Best of the week

Semester TakeAway

1. Positive note, not something I took away but maybe something I lost in the class. (EMOOOOOTIONS) I came in with the wonderful notion of being more than capable of bullshitting a class based on looking inward. I am of the opinion that inward of me is a black hole that draws all happiness and joy away from others, and I’m weirdly proud of that. Thus, will full intent of secretly upending the class I went about trolling assignments, being overtly eloquent in discussions. It gave me a secret pride that I was engaging others at their highest level of mental capacity at my lowest level of transparency. TL;DR; I HAVE A SUPERIORITY COMPLEX THAT IM COMFORTABLE WITH. Oh yeah the point, it was a pretty cool class. Not so terrible.

2. Neutral, my creative endeavors; 3D Environment Design, is based on putting players into an area and having them navigate it. That being said I’m not all about making unique new places for people. I want to make challenging places, for that I don’t really draw from a creative toolkit as much a…bank of expectations. Player expectations. Where am I going to go next? -> How can I then impede the player? -> I have met an obstacle how can I overcome it? -> How can I help the player? The circle of forcing players to overcome obstacle using what I give them. A lot of level design in video games is based on what looks good or realistic, without any thought being put into what they’re GIVING players. Most Call of Duty maps have HUGE sightlines, they then have every player capable of getting a sniper rifle. So I’m neutral on this point in that, this class wont inherently impact my creative outlet because of the nature of the outlet and less the success/failure of the class.

3. Negativo, I was going back and forth on whether or not to include this one because its rather subjective. SOmebody could walk in and find some of the assignments woefully boring, and by contrast another could be enlightened. I’ll simply put that the assignments were hit and miss with me, and I think that you are okay with that. SO this point is probably a neutral again.

Fear Factor

Probably the most important fear project to me was the one about death. That being every single other fear seemed to make sense. Anxieties and worries and phobias, yeah most everybody had a reaction to all of those. Death doesn’t illicit a response from me. For example, the person whom I’ve known for the most time besides a relative; Aurek Rardin. My best good friend, died last summer while at boot camp. Just no longer existed, didn’t bother me at all. I, within minutes, rationalized his death and moved on. Like “Oh”…the same sort of reaction you might have if the toast in the toaster popped a few moments before you expected.

There is an expected lack of empathy for any reaction of mine however this one is particularly strong. Not sure how that came about, and I couldn’t tell you how it would impact my creativity but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Class Takeaway 13

So I wasn’t available for class today so I had to go around figuring out what i’ll try to do on my own. So I did some brainstorming for what stuff I need to add to my book. I think I’ve settled on setting a decent number of pages on fire…I also like the idea of cutting out pages in patterns that are only revealed as you turn the pages. The same way that you are only given knowledge unique to every single page when you are reading a book, both fiction and non-fiction.

Class Takeaway 11

I have about 10% of the fear assignment complete. It is a presentation of the grandest proportions, concerning how and why spiders are satan-spawn from Tartarus. So far I’ve got a small powerpoint with examples from pop culture on the effects of spiders on human beings. I’ve even included examples of humans handling spiders or as I’d prefer they  be known, demigods of unnatural bladderly perseverance. I have not started on my book…I take the artistic approach known as procrastination, I hope you respect that art.

Class Takeaway 10

Like I said in class, I appreciate the diversity of thought available in this class even though I might find some of the thoughts ridiculous. That being said I was still surprised by some of the comments. I didn’t quite comprehend why some were wondering why they were in college when at the same time they mentioned that they had better options elsewhere. Yet…they chose not to pursue them, I find this and many other things spoke highly suspect. HIGHLY SUSPECT.

Class Takeaway 8

I find despite all the views and opinions stated that my understanding of identity remains the same. You are a set of skills, emotions, physical traits, as well as a name, number, address, contact information, SS, ID. Each piece of information or data is only relevant to select entities. A government might track all of these things besides your emotions and skills. A workplace wont track your emotions or physical traits. Your therapist doesn’t need your ID or SS. Identity is a collection of bits and pieces. Something your government values in regard to your identity YOU might not at all. Who cares what their SS is? Who values the actual digits? Maybe it happens to be the number 13 in there or some random date appears in it that corresponds to a holiday. In the end Identity is everything anybody ever sees in you.

Class Takeaway 6

SOOOO I didn’t fully incorporate the idea of more into my assignment. It was fun to slowly but surely realize what I was actually supposed to do by watching everybody else’s presentations. In my opinion I think a lot of people either took things too far or not far enough. That’s not entirely a fair estimation because I technically didn’t complete the assignment to it’s full expectations, but I DID something and defended it to the class fairly enough. I randomly came up with my “thing” which at the time was my full collection of the Reservoir Dog’s set. The Mr. Orange, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, and Mr. Pink boxes. I picked up “more” from my near-hoarder collection of dvds. Something about the physical box and disc is so very relaxing. Well now I think there is something wrong with me…perhaps I’ve expounded too much.

Class Takeaway 4

Today is difficult to really get something from. We watched that film Wasteland the entire time, and while I was very entertained by it, it’s not something that was created by this class. Watching a movie and saying hey this class is super inspirational is misleading. I think the confrontation at the beginning of class actually ruled out about 40 of the 50 possibilities for the altered book assignment which really helped. About 30 seconds of this class got me further than brainstorming for 2 or 3 hours over the past couple of days. Film was great, fritos are fattening, your drum is something I’d like to murder…8.5/10 class.

Class Takeaway 3

I can’t say that doodling is what would help inspire me. Structurally, I define work as a linear path from start to finish, where finish is a product that can be turned in and start is the absolute first moment of conceiving the product. Spending time doodling will probably always feel like wasting time to me. Especially considering computer science is my major, doodling doesn’t really assist in a major that doesn’t include a lot of creative design elements.