i love M Dot Strange. what he is doing to make art is beyond me to describe. i especially love M doTs "manifesto" and hope he agrees to let me interview him on camera so that we can talk about:
"Everyone...I mean everyone pretty much knows the world is broken...Everyone...pretty much like all the a_dolts in the world are broken...they are unhappy...they are lost... Yet they think they know what is best for art... they like to jam it into an entertainment package so they can attempt to define it and critique it... They are dying...wasting away... trying to steal time and energy from lively sprites of specularity... I've seen the blatherings of disempowered critics online... I've seen them offline... I've never met them in person... They hide in dark holes...they get hella knocked out by Uwe Boll... Now is the time for they're irrelevance...they're obsolescence... They don't matter and they know it...Desperation...Oh... Read the writing on the blog... I'm like...professional... and so are you... The MCP doesn't look so scary to me...User revolt... Throw the information disc back upstream... Yeh probably about time for some cr8zy art manifesto...yeh...I'm already on it..." 
i hear retro Comp-y-ness here, and i like it.
6 comments:
so, would you be screening another of your films? is that along the lines of what you're thinkin?
and btw, who is M Dot? i like how he says "a_dolts" - that's some freakin awesome wordplay!
M dot Strange had a film at Sundance in '07: We ARe the STrange. he does what he calls "st8nime" (strange + 8-bit + anime) animation, and it's pretty amazing. and it's VERY DYI. he does everything in a little studio in what must be his apartment. seems to have taught himself, and is VERY inventive (the available means . . . ). you can see TONS of stuff from/about him on YouTube as he has a big CA fan base. he released a lot of WATS in bits on YouTube and got feedback to help w/ the editing before Sundance. very intergrated, social, and immersive.
so, yeah, for RSA, i was thinking i would do the M dot Strange interview and work it w/ some of the stuff i've done and maybe include some of my students' work. all gesturing toward the value of what Geoff Sirc has called (in an email talk w/ me about my PSU piece), "the naive object" (maybe, probably that term is used elsewhere, but i love it and this is my context for using it). i mean, and here's where the "retro Comp-y-ness" comes into play, we can't claim to be about teaching rhetorical skill if we don't recognize it in the first place, and i mean, real, real-world rhetorical skill that is creating communities, communication, identification . . . all the things we claim to be about. but we say . . . "not polished, not critical, not academic . . . " (a_dolts, right?).
in my email exchange w/ M last night, i told him what i've been writing about, about multimodality in college/univ classes as a/the way to go, and he said he's been very interested in thinking about education for some time now (mobilized by hearing/reading things "crisis" oriented). he said that when he read what i'm working on it made him happy (yay). we need voices like this . . . fresh, unfamiliar, effective, engaged, and not completely hemmed in by the received discourse(s) of our work.
so. yeah.
go see the trailer for WATS at: http://wearethestrange.com
or anything on YouTube.
it will make your head explode (that term has become a convention w/ M's fans. i like it).
oops. that's DIY.
after i read Geoff's book for the first time i was moved. literally. i remember emailing him about my response at like 3 am. i had gone outside and thrown his book up and down the street for at least 10 minutes. just throwing it. needing to immediately respond in some active fashion. and that's what i came up with. chucking the fucker down the asphalt. (i probably sound like a lunatic writing about this...be gentle w/ ur judgments kind readers)
i remember being able to point to one particular passage - something around the middle of the book (if you remind me/if you're interested, i'll look it up later and email you the passage) - that was so REAL. i know that's a really generic word to employ. but i "felt" it. it's the only book in the field that has ever made me *feel* an urge. RIGHT NOW!!!
and i sense this in what you want to do:
"i mean, and here's where the "retro Comp-y-ness" comes into play, we can't claim to be about teaching rhetorical skill if we don't recognize it in the first place, and i mean, real, real-world rhetorical skill that is creating communities, communication, identification . . . all the things we claim to be about. but we say . . . "not polished, not critical, not academic . . . " (a_dolts, right?)."
YES! YES! recognition! in a dept meeting on Friday i had to almost shout at a colleague: "BUT THEY ARE WRITERS! THEY'RE WRITING ALL THE TIME; THEY'RE NOT INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU/WE WANT THEM TO WRITE AND WE JUST REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE WHAT THEY'RE ALREADY WRITING."
of course our students probably aren't as rhetorically sophisticated...but...mutherfuckers, LOOK! they're not idiots.
communities, communication, identification... you want to do /are doing the "real, real-world" composing that moves your students minds and bodies. engaging their communities; identifying with what is THEIR real, real-world (not "our" polished a_dolt world).
i'm feelin your post, B. i don't know what DIY is, but whatever it is it must be good stuff.
i LOVE what you did w/ G's book. i think he would love that too. when i first read his Never Mind the Tagmemics piece in CCC's, the first thing i did was interrupt a meeting Duane Roen, then ASU Comp Director was having w/ Dierdre Manhoney, then a Lecturer in the program. i practically burst into the office holding the journal, sort of shaking, and said, "have . . . you . . . seen . . . this???!" they were sweet and said they'd read it but were busy, although as really good colleagues, they indulged me a bit while i gushed. the next thing i did was call Joe Harris, then editor of CCC's, to congratulate him on his wisdom in publishing G's piece, especially because it contained what we might traditionally call "plagiarism" (where he interweaves Clash lyrics w/ his prose and doesn't quote or cite them; ha!). Joe said they had a lot of behind-the-scenes wrangling to do to accomplish that feat. then, i emailed G and practically confessed my love for him. yep, he keeps it real in so many ways. i've been lucky to get to work with him and treasure it every time (remember C's '07! what was *i* doing on a panel w/ Anne W and G???! that was amazing).
so, thanks for feeling the post and responding, Chris.
oh, DIY is "do it yourself," sort of a leftover punk mantra.
that's interesting about the "behind-the-scenes wrangling"
and, yeah, i remember Cs 07. i just figured you guys were a crew - a posse that rolled together on the regular.
i think that panel was the first time i introduced myself to GS (though he was kind enough to indulge me in a round of emails about his book). as well, it was the first time i had met AW in person. i had emailed her a few times RE: a CFP she had sent out (which i'm working on still).
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