Simply Complex: French Fries and Gangster Fish

Today's class was more humorous than usual. Our homework was to bring three unrelated images into the class that told a story when sequenced together. Easier said than done of course. When everyone placed their three pictures after moving the tables back we walked around and took a look at them. Jimmy picked some to place on the board, and then asked us to, as a class, determine which one told the best story. After nominating some, I now realize we had little to no criteria to judge them on, we voted on which one we liked best. We picked one with the subject of cosmetic surgery. One picture was a little girl looking at a barbie doll in a store, one of a woman with lines and patterns on her face and one of ...well I'm no quite sure who that was, I'm gonna say Jone Rivers, after surgery. We then stopped to discuss why we believed this was a good set of pictures, so that we would know to explain why we picked it. In the end I dont' think Jimmy was satisfied with what some people said, but we never returned to the subject.We spent some time figuring out one of a fish, drugs and money and a desert. This one caused quite the funny moments in class as most saw the fish as a character who got into some bad situations with bad people and ended badly, same thing I thought of, Jimmy didn't like the fish being the character, never the less his expressions to anyone who thought of the fish as a character were hilarious. After a round of who watches what on TV and who doesn't, the pictures were taken down and we were to come up with a story from all the pictures. Some people went right ahead and came up with some pretty amusing ones, like a woman having surgery to turn into a man.

What we learned from this was that this is a form of if not editing. Our discussion on TV came from this. This way of forming stories is how many of the shows we watched are put together. And I know it takes a great amount of work and effort to simply come up with a half a minute scene! I think what makes some of these pictures work well into a story is not only what is in the picture, but what it implies to us to allow our brain and imagination fill in those gaps in between to the next picture. Like a very good small summary of a movie, or book. What I didn't consider was if everything in the picture was in context of your idea of the story. One of the pictures had a woman dropping a camera, Jimmy made sure to point out that  you can't say she's taking a picture if she's dropping the camera. This occurred in a few others, I never took a second look at that.

In the last part of the session we watched another TED video by John Maeda. I found it to be really entertaining. Jimmy always asks us to pay attention to the way these artist present. I find that I tend to like the  talks that use a lot of humor. I'm someone who loves to laugh so these always keep my attention. His speech on simplicity began with how he noticed there are a series of books with the "...for Dummies" or " The complete idiot's guide to..." and how they are meant to simplify things for us. After doing work with simplicity he discovered simplicity following him everywhere, and how we as humans love complex things. He also mentioned tofu. He's completely right. Tofu is amazing if you don't think so you haven't had it cooked right, as a Vegetarian I felt special for that, though there truly is nothing to feel special about.  

He mentioned some of his work and how he loves living, often dropping a joke here and there. His pace was good, not to fast, simple words and humorous. I love people who can stop and admit how everything can and is beautiful, my art 109 teacher is one of these people. Someone who can look at a chair and speak about how beautiful its design is for hours, and appreciates everything in life. It's sad that most people who through life in despair worrying about tomorrow, I know the future is important, but we often miss the beauty in today worrying about it. I envy an animal's ability to live in the present, I liked this video and I hope others got a similar message through it.