Concerned Citizen

Link to Video

Artist's Statement

In our reading for this week, activist Arlene Goldberg speaks of an idea called “storyland,” where she asserts the power of storytelling in shifting societal ideologies, beliefs, and the status quo. In Goldberg’s “storyland,” “we understand that the resilience that sustains communities in times of crisis is rooted in culture, in the stories of survival and social imagination that inspire people to a sense of hope and possibility even in dark times.” We as a team likewise were able observe our BYU culture and identify a director and group actively serving their fellowmen. However, our experience making this documentary is not limited to the time stamps, but rather created another story in which we can share with others and inspire.

At the start of this project, we realized how out-of-touch we were in terms of social change. Although each of us do small acts of service that are often ignored, we wanted to find someone who was a leader and organizer, as we felt society needs more individuals that are willing to raise up, commit, and guide others in service. For the first time in our BYU careers, we walked into the Y-Serve office in the Wilkenson and followed a trail of breadcrumbs to a vacant lot in the middle of Heber.

That cold Saturday morning, we came to know Johny Jacobs, director of BYU’s volunteer efforts for Rural Housing Development (RHD). RHD is a government-sponsored agency that helps homeless families secure financing for housing materials and, alongside them, help build their home. Johny became involved in the effort more than a year ago and volunteered to raise awareness and coordinate the efforts of BYU students in helping housing development. Johny goes up to work on houses every Saturday from 8 am – 12pm, usually with a different group every week as he recruits new volunteers. We came to see firsthand that, even in the Happy Valley, USA, there are those that are unable to have the pride of home ownership. Rather than ignore that homelessness is a real issue, which often can be the case in a cultural as prosperous as ours, Johny sacrifices his time to improve the lives of the poor.

In terms of our documentary, we wanted to emphasize the transformative processes occurring while Johny answered basic “what, why, and how” questions to give the sense of activity and progress. In a symbolic way, the processes that were transforming raw materials into a home were also transforming Johny and the volunteers’ personally. We sought inspiration from process piece documentaries, utilizing in particular the editing techniques seen in Smith Journal’s The Smokehouse. Much like that film, our short documentary juxtaposed actions with dialogue so there existed a sense of synergy between what was said the interview and building process. It allowed Johny’s words to have greater power, as we see an active application of his ideals towards a productive solution rather than some abstract rhetoric.

We do not know how many people will be inspired (or even watch) our short documentary. Even if it is ignored, we as a team have lived a story that is personally inspiring and motivates us to participate more actively in finding solutions to social issues.

Information about Rural Housing Development

https://yserve.byu.edu/programs/rural-housing-development

Game For Change

Artist's Statement
In first approaching this assignment, I had the idea of shedding light onto the issue of conforming to labels and social conventions as seen in the documentary The Mask You Live In discussed in class. However, I kept coming back to a philosophical debate that I feel is even more ignored by modern media: the idea of utilitarianism and its role in suggesting moral relativity. I initially was afraid to focus my game on a philosophical debate as it would make my message much more broad and open to interpretation. However, as I proceeded to create ethical dilemmas, I realized that challenging people's ethical code and guiding them towards greater self-reflection is one way of helping to promote social change and widening viewpoints to social issues. While we can raise awareness of certain issues, it is still up to the individual to act upon said issues and apply their moral conscience.

Upon researching the social effects of moral relativism, I realized that almost no objective studies have been conducted, which makes sense given that any attempt to measure "positive" or "negative" outcomes when it comes to moral conscious is very biased and can be easily criticized in a philosophical debate. Much like our class discussion, the subject of belief ends in a paradox, and this can frustrate and confuse many people in society; especially when the only see issues from a utilitarian perspective. The closest I came in terms of statistics was an article which stated that atheists were almost 50% more likely to use drugs, alcohol, not marry, and other (from one perspective) counterproductive behaviors than those that follow religious beliefs. With that, I decided that statistics was not going to have the punch necessary to make my counterpoint, so I looked at philosophical arguments.

My research led me to two sources, one an article outlining utilitarian moral dilemmas and the other to an analysis of The Brothers Karamazov, an influential novel that deals with belief versus relativism. I decided the best way to establish my message in a way that was not so heavy handed was to have the player be confronted by a "devil's advocate" and put through moral dilemmas. In seeing the brutality of such frameworks and eliciting an emotional response, I wanted to have the player question the worth of utilitarian thinking much like the article. While the article established that moral relativism does foster empathy and tolerance, it is largely destructive in that The debate on freedom and relativism in addition to the paradox of Christ's sacrifice comes from the article for The Brothers Karamazov. Since we were dealing with a devil's advocate, I thought it would be potent to have him mix up some church doctrine in order to confuse the player, much like The Brothers Karamazov does for the reader. In the end, however; the book establishes that moral relativism takes freedom away from individuals by removing the opposition necessary to build character, or in LDS terms, to have "opposition in all things." This idea stands as the final climax to the player's journey and makes what I was trying to say a little more clear.

As we go out and try to change the world, I think it is critical to understand the differences between empathy and moral relativism. There are times when we have to stand for something, and the media is largely ignoring the importance of moral self-discovery. I may be biased due to my upbringing, but I feel that social change can be further facilitated when people take the time to find truth in the world and act upon it. It sounds super idealistic, but if we all take more time to search for truth and understanding, then we will be better citizens for it. Then we will see the world differently and hopefully, be more incentivized to understand and change it.

Play the Game
http://philome.la/JakeJaketnelson/the-ultimate-good

Sources

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/the-greatest-novel-of-belief-and-unbelief/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/#H4

https://www.jashow.org/articles/worldview/moral-relativism/the-fatal-flaws-of-moral-relativism/

World Building

Julian Bleecker in his article Design Fiction states, “When something is “designed” it suggests that there is some thoughtful exploration going on.” He goes on to emphasize how imagination can expand when one seeks to physically design that world. In order to create a new world, we were forced to explore and define much more than we originally thought. Just by changing one event in history, we were required to project numerous differences socially, economically, politically, and so on in order to make the world seem authentic. Thus, we had source material from which we could truly make our imagined world come to life. Our new culture was born out of the ashes of a nuclear war in which Egyptian society survived and mixed aspects of modern technology with classical Egyptian ideology and culture.

Map of New Cairo

We as a group thought a descriptive and authentic-feeling artifact of this new culture would be some sort of damaged, rough copy of the new civilization’s city plans. As mentioned, the new Egyptians would be able to reverse engineer some technologies and retain certain skills, but we felt that (due to lack of resources) the new culture would revert back to papyrus and inaccurate drafting techniques. Thus, the map models itself after modern Cairo’s city structure, but presents certain changes and modern buildings in a rough style seen in early city plans. Logically, we used the outside sources of modern satellite images and older city plans for inspiration in creating the piece. Finally, we decided to maintain a sense of authenticity and label areas in a rough and corrupted form of Arabic as such a style would be more realistic.

New Cairo Original Plans

18th Century Novgorod Plan Style    

Modern Cairo  

Desert Wear

We wanted to incorporate clothing into our project because of the unique perspective it would bring. This society, a dystopian world that decides to model its government after the inspiring success of the Egyptian empire, would have a very distinct blend of wasteland survivor and ancient religion. Pulling from the costume design of such films as Mad Max, Star Wars, and the animated short The Oceanmaker, as well as iconic tropes of Egyptian fashion, we created a mask that incorporates both worlds. It is practical in its use of keeping sand out of your mouth, but is adorned with Egyptian design made from broken pieces of lost technology.

Made From A Computer Motherboard and Linen

Model Wearing Mask

Prayer to Pharaoh

As we decided on the history and details of our fictional culture, we had to focus on creating items that properly represented this society. This particular creation is cross between the Islamic call to prayer and a fascist propaganda program. New Cairo’s self-proclaimed Pharaoh has commanded the universal worship of the Egyptian Pantheon, a theology that reveres the Pharaoh as deity himself. Spreading a gospel of quiet subjection and unquestioning devotion, the Pharaoh perverts the established order of Islam into a hybrid pseudo-religion that combines the form of the Islamic faith with the content of ancient belief. Navigating the slippery slope of religious and political correctness was challenging, but the involved process of design pushed all of us to create unique and thoughtful pieces that not only represent our fictional world but the aspects of reality that inspired us in the first place.

Painting

Every time human being have inhabited a place, they feel the necessity to create art. This forms of art are usually related to the religious beliefs, history and the social environment.

The first piece illustrates what happened before new Cairo was established, and combines Egyptian symbology and modern technology, the snake representing Apep, the evil spirit of destruction and darkness.The snake is placed right next to the image of a nuclear explosion which as we know is also a symbol of destruction and death.

Both paintings are a representation of the most important aspects of this society, both religious, political and ideological.

Some of the inspiration behind the paintings are the Marsh scene tomb of menna and the facsimile of the Egyptian book of the dead.

Webspinna Battle

In our preparation for our Webspinna battle, we found in our reading the following segment that broadened our understanding of this assignment:

“Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.”

Overall, what Jonathan Lethem means is that our artistic process is merely a remix of what has been created before, but in a way that reflects our own individual interpretation. Given this knowledge, we realized that we needed to glean from the collective chaos of the internet those clips that reflected some ideals that not only embody our existence, but also our observations regarding current circumstances. Additionally, we wanted our battle to not only reflect a certain element of our identity, but also open up social criticism as well. As such, we began with identifying certain aspects of our personal backgrounds that could be stereotyped into creating a sense of conflict. Inspired by the bombastic nature of the recent political primaries, we decided to leverage both of our national identities (Jake being American and Juan being Canadian/Latino) to poke fun at American patriotism and its effect on foreign relations. We found inspiration from personal experience with stereotypes, but also looked towards the art form of the political cartoon to get a better impression of what stereotypes came up most frequently. We boiled down these stereotypes regarding other nations into two categories: pride due to excess wealth and proficiency in war. (Cartoons below stand as an example)

Although we recognize (and do not totally agree with) these stereotypes, we wanted to display how fruitless such notions of American supremacy are in the context of other nations. Thus, we came up with ideas on how Juan (representing foreign countries) could reverse my over-the-top American strategies to put Canada/Latinos/the World into “their place.”

First, it was important for us to come up with an easy concept to understand. With that in mind, we concluded that a round-based battle would be best. Second, we decided to have America start each round because of its past history on striving to be the first at everything.

In order to have a sort of exposition for our respective characters, the Webspinna duel starts with a clash of our respective national anthems, which also quickly sets the rivalry tone of our presentation. Next, we decided to touch on America's pride by having her defend herself with something that she is proud of. With that in mind, we opted for the "Pursuit of the Happiness" song and a "Make Money, Money" audio clip to highlight how America prides itself as the land of opportunity (and you could say wealth as well).  Meanwhile, Canada replies with a song by Drake, a famous Canadian artist in the United States, to point out that America's opportunities also extend to other nations. Feeling mocked, America takes the next round to the next level by bringing its powerful and incontestable military arsenal into the mix. The exchange of bullets and nuclear bomb audio clips is an attempt by America to wipe Canada only to realize that the whole operation was unsuccessful (which also hints at some of the weaknesses of a military-based foreign policy). Facing such failure, America switches gears and pulls out his ultimate weapon; finding a bombastic voice that can attack on a more personal level. We recognize that kind of attitude has manifested itself in the recent political debates. As such, we included an audio clip from republican candidate Donald J. Trump (a very strong voice many Americans are backing) attacking Juan's hispanic nationality. Shocked by Trump's intentions to build a wall, Juan rallies a group of friends, chases the Trump, and claims victory as a final declaration that such verbal attacks only harm America’s standing.

However, our presentation ends then on a more hopeful note. While Juan is celebrating his victory, he invites Jake to join him. This is our attempt to show that we believe in a future where nations can still come together despite their differences and/or previous conflicts. On an even more personal note, although Juan and Jake have different backgrounds, we can still look beyond those backgrounds to find similar ground in building up the inherent good that the United States offers to all here at BYU.