The Hawkeye Initiative

I was a big fan of comic books.  I still am but not as much as an avid reader but more of a spectator of the media crossovers.  I remember growing up in my early teens reading comic books and all the heroines portrayed in the art were posed in such awkward ways, usually way too sexual.  Being a fan of the booming trend of comic book movies, I never noticed the blatant exposure of the heroine's butt.  I came across a Huffington Post link that had 8 examples of movie posters with the heroine of every different movie pose in the same exact way, showing the backside.  Heres a few examples:

 

As you can see, all the superheroines are posing the same especially being surrounded by men.  The news link just addresses the easy and I follow another link in its post to a website call The Hawkeye Initiative, base on the comic book character that Jeremy Renner plays in the movie The Avengers.  I will admit comic books is the last place people should look at for feminine equally.  It is a boy's club, much like Playboy and I don't think it will ever change.  Even women artists and writers concede to the sexy heroine archetype but The Hawkeye Initiative, satirically engages the sexy poses, diminishing the appeal all together much like a visual of a shirtless hairy Robin Williams eating a bucket of fried chicken (I saw a drawing of this in a Maxim Magazine a long time ago).  That imagery can make anyone lose their arousal.  My point is, The Hawkeye Initiative is precisely to desexualize the comic book heroine poses based on the replacement of the heroine by Hawkeye.  These visuals are hilarious and I feel I need to share, laugh and point.

 



The website is full of wonderful amateur artwork and they are all hilarious.  I prefer my comics books to stay the same but it is refreshing that the customers are fully aware of the manipulative marketing of the industry.

Pixar rules

There is a webpage that I stumbled across that explains Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling.  These rules were originally tweeted Pixar's Story Artist.  I have watched every single Pixar movie and most of them more than once including all there short films (even ones from the 1980's).  My personal favorite feature film has to be Finding Nemo with a close second of Up.  My favorite short film is Partly Cloudy.

I won't go through every rule on the list but there are a couple that I thought were great advices to creating a riveting story.  Most of the tips seem to be common sense to a writer but these are what I would consider helpful advices for any struggling writer no matter the genre.

Tip 14: Why must you tell this story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.

I like this tip because it forces the writer to question his motives of his/her writing.  Sometimes I feel I just babble on and on in my writing without saying anything but this tip addresses me, as a writer, to stay focus on the story.

Tip 20:  Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike.  How'd you rearrange them into what you do like?

There are plenty of movies I dislike but I think this tip is about movies that you might have enjoyed but the pacing and editing of the story is what hindered the enjoyment.  It is not about a movie a you hate and figure out what changes you can do to make it better.  In other words, if you hate the movie Twilight and you think the movie would have been better if it didn't have sparkling vampires in it, that is not what the tip is trying to get at.  If you mildly enjoy Twilight but you think the editing and storytelling was out of sync and you know how to make it run smoother, more to your liking and pace, then you have made a good story into a better one (*Not that I think Twilight was a good story but it was just an example).

For example, I would have like the movie Avatar but it was overly drawn out.  It was a sci-fi action movie but the beginning of the movie was rather slow and tedious.  I would have started out with an action sequence, like a scene from the end battle and then lead up to how we came to the beginning.  This would set the pace of the movie and give a hint to what to expect.

Crude Truth

This blog will be based on my website that I created for the 3rd project.  The title is Crude Truth of Life's Lemons.  The concept behind this is when life gets you down or throws obstacles in your way--Cowboy up, put on a Cape, and hulk smashed the hell out of those lemons to a pulp.  The four life's lemons are self doubt, lethary, fear, and apathy.  These four negative qualities are the weakness to the human spirit, a kryptonite to your inner Superman.  When these parasites got you down and corner; gain strength, grow some balls and flying jump kick your worries in the face.

The design was base on a comic book feel as in separate panels.  The crown insignias are for brand recognition and is a reference to the author.  The animated gifs are for positive reinforcement to the general audience much like pictures of cats clinging on a branch with a caption of "Hang in there."  Instead you get the Incredible Hulk, getting enrage, and Hulk-smashing the fuck out of Lethary or Captain America bitch-slapping the crap out of Fear.  In other works, don't just wait around until it gets better, get up, get hype and do something about that lemon tree that Life is throwing at you.

Focus: Mary Flanagan

In this weeks reading, I came across Mary Flanagan who is a digital  media artist who "investigates the relationship between everyday life and emerging technologies through art. (p. 280)".  I'm always a fan of artistic portrayal of slice of life.  I prefer watching movies that consist of that topic.  I like listening to music about everyday life and so on. I wanted to look at what Mary has worked on and I found her website that shows her art.  Here is a few examples I thought were intriguing.

[search]

This is based on the concept of how internet users use search engines.  People would rather use search engines instead of doing face to face communication or go to a library.  Whatever the results are whether they are useful or not, the person would rather sift through the misinformation than do physical research.  As Flanagan describes, 

"Users click on words in the live search feed as they find words in others’ searches which interest them. These words separate, and conduct their own searches on themselves. Users can drag two words together which interest them to produce associative searches. At this point, who is the searcher? What is being searched?"

This concept is exactly how I feel about my internet use.  I would rather use search engines than go to the library and no matter how far the links go down the "rabbit hole" I keep on going until I find my way back out or just start all over again.  This is how I get lost on Youtube. 

[from the ranks]

This is a conceptual art based on a video game created by the US Army for recruiting purposes.  Flanagan states that where she comes from, it's either farming or military.  In this art, Flanagan takes screenshots of the game and then has a computer embroider a design that juxtapose the familiar feeling of home and the dangers of war and violence all based on information brought from a video game.  As Flanagan states, "The works engage with the role of the military in my everyday life, from the standardized tests and recruitment visits to family memorabilia, and how present feelings about these experiences are discovered in contemporary computer-based images".

The reason behind this concept is very familiar to me.  I was in the Navy for 6 years and I've met plenty of people who has been a "military" family for several generations.  All the know is the military, the military is their family.  I've also known military personnel that joined because of things they saw in a movie or in video games, thinking that is what the military is all about.  This project is a bulleye on the metaphor of military life.

[borders]

This was based on a great quote from writer Henry David Thoreau in which he states, “Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect…”  Flanagan grab the ball from this quote and went beyond the wanderlust.  In an online multiplayer game, Flanagan would make her character wander aimlessly winding up to the games "edge of the world".  This facade of endless boundaries in videos was capture via screenshots; "exposing the algorithmic nature of landscape rendering and the cut-off points between subscribers or those who have virtual ownership".

Though these images reveal the boundaries of a game that is suppose to be a vast world.  It still seems like a realistic parallel of the world.  The game shows an endless world but has to place a border because the game has to continue, there is a story to the game or point to the character's life.  It can't be wasted walking aimlessly.  In my endeavors in the Navy, I would travel and explore a new location, basically having an endless path to an adventure but I knew I had to limit myself plus there were limits placed on me by forces I could not control.  In retrospect, my travels exposed the nature of my landscapes and comfortability of being in a new place plus the restrictions I was place upon only to be able to continue my life story/journey.  Sounds cheesy but it's the truth.

Wearable Technology Part 2

I've posted a blog about wearable technology about a month ago. I've mentioned Steve Manns' WearComp and Takehito Etani's "The Third Eye".  In the news lately there has been a lot of focus on Apple's iWatch and Google's Glass.  I'm not sure what the future holds on wearable technology but they are interesting.  Virtual Reality game systems and Nintendo's Virtua Boy and Power Glove are evidence that fashion and technology don't necessarily mix.  But Heads Up Display helmets have been very useful in the military.  So there are ways the two genres can work well together.  In more recent news, Fast Company reported that Adidas and Google merged for a shoe with a tech personality that resembles iPhone's Siri.  This shoe can detect the activity of the wearer.  If the wearer is inactive it will shout, "I'm growing weeds here."  If it notices you move around a lot the shoe will suggest the wearer to go for a jog or play basketball.

The more I read the descriptions of what the shoe offers, the more I thought of MC Hammer.  Let me explain.  Back in the 90's, Hammer was so famous they made a Saturday morning cartoon out of him.  In the cartoon, he has magic talking shoes that helps him fight crime and do his amazing Hammer dances.  Both the cartoon and the Adidas just seem unnecessary.  A talking shoe is not something the future needs.

Nice Car

Here's art and technology combined on wheels.  The 2013 Lamborghini Veneno has been recently showcased in the Geneva Auto Show and it looks amazing.  I'm not much of a car guy.  I am a practical person that would prefer a sedan to get around from A to B but in my younger days, during elementary and middle school I would carry Trapper Keeper folders and binders of things I thought looked awesome.  I remember having a binders with a Ferrari and a Fighter Jet on them and made me covet them.  They were things I adored and hope one day to have.  I think all my peers had a Trapper Keeper that had a picture of something they hope to have one day.

Just a few examples of what was so rad back in the 80's and 90's

The Veneno is the dream of all the young boys.  It is amazing looking, almost similar to the Batmobile.  It's a limited design along with limited editions.  Lamborghini only made four total but will only sell three and they have already sold out.  The Veneno is at a low low price of just under 4 million dollars.  Just like back in the 80's and 90's, the only place you'll see one of this is on a Trapper Keeper or whatever the equivalent is to kids nowadays.  Nevertheless, it is a beautiful car, a work of art on wheels.

Trapper Keepers: Still Awesomely Rad!!!

Poetic Thinking

In this week's reading, Shanken introduced David Rokeby and Lev Manovich.  There are two quotes I take to heart in this week's lecture.  Rokeby states, "A technology is interactive to the degree that it reflects the consequences of our actions or decisions back to us (223)."  Manovich claims, "In contrast, as a post-communist subject, I cannot but see Internet as a communal apartment of Stalin era: no privacy, everybody spies on everybody else, always present line for common areas such as the toilet or the kitchen (224)."

Both these statements were made in the mid 1990's when the Internet was just picking up steam but are still relevant with today's Web 2.0.  I'm not sure if these two men had any idea the direction society was taking the Internet to with its addiction to social networking but these two statements are definite prophecies of the likes of Youtube and Facebook.  Everyday there is a national and global story that depicts online etiquette and mob mentality that reflects the leery predictions of these two forward thinking techies.  They are like the millennial Nostradamus.  How many lives have been change for better or worst with participants of Youtube videos and its interactivity.  How many people freely give up there privacy for the sake of attention grabbing on Facebook, whom, by the way, treat their page like a public toilet; overflowing with non sense comments and photos, somewhat like a pissing contests.

I agree with Manovich when he says the Internet is good, the Internet is good, the Internet is good but it is real difficult to standby that affirmation when you read comments on any Youtube video.