Round Robin

I aimed for simplicity and creativity. I turned a girl into an orange-eating vampire, and gave an orange arms and legs. I derived both of these characters from something: Laura from Le Fanu's Carmilla (which I am reading for my 114 class) and Julius from the drink "Orange Julius'. I thought it would be fun to watch these characters interact with each other, as their interests contrast, and was excited to see whether Julius would survive.

I hadn’t realized, at the time, that it would be hard to maintain the specificity that Laura was an orange-eating vampire, and Julius was, indeed, an orange with arms and legs. Only the person immediately after me in the process knew those facts to specifically. The story developed into something less linear than I’d hoped, but was enlightening in that I learned that collaboration without communication is nothing more (or less) than a medium less controllable than watercolor. 

So, here is my story.

Laura The Vampire

Laura is a vampire. Except, she doesn’t drink blood; she drinks orange juice. Julius is an orange. (Maddy)

One night, the whole town ran out of orange juice. Laura thought that she could borrow some from Julius. She didn’t sleep that day. (Juan)




Laura couldn't get vitamin C from the sun. She didn't want to "borrow" from Julius. But, she must survive. (Heather)



Julius was quite the cautious type, but not too smart. His vitamin c was behind some lasers, but the wire was not. (Jake)

---- (Amy)

Artist's Statement

As eloquently stated by DJ Spooky in his preface to the Exquisite Corpse, recent advancement in social connectivity is fueling the fires of collaboration; breathing life and form into the masses of information we consume everyday. Despite the increased flow of information, however; collaboration and the art that derives from it continues to be dictated by the unbreakable, universal rules of chance and individual perception. Each one of our blogs displays a spin off of the Exquisite Corpse and evidence of the mentioned universal rules. As a team, we played a game where one individual begins a story, only to be constrained to writing under 20 words and sending the rest to be filtered through the artistic channel of four others. After coming together and analyzing each individual’s justification for their respective part, we were able to not only discover the following insights into how a disjointed story can work together, but also basic patterns manifested in collaboration itself.

After coming together, we each explained our justifications for the parts that we’d played. As a team, we realized that the game had forced us to think about our stories through a lens of communication -- which communication, in and of itself, fits under the definition of a ‘medium’. As a group, we each had to adapt to what the people before or after us in the process chain would add or take away from what we, ourselves, had imagined. Some players were able to adapt quicker than others, while the others were able to adapt more cohesively. This did not become apparent, though, until the game had finished, because there was such a lack of communication.

Therefore, without communication, the stories became more about expressing our personalities and worldviews rather than plotline. The game was challenging. It was hard to release some of our precious creative control into the hands of chaos, but chaos was crucial in preserving the crucial element of purity with regards to our reactions and responses. Most importantly, out of this purity came a story that was more creative and unique than we could ever imagine.

Looking deeper, we as a team felt that our game also helped unlock additional insights into the role of collaboration in art itself. As mentioned by DJ Spooky and class discussion, collaboration as an artform may seem disjointed and Frankensteinian in many regards. Each individual carries their own worldview, which is only accentuated in narrative construction as that worldview seeks to adapt to constraints and filters. Above all, however; these constraints are what make the Exquisite Corpse the artform that it is and the strongest glue that binds our story together. Each part of the story is unique in content, yet similar in which is what made. It stands as a microcosm of art itself, where we merely sample and elaborate off the shoulders of artistic giants who came before. Information and creativity may exponentially increase in a globalizing world, but the rules of artistic creation remain the same; forever dictated by the constraints our game portrayed.

Music Mosaic

"Porcelain" by Helen Jane Long (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c0FBSUd1Hk)

 I first began listening to this kind of music in 2013, my freshman year at BYU. I was learning a lot of things about myself, by myself, and this song reminds me both of who I am today, and what it took to get me here.

"Porcelain" is mostly composed with soft, blue piano cycles, with ebbs and flows of warmer -- yet restrained -- strings. These images try to capture the melancholy and loneliness of the piano, as well as the growth and release of the violins. Overall, I tried to maintain a level of depth within each image; I used several layers of pigment in my watercolors (which medium I thought expressed the "seeping" feeling I get from the song), as well as altered the last three photos I took to further distance the viewer from the real subject. The top two images I did not alter; I wanted to capture the original clarity and intrigue of the opening bars of the song.

The flowers require a little more explanation; I feel that the best way of visually capturing the first moment that the violins come in is with natural movement...either in the spreading and receding of a wave on the beach, or in a flower's bloom. I figured I could manufacture the same sensation with the wet-on-wet watercolor technique of dropping pure pigment onto a dampened canvas. The GIF of my paintbrush touching the wet paper and watching the first rapid, then slow spreading of the yellow was my attempt to recreate the natural, power-then-release feeling of the violins.

I then photographed the final images of my watercolors. Keeping the process of the wet-on-wet technique in mind, the flowers correspond (via their color, size, and placement on the page) to the notes of the violins as they enter and exit the frame.

Disney Fuels Addiction For Money and Uses Star Wars Video Games As Gasolime

I never know what to get my sisters for Christmas, but my brother is easy: video games. It doesn’t even usually matter what video game it is, as long as at least one of his friends or cousins has the same game, and they can go online and play multiplayer together for hours on end. It’s a $50-75 Christmas investment, which can be painful for college students like myself to watch that much money go into my brother's present, but I like thinking that I give the best gifts out of the kids in the family. 

If it’s a particularly popular game, like Star Wars Battlefront (2015) was just this last Christmas, we may not see my brother resurface for weeks...which, admittedly, I may benefit from, but Jake may not.  

I don’t judge him for liking video games so much. I like them, too. I’m not nearly as good at first-person shooter games, but I can definitely keep par with Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Those games, though, aren’t often the problematic games. Jake tends towards the big-money games: Halo, Call of Duty, and as I just mentioned, Battlefront. All Xbox and Play Station 4 games are expensive, but these massive, blockbuster, soldier-with-constant-action games are the ones that break people’s banks and overwhelm their personal lives.

Parents and experts have become increasingly more aware of and concerned for the growing numbers and symptoms of youth spend more and more time in front of a large, loud, violent and anonymous screen and less time with personal human interaction (http://www.addictionrecov.org/Addictions/?AID=45) -- which is bad, considering today's mental health crises and developmental disorders. 

Kids and teens use these incredible 3D worlds as a substitution for real-life connection (http://www.addictionrecov.org/Addictions/?AID=45), throw tantrums when the games are taken away, (http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/video-game-addiction-no-fun), and lose the motivation for anything else in their lives: homework, sports, music, eating, sleeping.

Approximately 8.5% of children who play video games (which are about 91-97% of all children in the U.S.) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/16/survey-97-percent-of-chil_n_126948.html) can be considered chronically addicted (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/06/health/video-games-addiction-gentile-feat/index.html)

And while this is going on, EA, Bioware, and other game developers are sitting around a large, white table, thinking of new games, new downloadable content (DC), new advertisements…more, more, more sources of income. Milk it ‘til it dies, and then take the leather and steak.

I think that some game developers – and sponsors, carriers, brands, etc. – have gone to lengths of catering their products around what they think people will buy and become addicted to – or, in more specific phrasing, I think that Disney is using Star Wars (the games, the movies, the entire franchise) to drain money out of people whom they have molded into not being able to resist.

This theory is mostly based on my skepticism of the huge success of both the movie and the game. While early ticket sales for Star Wars: The Force Awakens “broke IMAX records at $6.5 million” (https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/the-history-of-marketing-star-wars.aspx#sthash.ZX6mrqvZ.dpuf), Battlefront (2015) “has reportedly sold 12 million copies since its launch in November,” generating approximately $660 million in revenue as of January 4, 2016 (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/star-wars-battlefront-ea-sells-095739583.html).

Along those lines, let’s also talk about how the timing of the release for Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) just so happens to perfectly coincide with the premiere of the latest Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens (2015).

I think it is a little funny how, when I Google “Star Wars Success”, the first title that pops up is “Star Wars 7 Passes Avatar at US Box Office”, and right beneath it is “GS News Update: Star Wars Battlefront Has Sold 13 Million Copies?!” (http://www.gamespot.com/star-wars-battlefront/).

Critics explain that the reviews for both the movie and the game have solely relied on the fandom support, and play off of each other for their successes (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/122915/electronic-arts-buy-right-now-ea.asp?partner=mediafed). Battlefront (2015) is kind of an evil-genius way of extending the life of Star Wars income, “as it will give fans an opportunity to remain in the Star Wars universe while not watching the movies.” I would add onto that to say that the movies are a mirrored opportunity for the consumers of the games to grow more invested in the worlds that the games have created; therefore, “as long as the Star Wars movies continue to deliver, which likely they will, the demand for Battlefront games will be high.”

The game and the movie walk up to your doorstep hand-in-hand as they ask for your money, hand you some cocaine, and leave you to zone out in front of your TV for the next millennia.

Worse than cocaine, video games are extremely accessible. Anyone can walk into GameStop or Target and put a few thousand dollars’ worth of consoles and games into their carts – and that’s not even including the extra fun stuff, like headsets, plug-ins, and plush toys. NPD even coined the phrase for “Force Friday” (September 4, 2015), during which weekend, every $1 of $11 spent “went toward a Star Wars toy” (https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/the-history-of-marketing-star-wars.aspx#sthash.ZX6mrqvZ.dpuf). 

Then, when you go home and plop down onto your couch, you can buy even more stuff. I like to call these things “gaming lunchables”, because even though the buyers know they’re spending money on caloric waste, they love them…and, everything seems to end in “-bles”: collectibles, unlockables, downloadables, and so on.  

Lucasfilm kind of invented the idea of over-marketing through fandom with the first trilogy. “Over the 38-year span of the Star Wars’ lifetime, Lucasfilm has licensed $20 billion worth of goods. The saga’s brand consistently finds a place in the top five licensed toy brands each year, according to NPD Group. Today, companies like Campbell’s and CoverGirl are harnessing Star Wars’ marketing power, creating Star Wars-themed everything, from canned soup to eye makeup.” (https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/the-history-of-marketing-star-wars.aspx). Since the latest The Force Awakens and Battlefront, I myself have even gotten trapped in the Star Wars aisle at Target and been tempted to buy a remote-controlled BB-8, or a child-size Lego Ty-Fighter.

Mostly, I am concerned for the direction of where video games are going. It is arguable that the Hollywood film industry has turned into nothing more than a moneymaking entertainment business, and I think that video games are en route to surpassing film – and any other mode of entertainment – by means of exploiting their consumers’ addiction to them. I fear that Star Wars is sending that trend into hyper drive with Battlefront and The Force Awakens at the wheel.