Unicycle / Juggling act in Depauws Talent Show

Here is my act from the talent show I was in last night.

Some things to learn:

• Get the audience laughing, they won't expect skill. Surprise them.


• If you drop on stage (mess up), just laugh it off.


• When doing a routine to music, make sure it's dead solid. A mistake throws you off, because the music doesn't stop!


• I didn't ride the giraffe because backstage, I didn't have enough headroom. I couldn't fit through the door. Because I still can not free-mount the giraffe, I would (should?) have played it over-the-top difficult. Get some assistants in hard hats to hold a latter, draw out getting on the thing, be funny.


• Funny is good


• Rings are awesome for stage performance. I was juggling rings on stage beforehand, and they are large, visual, high, lots of fun.


• At least have a general idea of what you are going to do. The entire club part of the act was improvised, I wish I at least thought of some tricks to do ahead of time, practiced them.


• Just because something is difficult does not mean the audience will appreciate it. When I did 'factory' I got a huge reaction, but the mill's mess/pistons combinations were confusing. (although I did get comments on that trick after the show). Flashy is good, difficult does not = good. What I am saying is juggle for an audience, not for personal skill or other jugglers. There is a reason why taking a bite out of an apple (maybe the 2 trick I learned) is so popular.


• Be personal with the audience, casual. This may not work for everyone, but I like being really relaxed and loose, doing a trick like i'm showing the audience some cool secret. Drop a few times, they are with me trying to succeed. When I do, all the better.

On the Future of Comics and Technology Memo

Comics are a visual medium, and they are printed on paper. Here is the strange part: they no longer need to be printed on paper. Monitors are the new paper, computers, the internet, and other electronic mass communication technology is surpassing printed issues as a means of distribution. Comics are trying hard to stay away from the hellhole that newspapers have trapped themselves in, most notably, how to sell papers and compete digitally. Comics have one thing on their side that will keep people coming into stores and buying well arranged ink on paper: They are made for paper. Newspaper columns, for example, are text. Text can be transposed from one medium to another easier than any other. Comics can not traverse well.

Painting and technology is tricky. Because many paintings can't be digital, they stay away from being trapped in the ridiculously widespread (and socioeconomically speaking: interesting, but not what I am going to talk about) Internet mindset of 'open source" (free stuff is good). There is a problem when people make Digital Paintings (woo wacom!). Most artists just post these things online for free, without fear of theft of appropriation of their work. Why? Another interesting issue, but I want to stay clear of Internet societal reasoning's. I will say this: Posting something online ensures it will get stolen, kind of. Most people who steal things do not claim it as their own, this is very rare. What they do do, is steal it and punish it. The problem is not with intellectual property theft, but rather with content distribution rights. I have written a lot about this, and how to fix it elsewhere, and I think I am supposed to be talking about comics. Right then: Comics! When one thinks of comics and the Internet, usually we think of things like XKCD. Strip comics, the digital alternative to the funny papers. What I want to address is not webcomic issues, but the transition of Graphic Novels to THE COMPUTER.

In particular, the use of an infinite canvas. Comics on paper are bound to have borders, and to be read more-or-less like a book. (zag down a page, turn it, etc). When companies like Graphic.ly, Marvel, or other distributors scan their comics (not scan, as they have probably been created digitally anyway) and place them online, (behind a pay-wall, perhaps?), the transition of form is rather ugly. The comics do not read easily, and one is forced to turn digital pages as they read a paper comic that is plastered to a screen. It doesn’t work well. Now, it can work on things like tablets (Ipad) or touch screen displays, which add a level of control over viewing that is closer to that of paper. Tablet’s are still in their infancy, and most touchscreen smart phone’s just are not big enough to read comics easily on. So what does one do? How do comic creators contort their form to fit the new screen? Having the screen zoom in and follow a pre-set path (where the eye did this work before/on paper). Letterbox away and focus on one panel at a time? Tricks like these may make comics more applicable to a digital presentation, but one is ignoring the real problem: we are trying to put paper on screens. Screens have always worked better as a small view window into a larger canvas (think scroll bars and text/web site design), as opposed to a complete paginated/tabbed representation of the content. (we like scrolling over click-next-page-ing. Graphic storytelling (comic) artists have to take advantage of this property of screens. Make a comic like one could on a giant piece of paper, stretching the boundaries of what is possible in this new medium. Comics displayed on a computer are still in their infancy, which means that analysts’, reviewers, critiques, and formstudy-ers should stay the f*ck out of this medium. But we invite experimental artists to enter, and play around with creating forms and techniques, from there other artists can build on them and the medium can develop. Let  Cayetano Garza, Patrick Farley, Dresden Codak, Daniel Goodbrey, Scott McCloud, and many others experiment and create in form, and other less creative adventurous can use their work as a base. (Defiantly check out http://e-merl.com [tagline: New experiments in fiction].

I am personally playing around with different experimental things to use with an infinite canvas, And I am curious if I could do something like this for the Final project in this class.
Some Ideas I am playing around with

• Choose your own adventure comic


• Time is x axis, character moods are y


• literally parallel, crossing, circular stories


• Separate stories share same environment


• Pacing and timing can be made with physical space


• Panel layout can have more meaning: a stories L-R path changes suddenly, (start reading down or up) as plot changes


• Stories themselves can be more interesting, veritably looping, etc.

The point of this memo is not to explore the new way graphic stories could be told with a digital medium, but rather point out that this is a very necessary change, and that it’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment. Thusly: It’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment.

Wikipedia

I donated to Wikpedia. Read my post on communication here. Lets go people! Wikipedia is too awesome for us not to contribute in some way.

Graph title goes here

SigFig practice

Check out this little sigfig test that a friend of mine put together: http://alecgorge.github.com/sigfig-practice/


the reason it looks so damn pretty is because he used Bootstap. It is very pretty, and simple, and all javascript. Neato!

College Story Round Up #1

Story Round up taken from a letter I wrote. Names have been changed.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic. As you probably know, orientation is a pain in the ass. We want to get past the ‘freshman-who-does-not-know-what-he-is-doing’ stage as quickly as possible, but the 4 day long orientation forcefully dragged it out. Having come here early, I already had a group of similar-interest/like-minded/interesting/funny/cool/fun to hang out with friends, but I could not hang out with them, I had to go to meetings with my mentor group. At one point, I was holding hands with some sweaty people, with my arms wrapped around 3 others, and somebody stuck between my legs. They called it ‘the human knot’ and the goal was to free ourselves into a circle. It took my group and hour and a half. While invading an impressive number of peoples personal spaces simultaneously, I was able to watch a few good friends (some from high school) have an awesome time jumping rope with the president of the school, playing a giant game of ninja, and haveing a watermelon eating contest. Out group was veritably the lame one.

A girl (the same one who’s cousins house I am writing this in) has a sister. Her sister turned 15 on Saturday. She came to visit her sister and... let’s call them Jill for the girl and Meagan for the sister? OK, where was I: Meagan turns 15 on Saturday and is visiting/sleeping over with Jill. After they ate dinner, myself and Hank  met up with Jill and Meagan, and with some other irrelevant people, made a night of it. It started with an 80’s themed dance, where only 3 songs that were in any conceivable way connected to the 80’s were played (I did a pretty sweet MJ dance, moonwalk ftw). At one point, while running away from Hank (he was made I was introducing him as ‘hank’), out of the tent the dance was set up in, around the open campus lawn section-y area. We laugh it off and run back and I realize my Leatherman (big muilti-tool with knifes and such) is missing. Clark/Hank helps me try and find it, and I do, 30 minutes later. It had opened up and some particularly nasty blades were open, and on the ground. Did i mention the Leatherman is black? It could have ended badly. After we get tired of listening to LMFAO, we all head back to one of the dorms, to chill in the lobby area. We weaved a 15 year old (who has already witnesses some questionable content a la dance) around 2 seperate drunkenly passed out people who were more in than on the sidewalk, As it turns out, a drunk passed out guy marks an excellent location for people to gather and chat, and we had to stop and talk over the hopefully-not-choking-on-vomit guy for a bit. Did I mention 15 year old? We get back to the dorm, and talk/play pool for a few hours. Twice police officers and ambulance(s) are called to cart away somebody (right past us) with alcohol poisoning. Some facts worth noting: 15 year old. Depauw is #15 top party school in country. (down from #10). It was the greatest birthday ever!

My parents have not heard much of me. . . Mostly to the fact that I have made virtually no attempts at communicating with them. Some advice: Email. You can stay in touch without having to have personal or timely responses.

I was able to have a 6 day Wal-Mart visit streak. I am probably the only student in the history of Depauw to show up to an English class without paper. Or Pens. I barely had clothes.

Laundry! More advice: Don’t wait as long as possible, because doing one load is easier than doing two. Now you, like me, grew up in a household with parents. This means we do not know how to do laundry.

Ok, here we go. I walked into the laundry room with an overstuffed bag of clothes and dreams of cleanliness. I walked out with an impressively diminished sense of self-esteem. I confused the Washer with the Dryer and started loading up clothes in the dryer. My friend decided to stop me as I was about to toss in the detergent. These are what good friends I have. So Laundry done, I suppose my clothes are clean enough, but I am as of yet unable to master the ability to keep them wrinkle-free. I will be that freshman.

I have not yet locked myself out on accident, but a suitemate did. I come home and he is sleeping in the suite area, which was reaaaallly funny, and I woke him up laughing.

 

Yes, kevin

Yes, kevin. I can blog from my phone. Super sweet, right?