R E A L I T Y H U N G E R : a manifesto

Let me begin by saying that I loved and hated this essay. I mostly hated it because of all the references...I'm glad you're well-read and all, but I'm afraid I haven't read half of the things this man is talking about (maybe that's just me).

I mostly just loved the topic of this essay, which is very well portrayed in the first lines: "The world exists. Why recreate it?" The author does a great job of explaining his views "against" fiction writing - why should we have to make up completely new worlds, stories, and ideas if there's already so much in the world that we already have, and that we haven't discovered yet? While this is a rather limiting thought that I'm not sure I believe in, I think it's a very noble idea to promote and pursue. Sure, there's a lot to be created from what you already have, which is done on a daily basis all around the world. But where's the appeal? Why should we limit ourselves to the things that are inside our realm? Why not go out and invent something completely new from scratch as an escape from the real world? 

This is where I disagree with the writer. Sure, it's fine to make beauty, art, and express yourself from the things you already have, but what about expressing those things through something you don't have, and finding a way to manifest your thoughts and send a message through something you invented? In my opinion, that is one major component of creativity - inventing something that no one else has thought of. Of course, this can be done with the same materials as everyone else, but what about making something different with the same things as everyone else makes it so...well, different? I hope you can follow my train of thought. It's not always easy to, and it's especially hard in writing. 

Something else I noticed in the essay was a sort of stylistic device the author uses to prove his point, and I hope I'm not the only one that picked up on this: in constantly citing things form other authors, the writer uses this essay as a prime example that something completely new can be made out of things that already have been made. Creativity comes from already-established entities that can be recycled into something completely new. When I realized this about the essay, I got pretty excited.  Maybe I'm way off, but I'm still proud of my findings. Good move, David Shields.

V I D E O Z

CC: Flickr User la_salebete

Once upon a time, in middle school, I was a video-making fiend.
My friends and I would make music video excerpts, funny stories, and random videos of anything we could think of. Luckily, all (or most) trace of these videos have been deleted off the face of the earth, hidden somewhere inside the deep dark corners of my old green iMac, unplugged and sitting in my storage room, far away from here.
Since then, I haven't done a lot with video. In fact, the introductory video post was the first video I had filmed in a long time, and the Tongue Twister video was my first YouTube upload since those many years ago. It's rather unfortunate that I gave up on video a while ago, because directing, filming and especially editing are things I used to be pretty in to. But alas, times do change.
In the video unit of this class (which I was unaware of up until we talked about it in class), I hope to experience with making video from already pre-recorded videos and editing them - maybe like the "Silent Star Wars" video we watched in class (I think I just used the word video 4 times in one sentence). Although I don't know how to do that, I'd be interested in learning how to take pre-recorded film and changing it in a new artistic way - because isn't that what today's form of creativity is all about? Beyond coming up with my own ideas for video making, I want to steal someone else's and make something completely new out of it; just call me a copycat.