AgELEMENTALDESIGN

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!  Well now…..thats better!

Keep on pushin’!

My views on capitalism very from a lot of peoples but here is what I find interesting with E.P. Thompson’s writing. I find his view of this phenomenon and how it carries on into todays society to be interesting. The 40 hour work week is still the standard here in America and we are all working for the weekend. It’s not just a crappy 80s song, it holds true today.

My response to this reading may not be the same as yours, but we all process these things through our own life experiences. I come from a family that as a child was upper middle class and when I was in about 4th grade, my dad was laid off from his high paying job that kept us close to the upper crust. We went from having 2 Cadillacs in the driveway and a 2 story house which had just been remodeled, to riding around in a 79 Toyota Corolla, living in a house that was falling into disrepair and sleeping in my coat in the winter because we didn’t have any heat other then Kerosine. That being stated, my views of wealth or capitolism are skewed by my own life experience in dealing with them. We had money, then we didn’t. My views on time are consistent with Thompson’s as far as understanding the use of time in our capitalist society and that these views have control over us in our society.  

I find it interesting how this implimentation has pretty much bastardized our concept of time. What I mean by this is that whether we are doing something we like or dislike, our perception of time changes. Its like the old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” When we are at work for instance, time can drag by so slowly it seems as though the day will never end. When we have a day off the day is gone before we know it.

Now, Thompson’s view show how the fat cats who own the pocket watches basically own time, while the paupers are slaves to it. I can see his reasoning behind this statement. It is true, if you are wealthy you are free to live a life of leisure while if you are poor you work your life away to live and don’t get to enjoy as much leisure time. Also the fact that time measurement systems were implemented as a way to exploit labor and prevent idleness by making the statement “Time is Money!” You want someone to be more productive as an employee, fuck with their money and they will do what you want them to do. Now of course, you cannot just do this arbitrarily, you start docking their time for being non-productive or things of this matter and they becoming more efficient. Does this make any sense to you? 

I also find it interesting how we as humans use things as time markers. Example: If you are a smoker and you need to burn 5 minutes, you go smoke a cigarette. This usually takes about 5 minutes so we can use this to mark this period of time.

You can see how this writing illustrates to us the transition from pre-industrialized to industrialized capitalism began and how it still effects our way of life today. It also is a testament to how have become enslaved to time and capitalism as a society and how we keep these two things separate in our lives every day.   

During this project I found it interesting to see the different ways everyone handled a similar task. We were all given the same guidelines for the project but everyone took this assignment and made it their own. Some seemed to get this done more literally then others but everyones seemed to be successful.

Some of the videos really held an emotive quality that made you feel for their subject while others evoked feelings of fear or fright. There were also noticeable parallels in some of the projects where the sounds or music really mirrored the visual imagery and intended concept of the stop-motion or pixelations videos. in mine for example, I chose the harp arpeggio to immulate the beauty of the growing vine, the sound of the dixie horn for the formation of the bombs(culturally influenced I’m sure), and an intense clip of a metal song for the explosions and destruction of the bombs. “Dumpster Bunny Rides Again”, also seemed to run parallels with the sound and music.

It also seemed that most of us chose to do stop-mo over pixelation, and I am not quite sure why that is. For me personally, I just wanted to animate the illustrated frames by hand,  bringing one of my illustrations to life. my choice of sound effects just seemed to be an effective way to support the message intended by me.

Other videos also gave you an understanding of depth or texture or relationship between inanimate objects. To be made to feel sorry for a roll of wire who longs to be with an electric screwdriver was pretty amazing to me. 

Overall I really got some interesting insight into how we can create a whole environment or range of emotions through the marriage of sound and images. Space and time can create a world that takes the viewer from where they are, to where you want them to be.