Read Write Read

This link introduces the term net.art, which is the accepted genre of Young-Hae.

http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/book/contexts/koreansatire.html

This link is of an actual written interview, pretty interesting and revealing 🙂

http://www.brown.edu/Research/dichtung-digital/2005/2/Yoo/index-engl.htm

I think its important to look at the small differences between Bust Down the Doors and the Gates of Hell Version because they caused me to look at the same story differently. The original Bust Down the Doors was from a 2nd person perspective, and for me personally, even though it is in the second person, I found more detached and disconnected from the story. I think the reason for this is not being able to personally relate or conjure up the proper emotion responses that are needed to really understand a story like that, where  the story tells me of my last moments and how I think of my dream.

In contrast, the version with the woman’s voice and the use of 1st person allowed me to create a character in my head. For some reason, the creation of this character allowed me to ascribe different emotions to the story being told to me and I was able to better imagine the story being told. When the woman’s voice told me the difference in the neighbors and her actual dream, the story felt more tragic because I was controlling the character. I found this reaction counter-intuitive to my expectations.

It was also interesting how the use of the Chinese or Korean, whatever they were, characters with the second version put the story in a cultural context where the story was taking place in Asia and I imagined some kind of military force taking a woman out of her home. It was just interesting how the smallest changes to a story, like point of view and the addition of another language changed my interpretation and my ability to interpret the story.

The Gates of Hell Version of “He Busts Down My Door Again” is different from the other Young-Hae Chang movies we have seen.

The background has the look of a museum with high ceilings and and shiny floors.  The music that the red words dance to is upbeat.  It speeds as the story continues.  The story being read in a woman’s voice is a tragic one.  A woman is taken from her house and into the street in her underwear.  She is being accused of being a “traitor.”  She is being moved by gunpoint to a location where she will ultimately be killed by being shot in the head.  She claims that the only thing that will be life-saving is remembering the dream that she was dreaming when she was awakened by the invader.

Her dream involves her and her lover, who are “caressed” by a cool sea breeze, sit on a terrace by the sea and “drank to the strains of an unbearable sweet Bossa Nova.”  Bossa Nova, according the Wiki, is a style of Brazilian music, similar to jazz.

The story repeats over and over.  First in english, with charactered subtitles, then with characters and english subtitles.  I do not know what political movement this is referring to.  The main character, who is at her moment of death, grasps onto her cool dream to stay sane and hopeful.  It makes the sacrifice of her life for her beliefs, whatever it/they may have been, worthwhile.

The repetition make the story unending and therefore forever relevant.

The different versions of Bust Down the Doors allowed my to get multiple meanings from it. Since it was a little bit different every time, I saw it from a different angle. The difference in point of view was certainly interesting, although a small change. Imagining it from the point of the victim vs the point of the assailants was enlightening in a way. It was remarkable how the simple change in pronoun could make you feel like you were watching somebody be attacked or that you were fearing for your life. I like how Bust Down the Doors showed a wide range of emotions from the victim from fear, humiliation, and peace in a fantasy. It seems very surreal.

I liked the version with the voice reading it because it made me consider it from a woman’s point of view because of the voice when I had been imagining it as man the first couple times I saw it. It also helped to hear it because I couldn’t always read the text as it was flashing by. In the version with the strings I was able to see more of the text at the same time which helped me to piece the story together better.

Like we said in class yesterday, YHCHI draws attention from its readers/viewers by its unique presentation. Even more than the first YHCHI assignment we had, Bust Down the Doors! really got my attention because it was just the same story over and over again. I watched the clip in the library, and after about 20 minutes of it, people actually interrupted me to ask what I was doing. It seemed crazy that I was watching a circuit of slides repeating over and over again. Oddly enough, I think that this boring repetition is actually what kept me interested in Bust Down the Doors! – I wanted to see if the pattern would ever break and there would be some shocking new text, or even new music. Eventually, once my headache and frustration became unbearable, each time I saw the words “bossa nova” on my screen I promised myself that I wouldn’t watch it again. But I did – I kept watching to see if the storyline would change. At the end of each story, I hoped the next would be something groundbreaking and obvious as to the meaning of this YHCHI presentation. I feel that my hoping for something new was exactly what the artists intended – they were emphasizing the sameness of violence no matter how it happens. And it is true that violence is all the same: I kill you, you kill him, they kill us, and so on. Violence gets boring because it is all the same with exception to the who’s – just like how Bust Down the Doors! was boring other than the changing pronouns.
I much preferred Bust Down the Doors Again! for its calmer music and more aesthetically pleasing presentation. After viewing black words on a white screen for about 30 minutes, the colors were much welcomed. Also, I thought it was interesting that the text was written in both languages. Its bilingualism shows that both cultures are treated equally by violence, because you can’t choose only English or only Chinese (if that’s what it is). Point of view is everything and nothing at the same time: who cares what language it is, because it is the same story. For the first poem, who cares who does it to whom, because it is still the same story?

I find it a little difficult to write this blog post, not having the text in front of me, and it being more or less impossible to have a second window up with the text… playing (?) so that I can refer to it as I write.  Upon viewing this piece, after our discussion in class yesterday, I thought about how I would feel about it without the music, or if it wasn’t playing as a video of sorts.  This poem, as I will refer to it for the purposes of this post, I think would certainly be powerful on its own.  Talking about dragging someone out of bed and shooting them and the bystanders’ reactions create a powerful image.  Also, because each time it starts over it uses different pronouns, it forces you into the different points of view of the situation.  In doing so, you become the victim and the assailant, and that is interesting for thought.  However, I think the work would be much less interesting if it was simply a written poem.  It would be just like any other poem, really.  Of course all of the aspects make it what it is, so I think it would be futile to try and study it simply as text.  I don’t know how “into it” I am;  I think the drums and flashing words give off the illusion of being artsy.  I don’t know that anyone would care too much without the way it is presented.  It kind of reminded me of beatniks in some kind of 60s coffee shop at an open mic poetry reading with bongoes.  The bongoes make it much more artsy and dramatic.  Also, without being able to classify it necessarily into a genre, it’s hard to criticize it.

The more I watch these videos the more I question whether I enjoy them ore not. Yes, they are great break from the normality of “usual” poetry or novels. However, there is only so much you can watch of this stuff before it loses the the novelty.

“Bust Down the Doors!” really is what pushed me over the edge of not truly enjoying the work. I read and watch the first one, and have no problem understanding the story of a break-in. But then I have to listen to Microsoft Sam and lose all focus. I have to give them credit is very very creative, not the story, but the different ways of presenting the material. Does it matter that it probably took them five minutes to throw this together? Not really. But they could have used something other than the generic windows voice that reminds me of Radiohead, but that might be the very reason this gets old so fast.

The idea is not overly creative, to be honest anyone could have made these, but they thought of the idea first. And I think that is the reason why it grows old, we all combine different parts of programs and make things everyday. When you upload pictures you have to create a caption, crop your photo, and upload it to the internet. That is really all that is happening here, so going back to the one we watched last week, “The Art of Sleep,” is uploading a picture and caption on facebook art? I know this is not the same as facebook uploading, but it seems almost out of date. I know its the first time I’ve seen anything of this nature, but really can we see this lasting more than 25 years? In my opinion no. Technology advances, and people are always wanting the newest and best gadgets. But the likes of Hemmingway and Larsen will always be there with their paperback or if you prefer ebook. But one day this “literature” will not run on the most up-to-date flash player. Which makes me feel like this is a fad, great at first but tiring after a while.

I have to admit I was expecting BUST DOWN THE DOOR! to be much longer than it was. I also expected it to require a greater amount of concentration; however, what I found was that it was perhaps easier to grasp the concept of the piece because of its shorter length. What I basically took from the piece was that raid was taking place in the middle of the night and people outside were gathering silently to view the scene. I thought it was interesting that the raid was more from the perspective of the gun holder rather than the victim. The scene that was being played out to the audience in the piece isn’t something that I would classify as a regular occurrence in today’s world. If this did indeed happen to someone, I wonder how many people would just stand around and watch as if this was something normal. In that sense, it reminded me of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Perhaps this was an event that was normal to the people involved. I took particular notice to the phrase ‘Bossa Nova’ at the end of the piece (mainly because I had no idea what it meant). So instead of ignoring it, I ran a google search on it and found that it was a popularized style of Brazillian jazz music. In Portugese it means “new trend”. I had to wonder…was this horrific scene portrayed in the piece a type of ‘new trend’ for the community involved? If nothing else, I’m going to assume that the music that accompanied the piece was indeed bossa nova.

BUST DOWN THE DOORS! Is probably one of my favorite and easiest to understand of Young-Hae Chang’s and Marc Vogue’s pieces. The poem tells the story of midnight raid. The narrator is striped from his or her home in undergarments and taken into the street. All the neighbors are watching as his execution begins. The invaders are never named and the word “traitor” is used. My mind immediately began to race. What is happening here? Who is this person? Who are these invaders? The music set to the words aids in picking up the tempo and emphasizes the drama. The big, bold letters make the whole scene in my head a little harsher and more terrifying. I just watched a movie on the holocaust, and of course, my mind swiftly took me back to those images. I began to imagine being our narrator. What if someone invaded your home, and without a second thought, they killed in cold blood in the street? After I watched the clip a few times, I began to understand the effectiveness of the type of media. Throughout this semester, we have read several poems and pieces of literature that I could not understand or was just disinterested in. I can envision Young-Hae Chang and Marc Vogue brainstorming, thinking of ways to make their art matter and be relevant. We live in a day and age where things are fast-paced. This is news one day, and the next, it is forgotten. Chang and Vogue, as we said in class, created something that makes you focus. It takes you to that internal theater and lights it on fire.

After reading or watching “Bust Down the Doors!” and “Bust Down the Doors Again!” multiple times, I became slightly annoyed with it. The first time that I saw it, I felt that the poem wanted me to try and figure out why these things were happening to me and what they had to do with one another. I was under the impression that there was some underlying message or something of that sort in the poem somewhere, but I was unable to find it. After watching it my first time, the poem left me confused and I noticed that it repeated, which caused me to believe that the poem was just on repeat but I noticed that the poem was slightly different the second time. The second time that I watched the poem I began to think that the poem’s purpose was to force me to pay attention to detail since we came to the conclusion that the other Young-Hae Chang poems forced us to pay attention. After first, I found these new variations of the poem to be kind of interesting but then it keep going and did not appear to have any intention of stopping. Because the poem did not seem like it wanted to stop, I did what any person with a short attention span would do and stopped it myself be leaving the page. Then I read “Bust Down the Doors Again!” and saw the same story again but with narration which I found helpful as I was beginning to fall asleep. Once I finished watching the poems I began to think that there was a reason for the poems being this way and that the poets wanted this reaction but I still have yet to figure out why.