Today is an awesome day.
It’s not too hot, I’m working at a good pace, I’m much more relaxed after the beach yesterday…
Yup…Life is good
Life is simple and complex. It’s simple in the basic way that you live – you eat to live, you sleep to replenish your energy, and you die of old age. it’s also complex because of everything in-between, such as relationships. Technically, it’s easy to do whatever you want to do. It’s only a matter of yes or no, but there are always outside forces that will challenge you – conflicts in reasoning, rationality, and morality.
I believe that in reality, it’s not a matter of right or wrong. The concept of right and wrong depends upon perspective and the perception of the individual. The pessimistic way of going about it is to say, it doesn’t exist. For example, there exists the question (in general) of “is this the right/wrong thing to do?” Everything in life revolves around this question. How do we consider the concept of “right versus wrong” with an open mind when we are only limited to what our society teaches us? The subject of love is constantly a controversial topic concerning any kind of relationship. It is involved politically, religiously, ethnically and culturally. We all believe that love knows no bounds. If that is true, why are certain types of love (or specifically sexual intimacy) socially unacceptable? In any society around the world, there seems to be some type of unwritten “Love Law – The law that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.” (Arundhati, 33)
Why does loving someone require restrictions? In spite of open-mindedness, the corruption of influence runs deep. Although love is not physically bound by law, the unfavorable love is condemned to what can be considered a life-time damnation. The unwanted love in societies such as incest is considered to be a forbidden act of intimacy. Roy Arundhati’s “The God of Small Things” shows that incest is not something that is just a sexual relationship between siblings-the same blood, but an act that runs deeper than words can describe. The feeling of security, being “one” is a sensation that is felt throughout the body. For the twins, Rahel and Estha, they always considered themselves as one whole entity. When they are “separated, the two of them are no longer what “They” were or ever thought “They’d be.” (Arundhati. 5) As people, we judge things too quickly and automatically make assumptions without listening. We immediately think incest is wrong because we are taught to react and think that way. The way we introduce ourselves to our community is crucial since we are constantly judged whether we are acceptable or not. Because of our beliefs and morals, we are too quick to make conclusions.
Again, we are bound by invisible strings of manipulation and make use of our moral excuses to accuse supposed wrongdoers. In contrast, as siblings it nearly is impossible to be attracted to each other in a sexual way because they’re constantly together. They live, eat, and sleep in the same house. They can become the best of friends or hate each other’s guts. However Rahel and Estha, unlike other siblings, are separated for twenty-three years and have lived a dysfunctional family where love does not exist besides the love of a mother and her two children. In addition, the long-term separation devastated both children with different but similar results. No one knew that “the emptiness in one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other… that the two things fitted together. Like familiar lovers’ bodies.” (Arundhati, 21) As a result of the separation, the feeling of loneliness accumulated and the sense of sibling love grew bigger. The twins never received the type of love that is intimate nor have they received familial love besides their mother’s. When their mother passed away there was no one to love them anymore. They were simply ignored in the hopes that they would disappear from the face of the earth.
The twins were what could be called socially awkward. They hardly talked to anyone because their sense of trust and friendship was not something they were familiar with other than with themselves. Their feeling of security was gone and they were denied care and love. Also, if their incest is a sin, the sinner is the society – the crumbling Indian government that tries to heal itself while the “should-be protectors” corrupt themselves through greed and lust. Furthermore, the sex wasn’t driven by desire. Their attraction can’t be denied but the sex was purely out of innocent love – the wanting and the feeling of what love feels like. To the twins, the love they share is to “dream each other’s dreams and to share each other’s happiness and pain. ” – Arundhati Roy. The goal of the love that these two share is to free themselves of the boundaries and the limits they are bound to. The idea is to break the prejudicial moral society in which there is no true belief in anything. The sex was meant to show care and love; an innocent love that is indescribable in a world that is already in shambles with broken morals.
The racial issue of love is a social dilemma because essentially, you are not part of their world; skin color, culture, language, and even religion. One race looks down upon the other and ultimately does not see a person as a person. A country as a whole has pride and honor. Again, the “love law” interferes. Minke, a Javanese from “Footsteps” falls in love with a Chinese modernistic woman named Mei. A Javanese must marry a Javanese. A Chinese must marry a Chinese. It’s a simple system – just marry the same race. Why? Because it makes life easier. However love has no labels. It has no true laws or morals. Love is simply love. Although the love between Minke and Mei is generally accepted, the roles of the married couple do not follow neither the traditional pattern of the wife staying home, cooking and looking after her husband nor giving him children. Minke has never forced Mei to give him children. He simply just respected and worshipped her. However, when considering family honor, one is expected to follow the traditional rules. “That’s the trouble with taking a wife who is not Javanese”. (Toer, 119) Once something in the marriage goes wrong, criticism comes out. Furthermore, Mei is criticized for not respecting her husband and his line of work because she also works. It is humiliating towards both Mei and Minke to be insulted and accused of not announcing the marriage because Minke took a Chinese wife. “We married for our own sake…” Minke and Mei, although they loved each other, were never intimate. They lived a satisfying life, however the work loads for both Minke and Mei were overloading to the point that they never truly shared love.
Unlike the twins’ situation, Minke and Mei were given love and were able to love to the fullest extent. However, they always held back whether it was out of respect or because they were too busy. They never took the time to fully bloom their love and just simply lived their lives more as friends, rather than lovers. Also, when Minke loves someone, he is physically attracted to the other person. However, when actually in a relationship, he has never taken any initiative to do anything to further the relationship. Minke’s mother constantly questions her son as to why he has yet to marry and have children. Minke, being the reserved person that he is, lost the chance to marry. But even though he was in love with Mei and married her, he had never once thought about having a family. It was never in his interest. Their love life is a sad one since it never fully blooms. The “love law” in this sense is that Minke never goes over a certain level in the intimacy department. He continues to only worship and care since that is how he expresses his love towards Mei, and Mei has never asked for anything except to let her do as she want to do. Minke follows the “love law” so well that it seems as if he purposely restricts himself into loving someone and how much she should be loved.
Is such a concept hard to accept? A complete different perception in which is very hard to follow since it’s not something we’re taught to follow. A different point of view that goes away from the norm is something we as people have a hard time to accept. We generally follow what we are taught. We are taught to have moral because it brings order to our society but at the same time that moral is the very thing that destroys our society. We are constantly conflicted on what is right and what is wrong. well, what is right and wrong? is it right because it’s the right things to do and vice versa. In a way, morals, and reasons make us doubt consantly when it shouldn’t even exist. Whatever happens, happens. Life is something you should never expect something out of. because of that, we as humans are unable to move foward with our lives and have a constant repetition within the world’s history.
From the beginning of spring semester me and my partner (Jacki) have decided to work on something that was mainly satirical, humorous, and whimsical. However as we progressed further into our research our idea evolved into something much more tangible and political. This entry is a per se a documentation on how this project and our (mine and Jacki’s) perspective changed throughout the research process.
Working Title: TEXTUAL INTERCOURSE
Subject: Sex and Typography
When we first started on our DP, me and my partner decided to concentrate on sex and typography. Why? As graphic design students and RISD attendees, we noticed that there was a trend of “obsession with type”. It seemed almost like a fetish, a crazed obsession with typography -a dysfunctional romance. We hought to ourselves “Perhaps this obsession can be related to the relationships between people; a type of human emotions.”
Of course this is all a speculation – a pseudo science. None of this would have a stable background or factual evident truth.
When we first proposed this idea, we were given the advice to look into human alphabets. It seems many designers, especially (some) typographers were interested in using the human anatomy as letterforms and creating a whole set of alphabets. The interest of the human body (i feel) has always been a sub-conscious thing. No one would speak of this publicly, or even touch it for the sake of art (except maybe for those in fine arts who probably have more guts in touching something so sensitive) and most were unwilling to openly discuss the topic…
Subject: Gender and Typography
After the initial research in ‘Sex and Typography’, we decided to move onto gender and typography. We asked the question…
1. “Does typography by itself have a gender or none at all?”
2. “How do we determine masculinity and femininity to a typeface or a letterform?”
3. “Do typefaces even have a gender?… Does its form make a difference in its categorization?”
4. “How does is make a difference when implementing a typeface to a word?… Does the word influence the gender of the typeface?”
In order to find out, we decided to distribute a preliminary survey to determine whether or not there is a gender to a typeface. Because this is pseudo-science and only one survey there was no way we could have come up with a very detailed statistics. So in a sense this was more for our own amusement… maybe… We also came across an obstacle of gender stereotypes. In this modern world, how would one define ‘gender’? We live in a society where the word ‘gender’ hold many different meaning and is no longer the strict ‘ male, female’ variable. And of course, as a result many were displeased with our ‘ignorance’. I believe it was not a manner of ignorance that we came up with the specific survey, but perhaps miscommunication. The survey was designed so that its purpose would be easily recognized by other people. A standard survey that would get the information across as efficiency and quickly without long-term contemplation. But, no matter what our intentions we still had some angry people on our hands… Oh well.
Along with the survey, we decided to get a variety of magazines ranging from gays, lesbians, women and men. We tore apart each of the magazine and speculated on the typefaces that were used within each magazine. We asked “its purpose, does it connect well to the motif of the magazine, is there a reason why a specific typeface is used?…” By the end of it, our speculations led us nowhere.
Subject: Women in GD
…currently at work…
Ah…DP…
good times, good times…
LOTS OF SEXXX!!!!!!
Symphony No.5 in C Minor, Op.67
Symphony No.9 in D Minor, Op.125
= AWESOME
somehow today i feel refreshed. maybe it’s the weather. feels gooooood~~
also, finally got my site going…eesh.
the only thing i have to do is edit my ENTIRE portfolio…joy…
actionscript 3.0.
It’s interesting how I love and hate the functionality of Flash especially AS 3.0.
It’s not something that is intuitive but the process of coding that makes the design and distinct functions is quite fascinating. One wrong move and that can destroy the entire data, having to spend hours on why a certain code is not working and is only spitting out countless numbers of ERRORS. After spending 2 hours of forum tutorials and experiments, it gets to the point of utterly loathing the system and bashing the head hard onto a wall sounds very appealing.
As a graphic design student, the method of designing something that is interactive in a time-based area is something that pulls my passion. The effort that it takes to get to from point a to point b and having a processable program to make it happen (and a success in the coding) is like having a big orgasm. Design in a virtual time and space, experimenting with perspective, and depth with typography and imagery (i feel) give design such a dynamic sensation – an inspiration of what something can become, is alluring.
The purpose of writing this was to reboost my self-motivation in creating design. Over time the thing i enjoy the most became something i loathe (pretty much). My lack of motivation, and devotion has started to lead me astray where i will completely ignore and not care about the work I produce. With this, I hope to at least even in the smallest amount regain my determination and dedication in creating (interactive) design. Wish me luck.
