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As a feminist, progressive thinking, academically minded individual, there are a lot of things in culture and media that I have strong opinions on — equality, education, and self-love to name a few. The thing is, as much as I cherish these things conceptually, it can sometimes be a real challenge to practice what I preach when I live in a world that constantly promotes exactly the opposite. I preach about the absurdity of beauty standards and expectations for women’s bodies, but I go to the gym every day to work toward a similar goal. I could argue to the death that women can do anything as well as men, but sometimes I catch myself looking for a male employee to help me with my electronics or repairs. I catch myself using the word “gay” or “retarded” as colloquialism for something inferior, though I would never think of the people who identify with these terms in an inferior way. It can be really difficult for all of us to be politically correct all of the time and I think all of us slip. I don’t think, however, that that makes us hypocrites, rather it makes us human.

We live in an extremely flawed society which we directly and indirectly perpetuate through many of the things that we do — reading tabloids, going on diets, looking away from problems of racism and sexism, etc. because otherwise we’d have to admit that we’re a part of the problem. We’re all a part of it, but that blaming (self or otherwise) isn’t going to solve anything. At the end of the day I think we need to unite in becoming better at catching ourselves and gently, lovingly, catching those around us. Everyone is so filled with fear of saying the wrong thing that we end up silencing ourselves, refusing to enter into the conversation, and thus further hindering progress.

What we need most right now are voices that are humble enough to admit they’re wrong, voices that are willing to speak when necessary and also listen, voices that empathize, voices that ask for help to learn. As a white heterosexual woman I often feel like I have no right to speak to issues of race or sexuality. Jackson Katz, creator of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program eloquently addresses this issue in his TED Talk called Violence Against Women–It’s a Men’s Issue:

“In the U.S., when we hear the word “race,” a lot of people think that means African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, South Asian, Pacific Islander, on and on. A lot of people, when they hear the word “sexual orientation” think it means gay, lesbian, bisexual. And a lot of people, when they hear the word “gender,” think it means women. In each case, the dominant group doesn’t get paid attention to. Right? As if white people don’t have some sort of racial identity or belong to some racial category or construct, as if heterosexual people don’t have a sexual orientation, as if men don’t have a gender. This is one of the ways that dominant systems maintain and reproduce themselves, which is to say the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance, because that’s one of the key characteristics of power and privilege, the ability to go unexamined, lacking introspection, in fact being rendered invisible in large measure in the discourse about issues that are primarily about us. And this is amazing how this works in domestic and sexual violence, how men have been largely erased from so much of the conversation about a subject that is centrally about men.”

Though this is more specifically tailored to gender violence, he makes an important point about the silencing of the dominant group. It is not our fault that our culture is flawed, it has become this way over the course of a long and messy history; what is our fault, however, is choosing to remain silent. Our voices are needed, voices that are willing to be learn to speak the language of respect to those populations that have been historically degraded by the dominant population. It’s time to establish a more forgiving and open dialogue so that we don’t feel as though we have to tiptoe around these issues for fear of saying the wrong thing. So, instead of tiptoeing, instead of feeling guilty for hypocritical slips, instead of pointing the finger at people who say something politically incorrect, it’s time to come together as a community and talk about the hard stuff.

*This post was largely inspired by a performance by Antonio Lyons, creator of the WE ARE HERE project. More information about this can be found on his website.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors which contribute to high levels of success. Gladwell repeatedly mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule” claiming that the key to success within any field is simply a matter of practicing that specific task for a total of 10,000 hours.

As a quantitative thinker, I like the idea of a certain number of hours of work holding the key to success better than the qualitative idea of working hard and when you are ready, you’ll be ready. So naturally, I began to think about singing and performing in terms of 10,000 hours.

As a singer, you are not simply being judged based on the quality of your voice. Your diction, musicality and technique are constantly being evaluated. Beyond singing, your acting and dancing ability, as well as physical appearance are subject to harsh criticism.

So as I pursue a career as a performer, all of these requirements weigh heavily on my mind. Do I need 10,000 hours of practice in each subfield required of me as a performer or 10,000 hours total? 10,000 hours of Italian, French & German diction, 10,000 hours of vocal technique practice, on top of 10,000 hours of acting and dance training begins to feel overwhelming and near impossible. So which subfields require mastery and which can be strategically faked?

Mastery of vocal technique in an operatic setting cannot be faked or negotiated. While the rest of the subfields can sometimes be successfully fudged (just listen to some of the horrendous diction of operatic superstars) vocal prowess is a non-negotiable requirement. As for acting and dancing, we have all been subjected to the “park and bark” tendencies of opera singers.

As a performer, I will always strive for perfection – knowing full well that this is impossible. Having accumulated 60,000 hours of total practice in the various dictions, technique, acting and dancing by this point in my life would have been impossible. Yet, while I am not a master in any one of those fields I’ll keep attempting to be the total package and one day, I’ll hit 60,000 hours.

Okay, so this isn’t really a “part 2” of why I feel like Jimmy Fallon Revolutionized Late Night Television, but it is a part 2 on Jimmy Fallon, because, well…Jimmy Fallon. I didn’t have room for this in my last post, but I really really wanted to include it, so here it goes.

Also, according to Today, the 17th was Jimmy Fallon’s one year anniversary since taking over The Tonight Show, and I didn’t find out until about an hour ago. I must be psychic or something. Anyways, you read the article and see if it lines up with what I said in my last post about Jimmy Fallon.

So, in honor of Jimmy’s one year anniversary, I present to you Why I Think Jimmy Fallon Revolutionized Late Night Television Part 2: The Top 5 Jimmy Fallon Videos You Need To Watch Right Now (In No Particular Order).

5.

Most people would disagree with my choice for this “category,” so to speak, but I find the Ew featuring Taylor Swift to be so on point that it’s a must see. The will.i.am song is funny, but doesn’t give you much info on the background or the show itself. Honestly, I can’t even describe Ew because it’s just so insane. Just watch it. Close second is the Ew featuring Michelle Obama (as herself, not a character) and Will Farrell

4.

So I really couldn’t decide which #Hashtags video to go with, because they’re all so hilarious, and so inviting of the viewership at home, so I ended up choosing one that, ah, really speaks to me as a college student, if you catch my drift. But seriously, watch all the #hashtags…preferably when you aren’t procrastinating studying for an exam.

3.

While all the lip sync battles are fantastic and you should go watch them right now if you haven’t already, this one takes the cake. Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, and Jimmy Fallon all compete for the “Superbowl of Lip Sync,” and it is absolutely hilarious. You decide who wins. (My pick? Jimmy, duh.)

2.

I had a really hard time choosing a video to put in the “guest”/variety category. Jimmy just does so many amazing things with his guests, from playing charades to doing skits about dancing on jumbotrons, but I gotta say, this one is as good as any. You put Tom Hanks and Full House and Slam Poetry all in one sentence, and you get magic.

1.

So, I chose this as my last Jimmy Fallon Video You Need To Watch Right Now mostly because of personal reasons. I don’t know why this video works so well, but it just does. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake are just perfect together for some strange reason. If I had never seen anything about Jimmy Fallon and you told me that they were good friends and do skits all the time, I’d probably never believe you because they are two of the last people I’d ever expect to be friends. But they are, and I feel like this video is just one of the many that they’ve made that shows not only that friendship but also their talent for perfect comedic timing.

Bonus:

Since this isn’t technically a Jimmy Fallon video I didn’t include it on my list, but it’s still a fantastic watch, even if only for Fallon’s on point Jim Parsons impersonation (which, I would expect nothing less, since that’s how he became popular on SNL in the first place) and Justin Timberlake’s appearance as Jimmy Fallon himself. While I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to SNL (it’s a fantastic show but poor writing has made it almost unbearable to watch the past few years), I have to say this sketch was not only well written, but also had a fantastic execution which honestly proves how much better live entertainment can be.

And there you have it. Go take a (short) study break and watch some Jimmy Fallon. You deserve it.

 

“I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement…There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.” ~Jackson Pollock

The digital age complicates the very basis for determining not only what constitutes “Art”, but also threatens complete destabilization of the current mediums which exist.
I reference a classic Jackson Pollock painting, Autumn Rhythm, I need not assume you have visited the museum in which it is displayed, or even have access to a book that reprints it. I can digitally reproduce Pollock’s work before your eyes:

So, as digital technology transmutes physical artistic labor into easily consumable packets of information, what then is the task of an artist? What experiences to convey to a spectator? And where can we find a stable medium for this exchange?

Digital artist and new media theorist Lev Manovich argues the first step forward is to reformulate the conditions for how art and audience connect. Rather than a medium-by-medium theory, Manovich posits a totalizing theory of “interactive art” – the advent of the software interface allows an active exchange between viewer and artist mediated through software interfaces. For example, my ability to take a Pollock painting, throw it in a program, and mess with it.

From the perspective that art is a strategy for organizing data, the artist’s cultural prerogative, according to Manovich, has always been devising a novel algorithm for data implementation. So, montage filmmakers such as Eisenstein developed techniques which “coordinate data in different media tracks to achieve maximum affect on the user.”

Manovich’s theoretical position offers a universalizing paradigm for what constitutes an artist – a savvy architect of data structures. But this definition, in conflating data manipulation and creative expression, has some truly problematic implications. Essentially, this means any and all works of art are a set of instructions which program us to reach a pattern of feelings or thoughts. The data-reception model not only compresses the flow of creative possibilities through a single channel of data, but also re-entrenches the viewer’s passivity under the false guise of software-based interactivity .

I’d like to issue a different project for the digital artist. The project of smashing the code. Or, to use digital vernaculars, glitching the interface.

The glitch aesthetic is a postmodern digital technique implemented by DJs and VJs alike, who reformulate and manipulate broken code into a new sequence.

Digital information exchange is a syntagtic model which interpolates the viewer into a preordained mode of interpretation which precludes an ambivalent and reciprocal exchange of ideas. The glitch is a broken artifact in an otherwise smooth stream. A relic of imprecision. An accident.

As Digital Artist and Scholar Michael Betancourt notes, in breaking the smooth flow of information, the glitch exposes the materiality of digital code. Rather than perpetuating a sequence of references to information, the glitch ruptures into a recursive signifier which highlights not only its own unintended presence, but the facile construction of the very code it dismantles. The glitch inflects authenticity into the code by virtue of its indeterminate significance.

Beyond resisting the hegemonic communication model of digital capitalism, I contend glitch art is new media’s cultural link back to the origins of creative impulse. Art Historian John Onians presents a methodological twist on art history he terms neuroarchaelogy – linking neuropsychology to art history – in order to consider the origins of artistic representation in the cave paintings in Grotte de Chavet.

The inhabitants of Grotte de Chavet had developed sufficient mental capacity to recognize and recall images of the animals which they hunted. Archaelogical investigation suggests the first markings in these caves were those of a bear’s claws. The neanderthals in the cave, seeing the bear’s markings, registered the bear marks as icons of the bear’s presence, drawing it on cave walls themselves as a means of symbolic communication. At some point, however, one member mis-drew the markings, creating an accidental symbol lacking a referent – a glitch in his collective’s symbolic code.

This accident, reproduced unintentionally, developed a life of its own due to a phenomenon known as neural plasticity – repetitive actions become increasingly pleasurable until they form a new habit. First, other neanderthals tried to understand the accident-symbol’s meaning. Unable to see meaning, they reproduced it for no other purpose than study. Finally, they developed a new means of communication outside the bounds of normal behavior patterns. Hence, the original glitch incited the creative impulse – an entirely new method of communication based around expression rather than illustration.

Art, whether in pre-civilized cultures, early modern cities rejecting photographic representation, or our own age, can be seen as a means of rupturing the fixed-fast rhythms of society. It is an explosion into new means of expression. And in rewriting the dictates for symbolic communication with ambivalence, Art symbolizes new patterns of communication, behavior, and consequently of experiencing reality.

Here’s a glitch GIF I threw together from a silly picture I found on the internet.

Some awesome and inspiring and informative TED talks — for your viewing pleasure. The annual TEDxUofM conference is coming up in about a month, and their speaker lineup has just been released. In honor of this amazing event, check out these talks that illustrate some of the best examples of TED talks: awesome ideas worth spreading and worth listening to. Enjoy!