Synopsis of the written portion for my senior thesis
Collaged with screen caps from Eduware’s Prisoner game for Apple II
Note: Piece was originally written in November of 2011 (and was only published a couple months after that in the Art Co-Op’s zine barely anyone saw). The information is no longer relevant. I hear The Indy/The Brick are actually merging so that sounds good. Also I feel like I’ve gained some writing skills in the 1 and a half+ since I wrote this, but oh well. I just wanted to think about this in preparation for moderating the Dean Haspiel/Pat Giles/The Load panel at Zinefeast this Sunday. Check out their write-up about their time at Purchase here. See you at the panel.
How Purchase News Media Can Raise its Game:
Taking Tips From its Roots and Present-day Consumption
by Olivia Fox (Olivia-k.fox@purchase.edu)
We’re so lucky to be a part of an amazingly resourceful campus. There are public resources for pretty much any type of help a student might need. Unfortunately, students tend to be unaware of many of the tools available to them, but let’s not get to that problem just yet. Let me get to the point: I work in an obscure department within the Purchase Library called the Visual Resource Center. Say you’re trying to find a little known Picasso drawing you read about but can’t find a picture anywhere-well, you could come to the VRC and we’d help you locate it. This semester, I was given the task of digitizing The Load, Purchases’ first campus newspaper established in 1972 (fun fact: the library has hard-bounded copies of every publication the school has ever produced).
Scanning The Load was enlightening. From the very first issue, students are urged to think, listen, and get involved stating: “Purchase, a new school departing from some of America’s befouled traditions of education and living” (1) and “Hopefully, [The Load] will help pull together a real ‘community,’ but that will only happen when the commitments are made to this community” (2) The Load was both a space for ideas and an outlet for critical reports on the school’s progress. It became an active and central part of the campus. The third issue headlines apathy as a problem in educational places “A favorite pastime at Purchase is bitching and moaning; we can bitch and moan until our teeth fall out, but this will never bring about changes” (3). The editors, designers and reporters genuinely cared about reaching the students and getting them involved.
Does that legacy hold up? Let’s take another Load quote which states the Purchase community “should not eat plastic food on plastic plates with plastic knives and forks and plastic cups just because it is ‘cheaper’” (2) On the one hand, we aren’t served the best food here, given that Chartwellsâ is part of a giant, multi-national, for-profit, corporation called Compass Group (4), but hey, at least our utensils have been (mostly) biodegradable for the past 30 years.
Are The Indy/The Brick hubs of enthusiastic student energy and passion that The Load called for? The Indy does a great job with distribution, but it tends to read more like a casual magazine. The Brick has multimedia tools The Indy’s printed format could never have, but hardly gets around campus at all by comparison. Seems to me like pooling the resources of The Brick and The Indy together would benefit their organizations and our campus greatly.
Look at the state of print media! It’s dying. Major and local papers have had to completely revamp their methods to incorporate technology and social media or face bankruptcy. A printed newspaper on its own isn’t enough anymore, but making allowances for a faster consumer intention span is tricky. An independent website doesn’t grab enough attention on its own. Social media and good old-fashioned networking practices need to play a bigger role. Additionally, some news outlets fill their 24-hour cycle with fluff and entertainment; this is not appropriate for our campus news outlets and should only be done in moderation.
Earlier, I mentioned students being uninformed of many of the amazing resources within our school. This should be a major function of our news media. Since the ‘70s, our information has been dispersed into many different departments. We get update emails from the president, Reslife, student affairs, our department heads, and tons of other sources. It’s a lot for the individual student to digest. The Load laid out schedules, budgets, construction updates, maps and other campus facts in an accessible and convenient way. Perhaps current newspaper staff could sift through these emails for information they find most important for the student body to know about. Having all this information in one place made The Load a sacred tome of Purchase knowledge. Everybody read it, which meant everyone was subject to important articles about protest, elections and important current events as well.
As Purchase expanded, more and more departments were established, which became polarizing to the student body as a whole. The Brick and The Indy need to merge. Having two sets of staff that are passionate about informing the Purchase student body that aren’t working together is a detriment to the cause of each publication. This proposed multimedia publication could also be featured weekly in the update feed of the Purchase College Facebook and a weekly campus-wide email. No more update divisions! Let’s collaborate! While we’re at it, let’s get the journalism program involved. Perhaps a class could be taught around the campus media, similar to “Exhibitions Seminar,” an art history class that teaches students how a museum runs using the Neuberger. This new project would help bridge campus journalism resources together in a similar way. If the groups can work together, they can create a fantastic news source that would help consolidate information and distribute it in a more accessible and productive way. It could also bring pertinent campus information together with current affairs topics, making sure everyone understands what’s happening on campus and around the world. The name might be a little weird, though…”The Independent Brick?” “ The Brindy? “ Perhaps “The Load” would be a fitting title.
Check out the Purchase Load here (more issues added every week):
http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/52063/browse?type=title
1. The Load Vol. 1 No. 1 Editorial by Andrew Hugos (assistant editor, later editor-in-chief) entitled “Listen” http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/52467
2. The Load Vol. 1 No. 1 Editorial by Webb Smedley entitled “Think” http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/52467
3. The Load Vol. 1 No. 3 Editorial by Theodore J. Fox (editor-in-chief) entitled “Move” http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/52469
4. http://compass-usa.com/Pages/Home.aspx official website
A draft on Relativity and emotion:
I made this poem last night.
A busy day on 5th avenue was rattled by a disgruntled Apple™ customer
COLUMBUS CIRCLE, NEW YORK- Security guards were baffled this morning about how one unhappy Apple Store™ customer managed to sneak onto the roof of a very busy Apple Store™, and camp atop it for an entire day. One anonymous customer came forward with blurry details: “Right around noon I saw this figure trying to purchase a charger, but they were just kind’ve mumbling ‘I can’t do this, I just want to crack this f***ing [Apple] Store in half’ So they gave up, put the package back, and walked out before I could help them find a specialist”. The would’ve-been customer is currently being held in police custody after being found with a small knife and a dozen granny smith apples. According to one account they had been carving the apples into the popular Apple™ logo and slamming the creations into the glass roof. “Yeah I saw it punching up the roof ‘til it’s knuckles were bloody” Kesha Cook works in the store’s genius bar®, and was the first to notice the unwanted squatting “after a couple hours I told the manager ‘cause the noise was getting annoying, you know?” The perpetrator appears human, but their hands and feet are covered in synthetic material normally used in plastic surgery. Additionally, the mysterious humanoid could not present identification and refuses to cooperate with authorities. Drugs were also tested for, but other than abnormally high levels of androgen hormones, the offender was chemically stable and biologically female. A minor cog in the otherwise pristine Apple™ workday.
THE ROARLIVIA CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR!
Do note that I am having a great time on this much needed vacation.
I’ve been here for 4 days. List as follows:
1) Went on an airplane for the first time in like 7 years
2) Went to Griffith park with a complete stranger
3) Assisted a photoshoot for a Turkish jeans line that included hitting up the Hollywood sign, Sunset, and Hollywood Bld
4) Went to like 8 comedy shows (did you know I’m a nerd??)
5) Cat
6) Bought a shitload of comics from Meltdown (samehat posts forthcoming)
7) Read sad comic about a dog and cried
8) Made a Christmas Spectacular
I need to write about horrible things
Conversation with Kim completely randomized line by line:
and I don’t understand anyone’s motivations to pursue art and remain so ignorant
but like if its asian/poc people gettin offended then I feel like
it’s a weird thing
i fucking love comedy
I mean for illustrators, it’s more like being a tradesman that once out of school is consistently disrespected and paid shit wages because people don’t get that drawing shit doesn’t come out of nothing.
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
in student loans
yeah no it is
11:56pm
Ophelia Fox
11:59pm
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
it’s what’s goin on rite now man
yeah bruv
honestly I think you should have
I mean that’s just everything
grad school feels like buying a mutual fund
and its not that
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
11:59pm
Ophelia Fox
11:37pm
that racist stuff
black pool commodities
there is not being a fine artist without doing other stuff
11:38pm
I’ll still do art
11:42pm
yeah
Ophelia Fox
sure let’s talk about it
o
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
yeah no it is
yeah people have to feel that and just aren’y acknowledging it
well but continue dude
Ophelia Fox
it’s a bad call to call people of color dogs or any other kind of animal, but it’s pretty obvious he’s reffering to ugly people and not like
Ophelia Fox
and no matter what kind of illustration you do, it isn’t gonna be all rainbows and laughs
watching people waste their time
11:55pm
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
because then what the fuck is comedy, drama, anything
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
11:56pm
and working as an intern somewhere just feels like the bottom of the ladder of a corporate job
like
11:45pm
I mean illustration majors here
yeah because thats well
12:04am
i know
11:54pm
11:48pm
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
11:46pm
I dunno, sorry, art education is fucked up and I’m having a hard time
like
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
11:47pm
that’s not good comedy, that’s like a fart joke
11:44pm
Ophelia Fox
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
analyze it too hard but the point is if you read it right, it’s only complimenting liu.
Ophelia Fox
11:53pm
a sense of humor in the art world because I think it’s really funny. Bt that’s just meee so idk
11:45pm
we’re all real upset dark bastards as in we all know we just spent like 80k on a degree that’ll probably never make that money back in any real way
like dark as shit sometimes, but comedians still
Ophelia Fox
11:47pm
what is everyone else’s justification, I know mine pretty much
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
like we’re all gonna die basically
or sincerity in falsehood idk
is
I usually just think people either have a cumpulsion to work, or are bullshitting their way through life
why do we all do this, what is the merit to what we have to say to the world
well hey dude you got the power
sounds good dude
yeah that’s how I feel to
more like
but they’re different for everybody
like
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
Ophelia Fox
I think their work has a definite funny bent
artists are just stock
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
like, shouldn’t this be on everyone’s minds as much as it’s on mine
Ophelia Fox
12:14am
that’s real ideas on display and powerful thoughts
yeah
you shouldn’t have to explain comedy to white people
11:45pm
11:49pm
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
I mean, pursue real goals and work for places we believe in
Ophelia Fox
It’s probably worse in fine art majors at yr school, because in illustration over at mica we just kinda pity them at this point. Like most of our spirits broke awhile ago.
it dilutes meaning I find
Ophelia Fox
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
11:43pm
i’m not gonna sit around filling dozens grant applications all da
I just don’t know how to be a person
not everything has to mean exactly what is literally spoken
if we pool and fund them they’ll fund us back in value evenually
being illustrators
11:38pm
and then the personal struggle for worth in the world, which I’m pretty sure everyone has every day except babies, and art students that aren’t jello babies experience constantly.
yeah, I mean I understand. Of course with illustration majors we at least have less of a need to justify/fake-justify ourselves to other people , and more so just our tradesmanship.
I’m mad at myself too, constantly
Ophelia Fox
like the problem is that there’s certainly lines
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
Ophelia Fox
like Ai Wei Wei (not everything is comedy, but) or DuChamp
Ophelia Fox
Ophelia Fox
oh she’s a half asian dog
honestly everyone should be getting $8mill for whatever they shit out their asses yknow
idk no I don’t really thik like
But I’m mad at them for being here
well
the fact that people spend 8 million dollars on metallic balloon dogs that aren’t even actually touched by the guy who says he made ‘em
hillarious
11:36pm
12:02am
11:52pm
it’s good that it’s a joke, idk life is a joke, etc. etc.
12:02am
12:11am
11:46pm
I don’t know for sure
11:40pm
you ain’t poor
Ophelia Fox
Ophelia Fox
yeah fuck white people
I wanna stop doing art and be a comedian
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
like that’s the truth
either that or they just dnt realize cuz their minds are goo
I want to make friends with people I admire and feel respected and just make in that environment
and then the personal struggle for worth in the world, which I’m pretty sure everyone has every day except babies, and art students that aren’t jello babies experience constantly.
well yeah I know that feeling
Ophelia Fox
everything comedy
i’m just having trouble at school
11:44pm
*if
just as comedy
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
sorry I’m calling people babies a lot
Ophelia Fox
12:00am
11:45pm
but luckily no one at my school really pulls the punches about like
it’s cool
like can agree to disagree
who isn’t mad at everything constantly, self included
yeah I agree
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
even in a less meta way, I feel like a lot of my favorite artists are comedians
but I’m trying not to just be judging people, but I can’t help taking their lives and what they make into consideration with each other
no offense
12:01am
and I can see it in some people’s work
I mean, kind of in a hope way
Kim Wingle-Donut Te
I mean, I think there’s probably a lot of jello babies out there who don’t respect/realize what they have
i have ideas and I can show them and disperse them with the public in mind not the sale
like that’s the truth
12:05am
either or and all
12:13am
I mean you didn’t waste a million bucks on art school if you hated it
11:33pm
it’s a weird thing
I know what I want outside of school
yeah they’re just being dumb, race has nothing to do with it
I don’t know, I know certain people are, but I don’t get it out of everyone
seriously it’s over sensitive stuff like this against comedy makes me really apprehensive
well, that’s the thing. idk, I feel like anyone who is just bullshiting just isn’t going to be an artist, plain and simple. Their minds are made out of fuckin jello, yknow?
shit is fucked up there is no integrity so why feign sincerity
12:03am
but not everybody’s
y
and they’re not just overly ironic bullshit
12:06am
but even then why go into a trade that doesn’t need you of you aren’t voraciously pursuing it in every outlet?
I just have a muddled mess of resentment and fear and respect and disrespect and I don’t understand what I what and what they want for me
11:33pm
11:57pm
fuck yeah brubbvv
omg let’s be scumbums together forever
Ophelia Fox
11:49pm
sellin’ merch. YEY!!!11
This past weekend was the Pressure Print Fair at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and it was dope as hell. Cool crowd, cool prints, amongst other things. I sold my most recent tshirt design, (the vampire squid) and tons of patches. Also did tradesies with Parsons kids. In the end, got away with a few prints, and some pocket change. Good stuff.
We did it! P-R-A-TITTIES-TITTIES-INSTITUTE!
I like gave away stickers or something. I talked at some people, they were great, those guys should get at me.
I am daunted and afraid of everything. Don’t bother reading more.
They started reminiscing about high school sports so I told them “Hey, I just got into high school sports, I’ve joined a Lacrosse team” they were intrigued so I went on to explain that I have been posing as a boy at a local NYC high school and I’ve made it on to their Lacrosse team. They 100% believed that was something I could pull off. Made me proud in a way.
Well back to the wine! Have a good one!
