Extra Credit Manifesto

You can look at Karim Rashid’s work here (note: he has not made his full manifesto public) : (www.karimrashid.com) After reading this partial listing of Karim’s manifesto, and seeing some of his work consider these questions:

            Which one of his ten points speaks to you the most?   Why?  

           

            I guess my favorite point of his is to “Consume experiences, not things.” Coming from a spiritual person this sort of statement makes sense, but it’s also an important notion from one artist to many others. Artists and creators do not sell objects and possessions, but experiences. Stories are experiences, and that’s why people value them as much as their own experiences. And if one does not consume experiences, one cannot turn them into stories, one cannot make art.

            Can you see a correlation between his manifesto and the work he does?  Do you think his spirituality informs his art? Explain.

I think that all artists are informed by some sort of spirituality. They may not know how to quantify that spirit, but it’s most likely there. Because artists create great works out of absolutely nothing, spirit is the only thing they have to build off of. Those who sell objects rely on the objects themselves and the design of those objects so as to produce more exactly like the originals. Those who sell experiences are selling something intangible, which has no design and cannot be reproduced multiple times in a factory, and so spirit is the only medium for creation available to them.

The Storyteller’s Manifesto

1.      You have a special place in the village

-          In the villages of the hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe, one elder is designated as the storyteller of the tribe. The storyteller is responsible for not only entertaining the tribe, but also recording and passing on the legends and history of the Hadza people, traditions that stretch back to the dawn of Mankind. The Hadza, just as our ancient ancestors did, understand the importance of such a role in their village, for without the storytellers, they would have no history to guide them, no tales of Hadza heroes to inspire them, and so without the storytellers, humanity may never have evolved to our current civilization. As such, the storyteller is rewarded with the best food known to the Hadzabe; the brain of a baboon. The village system remains in place even in the modern era and all across the world. Storytelling is extremely valuable, and those who do it well are rewarded quite well. Remember this when you join the grand tradition of telling stories

2.      Nothing is new

-          There’s nothing wrong with telling old stories, just like there’s nothing wrong with telling new ones. If you tell an original story, great. If you want to tell an old story, that’s fine too, but it may be best to change it a bit. Why and how are the focus of my next point.

3.      Find another angle

-          A story is like a photograph; we usually only see a tiny fraction of the entire image. It’s impossible for one person to tell every angle of a single story. There are just too many. And so, if you know of an old story that you’d like to tell again, try looking at the picture from another angle. Not only is this more interesting to an audience, but it also gives you a chance to discover things about the original image that you may not have seen.

4.      There is no fourth wall

-          In theater, we say that there is a “fourth wall” dividing the audience from the story being told to them. When the story acknowledges the existence of the audience, the fourth wall is said to be broken. The fourth wall is just one of many “walls” in storytelling, but all of the walls really boil down to the separation of fiction and reality. I’m not suggesting that to tell good stories you must break the fourth wall or any wall, but I am saying that it’s important to remember that none of these walls actually exist, and so it would be a shame to contain yourself in an imaginary prison. Being ignorant to freedom when one has it is the ultimate slavery.

5.      Make it real

-          If you’re going to break what separates the audience from the story, or the real world from the story world, then reactions must seem real. I’m not saying situations must be real, or even believable, but the reaction of characters must be believable. After all, by ignoring the wall that doesn’t exist, you make the characters into real people and real people into characters. The real people can’t be characters if the characters can’t be real people.

6.      Don’t make excuses

-          Characters must be believable, but not situations. Don’t ever apologize or make excuses for why something isn’t believable. That’s not your job. After all, you should tell every story as if it actually happened, how are you to know the logistics or physics behind it? Who, what, when, where, why, that’s all you need to tell them. How is unimportant.

7.      Ask for nothing

-          Having said that, don’t ask an audience to suspend their disbelief. Don’t ask them for anything. If you’re good at it, you shouldn’t have to. You bring the story, they bring themselves. Storytellers don’t take orders and they don’t ask people to change their appetite to fit what they’re serving.

8.      Don’t ignore stories

-          I mean, it’s not as if you can. If you try, you will fail. Your subconscious knows which stories need to be told when it creates or discovers them. You’re conscious will then try to tell it in a logical fashion, and it will run into a wall and disregard the story as impossible to tell. But your subconscious will bring it up again and eventually, you’ll find a way.

9.      Focus on response, not stimulus

-          Stories are not about events, but about the characters reaction to those events. This harkens back to my first point, and the fact that storytelling serves an ancient and vital purpose. The whole point of storytelling is to examine humanity itself and to provide future generations of humans with examples and opinions of what humans have done in certain situations and what humans should do in certain situations. As such, the response to a stimulus is always more important than the stimulus itself.  

10.  You’re always working

-          If you’re a storyteller, you’re always working. You may not realize it, but you’re always telling stories, you’re always collecting stories, you’re always preparing or writing stories. Next time you think you’re doing something completely mundane, ask yourself what you’re really doing. Chances are, you’re storytelling.

Blog 9B

Blog 10A

http://changethis.com/manifesto/45.02.FreakFactor/pdf/45.02.FreakFactor.pdf

In this manifesto, David Randall tells readers how they should identify, confront, and utilize their individual strengths and weaknesses. Three of his points that I enjoyed the most were;

3. There is nothing wrong with you (“All strengths have corresponding weaknesses.)

            I like this point because I see this in a lot of people. I don’t see it so much in myself, but I’m sure it’s there. It’s the idea that for every positive attribute that a person has, if it is taken to the extreme, it can become a negative attribute. In theater I saw it a lot with people who were confident enough to get roles and be praised for their performances, yet often that confidence would give way to arrogance and diva-like attitudes. In myself, I always tried to be humble and not flaunt myself and my strengths as an actor, but I believe this attitude meant that my abilities were not recognized as widely and my roles were often supporting ones rather than leads.

8. Freak: The Power of Uniqueness (“People pay for things that are unusual.”)

            I think the reason that a lot of people shy away from being unique is because it’s not something that’s really rewarded all that often in our personal lives. People don’t always flock to other people who are “freaks” because we like to spend time with people who are more like ourselves. But in our professional lives, uniqueness is extremely important because it’s profitable. People don’t pay for things that are normal. Why would they? If it’s something normal then they can find it anywhere. People may not hang out with “freaks” but they certainly pay for their ideas.

9(2) Engage in permanent procrastination

            Procrastination is when you don’t do something until the last minute, much like this blog. When we do this, we often don’t do a very good job, and as Randall points out, people don’t pay for mediocrity. But if you don’t do the thing you don’t want to do at all, then ostensibly you will be focusing more attention on doing things that you actually enjoy doing, and enjoyable work is often better than work done begrudgingly. As such, we can think of permanent procrastination as allowing us to accomplish something of value rather than completing something for the sake of having completed it.  

As for my own strengths and weaknesses, I think they’re pretty obvious. I have a lot of ideas in my head, but I don’t have the organization or the motivation to act on a lot, if not most of them. Randall’s manifesto contends that I cannot hope to change my lack of motivation anytime soon, but I can surround myself with people whose strengths counter my weaknesses. I can utilize my creative abilities by finding people who have the motivation to make my ideas become reality.

Blog 9A

I think that the biggest weakness in our gaming presentation was presenting it in a way that would convince a potential executive to buy our game and sell it. I think that as younger people, we tried to present our game in a way that would entice younger gamers, not necessarily in a way that would convince executives that young gamers would buy our product. I don’t think we pushed the originality of our game hard enough, both in terms of the storyline and the gameplay. We could have explained more that there is a noticeable gap in the styles of “flight simulators” and “first person shooters.” In flying games, which our game is, the game play can often become boring due to the singularity of the player. There is more excitement in first person shooters because you are interacting with, fighting with, and fighting against other characters. We would strive to make our flight simulator more exciting by including more “characters” (ships) to fight with and against and utilizing the apocalyptic nature of the plot to instill a sense of urgency in the player.

I think the strongest point in our game was our storyline. The player is not engaging in a “campaign” and the actions taken by the player are simply to ensure the survival of humanity after the destruction of Earth. This is a depressing thought, but one which makes the player’s decisions more urgent in the world of the game.

I would think that goals are the most difficult concept to discuss with others, simply because not everyone has the same goals. Goals are not necessary to the winning of the game, unlike objectives, and so people may have an interest in accomplishing goals that are different than their friends.