Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Project 2 generative writing

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I have always loved using art to express ideas, and found it interesting and sometimes challenging to express creatively/artistically the same idea that I could in writing. There are a lot of times in which I find that writing is much more complete in expressing ideas than art is, simply because art often leaves the audience grasping at their own conclusions of the piece, especially because since writing can be so complicated, one cannot fit the literal meaning in one or two of three pieces. This pushes art in the abstract direction in order to completely say what is needed, which poses yet another problem: abstract art leaves much to the imagination. So I suppose my own goal is to make one or a few pieces of art that expresses the general tone that I want, with a few specifics, in such a way that the audience can appreciate - or perhaps wonder at the meaning at first, but which slowly becomes clearer and clearer, ending on an epiphany at the end. 

In class, as the project was introduced, I knew I wanted to do something artsy - although creating a piece of music along a topic also seemed super cool...but unfortunately, I'm pretty awful at improvising and composing music ;__; But as I started thinking of ideas to work off of, I had a little trouble. See, most art pieces on international aid are super emotionally charged - whether it's a depressing image, or an oppositely happy image, there isn't anything besides infographics that transmits information like writing a semi un-biased paper does - and even then, both carry hints of potential emotion in them. Along those lines, I can't possibly avoid expressing something artistically that doesn't somewhat elicit emotions in the viewer - so perhaps I could incorporate a bit of both.

Eventually I wandered upon the idea of rising above the need for aid, and bringing people out of poverty. But unfortunately, not all humanitarian aid helps people further themselves – look at the 7-Worst-International-Aid-Ideas article for reference – and even when the intentions and ideas are solid, it won’t be that easy to solve the problem that so many people are suffering of. It’s like a cliff. And while we can bring goods and services and funding “down” to them, the cliff to where relative prosperity exists is almost exponentially high. And how better to depict this than a figuratively-literal representation of the cliff, the yearnings, and struggles to raise oneself past poverty? I think I’ll end up doing a few pieces along these lines, probably in order, and definitely in sort of a dark and depressing tone. While there are many positive aspects and results of humanitarian aid, those are not the aspects that need attention to improve their condition and the world as a whole. I’d love to be able to bring attention to some of the harsher truth that people ignore or are not aware of, and show what isn’t effective and what else needs to change in ways that writing can't achieve with such an impact in that short of a timeframe.
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