Round Robin

Chris's 5 Part Story

Old Zadok Allen, without a shrug, puts down the very last of his money for a bus fare – as far as $10.50 will take him.

Zadok Allen had $8.00 left after buying his bus ticket.  A charming little girl named Emily sat next to him.

 

Ashley Allen put up her daughter, Emily, for adoption when she was 17. Her father never met her.

Samuel is shocked to learn that the girl he has kidnapped and tortured for ransom money is his own daughter.

Samuel immediately let his captive go. But it was too late. She already recognized her father's voice. 

 

Julia: Intro

           We’ve all played the game “telephone.” A simple saying gets passed from person to person, and by the end, it’s become something entirely different. This week’s project was similar to the telephone game. We started with a twenty-word story, and sent it to one person at a time. Their job was to create the second part of the story and send just their section of the story to the next person. What resulted was a collaborative effort of creation that involved the evolution of an idea. While things didn’t always flow or connect directly – as would be expected with this process – it was fascinating to experience how different ideas flowed out of others.

Christopher: Product

The article by DJ Spooky focuses on this age of great collaboration.  Some collaboration is subconscious.  We process so much information day to day from people all over the world – I myself have Facebook friends from Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Chili, Brazil, and quite a few Polynesian Islands.  This isn’t uncommon either.  After only five minutes or so on Facebook, I’ve seen hundreds of ads, articles, pictures, quotes, conversations, and more, and that’s just from one source.  Then, of course, DJ Spooky talks about the conscious collaborations.  I think of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.”  This song, from the album with the same name, is a perfect example of the ideas of collaboration, particularly with world music.  Paul started with what he thought was a good Sun Records groove.  He played it for his South African collaborators.  They came up with riffs that they felt mimicked Paul’s style, and Paul did the same with their sounds.  The product then was a song that wasn’t Sun Records, wasn’t Paul Simon, and wasn’t South African; it was a new view and a new sound in the spirit of imitation and replication but in each one’s own natural style.

               What I learned from the product of this project, which supports my already ample love for collaboration, is that each mind is its own little Plinko machine.  Did you ever watch The Price is Right?  In Plinko, contestants dropped little tablets down a scattering of pegs.  The tablets bounced and danced down, hitting all the pegs, never ending in a predictable place.  I’ve got my own Plinko machine in my head, full of potential subconscious collaborations, and so does everyone else, but each person’s information is arranged in its own way with its own connections.  One little spark of a story, 30 words or less, is enough to set everyone’s Plinko mind into a race of associations.  I never would have suspected that a story about an old man getting on a bus would turn to a murderous father mistakenly ransoming and torturing his own daughter.  Though I prefer the direction in which I intended my story to go, it’s infinitely fascinating to me that these associations were made.  Wild and deliberate choices were constructed with prompts of only 30 words.  It’s great to think of the value of each mind.  We, perhaps, only unlock our strongest potentials when we swap chips (ideas) and drop them through each other’s Plinko minds.  Amazing.

Josh: Connection to the Reading/Personal Response

This project was similar to what was described in the reading written by DJ Spooky Totems Without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse.  In the text, DJ Spooky says “Cut and paste the results, and it could easily be Pac Man, Quake, or Halo 2” (xi).  While sending our different stories around, they evolved or changed into something different.  For all we had known, our stories could have become the opposite of what they began as.  The text also stated that the most important part of the exercise was to have fun.  The project was definitely interesting and it was exciting to see the next part of the story.  However, it became a little confusing as we tried to get the right story out to the right person, which admittedly took a toll on the fun aspect of the project.

Cameron: Work of Art

    The collaboration that took place with this project reflects what many other artists accomplish with other artists on projects in the real world. Recently, a collaborative mural project has begun near downtown St. Louis off of Washington Ave. The funding has been raised by donations. Painters, muralists, and other artists will join together in creating a large mural on the side of a building in downtown St. Louis. The people believe that it will be a catalyst for more people to collaborate and create new works of art. As we read each other’s stories, we had the opportunity to collaborate and build on to that story. We could choose if we wanted the same character or same setting. In creating this mural downtown, the artists will have the same opportunity to see what they want to keep in their addition of their painting on the wall. The mural project is called Lab 1500 Mural.

   

Jared: Process    The Round Robin process created a few distinct experience within the group. First, the process forced each member of the group to forget where they intended the story to go or how it might end. The stories were granted freedom to develop as they please. The process gave the stories their own lives. Second, the power to develop someone else’s story engendered interest in how the stories advanced. We felt invested in each other’s stories. Did the college students win the game show money to pay off their student loans? What would happen to the poisoned steak and meatballs? What would the kidnapper do when he finds out the girl he’s holding hostage is his daughter?  In the end, the singular creator is gone, community is the parent of each unique story.

Music Mosaic

The song I chose is called "Simba," by Les Baxter.

After reading Annie Dillard's article called "Seeing,” I began again to consider the flaws and benefits of my mind’s library of associations.   I expected Ms. Dillard’s stories of the blind first learning to see, about childhood fancies, and about the wonders of nature to be more allegorical.  She didn’t distinctly tie her thoughts into a metaphor or overall message, either, but as for herself, in the end, she seemed to be hoping to shed her predispositions and see the world through virgin eyes.  It’s a beautiful idea.  It seems, though, that this pursuit must be individual one and alone – it shouldn’t, or likely, couldn’t be shared or imparted.  This places the artist in a sticky situation.  Everyone, especially the artist, should be eager to see the world in a new way, but if there is indeed a parallel universal before our eyes which reveals itself by a tiny shift in perspective, as Dimitri Martin suggests in “If I," and if the artists gains this sight, the new perspective should be presented to others in a way they can understand.  People need a frame of reference, a way to relate.           

Les Baxter, in his exotic orchestrations, innovated but also relied and built heavily upon the shared experiences of his audience.  Let me explain through my pictures.  Each of the eight pieces I constructed has a felt pen outlined and colored-pencil filled central image.  The outline and two dimensional central piece is a cartoony representation of reality.  Les Baxter’s songs use exotic instruments and international (usually tropical) music as influence, then he orchestrates them in a sort of cartoon form of the real deal.   Then, my watercolor backgrounds come from the silky mystique of the pieces.  When I listen, I don’t see the details of the jungle, but I feel more like I’m in a haze, a tropical dream with all the images associated passing into and then out of view. 

It was a deliberate choice of Les Baxter in this song and in most of his others to create this adventurous, seductive, tropical feel.  And this is why I love his music.  I love to imagine this overly dramatized excitement of the Western man (that’s me) on some exciting or romantic jungle adventure.  What then would this music be to me if it didn’t remind me of Polynesian chants, African Drums, and sparkling harp-like waterfalls?  How would it be different from Thelonius Monk or Stravinsky? 

                
So I didn’t listen to the music with infant ears.  I didn’t try to hear it only for the complex sums of sine waves moving through the air as compressions and rarefactions, detached from my catalogues of timbre recognition.  I heard some blatant, sensational, romantic, westernized, exotic sounds, so I painted and drew the same.  

Thinking and Writing - Electric Lady

The Electric Lady.

              Who is the electric lady?  What is an electric lady?  For starters, it’s the name of Janelle Monáe’s third and most recent R&B and “psychedelic soul” album, suites IV and V of the saga of her fictitious persona Cindi Mayweather, an alpha-platinum 9000 android, numbered 57821.  Cindi is the ArchAndroid, the face, the name, the leader, the representation of a revolution of the oppressed android community of the fictional Neon Valley. 

                In other words, Janelle creates the music, but once it begins to play, you’re in the hands of Cindi.  Pulling from great Sci-fi classics like Metropolis and, of course, Blade Runner (a film about androids being hunted and oppressed), she creates a world and a character that are immediately approachable and universal.  Many of my generation grew up with science fiction cartoons and movies.  So by adding an engaging story – centered around a robotic fugitive, on the run from the law because she fell in love with a human named Anthony Greendown, who then becomes the head of a rebellion – with engaging music, it’s easy to get hooked.  And, by using androids, she’s never concreted to one group.  Anyone alone, oppressed, unwanted or unwelcome, really anyone at all can relate to the empowered outcast by whom she performs, because it’s designed for us all.

                That being said, this album in particular focuses a great deal on women, their situation, and their powerful potential.  This in no way, for me, makes the music any less meaningful.  So what then is an electric lady?  An electric lady, in the obvious sense, refers to any of the literal, electrically powered females of Janelle’s android-based world.  Of course.  But in addition to that, an electric lady represents any woman, as defined by the title track, who illuminates all she touches and knows just who she is; a modern day Joan of Arc or Mia Farrow, she’s classy, sassy, sophisticated, and funky. 

                A later song on the album, “Ghetto Woman” ties in closely with Janelle’s own past.  She grew up in Kansas with her single mom and with the help of her grandma, too.  It was a working class life.  In this song, Janelle breaks from her character for the length of a rap where she tells about her actual mom – it’s a break in character, because androids don’t really have parents.  Her mom worked hard late as a janitor while trying to take care of young Janelle, go to school, pay the rent.  By saying that the landlord would come directly to their home tells me that the payments weren’t often on time. 

                Elsewhere I’ve learned that Janelle’s grandma worked for many years as a maid.  Janelle was, too, before her music career took off.  She would work, and while she worked she’d sing for the other maids.  The song “Ghetto Woman” is for all such hard working women, in any respect.  Speaking specifically of her mother, she says, “She’s the reason that I’m even writing this song.”  All the lyrics are full of hope and encouragement:  “ghetto woman hold on to your dreams and all your great philosophies, you’re the reason I believe in me, for real.”  There is nothing but true sincerity in her work.  She wants to create real music that can be passed down to our children.  I think, too, that she’s recognized for that.  The city of Boston named October 16^th Janelle Monae day.

                With such great woman role models growing up, Janelle had an excellent opportunity to also carry on the classic work of African-American female authors.  Zora Neal Hurston, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, they all write novels where their main characters start out good and strong, a sort of current quality, but are broken down and re-idealized, often times mythicized.  By breaking down and mythicizing their characters, the ideas of manhood, womanhood, and humanity in general are re-idealized.  Janelle has very clearly done this with herself.  I know that she believes in what she does and acts accordingly, but her character Cindi Mayweather is even more successful.  She gives a new beacon to consider, discover, and uncover. 

                The format of the album also helps to put listeners into the world of the story, thinking about how they would place themselves in it, then when the music stops, the same ideas transfer over into the real world.  Between songs, DJ Crash-Crash of 105.5 WDRD, another android, takes callers who are for and against the droid rebel alliance, announces meetings and parties, and introduces Cindi’s newest jams.

                Who knows, many people might just love to groove along with “Dance Apocalyptic” and call it good.  Many may not think too hard about the intricacies of what Janelle has done with her work, particularly this album.  Some may relate to pieces but aren’t equally familiar with Blade Runner and Toni Morrison.  I surely haven’t caught all the significance jam-packed in.  Yet regardless of the level of listening and interest, I think anyone can and will take away a hope for change and betterment listening to The Electric Lady.