which itself derived from verbs like phantazein (to make apparent; to appear) and phainein (to display; to show). In Sophist 264a, Plato describes phantasia as “a blend of perception and judgement.” Aristotle believed it played a key role in human movement and desire. The concept of fantasy has always been a significant theme in the arts...the ability to create something out of nothing would be impossible without it. Fantasy acts as a guide between perception and thought, between the concrete world around us and the world of the mind. Our ability to modify the world--to even imagine that there could be ‘a better way’--is dependent on our ability to fantasize.
Most of my imagination nowadays is taken up with dreaming of the future. I don’t dilly dally much with the past. I don’t have to since much of my past is still in recent memory and in the memories of the people around me...easily drummed up, easily recalled and detailed. When that fails, computers are on hand to recall my past in embarrassing detail: the first blog I started when I was 14, thousands upon thousands of digital pictures, emails from ex boyfriends, instant messages with ex best friends. etc.etc.etc. I don’t know whether this ad nauseam digital account of my life is good or bad, or how these types of accounts will change my generation’s relationship with the past, but the future certainly seems even more mysterious when the past is in such close reach. Whereas the past is cemented in all its digital reality, my fantasy future remains a perfect ideal where I can test all the possible directions various life paths might take.
For instance, in one fantasy I might strike up a conversation with someone in a coffee shop. I find out they work for a non-profit that deals with a social cause I’m interested in and we exchange business cards. I end up volunteering with them for a while and find my true calling. Maybe I end up going to law school after all, becoming a ballsy lawyer with a reputation for kicking ass and taking names. When not on the job, I travel a lot speaking to people about the cause and rallying support. Maybe I even run for office and get into politics. I’m able to push for reform from the front lines, making the world a bit better all while wearing fabulous 4-inch heels and a black pantsuit.
In another fantasy, I get married right away to a great guy. Maybe we have a baby. I freelance from home, slowly making a name for myself. In the meantime, my husband makes an irresistible indie film that ends up being a sensation. We move to a cozy house in Silver lake where I have a space over the garage that serves as my studio. I have super creative kids that work on their super awesomely brilliant kid projects while I work on my super awesomely brilliant graphic design adult work. I’m done with work every day by 4. Then I go to the grocery store, come home and make an amazing from-scratch experimental gourmet meal every night.
In other fantasies I go to grad school and get into education, teaching design while developing my own theories and projects. Or open a pastry shop and cafe where I get to bake all day. Or join peace corps. Or.........
Of course in my imagination, all of this is happening simultaneously. The domestic mommy me is also the front-lines fighting lawyer and the person getting her doctorate in some field of design that doesn’t even have a specific name yet. My fantasy world is a post-feminist heaven...where I can be superwoman and supermom and superwife all at the exact same time and still get 8 hours of sleep at night.
Fantasies are so important because simultaneous alternate realities are not allowed in the real world. In this world if I choose a path I might be stuck with it. Even when I can change direction after considerable effort, I certainly can not make it so that I never chose the original path. I can not literally undo something. But in my fantasy world I can be more reckless, less attuned to the constrictions of reality, and therefore much more wildly imaginative than I ever can be when faced with real world choices. Of course that’s not the end of the story. Fantasies allow us to imagine a better real world and then--as Aristotle suggested--creates the desire and movement to do something about it.
Harold is a good example of someone using his imagination in the moment, getting himself in and out of trouble and using his crayon to do so. There are overly obvious parallels to the life of ‘creatives,’ but the lessons really apply to anyone. I can’t draw myself into this perfect future world that I see for myself, but I can draw myself in and out of scenarios in my everyday life: making things a little more interesting, seeing where things could be better, and making necessary changes. Imagination is an agent for change, and therefore so is all design work. For that matter, so is any work that begins with fantasy.
My first art instruction was given to me by my babysitter and involved step by step instructions on how to draw a princess. I would practice on my magna-doodle: circle for the head, a smaller circle on the side represented upswept hair, rectangle neck and arms, two circles for the pouffy princess sleeves, a rectangle ending in a point for the bodice, and a giant half circle skirt. From there I expanded my repertoire to religious figures: Jesus on the cross--complete with crown of thorns and pierced side--was a popular subject in my 6 to 8 year old work. I was allowed to draw in church and would give my latest masterpiece to the priest after mass every Sunday in return for hard candy...quite literally my first taste of the artist/patron relationship.
My interest in art gave the adults in my life an easy out on gift ideas. Birthdays without fail included newsprint sketchbooks and a never-ending stream of crumbly watercolor wafers. I lusted after scented magic markers in skinny white plastic casings, sharpened ebony pencils and the dusty curves of pink pearl erasers. At some point, I acquired a picture book called Harold and the Purple Crayon that quickly became one of my favorites. The story is simple and lovely. Harold has a purple crayon with which he draws the ‘reality’ around him: from pies to dragons to a boat for the ocean that he inadvertently draws himself into. I was drawn to Crocket Johnson’s spare illustrations and the softly expressive lines of his crayon-wielding protagonist. I’d almost forgotten about the book until recently when I Google image-searched “imagination” on a whim for this essay and a thumbnail of Harold popped up. Upon rereading the story, I noticed for the first time the other less obvious creative tool that Harold suggests to readers: fantasy.
Fantasy is a bit of a loaded word...its associations run the gamut from innocent daydreaming to Freudian fetishes. The word has an interesting etymology. It’s rooted in the Greek phantasia, which itself derived from verbs like phantazein (to make apparent; to appear) and phainein (to display; to show). In Sophist 264a, Plato describes phantasia as “a blend of perception and judgement.” Aristotle believed it played a key role in human movement and desire. The concept of fantasy has always been a significant theme in the arts...the ability to create something out of nothing would be impossible without it. Fantasy acts as a guide between perception and thought, between the concrete world around us and the world of the mind. Our ability to modify the world--to even imagine that there could be ‘a better way’--is dependent on our ability to fantasize.
Most of my imagination nowadays is taken up with dreaming of the future. I don’t dilly dally much with the past. I don’t have to since much of my past is still in recent memory and in the memories of the people around me...easily drummed up, easily recalled and detailed. When that fails, computers are on hand to recall my past in embarrassing detail: the first blog I started when I was 14, thousands upon thousands of digital pictures, emails from ex boyfriends, instant messages with ex best friends. etc.etc.etc. I don’t know whether this ad nauseam digital account of my life is good or bad, or how these types of accounts will change my generation’s relationship with the past, but the future certainly seems even more mysterious when the past is in such close reach. Whereas the past is cemented in all its digital reality, my fantasy future remains a perfect ideal where I can test all the possible directions various life paths might take.
For instance, in one fantasy I might strike up a conversation with someone in a coffee shop. I find out they work for a non-profit that deals with a social cause I’m interested in and we exchange business cards. I end up volunteering with them for a while and find my true calling. Maybe I end up going to law school after all, becoming a ballsy lawyer with a reputation for kicking ass and taking names. When not on the job, I travel a lot speaking to people about the cause and rallying support. Maybe I even run for office and get into politics. I’m able to push for reform from the front lines, making the world a bit better all while wearing fabulous 4-inch heels and a black pantsuit.
In another fantasy, I get married right away to a great guy. Maybe we have a baby. I freelance from home, slowly making a name for myself. In the meantime, my husband makes an irresistible indie film that ends up being a sensation. We move to a cozy house in Silver lake where I have a space over the garage that serves as my studio. I have super creative kids that work on their super awesomely brilliant kid projects while I work on my super awesomely brilliant graphic design adult work. I’m done with work every day by 4. Then I go to the grocery store, come home and make an amazing from-scratch experimental gourmet meal every night.
In other fantasies I go to grad school and get into education, teaching design while developing my own theories and projects. Or open a pastry shop and cafe where I get to bake all day. Or join peace corps. Or.........
Of course in my imagination, all of this is happening simultaneously. The domestic mommy me is also the front-lines fighting lawyer and the person getting her doctorate in some field of design that doesn’t even have a specific name yet. My fantasy world is a post-feminist heaven...where I can be superwoman and supermom and superwife all at the exact same time and still get 8 hours of sleep at night.
Fantasies are so important because simultaneous alternate realities are not allowed in the real world. In this world if I choose a path I might be stuck with it. Even when I can change direction after considerable effort, I certainly can not make it so that I never chose the original path. I can not literally undo something. But in my fantasy world I can be more reckless, less attuned to the constrictions of reality, and therefore much more wildly imaginative than I ever can be when faced with real world choices. Of course that’s not the end of the story. Fantasies allow us to imagine a better real world and then--as Aristotle suggested--creates the desire and movement to do something about it.
Harold is a good example of someone using his imagination in the moment, getting himself in and out of trouble and using his crayon to do so. There are overly obvious parallels to the life of ‘creatives,’ but the lessons really apply to anyone. I can’t draw myself into this perfect future world that I see for myself, but I can draw myself in and out of scenarios in my everyday life: making things a little more interesting, seeing where things could be better, and making necessary changes. Imagination is an agent for change, and therefore so is all design work. For that matter, so is any work that begins with fantasy.
Wonky formatting...
For some really annoying reason all my posts are in bold now. Something is wonky with the formatting and it seems to have something to do with the text editor and not the css...Not sure how to fix it so for now, other than when I actually do purposefully bold something, it shows up regular. So if I bold what's meant to be normal and vice versa, the next post will look normal. But I don't have the time/energy to go back and do that to all the old posts, so I apologize for the annoying formatting!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Reflections on Rectangles
Part I of "Visual and Verbal Literacy in New Media and the Role of the Designer"
draft I
After six years of undergraduate writing, I’m well acquainted with the ritual of opening a blank word document and struggling to fill it with something intelligent. Yet despite the fact that we’ve met often enough in literary combat, that blank white rectangle never fails to intimidate the heck out of me. There’s something about the proportions and the blinking text cursor that feels claustrophobic. Last week I was struggling to put pen to paper when I found myself thinking again how much easier it is to come up with a clear argument and train of thought when speaking out loud to another person in the world--unconfined. This got me thinking about how we write, the ritual of writing, and the mediums we use to hold our thoughts.
The first step that I always take when beginning a writing task is to open a document on screen or to take out a blank piece of paper. In either case, my writing is contained within the window of the page, screen, etc. This makes me wonder...what would windowless writing look like? Is it possible to imagine a new way of writing that is as containerless as speech? Why are our modes of input so limited...so unchanged for hundreds of years?
There are some clear benefits to having standard containers for writing. The physical and visual limitations might be freeing to some. As with any design problem, limitations are essential parts of defining and solving a problem. Perhaps these limitations actually free up the writing process. Perhaps the default means of displaying text and graphics also aids in the mass communication of messages. Perhaps mediums and sizes help people to focus on the content rather than the delivery. Certainly tasks like sending physical mail and printing on a large scale would be very difficult without some kind of standards for output of written communication.
However, we’ve been contained within these mediums for so long that I wonder whether anyone even considers that there might be another way. In following this train of thought, I’ve struggled to come up with an image of what truly containerless writing would look like. It’s difficult to imagine a world where history hasn’t brought us to a place of paper, windows, and ubiquitous rectangles. Certainly writing in the post-Gutenberg world has been limited by paper, and this has extended to our ways of writing on screen, despite the fact that the physical limitations of press, printing, paper, and the postal service no longer exist in the digital realm. These types of writing mediums also seem to privilege text heavily over image. Since most of the mediums came out of a verbal tradiiton, the mediums are not specifically created for images. Images are often placed into and formatted for these rectangular containers regardless of content and appropriateness.
When I first started thinking about the category of contained communication, I thought of writing on a screen, writing on a page, video chat, instant message, email, blogging, etc. Containerless communication would be talking on the phone or person to person in real life. I didn’t realize until after making the lists that I’d neatly put all the inherently visual communication I could immediately think of into the container category and the two most potentially non-visual into the containerless category. This isn’t really accurate. Phone conversations are also contained within a medium even if the medium isn’t a rectangular window of some sort. And there must be a way of working within the ‘contained’ mediums so that the text/image isn’t so limited by the parameters and syntax that we’ve become so accustomed to when writing in rectangular spaces.
But again, what would this look like? My first thought was the work of Stefan Sagmeister:
He’s made a habit of working outside the box to great effect. But just working off screen and off page doesn’t really get to the heart of what I’m talking about.
I suppose the main issue is that we seem stuck with writing traditions that were developed in the 1400s. Surely it’s time to rethink or at least stretch our awareness of our means of writing and possible alternatives?
draft I
After six years of undergraduate writing, I’m well acquainted with the ritual of opening a blank word document and struggling to fill it with something intelligent. Yet despite the fact that we’ve met often enough in literary combat, that blank white rectangle never fails to intimidate the heck out of me. There’s something about the proportions and the blinking text cursor that feels claustrophobic. Last week I was struggling to put pen to paper when I found myself thinking again how much easier it is to come up with a clear argument and train of thought when speaking out loud to another person in the world--unconfined. This got me thinking about how we write, the ritual of writing, and the mediums we use to hold our thoughts.
The first step that I always take when beginning a writing task is to open a document on screen or to take out a blank piece of paper. In either case, my writing is contained within the window of the page, screen, etc. This makes me wonder...what would windowless writing look like? Is it possible to imagine a new way of writing that is as containerless as speech? Why are our modes of input so limited...so unchanged for hundreds of years?
There are some clear benefits to having standard containers for writing. The physical and visual limitations might be freeing to some. As with any design problem, limitations are essential parts of defining and solving a problem. Perhaps these limitations actually free up the writing process. Perhaps the default means of displaying text and graphics also aids in the mass communication of messages. Perhaps mediums and sizes help people to focus on the content rather than the delivery. Certainly tasks like sending physical mail and printing on a large scale would be very difficult without some kind of standards for output of written communication.
However, we’ve been contained within these mediums for so long that I wonder whether anyone even considers that there might be another way. In following this train of thought, I’ve struggled to come up with an image of what truly containerless writing would look like. It’s difficult to imagine a world where history hasn’t brought us to a place of paper, windows, and ubiquitous rectangles. Certainly writing in the post-Gutenberg world has been limited by paper, and this has extended to our ways of writing on screen, despite the fact that the physical limitations of press, printing, paper, and the postal service no longer exist in the digital realm. These types of writing mediums also seem to privilege text heavily over image. Since most of the mediums came out of a verbal tradiiton, the mediums are not specifically created for images. Images are often placed into and formatted for these rectangular containers regardless of content and appropriateness.
When I first started thinking about the category of contained communication, I thought of writing on a screen, writing on a page, video chat, instant message, email, blogging, etc. Containerless communication would be talking on the phone or person to person in real life. I didn’t realize until after making the lists that I’d neatly put all the inherently visual communication I could immediately think of into the container category and the two most potentially non-visual into the containerless category. This isn’t really accurate. Phone conversations are also contained within a medium even if the medium isn’t a rectangular window of some sort. And there must be a way of working within the ‘contained’ mediums so that the text/image isn’t so limited by the parameters and syntax that we’ve become so accustomed to when writing in rectangular spaces.
But again, what would this look like? My first thought was the work of Stefan Sagmeister:
I suppose the main issue is that we seem stuck with writing traditions that were developed in the 1400s. Surely it’s time to rethink or at least stretch our awareness of our means of writing and possible alternatives?
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
On Writing
[An unedited personal essay on the frustration of writing, which I wrote Feb. 17th and have been waiting to post until I ‘edited’ it...which is quite sad/laughable considering the theme of the essay...siiiiigh]
I paralyze myself with thinking “who’s going to read this, what are they going to think?”
I need to just write. I need to stop worrying about sounding clever or getting the right idiom or who’s going to think I sound smart or pretentious using this word. I need to just get it out of my head.
I’m paralyzed by past teachers who used to praise me for writing what they wanted. (which was generally middle of the road sentimental average sludge.) It was really well-written sludge, but it was boring and overly-sentimental as probably all middle school English teachers think a polite, smallish twelve year old should sound. I find myself wanting to find the moral in every story and wrap it all up in a nice little package. It’s hard not to censor myself as I write...to allow myself to write in an authentic meghan voice instead of the meghan I’ve concocted to please the writing audience I’ve imagined in my head...and the real one grading my papers in English classes.
I have to write as fast as I possibly can to avoid thinking myself into a bad place. I have to write faster than I can censor myself. It’s like the authentic meghan voice is racing against teacher-pet perfectionist meghan and if my hands can type fast enough, maybe authentic meghan can beat stupid-perfectionist meghan and then I can actually have something interesting to work with.
The feeling of “not knowing” is just generally uncomfortable for me...not that I don’t love it. I love finding a new topic to explore...but I feel this crazy uncomfortable pressure to learn about it as quickly as possible so I can start knowing how to talk about it and how I feel about it.
This effect probably comes out of my interest in politics and social justice and my stints on various debate teams. I was on three at the same time in high school: National Forensics League (has nothing to do with dead people...I don’t know why it’s called that), Harvard model congress, and Model UN. Girls are still in the minority on those teams, and I relished kicking the boys’ butts. My team used to practice for 6 hours every Sunday until we could make a sound argument in our sleep. But a side effect is that now making casual observations and feeling things out is really hard. My brain is wired to write in normative statements.
And right now that’s how I feel. Out of my element. It’s all new and fascinating territory. I feel this enormous amount of pressure to know EVERYTHING about the subjects I’ve laid out for myself...a feeling I’ve learned to kick to the curb in my other design projects (most of the time) but something I still struggle with in my writing courses. I have this desire to know everything there is to know about something before I begin so that I can make the absolute best piece of writing possible--especially if it’s a rhetorical piece. I want my arguments to be so tight that I’ve thought out every possible rebuttal and covered it. Of course this is an impossible and really annoying place to live in. Not to say that perfectionism doesn’t have its place. But it does NOT have a place in writing first drafts. It’s impossible to write a ‘perfect’ first draft and it’s impossible to know everything about something before I’ve explored it through writing/sketching/getting feedback about it. And this blog it supposed to be a place for me to explore topics and get feedback. So...I need to chill out and realize I’m not on debate team anymore. And also this is supposed to be fun. The biggest impediment to my own success is my own worry ABOUT that potential success and what other people will think about it/me after I put myself out there to be judged. Which is such a ridiculously juvenile thing for a 24-year old to worry about. So I need to chill out and stop worrying and just have fun with the material. As someone wise told me last year during a similar personal freakout, “If you have fun with the work, the outcome will take care of itself.”
I paralyze myself with thinking “who’s going to read this, what are they going to think?”
I need to just write. I need to stop worrying about sounding clever or getting the right idiom or who’s going to think I sound smart or pretentious using this word. I need to just get it out of my head.
I’m paralyzed by past teachers who used to praise me for writing what they wanted. (which was generally middle of the road sentimental average sludge.) It was really well-written sludge, but it was boring and overly-sentimental as probably all middle school English teachers think a polite, smallish twelve year old should sound. I find myself wanting to find the moral in every story and wrap it all up in a nice little package. It’s hard not to censor myself as I write...to allow myself to write in an authentic meghan voice instead of the meghan I’ve concocted to please the writing audience I’ve imagined in my head...and the real one grading my papers in English classes.
I have to write as fast as I possibly can to avoid thinking myself into a bad place. I have to write faster than I can censor myself. It’s like the authentic meghan voice is racing against teacher-pet perfectionist meghan and if my hands can type fast enough, maybe authentic meghan can beat stupid-perfectionist meghan and then I can actually have something interesting to work with.
The feeling of “not knowing” is just generally uncomfortable for me...not that I don’t love it. I love finding a new topic to explore...but I feel this crazy uncomfortable pressure to learn about it as quickly as possible so I can start knowing how to talk about it and how I feel about it.
This effect probably comes out of my interest in politics and social justice and my stints on various debate teams. I was on three at the same time in high school: National Forensics League (has nothing to do with dead people...I don’t know why it’s called that), Harvard model congress, and Model UN. Girls are still in the minority on those teams, and I relished kicking the boys’ butts. My team used to practice for 6 hours every Sunday until we could make a sound argument in our sleep. But a side effect is that now making casual observations and feeling things out is really hard. My brain is wired to write in normative statements.
And right now that’s how I feel. Out of my element. It’s all new and fascinating territory. I feel this enormous amount of pressure to know EVERYTHING about the subjects I’ve laid out for myself...a feeling I’ve learned to kick to the curb in my other design projects (most of the time) but something I still struggle with in my writing courses. I have this desire to know everything there is to know about something before I begin so that I can make the absolute best piece of writing possible--especially if it’s a rhetorical piece. I want my arguments to be so tight that I’ve thought out every possible rebuttal and covered it. Of course this is an impossible and really annoying place to live in. Not to say that perfectionism doesn’t have its place. But it does NOT have a place in writing first drafts. It’s impossible to write a ‘perfect’ first draft and it’s impossible to know everything about something before I’ve explored it through writing/sketching/getting feedback about it. And this blog it supposed to be a place for me to explore topics and get feedback. So...I need to chill out and realize I’m not on debate team anymore. And also this is supposed to be fun. The biggest impediment to my own success is my own worry ABOUT that potential success and what other people will think about it/me after I put myself out there to be judged. Which is such a ridiculously juvenile thing for a 24-year old to worry about. So I need to chill out and stop worrying and just have fun with the material. As someone wise told me last year during a similar personal freakout, “If you have fun with the work, the outcome will take care of itself.”
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