Exquisitely Round, Robin Corpse (Pop!)

In the early 1920’s, a new surge of art overcame the aesthetic world. In a hodgepodge of dreamlike, nonsensical images, surrealism was born. The point of surrealist art was to challenge convention-- it represented an uncomfortable deviance from reality. As this art form developed, a parlor game developed along with it. Sitting in their vintage suits, surrealist artists drew a bit of a picture, hid all but the very bottom, and passed it on to another artist to continue. The result was usually grotesque, and always fascinating. An Exquisite Corpse-- a mixture of different artists’ ideas and images that couldn’t quite fit together in a homogeneous form. In an attempt to recreate our own form of this surrealist experiment, we passed snapshots of stories through our round robin of creativity. The resulting stories were just as fascinating as the results of the 1920’s parlor game.

Very early on in the process, we had to surrender our stories. We watched our initial snapshot twist into a jumbled mess of other people’s creative flows. After we got over the initial shock of losing control, however, the process became something beautiful. We “...enjoyed the mesmerising flow of fragments” (Paul D. Miller, “Totems Without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse”). The beauty of our combined creative flows helped us create our hodgepodge of nonsense. That hodgepodge, however, was the point of this whole exercise. When our stories made the least amount of sense, doors of creativity opened in our minds. Suddenly making sense didn’t matter. Fitting a mold didn’t matter. Our “flow of fragments” turned into a pure example of our own freed thought processes and creativity.

Our project process represents something beyond stories-- it represents the world’s creative process on a microscopic scale. Everybody works so differently, sees so differently, processes so differently, that every bit of art is subject to billions of unique perspectives. We may never create anything completely original, but we create things that are uniquely our own. Nobody will be able to copy the intrinsic meaning we assign to our own art, just as we will never understand exactly what somebody else’s art means. All of the art in this world comes from this individual synthesis of our surroundings. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí worked together on the 1929 film “Un Chien Adalou”, resulting in a nonsensical representation of their dreams in art form. They didn’t come up with anything new, they just came up with their own interpretation of the information they had.

The tenuous strings of narratives we created illustrate the simple, beautiful fact of our diversity. We work so differently, see so differently, process so differently… Isn’t it amazing how individual our worlds are? How we are able to come up with such a unique synthesis of our surroundings? Our stories are barely interconnected, overflowing with our ideas and interpretations and information. We may not have made sense in our exquisite corpse storyboards, but we did make something-- and that, ultimately, is what matters.

Clever Buster Series

#1 Buster was young, barking, biting, and chewing.  He quickly changed his mind after a zap from the Christmas tree lights.

By Grant Gomm

#2  Buster thought nobody was watching, but a cop was passing by and Buster got busted.

By Pepe Callejas

#3 Buster broke the law so he was thrown into the pound.  He knew he had to escape.

By Brandon Carraway

#4  After sneaking in and taking out the guards, Buster's poker buddies helped him escape prison.

By Zach Connell

#5  After all, he had a debt to pay.

By Madison Ellis

Fusion, Synthesis: Elemental

Blackmill’s Rain and the works of fine art nature photographer Michael Fatali have fused deep in the grey-matter of my mind inspiring a series of photographs that visualize this synthesis.  Blackmill's "melodic dubstep" is rich with sounds and complex layers existing in time, rhythm, and beat.  But Michael Fatali's images are timeless.  They are portraits of nature that capture the uniquely lit deep colors of red-rock landscapes hewn by the hand of nature.  But to understand the genesis of what I see in Rain, you must look deeper at these images, peering into the picture to the point where all that is left is abstract.  If all you see is simply water, snow, ice, or perhaps a frozen waterfall, you’ll miss it. 

Rain is made up of different layers of sound.  Now, I am not educated in music.  I am a visual person so explaining musical structure and form is a challenge.  However, I’ve tried to capture these aural layers in images inspired by Fatali and show you what I cannot verbalize.  By looking at the form alone, and ignoring the obvious - that you see freezing droplets of water, chunks of ice, and piles of snow - what I want to tell you about this song begins to take shape.

In Annie Dillard’s essay, Seeing, she talks about those that were once blind, who had their vision restored.  Upon removal of their bandages, some saw shapes and colors, not associating them with known objects.  As you look at my images this way, you will see how the droplets are bright staccato notes dancing lightly in the air.  Where you once saw rocks, a cliff, or ground, you will see a solid baseline with decisive percussion forming hard angles for the ice to grip.  You will also see snow and ice-made stalagmites forming flowing sounds of undulating, changing shape. 

The song’s layers contrast and still complement each other as they form one harmonic sound.  This idea of contrast is important in these images.  When you begin to see the lines between the bright and dark, the shape of the music begins to take form.  The depth that is created when the shape is illuminated, the light disappearing into black voids around curves and corners, is what gives us the images we see.  It is this contrast between the bright staccato and soft lulling drones of Rain moving through time that enable each image to speak.

Let’s look for a moment at the natural processes that made this.  Light, hydrogen, oxygen, temperature, and time all come together in just the right order and under just the right conditions to make what we see.  As the water flows, or as it falls in the cold, it solidifies layer upon layer – growing ever higher into a castle where creatures of the imagination rule.  Snow gathers making what looks like a soft white blanket.  But look closer, you can see jagged edges of each flake as it reaches up and out like a thousand hands raised waving goodbye to the clouds that formed them.

Finally, clothed in hues of light, the frozen citadel takes on the blend of notes soft and warm, cold and sharp. Look to the colors in between and feel which sound is calling to you.

‘Making a Murderer’ Making a Buzz

Type the name “Steven Avery” into a Google search and an innumerable list of articles will appear about  Netflix’s new ten hour docuseries, Making a Murderer.  In the mid 80’s, Avery was wrongfully convicted of assaulting a woman, and spent 18 years as an innocent man in prison in Wisconsin.  After DNA evidence exonerated him, and he was released in 2003, he filed a $36 million dollar lawsuit for wrongful conviction against the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department.  Two years later, he was arrested for the murder of a photographer who worked for Auto Trader Magazine, Teresa Halbach.  Avery was tried and convicted of the murder, and is now serving a life sentence. Setting the stage as a frame-up job by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department,  Making a Murderer is a rally cry for justice using Steven Avery as an example of what can happen to innocent people when the system we trust to protect us becomes corrupt.  But will all this buzz be enough to actually lead to eventually proving his innocence?

After being released for less than a month, the movement resulting from Making a Murderer has already reached the President of the United States.  A petition was started on December 20th on the official Whitehouse Petition website, http://petitions.whitehouse.gov and after getting over 100,000 signatures, has received an official response.  The response noted that Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was said to be an accomplice, were held as prisoners by the State of Wisconsin, and are not under federal jurisdiction.  Therefore the President does not have power to grant clemency in this case.

However, the message is still getting out.  Forbes.com labeled Making a Murderer “Netflix’s Most Significant Show Ever.”  Still, there are articles, podcasts, and debates all over the internet talking about this less than a month old docuseries.  CNN.com, Rollingstone.com, abcnews.go.com, and PopSugar.com are just a handful of the websites that are in one way or another getting the word out.

So what makes this show what it is?  It is composed of interviews of family members, attorneys, friends, and relatives of the victim, as well as the woman Steven Avery was originally accused of assaulting, but for which he was exonerated. There is old news footage, footage from the trial itself, and even clips of Dassey’s interrogation where the investigators are clearly manipulating him into telling the story they want to hear.

During these interrogations, it quickly becomes evident that Dassey must have some sort of intellectual disability, and really doesn’t understand what is going on.  He shows no sense of fear or concern for the situation, and readily changes his story at key verbal queues issued by the interrogating officers.  One of the facts regarding Halbach’s murder is that she was shot in the head.  However, that piece of evidence was not released, and the two officers tried for some time to get Dassey to confess to that.  Dassey, trying to give them what they wanted (but not knowing what it was), would respond with gruesome answers as he was asked what they did to Halbach’s head.  Dassey would take some time and think like he was making up a story to please his interrogators.  With each answer the police would tell him that they knew the truth, and like a puppy begging for a treat, Dassey would come up with something new.  Exasperated that they weren’t getting the answer that they were looking for, one of the officers came right out and said that they knew she had been shot in the head, and asked him who did it.  If the few clips of Dassey’s interrogation were not enough, online articles are linking to Dassey’s entire interrogation videos on YouTube.

Also in this docuseries, it is shown how the initial murder investigation of Teresa Halbach was handled.  To avoid any apparent conflict of interest due to Avery’s then pending lawsuit with the MCSO, the investigation was conducted by the Calumet County Sheriff’s Office, and Manitowoc officers were not supposed to be on site.  However, two Manitowoc officers who were involved in Avery’s original assault charge, and also individually named on the lawsuit along with Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office, began assisting with the investigation.  In fact, it was one of these two officers who found the key to Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 laying on the floor of Avery’s bedroom after Calumet had already been searching the room for several days.  Another interesting note is that only Avery’s DNA was found on the key.  It is noted in Making a Murderer that Halbach’s key was old and well used, and therefore her DNA should have been on the key as well, suggesting that the key had been wiped clean of any DNA, and then Avery’s DNA had been added.  This series also points out that there is no blood nor DNA of any kind belonging to Halbach at the alleged crime scene.  It is details like these that make up this series that point to Avery being framed.

Of course, there is the possibility that Avery and Dassey are in fact guilty of an incredibly horrific crime.  If that’s the case, then pushing the buttons too much, and their potential release would only let two very dangerous men out from behind bars.  Perhaps this docuseries left out some very important information that influenced the jury to come to a guilty verdict.  Although it is important to note that there were jurors on Avery’s trial that were employed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office.

Either way – truly guilty or not – Making a Murderer is gaining traction and support for Avery and Dassey.  Kathleen Zellner is an attorney who has the highest number of exonerations of any lawyer in the country, and she has taken over Avery’s case since the airing of this show.  In an article on thewrap.com, Zellner states that there is “new evidence” and she is “…confident Mr. Avery’s conviction will be vacated…”