Labyrinth

McLuhan writes “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror… Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land.” His present was obsessed with the past, with nostalgia. And media is still, in large part, preoccupied with its thirty-years-younger self. Look no further than the superhero revivals for evidence of that. Yet our present is also obsessed with its present. We look at the present through the lens of a smartphone camera, or the mirror-like image of a selfie. We look at our smartphones when we should be looking in our rear-view mirror, or better yet, the road in front of us.

To symbolize this obsession with the present at the expense of the future, I traveled to the grass labyrinth at Saint Norbert Abbey in Green Bay, WI. Walking the labyrinth is meant to be a meditative experience, but the subject of the video is impatient and skips straight to the center.

Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future

"Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither inclines him to grow up."

- Marshall McLuhan

As I take my first steps into ART240 - New Media in Art at Lawrence University I am filled with self-doubt. Am I even an artist? I am a writer, but writing is not one of the “fine arts.” But I have created and will to continue create content intended for entertainment.

PAST

Throughout my childhood I would embark on fan projects based on my favorite forms of entertainment. Often this was fan-fiction, but sometimes it took the form of a comic, animation, or video game. It was during these spells that I taught myself rudimentary computer editing skills, and even tried to learn to draw.

Footage of my contemplating the past can be found here.

PRESENT

As a student here at Lawrence University, I am more frequently called upon to create original art. Here is the channel of my experimental creations for film classes taken so far at Lawrence.

FUTURE

It is my dream to inspire a creator, just as so many creators have inspired me. Whether or not the project that does this inspiring could hang in a museum doesn’t matter to me.

I say that it doesn’t matter, but then why do I object when I hear that video games are not considered fine art when, increasingly, films are? Maybe one day I will be a video game developer, and make a game like Myst.