Changing Seasons and Charging Stampedes

its getting darker earlier... you know what that means!

right, i forgot to white balance!

anyhow, just figured i would fill folks in,

my movie, that i put on youtube is experiencing some difficulty, especially with the onset of that SOPA bill, since, as it was a student film, i was not required to compose my own score. but yes, i am working on re-loading it at some point.

this might be an interesting time to express an opinion on the matter of SOPA, which i learned about only last night, by a friend who was fairly volatile about the shortsightedness of this maneuver by its supporters; ie big industry hollywood and other media mongrels. since i am an artist of media, this bill limiting the content of the internet could protect many for-profit items from sly techie fingers. however, i do not believe that this is a motion that should exist, or at least not in this form for two reasons.

a) the way the pushers are going about this bill means that search engines will become outlawed or extinct, which while edgy sounding and therefore cool, does not bode well for anyone looking for information. not only will we be persecuted for linking people to other information, but the entire student population will lose their greatest resource (since too few people make use of the libraries these days, myself included)

and b) because it hammers another nail in the rickshaw coffin of downloading, which the government has been working to bury for years. downloading movies, books and music is the price of digitization, as the media industry has overextended itself to compensate for their increasingly sheltered consumers, making it easier and easier to hide behind a computer screen than interact with real people in order to get what we want. this is the compromise that the companies make, with itunes and netflix and those damn kindle pads. i mentioned that the library was seeing less use these days, and this is why; the internet has become a digital library that anyone can access from the comfort of their toilet. crying sour grapes because people innovated someone else's innovations is a poor sport's move, and yes i approve of taking an action, but burning libraries is an archaic expression of frustration.

a solution to this might be...

• leaving search engines alone, because they are a valuable resource that provides large corporations with free or inexpensive advertising.
• finding a way to instead of ban downloading, accept that its become the new library, and treat them like any other library system, by having them pay before they distribute.
• remember that the hard copy is still a valuable product. people still support things that they enjoy, so that they can see more of it produced.
• eat a shoe, just because i am a fan of shoe eating.

thank you

- ben

From Hell's Heart - essay

Seam of the Mask: an expository essay

Seam of the Mask:

The Fine Line Between Salvation and Damnation

By Benjamin Doane

It is not an uncommon feeling for someone to experience a distance between themselves and the population en masse; a difference sometimes more recognizable than others, but setting an individual apart from their peers with a barricade of misunderstanding. In my own experience there have been many such walls of reasons for separation; personal experiences and thought processes are subtle variations from the norm easily masked with comforting words and false smiles of softness to lubricate the cogs of sociality, but at the cost of being incapable of truly understanding what their own emotions and feelings means. We are a world of masked performers, who in the salvation of their craft also find their damnation.

Being a victim of this fashion, I began my career of survivalist thespian at a young age, where one’s impressionability might lead to seeds of greater things. My father was a bastard plain and simple, raping my mother and abusing my family until the ripe year of nineteen ninety eight. Now, being young, one’s natural response to pain and torment would be to cry. However, any experienced sadist knows that the responses of the victim are what make the whole experience so satisfying, and so a sobbing young boy would only attract further attention to predators. Hence, I developed an apathetic nature towards his blows, concealing my scars with stoic behavior, like a makeup artist might paint bruises onto the eye of a television detective; a deception hindering the development of my emotional growth. While I physically survived this chapter in my life, I cannot say that my emotions were entirely whole. For a long period I refused to cry; at the funeral of a family friend or over my grandfather’s open heart surgery. I had learned that tears were a sign of weakness, and they were to be ashamed of, so for six years I refused to cry.

However, this course barely protected me, let alone my family, who Dwight would terrorize with blows from punches and kicks, and barrages of projectile tomatoes not unlike a dissatisfied audience might assail the stage of a travelling theater with ammunition from the fruit stand. During one the final display on my eighth birthday, he had taken my brother into the living room to “teach him” some dreadfully important lesson when I intervened and threatened to kill him, unsure of how much I meant it, or how ready I was to act on it. Convinced that he would have ended my brother’s life that day, I threatened a six foot tall, two hundred pound man with anger issues, without giving consideration to the consequences, as though it were a monologue given under a spotlight, where afterwards I could return to my trailer. Improvisation is sometimes the only option in quickly paced scenarios, and thus the mask is used to quickly shift gears when reaction time becomes the critical difference between wasted film.

The ordeal with my father left me as a young boy with very little willpower to express my needs or ideas, and in thriving social cultures of public school politics, it was a struggle for me to order my hand above the others. Here the masks proved another blessing, where I was allowed to imitate people who had the confidence I lacked. Superheroes, archeologists, and classmates even were getting this right, and for those short seconds where I needed a voice or a fist, I could pretend to be one of them. This has its fallbacks thought, when one begins crossing boundaries of control and starts to emulate their characteristics better than their own, and at the age of eleven, while it is admirable to stand up for truth and justice, misinterpretation of a borrowed trait can lead even the best intentions astray. Taking matters into my own hands, I found that a playground was not very accepting to vigilantism, or when I toned down my act, snitching, and I earned a number of shiners before my mask fell apart and I could no longer pretend to be anything but a tormented and frightened little boy.

In Vegas casinos, they call them “tells;” little involuntary indications that a player has been less than truthful in their game. Natural thespians go through this phase like any cardshark before reaching their fullest potential, where they subconsciously try to sabotage their plans and guises. Some do it out of fear while others do it out of thrill, and others still simply slip up on what kind of mask they’re wearing, which in any case disturbs the illusion of the fabricated personality. My mother, being the insightful woman that she is recognized my uncomfortable attempts at personality falsehood by calling me on my nervous giggle, an poorly concealed depression and a propensity for grinning at the wrong moments, which gave me away every time I felt need to act braver than I felt. A disenchanted public is the most dangerous kind of public who will toss out their misallocated trust, and depending on my facial tics, and vocalization, a seasoned reader of me can decrypt and determine exactly what I am hiding at any given time; a flaw which would put any seasoned Hollywood actor out of work.

Another flaw to subscribing to the mask would be the unsolved problems that fester during the time between putting on one’s false face and taking it off again at night. During the day, the problem behaves like any suffocating organism in the sense that it grows clammy and starts a premature decay. With the bullies of middle school, I was convinced it was an one way road that led to my being pummeled as often as possible, because I failed to recognize the social web of loyalty any generation will spin for itself. Snitching on the children who brought their bowie knives on the bus, and spying on the black market trading card deals being cut by the tetherball courts, I was constantly defying the rationale of equipping the costume, and found myself trapped with weaknesses that I targeted me for such abuse. After months of ignoring the signs of obvious intolerance, I came to realize I was staving off a personal development that needed to happen for my physical survival, although by this point I was already ostracized and continued to be assailed, without the saftey insctruction of a master choreographer.

When spending one’s time imitating traits, the effort extolled to convince an audience is exhausting and depends so heavily on focus and determination, that many facets of one’s being become demoted to secondary status characteristics. After each instance of me masking a flaw or a dissatisfying trait, I had to strain to define myself and my attributes. Namely morality was the asset I struggled most with as it presented an avenue of expression through violence, and also a subtler one which less people would recognize but simultaneously more would appreciate. In essence, forgetting your own identity becomes an all too common, and doing so, you find yourself kicking people through doors, or with your tongue in the mouth of a woman you do not plan to love for longer than five minutes. Always, in every one of my trials, I had justified myself with righteousness akin to any exorcist or supreme court judge, but in these instances even my most earnest performances fell short of my greatest critic: myself. Reflecting back on it, I feel disappointment in my actions, not because they were dishonorable, but because they didn’t represent the man I was, or the man I hoped I was, or the man I thought resembled me most, since without the mask I was not sure who I was anymore.

I am still uncertain as to who I am, since so much of my being depends on what I feel is necessary for a given scenario. I try not to use the masks for my friends, but sometimes it feels so easy just to slip into another persona and prance around as that for an hour or so. While it may benefit me in the short term, the consequences of imagining yourself in someone else’s image affect not only you, but the people you love, and the reputation you own. For this one pays a pound of flesh, and perhaps their own peace of mind, sacrificing after resorting to an alternate personality, the biggest risk is trying to imitate yourself.

Basquait's Untitled Skull

An Examination of Jean Michael Basquait’s Untitled Skull

By Benjamin Doane

Jean Michael Basquait was born in Brooklyn, New York in December of 1960 to parents of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent; his overall background manifesting itself in encounters of discrimination, drug trafficking and graffiti street art. Early expression that stemmed from an artistic youth developed into the SAMO spray campaign which lasted until 1978, when he began experimenting in the music industry, though staying true to his visual roots. Publicity and acclaim ensued through Rene Ricard’s The Radiant Child and the Annina Nosei gallery allowed him access to celebrity artists who boosted his notoriety. However in 1988, Baquait’s life was ended by a lethal overdose on heroin, which tragic as it was only furthered the reach of the artists influence, as since his death, a number of retrospectives have toured in his memory.

This untitled piece by Basquait is commonly referenced as Skull, it is both acrylic and oil on a canvas measuring 207cm by 176cm. Painted in 1984 before his period with Andy Warhol, it depicts a human head that in some places reveals bone and further. Immediately, one notices the downcast eyes and the frown expressing emotional depth in the work.

The shape of the subject itself is indicative of a skull, hence the title, while deliberately making concessions in the contour for an ear and also the nose. Within this initial structure there are a variety of trapezoids formed over the left hemisphere of the brain with very organic line structure to them, roughly compartmentalizing regions of the head. Other more representational forms contribute to constructing a recognizable head, such as the circles which substitute eyeballs and the ear, and the jagged strip that forms the gums that hold this person’s teeth, thereby connecting the image to the audience by using such relatable shapes, while creating complex and curious negative shapes with the background’s swathes of color.

Extensive use of line defines many areas of the face, developing planes to provide the painting with a sense of depth, aided by overlapping and intersecting dashes. Varying the line width adds weight to the jaw area, and likewise adds a kinetic energy to the piece, such as the stitches that stretch from the left side of the canvas into the skull’s eye socket. By the sharpness of the terminal line, one can assume that the aspect was preformed quickly and with much excitement behind the tool used to apply it. In this piece, the line work is suggesting of some more sinister energy in its patchwork appearance across the subject, and also in the nigh-untranslatable scrawling in top left and bottom right corners, detailing Basquait’s sickly vision.

Much of the local color in this piece involves the complimentary colors of blue and orange, and orange’s analogous pair of yellow and red. The colors themselves are all very cool and feel somewhat detached, but in doing so the background does not overwhelm the subject. The skull itself is painted with flesh tones, ranging from brown skin to a bleached bone, defining for the audience the race of the subject, and potentially even the vital signs.

Working predominantly with hues, these colors are only contrasted by the stark use of black and white pigments that account for shapes and lines which cover the subject. All of these colors seem very flat, and when highlighting is attempted, it is done in a blocky, counter traditional to the blending techniques of artists past.

Texture comes into play with the method of paint application, which leaves much of the surface area looking like a crusty, battered plane, especially with the patches of split analogous colors which try, but fail to blend in with the local colors. Some of the lines in the piece also contribute to this with their haphazardness, which would lead interpreters to believe that they had been made unintentionally and hastily without concentrated effort. Being interdependent in their function, these aspects give the painting a discarded feeling and evoke pathos in the audience for the subject and his circumstances.

In both the foreground and background, movement is a very pronounced element of design in this piece. The subject itself contains the majority of lines included in this work, which tend to connect and overlap in abundance, and furthermore, the edges of the skull often have a border of lines or jagged points. Together, these function to lead the eye through the features, the nose in particular with its high contrast color, and push the focus from the middle of the subject to the outside of itself. From there on, the background takes hold of the movement, using the drybrushed edges of the blue and orange forms to spin the eye around the painting, keeping the attention in and around the subject and disallowing any deviation from the carved path.

The majority of comparisons to be made are in relation to the shapes and lines that compose the subject’s features, where proportions appear blocky, yet accurate in their representational form. Anatomically, though stylized, the skull exhibits basic standards for accurate interpretation of the physical, while making concessions as seen by the size of the eyeballs, and how the leftmost is slightly smaller so as to communicate the painting’s depth. Another example of proportion is the comparison between forms of the same meaning, such as the teeth, which hold a fairly small range in size, but continue the aforementioned concepts of distancing, and making the image more believable as a whole.

Emphasis takes place in all regions of the piece, namely with the heightened drama of the line in modes of simplifying or complicating essential structures. In the case of the yellow jawbone and nose, attention is drawn to these areas by virtue color contrast with their surroundings and because of their thicker lines that stand out in their definition more confidently than the lines on the top of the skull which tend to clump together rather than announce their independence. Oppositely, regions within the head function as interest catching, such as the eyes and rear regions of the skull for their complexity of line, which forms smaller compositions within the greater. Furthermore is the use of words in the top left and bottom right, as they draw attention to themselves by being not of the same family of meaning as their environment, as they blend another branch of language into the art.

On the first glance, balance seems to have been thrown out the window when considering this skull being painted at a three quarters viewpoint and centered in the canvas; little more stands out as related than the even negative space. However, Basquait merely deviates from the traditional ideas and makes his organization of the page more subtle, as in the ear and the nose, and how spatially, they take up the same space on a laterally symmetrical bisection, supported by the lack of transition between the blue and orange patches below. The same can be gathered from the eyes and the odd patches of corresponding color on the other side of the composition, as the artist has chosen to experiment in near balanced communication.

In this piece there is a variety in the executions of line where length, width and color are organized differently, making for a more interesting piece in its base materials. While they stand out in their own right, they interact more or less harmoniously due to Basquait’s decision to have no transition be too abrupt, so that lines get smaller and thinner without distracting the observer’s eye and breaking its concentration. The action within the piece is diverse, yet it does not conflict within the article, thereby achieving coherency rather than confusion.

The economy of the painting is difficult to gauge considering that it is simplified into very recognizable forms that the audience very readily picks up on, while oppositely, the use of line complicates matters with its function to apply additional content not necessarily related to the subject. The use of stitches across the head in their simplified form draws away from the represented skull and more to themselves, which abstracts the head in a way not conventionally considered correct.

Often considered to be Basquait’s most successful painting, the Untitled Skull represents his contribution to the Neo-Expressionist movement of the eighties, not to mention one of his more commercially valuable works. The reason I find value in this work is due to the emotional properties that are displayed in its subject. It is a frangible skull pieced together in mock stability, like many of us who for the sake of appearances compose ourselves to seem more solid and formidable. I think this piece accepts that about humans, and takes it to the next level by representing our frailties and crutches with stitches, producing a visual metaphor for the audience to apply to themselves. Basquait's untitled skull represents so much more than technique and process, but without them its meaning would be lost under poor technique and lots and lots of paint.