Norulesness: The Last Manifesto #1 by johncharlesbricker

noRuLesnEsS the last manifesto #1 written and illustrated by

John Charles Bricker

^,, 2019

booklet one

noRuLesnEsS the last manifesto # written and illustrated by

John Charles Bricker

MA Design of Experience University of the Underground 2017-2019 Hosted by Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, Netherlands

booklet one

booklet two

booklet three

booklet four

booklet five

PART#1

Play Versus Games

In Conversation with Keith Johnstone

In Between Moments

PART#2

Plasmatic Life

If Everything is Character

Norulesness Idea Conjuration

Channeled Out of Context

Breakdown

PART#3

Time in Norulesness

Final Words

You are reading this formatted to be read left to right, upper left hand corner to lower right hand corner, row by row, in the english (insert other language in case of translation) language. ...then again, fuck it. Read this text however you want.

take as much time with this text as you need. follow your heart. follow your mind. ignore this text if thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what you feel like. it is as much yours as it is mine.

warning: the following works contain themes related to suicide. please note that the author is actively seeking mental-health treatment through a combination of therapy and prescribed medication at the time of writing. All mentions of suicide exist only as honest/candid documentation of the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thought and emotional patterns. There is no intent to act. The author is not at risk to harm self or others.

Note from the author, John:

If you are struggling with your mental health, please know that there is help out there (although not enough). You’re not alone. Personally, I know that I’ll struggle with mental health for the rest of my life; for what it’s worth I do believe there’s gotta be something worth living for. It helps for me to write this stuff down, so I left a space for you to write down some of your own thoughts just in case it could help you too.

1 Sooner or later, the conditions and impli-

cations of lived reality expose themselves, and task each of us, both collectively and as individuals, to reckon with the question of just what exactly it is going to mean for us to exist here until we reach the point of brain death. This process is gradual and ongoing, and at times relentless. One of the ways to survive and make sense of this world is to employ a methodology of creating rules. Some of these rules are based on rigorous observation of natural phenomena, or trial and error techniques; most are filtered through some version of qualification and/or quantification, while others are quite arbitrary in nature (lol). Throughout this text I will use cartoon theory to explore how notions of rules and artifice function and play out in the worlds of our lived reality as well as fictional and virtual worlds.

As a child born at the tail end of the 20th century (spring of 1994 to be precise) in a suburban area near Kansas City, Missouri, USA, I spent quite a significant portion of my time in front a television set. The worlds presented to me via T.V. were fantastical, and had different sorts of rules than my reality. This instilled in me not only a deep longing to inhabit worlds more like those I could only watch, but also a sense that it was worth trying to make such an existence possible. I was bored by reality. My surroundings were gas stations, Walmart superstores, shopping malls, franchised fast food and casual dining restaurants, medical campuses, churches and synagogues, and seemingly endless housing subdivisions. The closest I could get to inhabiting my preferred worlds (the ones on television) was to play pretend with my peers, using our imagination and, if available, mass produced totems of these worlds such as toys, or costumes to act as a proxy for the real versions we could only watch displayed on a box.

Perhaps these pretend games could be looked at as an ultimately hollow gesture, delusional escapist fantasy unwilling to confront and embrace what some may refer to as “the real world”. blah

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It has been brought to my attention that my sentences about potential hollowness or delusion in play are perhaps unfair. Perhaps it is a result of my insecurities; a projected judgement onto my inclinations as some sort of defense mechanism. It’s like me saying, “I already know I’m stupid, so good luck calling me stupid!” Yes, it is true, I do believe I have been too harsh with notions of play and make-believe. Thank you to my thesis tutor Mijke for calling this to my attention, and encouraging me to embrace these modes of expression. To aid me in this pursuit, Mijke suggested I look to the the practice of improvisational theatre and the writings Keith Johnstone has done on the subject. Imagine my thrill at this suggestion! (If you have trouble imagining, allow me to paint you a picture: I was like super thrilled! Golly. Tap dancing in my mind-brain and body. Especially because I did a lot of improvisational theatre in the past. So the dots continue to connect. Very exciting.)

This line of thinking also lead to my consideration of the relationship between games and play. First, I will present the thoughts that bubbled up inside of me, and then Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll introduce some of the concepts discussed in Keith Johnstoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book, Impro for Storytellers (1999), alongside some commentary of my own.

In regards to play versus games,

there is a distinct difference in how these forms prioritize and treat rules. While games operate on strict guidelines and performance metrics, which, if broken, penalize the parties responsible, there is something intrinsic in play which beckons participants to bend and flirt with the rules; to generate new ones on the spot and abolish rules whenever they become restrictive and tired. Play finds power in the interpretive and subjective whereas games rely more on strategy and adherence to technicality. This is not to say that play and games (along with their respective qualities)

are mutually exclusive, but to instead highlight the difference in how rules and structure operate, and how participants are expected to interact, within these two closely associated terms. For a thought experiment, I am going to select a common byproduct present in both categories (in this case I will choose “Surprise”), and record any distinctions that arise between each term. Surprise manifests differently in games than it does in play. Take for instance the sports term “upset game” which refers to a sports match that concludes in the “underdog” emerging victorious despite records and statistics based on previous matches indicating a probable loss. Upset games can prove quite thrilling, especially for those cheering on the “underdog”, because expectations are subverted. These expectations are constructed through strict observation of performance within quantifiable rules and structure which result in statistics that are then filtered through a lens of probability.

In play, surprise is also rooted in a subversion of expectation, however, the genesis of these expectations relies far less on de jure, quantifiable metrics. Play leaves more room for the unspoken assumptions and idiosyncrasies of a given context to be explored and tinkered with. These expectations are far more likely to be rooted in and affected by subjective qualifiers such as bias, point of view, history, cultural tradition, and so on. Surprise in these circumstance could be a result of unconscious/silent truths being brought to light, systematic incongruities called out, base desires/ human experience typically regarded as shameful acknowledged (perhaps plainly, earnestly, in a self-deprecating tone, blunt, strangely enthused, bored, depressingly, angrily, maniacally, in a whisper, and so on and so forth). There are tons of ways for surprise to play out. As I write this, I sense a spirit of relief present in the experience of surprise. Allow me to elaborate: think about the feeling of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stomach turning as their body is hurled downward through space at speeds, which, in normal circumstances would be considered deadly, only to be safely harnessed 23

into a cart connected to a train of other carts on a contraption known as a roller coaster, which is specifically designed to induce these feelings of thrill and delight in premeditated artificial danger. The relief in the roller coaster example comes from not dying when, in most other instances, the conditions thrust upon each human body on the ride would probably kill that human (or at the very least do some serious bodily damage.) This point awakens ponderances on the capabilities and limitations afforded to the human body. While it is certainly an amazing machine, the body (as it is in lived â&#x20AC;&#x153;realityâ&#x20AC;?) is also quite soft and fragile, and prone to malfunction sooner or later. Further on in this text there will be discussions over the body, and what happens when we consider it through a cartoon lens. All in due time. For now, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get back to thinking about games and play...

Johnstone, Keith. Impro for Storytellers. Faber and Faber, 1999.

in conversation with...

Okay... So we have done a little bit of thinking about the different ways games and play interact with rules and structure. Now let’s see what happens when the lines between the two are blurred. Theatresports is a type of performance that collides notions of games and play into one dynamic package. Over the course of this conversation with Keith Johnstone’s Impro for Storytellers (1999) , I will adopt the moniker of John Brickerstone. Just for fun. Johnstone’s words will be formatted within quotation marks. Brickerstone’s words (mine) will not. All words will be attributed by name. I mention this to make you explicitly aware of the rules I am choosing to employ here. Onward!

What is Theatresports? Theatresports is comprised of improvisational skits/sketches/ scenes/performances contained within a team-based competition structure. Bodies required to enact theatresports are as follows: -Commentator

(preferably disembodied voice)

-Two

Teams of Performers

-Panel of Judges

-Spectators

(three is a magic number)

The two teams of performers challenge each other to compete for the highest score. Scoring is determined by the judges who have cards marked with numbers one through five. These cards are held up by each judge at the end of a teamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s turn. Judges may base their scoring on a number of different factors such as spectator response, cleverness, outright stupidity, amazing displays of physical prowess, etc... -John Brickerstone (summarizing Keith Johnstoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Theatresports methodologies) 27

The Origins of Theatresports â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theatresports was inspired by pro-wrestling, a family entertainment where Terrible Turks mangled defrocked Priests while mums and dads yelled insults, and grannies staggered forward waving their handbags (years passed before I learned that some of the more berserk grannies were paid stooges).â&#x20AC;? -Keith Johnstone

Already we can see how genres that combine games and play inform the sensibilities of theatresports. Pro-wrestling is melodramatic theatre that uses conventions of competition and sport to transmit narratives of conflict and rivalry solved through high-impact combat choreographies. -John Brickerstone 28

A Sense of Place “Whenever possible I surround the players with tables covered with junk -- a golf-cart, beds and bedding, wheelchairs, a boat that they can ‘row’ about the stage, and whatever. ‘Scenographies’ are supplied by ‘Snoggers’, who lurk backstage ready to roll tumbleweed across the stage for a Western scene, or to drape chairs with ‘mylar’ for a scene in heaven.They’ll fold back the carpet to reveal the taped outline of a body (to establish a crime scene), or lay a black-painted ladder on the stage to indicate a ‘railroad track’, or they’ll stand on opposite sides of the stage holding up baskets to establish a gymnasium. Audience volunteers are sometimes conscripted: I once saw fifty people run on to the stage and lie down and make sucking noises while the improvisers pretended to be duck hunters wading through a swamp.” -Keith Johnstone

The use of props and bodies to evoke a more dynamic and immersive sense of place in theatresports reminds me of the pretend games my friends and I would play when we were kids. There is an attitude of “by any means necessary” at work which results in an embracing of ingenuity alongside a rejection of functional fixedness. I remember wanting so badly to have access to the worlds presented via cartoons, video games, and television. The desire to transcend my commodified suburban environment, and inhabit a place less impacted by the societal and physical restraints of my middle-american world was powerful. Could it be possible to stumble upon a portal that led to such a place? Where was the magic? Why wasn’t it present in my world? If I couldn’t find any “real” magic, then it was left up to my imagination, and any other instruments at my disposal (toys, drawings, costumes, tree branches...) to perform a method of play in which I could embody any existence I chose, so long as the appropriate conditions were maintained. -John Brickerstone

“...if the performance has gone well, you’ll feel that you’ve been watching a bunch of good-natured people who are wonderfully cooperative, and who aren’t afraid to fail. It’s therapeutic to be in such company, and to yell and cheer, and perhaps even go on stage with them. With luck you’ll feel as if you’ve been at a wonderful party; great parties don’t depend on the amount of alcohol but on positive interactions.” -Keith Johnstone

Conclusion??? I don’t know, dudes...what were we talking about again? -John Brickerstone

“Disaster is unavoidable.” -Keith Johnstone

Huh? -John Brickerstone

“In good circumstances, competition generates a desire to improve technique,” -Keith Johnstone

Oh right. This was an exploration into what kind of results can materialize when games and play are smashed together. -John Brickerstone

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Enter again, but this time let your eyes be wide open!â&#x20AC;? -Keith Johnstone

Eyes Wide Open So it seems to me as if both games and play utilize rules and structure, but that they go about it in different ways. Games typically use systems of quantification and concrete metrics to generate competition. Whereas play uses rules to suspend disbelief and conjur moments of immersion, relation, and experiential states. Theatresports is a great example of how these two modes can be put together in order to inform one another and expand the boundaries of what makes each mode interesting and special. In realms outside of theatresports, perhaps this is accomplished by a reward system encouraging a player to explore the virtual world of a video game more thoroughly; or the narrative arc of a film informing the aesthetic logic behind a conceptual website. -John Brickerstone

Any Final Words of Wisdom? “-Find Judges who will throw you off when you’re boring. -Play a match in public before you know what you’re doing. -Keep the first matches mercifully short (twenty minutes is ample and can seem like hours when you are uninspired). -Screw-up with good humour. -‘Lick your wounds’; practise the skills; plunge in again.” -Keith Johnstone

If indeed you find yourself without any clue

of what to do with yourself in any given moment, give some of these techniques a try: 1. Take stock of your five senses.

(switch it up by using Who, What, When, Why, Where, How)

What do you taste? How is your sense of smell? Why are your hands the temperature they are? Where are the sounds you hear coming from? Who did you last see? When did you see them? 2. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know whether or not this is stupid. Do you like the feeling of butterflies in your stomach? What sorts of things make you feel that way? 3. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not get lost in self-conscious judgements. Are you feeling like a flower today? Or more like a dragon?

4. Can you come up with an example of “either/or” thinking you typically employ? As in, like, comparing things based on a binary scale. For example: Good vs Evil, Loud vs Quiet, Past vs Future, etc…

Do you have any ideas on how to conceptualize the same sorts of things without the use of binary poles containing varying points of degree in between? 5. What emotional states have you found yourself in today? Don’t be afraid to be obvious. (thanks Keith Johnstone!) What happened to make you feel these emotions? What emotional states have you perceived others to be in? What do you think happened to these people today? If you don’t know, make it up! Speculate! Don’t be afraid of being wrong. There is an encouraging voice in my head right now. This is what it says: “it’s okay to be who you are. you don’t need to hate yourself or think other people hate you. try to be a good person. try to respect yourself and others. trust others. it’s okay to be vulnerable or not always 100%

is this what is at stake? --Mijke

it’s okay if it is. --Mijke

you just have to say so. --Mijke

the most entertaining-best-talker-most-interesting-person-ever. nobody is that all the time. it is okay to be sad, or awkward, or say something wrong. it’s okay to be embarrassed. you don’t have to want to die. I know sometimes you do, but you don’t have to.”

I am a little shook up frazzle-dazzled. I need to linger in this in-between moment a bit longer. the dog tail wags happily as pets are received. contact with human hand on dog head is good. the ears recede down, lower, kind of like how a human’s eyebrows might raise as they close their eyes with pleasure. this is a bustling place, the people are talking and I am sitting in a small chair near the door to the bathroom area. it is okay. fairly comfortable. I itch my neck, there are mosquitoes buzzing around. i hope one did not bite me. what does it mean to be good? what does it mean to be good? what does it mean to be good? what does it mean to be good? what does it mean to be good? what does it mean to be good? 37

this is all so literal babble. like a talking mouth-brain on the fritz, feeling every minute, too much to document really. this is only like 5% of all the stimuli that I am taking in at the moment. maybe not even a fraction of a percent if I really start to think about all the, the multitudes of processes, sounds, sensations, thoughts, smells, occurrences taking place second by second. This is interesting: does this disrupt rules as they are too constrictive and do not adequately map onto the possibilities for life? --Mijke

indeed. it seems rules can never truly account for the constant-infinity-chaos that is existence. perhaps this is one reason why i am writing about a made-up idea called â&#x20AC;&#x153;nOruleSneSSâ&#x20AC;?. but what is norulesnesss?

what a beautiful tackle the football player at

the doorbell rang for hours before the sunday paper came to roost in the morning at the coffee roasters, I am not thinking, that is me, is the buzz, the fake fullness, foolish absence of hunger, soon I expect a compulsion to poop. kissing nice towards a dog to my right. taking pictures on their phone, petting petting petting. there are no doorways that canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t open if you have enough keys. water spoke about people who walk around with factions of keys and try to open any locked door they come across. it made think about opportunities. i found it to be a nice poetic image. the key people. reminded me of custodians.

it is an exercise in improvisation. you can do it, you just have to keep going until your fingers bleed. it is an exercise in exercising your voice. in getting it out, putting it out, hanging the laundry out to dry.

checking my phone now, the dumb addiction. the place everybody seems to be. i want to be included, I want to be seen

sick of big words in the big world run by big boys composed of mud, greasy mud and deflated bodies despair or wet hot love or flower gardens or grave yards it is actually not so big and you are not the boss of me now, off me now, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memes now and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not so big, life is unfair --Chunk #1

i think, therefore I am wrong sometimes. --Chunk #2

(last two chunks were old stuff i retyped) (now Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m back today in the present moment)

the dog has nestled itself close to my feet and it is really cute I want to pet the dog, it seems so sleepy okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay

BACK TO BUSINESS!!!! 43

booklet two

2 My dad sang with the church choir at various

points throughout my life. There was a period a couple years after my parents divorced when my little brothers and I would accompany our dad to church twice a week or so. Once for a weeknight rehearsal, and again over the weekend for mass. I was probably between the ages of ten and thirteen at this time. Church was of very little interest to me, so I used this time to complete whatever homework assignments I had from school, and then either sneak around to talk and goof off with my brothers, or occupy myself with drawing or playing Pokemon on my Gameboy. Sometimes a nosey church-goer would scold us or interrogate us over why we were not with our guardian or in Sunday school with other kids. At the very least we would be met with disapproving stares. It is not as if my brothers and I were ill behaved, or even all that disruptive. In fact, we were

fairly quiet and made it a point to keep to ourselves. Still, we weren’t really engaging with the rituals of church either. And when you’re in a space that is popularly regarded as sacred; in a space where eternal damnation to hell is on the line, most people expect you to at least pretend to be respectfully engaged and present; to sit up straight and stand when instructed to, then sit back down and remain silent until invited to sing along to songs you’ve never heard before. I’d much rather pretend my friends and I have super powers or that we time travel with portal devices or inhabit teeny-tiny self-regenerating bodies made of gelatinous semi-sweet antimatter. (Talk about snack time.) Why should my pretend-preferences mark me as spiritually misguided/lost? Why should an inconsistent old book written about a cruel and all-powerful god, for whom my devotion must be absolute and unquestioning,(assuming I value my life), be the default user-manual on which I base my morals and perceptions of this world? I don’t want to be a sinner. I want to be a cartoon.

In order to become a cartoon, it is

important to take a closer look at the characteristics of cartoons, and the properties under which these realms operate. To help guide us on this journey, I have selected some very smart thinkers to contribute their thoughts along the way. John Brickerstone is back for some sweet sweet authorial interpretations. warning: all quotes and theory are taken out of their original context so I may arrange them to illustrate a train of thought. This voice is the theory grappling one. It will try to sound smart and authoritative and thorough. Do not be fooled: this voice is prone to bias and (sometimes purposeful) misinterpretation. For clarity: I am using these other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thoughts in order to think through things myself. Hopefully you can use these thoughts to your own ends as well.

Okay...

Pierson, Ryan. “Toy Like Nature: On the History and Theory of Animated Motion.” University of Pittsburgh, 2012.

So my entry point into applying theory to cartoonwas the dissertation The Toy Like Nature: On the History and Theory of Animated Motion (2012) by Ryan Pierson.

Eisenstein, Sergei, and Jay Leyda. Eisenstein on Disney. Methuen, 1988.

Pierson’s text provided a wealth of knowledge and history on not only cartoons, but animated motion as a whole. One reference that proved pivotal to my “nOruLesNess” thinking was a collection of writings by the soviet film theorist Sergei Eisenstein; particularly Eisenstein’s theory of plasmaticness. These thoughts are recorded in Eisenstein on Disney (1988).

Similar rules to the conversation we had with Keith Johnstone. Just some more voices this time. All non-Brickerstone voices get quotation marks. Let’s go!

Plasmatic Introduction “Eisenstein admired Disney as much as any moviegoer in the world and located the primary aesthetic significance of Disney’s practice in the peculiarly elastic qualities of his figures: horses’ necks and legs stretching, ocean waves transforming into boxing gloves, characters who combine traits of multiple animals, and so on. Such wonders, for Eisenstein, all have essentially the same attraction: our desire to identify with a form of life that is free from the fetters of the human body and the laws of physics.” -Ryan Pierson

“[Y]ou can’t help but arrive at the conclusion that a single common prerequisite of attractiveness shows through in all these examples: a rejection of once-and-forever allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically assume any form. An ability that I’d call “plasmaticness”, for here we have a being represented in drawing, a being of a definite form, a being which has attained a definite appearance, and which behaves like the primal protoplasm, not yet possessing a “stable” form, but capable of assuming any form and which, skipping along the rungs of the evolutionary ladder, attaches itself to any and all forms of animal existence.” -Sergei Eisenstein

Images depict instances of plasmaticness at work in old Mickey Mouse cartoons and on a cellular level.

Imagine an existence in which our bodies are governed by whimsy. All forms celebrated, all angles possible, all limits out the window. -John Brickerstone

The basic appeal of plasmatic cartoons utilizes animated motionâ&#x20AC;Ś to put to the use of metamorphosis and character, celebrating a kind of interior freedom of a cartoon subject. -Ryan Pierson

This freedom spawns from a body and a world constructed from basic elements of line and color. Without the constraints of our physical world, cartoons are free to travel through space at their whimsy, not constrained to a tired body with a set expiration date, entrenched in a slow developmental cycle towards inevitable decay. -John Brickerstone

The cartoon seems to stand in relation to reality as the movies stand in relation to modern art: they do not avoid its problems, they escape its conditions entirely. They effectively construct an entirely other world, a world where escape is the whole point. By means of escape, the very thought to contribute to the cartoon’s irrelevance and invisibility—its ephemerality, its lightness of touch, its frank appeal to the childlike, its lack of obligation to physical rules or moral consequences—becomes its aesthetic virtues. -Ryan Pierson

There is a certain freedom in the position of the universally irrelevant and invisible. My thoughts lead to instances of dancing naked and alone after singing and shouting in the morning shower. To be a cartoon could be to dance like no one is watching. -John Brickerstone

“Cavell notes that cartoon character’s bodies never seem to get in the way of what they want to do, and ‘we are uncertain when or to what extent our laws and limits do and do not apply’ (which suggests that there are no real laws at all). Panofsky approvingly refers to the cartoon’s ‘fantastic independence of the natural laws’. …the space within a cartoon’s world is determined almost entirely by lines and color. The metamorphic possibilities of cartoon bodies are a function of the multipurpose ambiguity of the drawn line. This gives the cartoon world a homogeneity and harmony in which it can make intuitive sense for a character to stretch [their] neck or for waves to turn into boxing gloves; part of the

wonder of plasmaticness lies in the deceptive simplicity of such transformations.â&#x20AC;? -Ryan Pierson

...but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not made of color and line. My body is volumetric and composed of a complex system of interwoven biological structures. There is a certain level of automatic precision and functionality required to sustain my body and my life. Is it possible for me to exist as plasmatic? Can I exist without natural laws? Can there be noruLesness without any rules? -John Brickerstone

14 Halas, John, and Roger Manvell. Design in Motion. Studio Books, 1962.

Rules Rules Drools Rules â&#x20AC;&#x153;We live physically in a world of four dimensions, three of which can be measured with an inch tape and the fourth with a watch. The cartoon character lives within a subjective, private space of [their] own. Special laws govern the landscape in which animation takes place. In real life, topography governs all our movements; in the animated world, it is our movements that govern our surroundings. There may be a forest in the landscape, but it melts in the path of a running creature. Objects have neither weight nor texture except what is needed to express their movements. The laws of gravity exist only to be denied. Height, width, and depth lose their actuality through the demands of movement.â&#x20AC;? -Halas & Manvell

So the cartoon exists within a subjective space...sometimes it feels like the world I live in is a subjective space too, but other times I am made keenly aware of objective reality. (the law of gravity, homeostasis, an owl hunting for mice, mouse bones in owl pellets).

-John Brickerstone

“[N]either these lively creatures nor their actions ever existed until they were projected on the screen. Their projected world exists only now, at the moment of projection—and when we ask if there is any feature in which it differs from reality, the answer is, “Yes, every feature.” Neither space nor time nor the laws of nature are the same. There is a world we experience here, but not the world—a world I know and see but to which I am nevertheless not present, yet not a world past. For there is no past time at which these events either did occur or purport to have occurred. Surely not the time the drawings were made, or the frames were photographed; for the world I know and see had not yet sprung into existence then. It exists only now, when I see it; yet I cannot go where its creatures are, for there is no access to its space from ours except through vision. -Alexander Sesonske, “The World Viewed,” The Georgia Review 28.4 (1974) (via Pierson)

Sesonske claims that cartoon worlds only exist at the precise moment the cartoon is simultaneously projected and viewed by a spectator. Necessitating these formal conditions feels a lot like rules. To follow Sesonske on this train of thought leads me to wonder what other sorts of rules and conditions cartoons adhere to. And if the joy of plasmaticness is to witness an existence unfettered by rules, then why must any rules be followed at all? -John Brickerstone

“These conditions...allowed for a stable appeal of plasmaticness, a set of rules that made it possible to recognize cartoon characters as breaking our rules. In other words, although the cartoon often acted as if anything was possible in its world, there were loosely-constructed heuristic rules as to what they could and could not do. It was the presence of these rules that made it possible to speak of an “animated world” at all...” -Ryan Pierson

Merciful heaven. Are we having the chicken or the egg talk? If cartoons are cool because they break the rules, and rules are meant to be broken, then the logical conclusion is that cartoons are the example to look to, right? Or wait...does that make sense? I mean, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gotta be rules in the first place or else we got nothing to break. But where do the rules come from? Do we pick and choose the rules? Do cartoons pick out which rules to follow and which rules to break? Is there such a thing as free will? Does breaking one rule necessitate following others? Can all the rules be broken? When are we under rule of permanence, and when are â&#x20AC;&#x153;takesies-backsiesâ&#x20AC;? allowed? What is it like to die? -John Brickerstone 18

“Characters openly defied death. Metamorphosis depicted not just a physical transformation, but the freedom of a pure will to transform—any transformation could be changed again, or taken back. A freedom from consequences determines the ways in which the impossible things are possible for cartoon forms. Recognizable figures easily overcome the limits of our own physical world, in recognizable ways.” -Ryan Pierson

No consequences, huh? For no consequences to give us joy as Eisenstein indicates plasmaticness to do, then someone somewhere has to be aware that under â&#x20AC;&#x153;normalâ&#x20AC;? conditions consequences would, in fact, be inevitable. It is beginning to feel like there is something very specific about plasmatic freedom. Like to be free in the plasmatic sense is to be very aware of what it is to be unfree. -John Brickerstone

“As such, the notions of freedom and escape invoked by the idea of plasmaticness are peculiarly suited to the form of cartoons (and not necessarily the more general technique of ‘animation’). Plasmaticness is not guaranteed by the instrumental basic of frame-by-frame manipulation; it must be utilised by the cartoonist in relation to a set of conventions.” -Ryan Pierson

“We know that these intensified configurations are made up of nothing but this small set of rules; and yet each added layer of action, though by definition a repetition of the earlier action, makes it possible to see the action in new ways.” -Ryan Pierson

It’s like relational objects creating new contexts with each point of contact and departure. What are the properties of water that cause it to pool together and ripple outward in circular formations from a point on the surface that has been disrupted/engaged? -John Brickerstone

lol what 22

“However: strictly speaking, the plasmatic freedom of cartoons is of a very specific kind, the freedom of a body being able to alter itself and wander at will through a world which is understood in some attenuated way as being physical. We can see the limits of this freedom at work in one of the cartooniest of all cartoons, Chuck Jones’ Duck Amuck (1953)... A Daffy Duck cartoon which is never able to properly start, because the unseen cartoonist keeps defying Daffy’s expectations. A background changes without warning from a farmyard to the Arctic, requiring Daffy to change his costume; Daffy’s own voice gets taken away, and a rooster’s crow comes out of his mouth when he tries to speak; the top edge of the frame starts to collapse under its own weight like a wet cloth ceiling, leaving Daffy to hold it up by his own strength; and so on. The pranks continue to the end of the cartoon, when the cartoonist is revealed to be Bugs Bunny.” -Ryan Pierson

“Each gag relies on temporarily breaking a rule of some kind; some of the rules apply to our world (we expect to not have our voices taken away at will), some apply to the conventions of cartoons (we do not expect a “The End” title before the end). The gag lays bare the vocabulary of cartoons, and lay bare the potential arbitrariness of those conventions.” -Ryan Pierson

Rule #1: Arbitrary conventions. -John Brickerstone

“Cartoons may not carry a consistent set of physical laws, but they do adhere to a consistency of souls. It is only with personality that we can get an impression of animated characters behaving animatedly in an animated world.” -Ryan Pierson

one + one = ed

You now seem to front load that cartoons use rules, but maybe they only ostentatively break/rewrite rules in order to return to ignoring them? --Mijke

this is a typo. not sure if it is meant to be read as:

ostensibly /ɒˈstɛnsɪbli/ (adverb) or

as appears or is stated to be true, though not necessarily so; apparently. “the party secretary resigned, ostensibly from ill health”

ostentatiously /ˌɒstɛnˈteɪʃəsli/ (adverb)

in a pretentious or showy way designed to impress. “she was known for dressing ostentatiously in designer clothes”

either way makes for a thought provoking question. I’m not sure what the answer is...

Rule #1: Arbitrary conventions. -John Brickerstone

Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy is animated television show that was very specific in selecting how norulesness operates within its universe. The show revolves around three suburban boys all named some version of “Edward” and a group of nine other kids living in a cul de sac called “Peach Creek” while on summer vacation. A typical episode is eleven minutes long and depicts the three Ed-boys attempting business ventures, referred to in the show as “scams”, in order to make money off of the other kids so that the Eds can buy the show’s most coveted candy item: jawbreakers. There are no robots, super powers, space adventures, or talking animals in this cartoon. The world of Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy is banal and domestic at its core. The norulesness materializes in wobbling lines, squashing and stretching of characters’ bodies, and strategic lapses in physical law. The show is generous with child-like imagination, allowing for cardboard cities to be erected with chewing gum and duct tape, and demolished within the same day. Or by teasing at the possible sentience of one of the other neighborhood boys, Johnny’s, best friend and piece of rectangular wood with a painted-on face fittingly named Plank. One episode in particular stands out for its norulesness: Season Two Episode Four entitled “One + One = Ed”. The episode’s title card depicts six lime green puzzle pieces adorned with painted fruit, shapen to never fit together centered in the frame. In the lower left corner is a deformed human hand sliding a pink puzzle piece adorned with a painted bunny rabbit towards the lime green pieces under its index finger. The episode opens with a nighttime shot of short, pink-skinned Eddy sleeping in bed before being awoken by buzzing flies. The

in surprise at his friend’s unwelcome presence in his bed to which Ed responds, unaffected, that he cannot sleep due to unceasing thoughts questioning how his feet can smell if they don’t have a nose. Eddy tries to kick Ed out of his room, but Ed is unphased by this and persists in involving Eddy with his inquisitive insomnia. Eventually the night transitions to day and Eddy is shown with spirals in his eyes and yellow bags underneath to indicate a long night of sleep deprivation. Ed is still occupied asking silly questions when Eddy finally snaps and asks Ed why he doesn’t wonder about important questions such as how to get one’s face on a dollar bill. The question is rhetorical and Eddy then follows up with a call to see what the third Ed referred to in the show as “Double D” (a reference to the spelling E-d-d) is up to. Fade to black and fade in to imagery of machine components being tinkered with eagerly by Double D who declares his love for knowledge before being startled by Eddy shrieking “Hey Double D!” in order to indicate his and Ed’s presence in Double D’s bedroom. Eddy inquires about the machine double D is tinkering with, mistaking it for a toaster before Double D explains that it is actually an antique radio that he has disassembled in order to understand how it works. At first Eddy is uninterested until he comes to the conclusion that if they knew everything they would become very famous and very rich. The newly impassioned Eddy is now eager to learn and accrue all of the trappings of knowledge: fame! wealth! Jawbreakers! The three boys decide to begin their quest for knowledge at Ed’s house whose garage is packed to the brim with all kinds of junk to take a apart. After a series of gags involving a washing

Rule #1: Arbitrary conventions. -John Brickerstone

machine, and Eddy stumbling upon a bra belonging Ed’s mom, Eddy grows restless and sets off to the home of another neighborhood kid named Rolf, who is characterized by his animals, farming practices, and allusions to his immigration to Peach Creek from a vague “old country”. This scene begins with Rolf scolding his pig for hanging out with the chickens in the coop before he is interrupted by the Eds making observations on their pursuit for knowledge and solving the mysteries of life. Rolf comments that their quest reminds him of a fable from the old country called the Ugly Boy and the Tree of Heads. Eddy tries in vain to avoid hearing the story, but Rolf brings the Eds in closer to tell the tale. It tells of an ugly boy who stumbled upon a tree which bore beautiful heads as fruit. After trying on many of the heads, the boy found one that fit and ran back to his village. (Note that while Rolf tells this story he uses large fruits from a tree in his yard to symbolize the heads. At one point Rolf plops the fruit over his head and eventually removes it to reveal his head has also been removed for a moment before popping upwards out of his shirt collar, apparently just tucked inward somewhere in his body.) The story concludes with the ugly boy becoming very popular thanks to his new head. This excites Ed very much, leading him to jump up and hug the tree as he shouts out his desire for a new head. As this action plays out, Ed uproots the tree which is then revealed to be two dimensional. Double D, excited by a new discovery, takes note that the tree is flat as cardboard and heavy in weight, as the flat tree falls onto Eddy’s head and over to make contact with a nearby fence creating a bridge-like apparatus. Eddy picks himself up and clumsily tumbles over the tree bridge in a visual gag style. As the other

now proceeds to toy with the reality the Eds find themselves in. First by ignoring perspective logic by showing Eddy fall into the houses painted small in the background order to indicate distance. This gag acknowledges that flat plane that the image of the Eds exist on. The next example is Ed crawling underneath the street pavement as if it were a rubber blanket. All the while, Double D is giddy with delight as he revels in all of the new discoveries that he and his friends are making. To further drive the point of ignoring perspective logic, Eddy waves his hand as he laments at his hunger, and as his hand approaches top of frame it recedes behind the white circle which represents the sun instead of remaining in front. Eddy takes a moment to acknowledge how weird this moment is before deciding to take hold of the sun and take a bite out of it. This causes the shape to change to a crescent moon, and the lighting change to indicate that it is now night time. The scene then transitions to show a younger neighborhood boy named Jimmy who is characterized by his fragile and feminine nature (and orthodontic headgear) now alarmed at the quick transition from day to night. Ed’s head appears from over a fence, startling Jimmy, who faints, and is caught in the arms of Double D. As Eddy tells Jimmy to lighten up, he notices a loose thread coming from his sweater and begins to pull on it. After unraveling Jimmy’s sweater, the thread is revealed to be connected to Jimmy’s outline. Eddy yanks again, separating Jimmy from his outline resulting in what remains of Jimmy (his color) dissolving into a puddle on the ground which then pours down a sewer drain. Eddy then alters Jimmy’s outline into a new hairstyle for himself

Rule #1: Arbitrary conventions. -John Brickerstone

before the scene cuts to Ed cutting a circular hole in the night sky with a hand saw. When the circle is complete, it fall to the ground, revealing a group of sisters known as the Kanker sisters from a trailer park nearby in a bubble bath together. Alarmed, Ed bounces the circle containing the Kanker sisters away before Eddy enters the frame and falls into the piece of sky that Ed cut out and landed on the ground just before. It has now become a portal. Ed’s angry little sister Sarah emerges from the portal holding what remains of Jimmy in a glass pitcher. Eddy gets rid of her by winding up his feet like roadrunner and placing them on Sarah, forcing her to run off. Double D waxes excitedly about how, due to their remarkable discoveries, he and his friends may end up on the cover of an intellectual magazine. His enthusiasm is cut short as he is startled by a cow hovering just overhead. At this point in the episode, the reality surrounding the Eds has become radically altered. The usual backgrounds of suburban houses, yards, and fences have been replaced with strange patterns, floating chunks of earth, and strange doorways. The Eds begin to worry about the current state of things, but Eddy remains convinced that they are going to be rich. Suddenly, Sarah emerges from a floating house and yells at Eddy “Everything in broken! Fix it now!” Eddy responds by removing Sarah’s mouth which then proceeds to bite his face in retaliation. A checkerboard road then envelopes the frame as a scene transition until we are met with the eyeballs of the Eds against an all black frame. Double asks if Eddy ate the sun again. It is then revealed that the Eds have transported into the pupil of a neighborhood boy named Kevin who is characterized by his dislike of the Eds whom he refers to as “dorks”. Kevin attempts to speed off on his bike,

proceeds to grab a cloud and try to eat it. Double D warns him that he doesn’t know where the cloud has been before two other neighborhood kids pass by. Johnny who holds his own head which has been replaced by his piece of wood best friend Plank, and Nazz (who all of the Eds have a crush on) whose head has been placed on a giant purple dragon. Rolf then tears through the screen to reveal that he has three heads and repeats his utterance about many doors. Ed inflates the cloud he was holding with his breath. He flys away and the other two Eds grab on. Eddy wonders if they are rich yet nand Double D laments that it has all become too complicated before the cloud is burst by a giant pencil in the sky. The Eds fall to the ground and all of the noted Double D has been taking throughout the episode scatter. The episode ends with the Eds frantically trying to gather the notes as the neighborhood kids watch with puzzled looks. Reality has been restored and it seems the Eds are the only ones who experienced the deconstruction of their world.

Rule #1: Arbitrary conventions. -John Brickerstone

Tarot Popsicle / Parrot Talks It Cool “Studies of cartoons tend to revolve around the problematic of the plasmatic. Eisenstein himself noted the irony of Disney’s Romantic naturalism emerging from the United States under industrial capitalism.” -Ryan Pierson

“More recent studies of cartoons, by Norman Klein, Vivian Sobchack, and others, often expand on this thematic to explore the vexed relations between the pre- or anti- modern freedom promised in cartoon characters and the quintessential modern technologies or the automized labor conditions that produce them.

(see Norman Klein, Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon (London: Verso, 1993), 75-80; Vivian Sobchack, “Animation and Automation, or the Incredible Effortfulness of Being,” Screen 50.4 (2009), 375-391; Scott Bukatman, The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

Cartoons thrive on Taylorism while rebuking it. Consequently, the major question behind the plasmatic is whether its pleasures represent the possible defeat of capital, the triumph of capital, or some dialectical tension between the two.” (see Donald Crafton, Before Mickey,137-168; see also Krauss, 16; and Keith Broadfoot and Rex Butler, “The Illusion of Illusion,” in Alan Cholodenko, ed., The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sidney: Powers Books, 1991), 272).” -Ryan Pierson

Taylorism /ˈtəɪlərɪz(ə)m/ (noun)

the principles or practice of scientific management and work efficiency as practised in a system known as the Taylor System.

mid 19th century: from the name of Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915), the American engineer who expounded the system, + -ism.

“…the kind of assembly-line dehumanisation typically evoked in discussions of the plasmatic. …emphasizing the elastic buoyancy of cartoon bodies and environments.” -Ryan Pierson

“The paradox of freedom and automaticity, of magic and mechanism...” -Ryan Pierson

This is interesting: it also returns perhaps to the commodification of kansassian suburbs? --Mijke

Is it possible to think about Kansas anymore? What is the in between point of contention that lies in the middle of this no nonsense radar babble fest. It’s as if the guru hasn’t been to the office in a long time. The toilet paper is out. Depleted and dirty-bottomed, the workforce finds themselves with low morale and for good reason. Who among us would not be peeved with conditions poor as those? Oh who is even listening anymore? This isn’t going to come together, not today. It doesn’t feel that way at least. It feels like my eyeballs are going to dry up and fall out the sockets. Is it possible that I am still alive? I feel dead. I don’t want to be dead. But I do want to be relieved. whiney baby. It’s my prerogative. I’m gonna crash. I’m in the middle of crashing. Damn, I really wanted to work on some good shit today. But I don’t think it is going to happen. This is all forced nonsense not good for anybody. -John Brickerstone

Back to Paradoxical Which is What “Tarot Popsicle / Parrot Talks It Cool” is Supposed to Sound Like if One Reads the Words Fassst Enough

“While the elements may be said to strictly ‘make sense’ in that they do not explicitly contradict each other (i.e., interrupt each other’s movements), they don’t perfectly complement each other either; they simply coexist. This underlying sense of chaos is essential to its wonder for it keeps alive the feeling that these figures should be bumping into each other, that they shouldn’t acquire any patterns at all.” -Ryan Pierson

The idea here of existing together in the same space, neither as complimentary nor contradictory, and regarding this sort of existence with feelings of “should” reminds me of tenants around intersectionality. I believe I read Audre Lorde speak about it. How it is important to account for and prioritize the differences and disagreements between people. That this is valuable because it results in a more representative and nuanced set of social conditions. Well, have a look for yourself. Audre Lorde says it better than I ever could in her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979). -John Brickerstone

42 Lorde, Audre. The Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House. Penguin Books, 2018.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no other charters. Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.â&#x20AC;? -Audre Lorde

If the inevitable endpoint of universal entropy is some version of absolute decay, and all happenstancial occurrences along the crooked, spiraling, zig-zaggy cluster of pathways to this point will be defined as chaos, then it seems to me that it is up to us to, frankly, just do our best, to follow our instincts as social creatures, and listen to each other, and consider that all othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; existences are as equally infinite and complex as our own; to try and feel good about the world we live in before we are all inevitably destroyed. I find great comfort in knowing that someday our sun will explode and leave our solar system in smithereens, and that someday the entire multiverse may very well collapse into its own cosmic vacuum and cease to exist entirely. To this I say amen: Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s do what we can with what we have. Paradox chaos and all. -John Brickerstone

Conclusions Plasmatic “...the cartoon escapes what are thought to be nearly-unbearable burdens of modernity through escape, through magic...” “Reality is obviously not a standard for cartoon.” -Ryan Pierson You disbelieve this (I think?) --Mijke

think so... hm, yeah I

I’d like to expand notions of what a cartoon is beyond existing merely as something to look at or watch into existing as an aspirational marker for reality. NoruLesness strives to manifest the tenets of plasmaticness in any dimension. The aim of NorulESneSs is to strike down and demolish the fourth wall of the animated cartoon so that the plasmatic may enter our world or any world for that matter. Our minds are our greatest ally in this effort. -John Brickerstone 46

booklet three

â&#x20AC;&#x153;No object in creation [in the cartoon], whether it be a house, a piano, a tree or an alarm clock, lacks the faculties of organic, in fact anthropomorphic, movement, facial expression, and phonetic articulation.â&#x20AC;? -Panofsky (via Pierson)

Let us suppose that character is all around us. Cartoon worlds are packed

with characters. I’m sure it is obvious by now, I mean...where even are we?...that I am obsessed with cartoons. So obsessed that I want to turn the world into one. And if we think of our minds as our greatest ally, then my next question is: What happens when we think like a cartoon? In this next section, I’d like to dig into some of the notions surrounding “character” to see what happens when they are used in associative applications and constructing mental frameworks. 3

If Everything is Character To begin exploring “character” I will enter us into another dialogue. This time with ideas from “Character Animation and the Embodied Mind-Brain” (2008) written by Patrick Power. To shake things up, this conversation is going to be formatted differently from previous ones. I’m going to make it up as I go along, but don’t worry: I’ll make sure that attributions are clear and accounted for.

Power, Patrick. “Character Animation and the Embodied Mind—Brain.” Animation, vol. 3, no. 1, 2008, pp. 25–48., doi:10.1177/1746847708088734.

article

Character Animation and the Embodied Mind–Brain Patrick Power

Abstract This interdisciplinary investigation of aspects of 3D character animation synthesizes relevant research findings from diverse perspectives, including neuroscience, narratology, robotics, anthropology, cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, and considers how they might be integrated as theory for animators and animation studies. The article focuses on the creative nature of character conception and creation in a 3D animated environment and on aspects of character – narrative and style, in particular. It examines how findings from interdisciplinary research on the embodied mind–brain, including neuroscientific research with regard to mentalizing and simulation theory, can inform the creative animation process and might be gainfully synthesized in an animation studies context to inform both pedagogy and creative practice. Keywords 3D, aesthetics, animation, anthropomorphism, character, embodied, mind–brain, narrative, neuroscience, simulation

Introduction There is a dearth of theoretical analysis of animation compared to other arts or media and, until recently, theory addressing the specificities of the creative animation process has been particularly scarce. animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com) Copyright © 2008 SAGE (London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore) Vol 3(1): 25–48 [1746-8477(200803)]10.1177/1746847708088734

Downloaded from anm.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 9, 2016

“Character in narrative animation is a constructed model of the embodied, motivated mind, and so is a natural if indirect focus of neuroscientific and related research.”

Patrick Power

“

“‘Psychologically, character is a mental model of an actor in a story’, and the modern conception of character both in the arts and everyday terms is an entity that is ‘affected by experience, built of goals, intentions, and emotions, from which actions flow’ (Oatley and Mar, 2005: 189). Characters then are salient intentional agents within the story-world, and their motivated intent drives plot.”

Power Character animation and the embodied mind–brain 39

Figure 4 Simulation-based mentalizing, or mind-reading, is involved in diverse aspects of narrative-based character animation.

state, either directly or indirectly through narrative. Simulation is hypothesized by some theorists to be the basis of emotional resonance, emotion contagion and empathy (Goldman and Sripada, 2005). ‘Emotional contagion comes into play in our reactions to narrative, for we are also story-sharing creatures’ (Keen, 2006). Recent studies (using animated cues) have also shown that not only empathy but goal contagion can result from watching others strive to achieve their goals (Dik and Aarts, 2007), and is strengthened by perceived effort involved. Conway et al. (2003) studied the difference in memories of experienced events vis-à-vis imagined events8 and found that ‘memories of experienced events contain sensory–perceptual knowledge stored in occipital networks whereas memories for imagined events contain generic imagery generated from frontal networks’ (p. 334). These findings support methods such as Stanislavsky’s, where experienced affective events are recalled to feed imagined emotion-based events enabling authentically motivated action rather than generic performance. Writers do the same when drawing from what Graham Greene called the compost heap of sensual and emotional experience in episodic memory to create novels or screenplays, and the application in animation is self-evident. Sensual and emotional cues are likewise crucial in narrative depiction, underpinning what practitioners across media often articulate as show, don’t tell. Specificity and sensory detail, combined with limited use of abstraction, generalization,

Hello it is me. You know. How are you? Have we lost the plot? Or has it thickened? Both? Neither? Good to be here with you. Thank you for existing. A very happy accident.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Anthropomorphic personification is so pervasive in cartoon and 3D feature animation that it is virtually synonymous stylistically with these genres. The anthropomorph as an intentional character can play and resonate on any number of aesthetic levels: creative ambiguity, defamiliarization, play of representation, imagination, symbolism, appeal to children, fantasy, surrealism, the uncanny, humour, shape-shifting or morphing, magic realism, subversion, irony, satire, jouissance and so on.

Patrick Power

â&#x20AC;? 9

“All fictional universes depend of what Gardner (1991) calls believability as distinct from truth, and mentalizing addresses important aspects of what the animator must consider if an animated character is to be believable, taking into account how it looks, its perceived intent and consequent motivated animated behavior.” -Patrick Power

“Moment-to-moment multimodal perception involves proactive emotion-motivated creation of a scenario of meaning for the organism in its environment, searching out certain aspects, exaggerating some, simulating or ignoring others in a way analogous in some respects to how an animator selectively interprets a scene or a writer a scenario. Relevant memories are activated; emotion-salient memories have more significance and are rapid access.” -Patrick Power 11

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Engagement with characters in these scenarios involves narrative empathy --

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Patrick Power

Okay so I know I’ve been mostly talking through pictures for the last couple of pages. I don’t mean to make Power do all of the linguistic communication. Do my pictures make you think about stuff? No, wait...don’t tell me. No, wait...tell me.

Coming ‘Atcha with Some Words of My Own What is my name? What does it do for me? What are the mechanisms with which it represents my essence? Do I have an essence? If everything is character, I am a salient intentional agent within the story-world, and my motivated intent drives plot. If everything is character, then what motivates the Earth to spin round its axis? If everything is character, then why do cancer cells carry out exponential growth and kill humans? It is not my intention to drown out scientific observation and inquiry with an animistic “character” worldview. I hope that is clear. How can character be used as a tool to form more intimate bonds with objects or ideas otherwise thought of as inanimate? When does projecting/considering agency onto other things help us deepen our understanding and relationship to rules? When does it get in the way?

Just because everything is character does not mean that all motivations are parallel. What motivates humans may not motivate canaries. What motivates earthworms may not motivate nerve pathways. And so on and so forth....I mean, shit, what motivates some humans as individuals won’t motivate their neighbor, or sister, or brother. There is infinite nuance and complexity, even in similarity. Thinking of things as characters makes it easier for me to grasp what is otherwise outside of myself. It even helps me grasp what goes on inside of me. Personally, biologically, mentally, emotionally,slowly, poetically, begrudgingly, intimately... As a matter of fact, and I know it may sound simple or vague or something, but conceptualizing everything as character is how most things ever make sense to me. Sometimes I get stuck inside of myself. It’s like a solipsistic quicksand pit. If I only believe in what I experience first-hand, then I am alone and lost and ignorant and afraid. Listening and trying to learn and daydreaming help me out of the quicksand. They remind me that I’m not alone, none of us are. That we are all part of infinity. That it’s worth paying attention to.

Reality Isn’t “Wrong” Necessarily But Cartoons Are Pretty Frickin’ Cool

“

Patrick Power

“

“Believability and authenticity in narrative, in particular 3D animation, is often confused with realistic representation, and realism (defined in this context as audio-visual verisimilitude) is one of animation’s more contentious stylistic issues. Disney decided realism was the way ahead during the making of Pinocchio (1940) and sought “more of a three-dimensional quality” (Leslie, 2004: 203). This quest for realism coincided with the studio’s abandonment of any radical aesthetic that was evident in some of its earlier films.”

You remember that Disney film based on Rapunzel called “Tangled”? I heard somewhere that they had an entire fleet of workers dedicated to rendering the princess’s hair. Same kind of deal for the snow in “Frozen” and the water in “Moana”. So the quest for realism continues... That is all well and good, but inside of me there is a desire to not only see our perceived world mirrored back in gritty (looking at first person shooter video games) or idealized detail. The desire to witness and experience modes of being otherwise unattainable to the human.

John Brickerstone

“Eschewing realism creatively can enable an engaging experience, but pursuing it can prove problematic.” Why can pursuing realism prove problematic? There is something satisfying about a successful attempt at representing reality. But how do notions of standards and bias and idealism relate to the pursuit of realism?

“Realism seems to elicit more engagement from viewers to a point, until slight mismatches become uncanny and people find them strange; this is the “uncanny valley” (Mar and Macrae, 2006: 120).”

“The uncanny valley concept came from robotics research in Japan by Masahiro Mori in 1970, and comes into play when animated phenomena look very realistic but not quite real, and the brain registers the subtle mismatch resulting in loss of emotional engagement or even repulsion.” 20

“…that the more realistic the imagery, the more it triggered agency and intent, whereas the “peculiarly rich experience” (Whitfield, 2006: 923) afforded by the animated dreamscapes might register more aesthetic or emotional reward.”

Maybe it has something to do with letting an illusion be an illusion. Maybe we want to see fingerprints not pretend they don’t exist.

Patrick Power

Some Schmuckerstone

“The brain seems happy to accept caricature, but not an uncanny mismatch. Of course, the uncanny valley effect can be used to aesthetic advantage, too, and has been in such films as... Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982, 1992) The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) ...where ambiguity vis-a-vis a character’s nature as human or android can add to intrigue and suspense.”

“The mind-brain can happily accept a circle chasing a square as characters in a narrative, but may register repulsion as a realistic simulation with a slight mismatch in its modalities.”

“…realistic imagery has lots of information that can be seen as noise, whereas stylized imagery can isolate the essence of a character.”

“

“Less realistic synthetic movement has been shown to be more readily accepted as natural if the character is less realistic in form (Chaminade et al, 2007).”

Patrick Power

Conclusionish Type Stuff While the pursuit of accuracy in representing “reality” yields progress in deepening our perceptual understanding and relationship to the multiverse we are part of, there are pitfalls in such an endeavor. Without room to embrace abstraction and distortion and exaggeration and simplification, we run the risk of trapping ourselves in the uncanny valley. Although it takes a great deal of skill and time and effort and knowledge to create realistic representations of “reality” , and although it is indeed an admirable cause with numerous applications, it does a disservice to poems and cartoons and subatomic particles to define our aspirations and prescribe value to them based solely on the accuracy with which we echo back the world as we human beasts know it. Is the quest for nORULESNEss making more sense? Does it have to?

“[The] realistic approach does not necessarily converge with aesthetic excellence. We scan the world after all, not for reality, but for meaning; an emotion-based inference of what likely scenarios mean for us. Scott McCloud (1994) in his groundbreaking work Understanding Comics considers that iconic imagery can have a rhetorical advantage over realism in that our image of self is necessarily more iconic than that of the other so we can identify more naturally with an iconic agent.”

“

Patrick Power

NORULESNESS idea conjuration #1 Form creative coalitions (such as a music group or paintball team) Each member contributes to a body of a work. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s run with the music group metaphor: Say this group is working on an album, maybe 4 or 5 tracks is good. Each member is a character. The group itself is a character. Each character has key components/specific characteristics. Things such as: - personality - stage presence - attire - musical parts - etc...

These are documented and formatted into instruction manuals. All musical compositions composed and laid out in a readable format (sheet music, or tabs, lyrics, etcâ&#x20AC;Ś) and included in the instruction manual. Think, like, a combination of a brand guidelines document and a script for a musical. These materials are distributed and available for free online. This music group can exist anywhere with the parts played by anybody who is up for learning and performing the material. Material can be altered or interpreted in anyway. (Can you donate intellectual property to common use? Like, to ensure that nobody can ever limit anybody else on what they do with the material? This way the project belongs to everybody, and is left up to society and the universe/multiverse at large to interpret. Well if you can, then thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to try.)

NORULESNESS idea conjuration #2 Listen to songs as inner dialogues, atmospheric sonic augmentations, spaghetti westerns, soap operas, math equations, enchantment spells, etc... As many characters as youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like. Perhaps each word is a character, perhaps each verse, instrument, ambient drone, crunch noise, transcendent harmonyâ&#x20AC;Ś perhaps each voice. perhaps it is a dialogue between 2 people, perhaps you are one of them.

perhaps it is 16 people and you are merely eavesdropping coyly.

it can be anything / it’s a frickin’ augmentation! Like with that mind of yours, it’s something like the following addition formula:

YOUR MIND + SENSORY INPUT = (in this case: your mind)

(in this case: songs)

ANY SPLENDID HORRIBLE ELOQUENT POORLY WRITTEN SYNAPSE FIRES AND ALL RESULTANT BOUNTY (in this case: glory! glory! hallelujah! )

I am going to do the imagination techniques described in nOruLESNess IDEA CONJURATION #2, and try my best to transcribe what comes to mind while listening to a song in this fashionâ&#x20AC;Śright after I start boiling the pasta waterâ&#x20AC;Śbe right back. no wait...three songs. ok. cya in a bit.

Poured, salted, and heating up. Let’s do this:

First Song

Spiderman Animated Series Theme (1990’s) Original Lyrics Spider-Man Spider-Man Radioactive Spider-Man Spider-Man Spider-Man Radioactive Spider-Man Spider blood Spider blood Radioactive spider blood Spider blood Spider blood Radioactive spider blood Spider blood Spider blood Radioactive spider blood Spider blood Spider blood Radioactive spider blood Spider-Man Spider-Man

My Transcribed Augmentation

Second Song

Silver Tiles by Matt and Kim (2005) Original Lyrics

My Transcribed Augmentation

Three teeth left his silver smile Brushed clean three metal tiles And tiles like parking lots Three miles it never stops boy You’ll be okay boy Your silver tiles And all our hopes And all our friends Through parking lots It’s where we’ve been Shoes have grown mighty old Pants faded knees with holes Stitched up now silver thread Fixed up now like I said boy You’ll be okay boy Your silver thread boy Your silver tiles Your silver bones And all our hopes And all our friends Through parking lots I found this B I got in school Three teeth left his silver smile Burnt skin for miles and miles Of crossing parking lots Three miles it never stops boy You’ll be okay boy Your silver tiles Your silver bones With silver sides And all our hopes And all our friends Through parking lots I found this B I got in school And all our hopes And all our friends Through parking lots I found this B I got in school It’s the B I got in school

Third Song

Stars by Nina Simone (1987) Original Lyrics I was never one for singing what I really feel Except tonight I’m bringing everything I know that’s real Stars, they come and go, they come fast or slow They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze And all you see is glory Hey but it gets lonely there when there’s no one here to share We can shake it away, if you’ll hear a story People lust for fame like athletes in a game, we break our collarbones and come up swinging, some of us are downed some of us are crowned, and some are lost and never found But most have seen it all, they live their lives in sad cafes and music halls They always come up singing Some make it when they’re young, before the world has done its dirty job and later on someone will say “You’ve had your day, now you must make way” But they’ll never know the pain of living with a name you never owned or the many years forgetting what you know too well That the ones who gave the crown have been let down You try to make amends without defending Perhaps pretending you never saw the eyes of grown men of twenty-five that follow as you walk and ask for autographs Or kiss you on the cheek and you never can believe they really loved you Some make it when they’re old (Perhaps they have a soul they’re not afraid to bare or perhaps there’s nothing there) Stars, they come and go, they come fast they come slow They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze And all you see is glory But most have seen it all, they live their lives in sad cafes and music halls They always have a story Some women have a body men will want to see and so they put it on display Some people play a fine guitar, I could listen to them play all day Some ladies really move across the stage and gee, they sure can dance I guess I could learn how, if I gave it half a

My Transcribed Augmentation

Original Lyrics

My Transcribed Augmentation

chance But I always feel so funny when my body tries to soar And I seem to always worry about missing the next chord I guess there isn’t anything to put up on display Except the tunes, and whatever else I say But anyway, that isn’t really what I meant to say I meant to tell a story, I live from day to day Stars, they come and go, they’re coming fast they come slow They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze And all you see is glory But most have seen it all, who live their lives in sad cafes and music halls And we always have a story So if you don’t lose patience with my fumbling around I’ll come up singing for you, even when I’m down

What Was That? It was an idea conjuration put in action. Here is some more of my thinking behind it: The three songs were selected based on a chronological timeline of my life. Ten years between each song. Each song is somehow emblematic of a time and version of me.

First Song: Age 5 (1999) Second Song: Age 15 (2009) Third Song: Age 25 (2019)

NOrULesNess assumes many forms, noruLesneSS assumes nothing.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk about time some more a bit later. For now, gonna go see if my pasta water is boiling.

And now it is time for...

42 Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study of the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. New American Library, 1954.

with SUSAN K. LANGER

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation. The promiscuous collection and tabulation of data have given way to a process of assigning possible meanings, merely supposed real entities, to mathematical terms, working out the logical results, and then staging certain crucial experiments to check the hypothesis against the actual, empirical results. 43

But the facts which are accepted

by virtue of these tests are not actually observed at all.

With the advance of mathematical technique in physics, the tangible results of experiment have become less and less spectacular;

on the other hand,

their significance has grown in inverse proportion. (oof. roasted.)

T he men in the laboratory

have departed so far from the old forms of experimentation —typified by Galileo’s weights and Franklin’s kite— that they cannot be said to observe the actual objects that they cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all;

of their curiosity at all;

instead, they are watching index needles, revolving drums, and sensitive plates. No psychology of â&#x20AC;&#x153;associationâ&#x20AC;? of sense-experiences Can relate these data to the objects they signify, Can relate these data to the objects they signify,

For in most cases the objects have never been experienced.

Observation has become almost entirely indirect;

and readings take the place of genuine witness.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Observation has become almost entirely indirect; Observation Observation has has become become almost almost entirely entirely indirect; indirect;

booklet four

I am here, but barely. Writing out the words like dusty skeleton dance moves albeit far less interesting. Listening to the old music that held me as I grew asinine, hairy, and emotionally confused. It wouldn’t be a party without somebody losing their dignity; that’s how you know you’re having a good time. I wouldn’t know. Okay, sorry sport.

If I keep going I am afraid I’ll fall right into oblivion. That’s the inevitable endpoint I suppose. The game is fall down as many times as you can and to really make the bruises count. It’s hard to remember anything that happens in between each tumble and spill.

If I fucking knew what to do I would take a chainsaw to the globe and shred it and leave it as a desperate tangled mass of

thin slivers to float thin slivers to float thin slivers to float away to infinity. away to infinity. away to infinity. thin slivers to float thin slivers to float thin slivers to float away to infinity. away to infinity. away to infinity. thin slivers to float thin slivers to float thin slivers to float away to infinity. away to infinity. away to infinity. 5

What is this? --Mijke

What the fuck, I wish this one was good, but it just isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t good. the bootlicking police came over, in to town and put the whole block on house arrest. Nobody was allowed to leave and the children had to use their toys as kindling for the furnace.

The face is in the sky.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already been there before we were paying attention.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no introduction necessary, everything is on camera, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re good little dog. Good dog, jingle jingle. Time to eat.

If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t eat, you die.

Go outside when you can because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll maybe be worth it. (Passive passive, dumb. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hold on.)

These are the words that come. It’s the ones without thought that do the talking right now. Because the thinking has become too serious for its own good. And nobody is really paying attention to much except an inbox of glory. The whole world.

In keeping with traditions of the past. For good times please call a doctor. Don’t talk to strangers and who knows maybe you’ll get lucky and remember to think positive in order to set yourself up for the best manifestation.

Hole world. Bleeding. God bloody damn, the violence is good because we love it don’t we? If the hands of children could hold all the pain should we let them? Who says of course? I’m not sure what to say. That’s what happens when the doubts creep in.

Fucking a betty was a flintstone lady and the bedrock heard the cars coming from a mile away, Letters from a loved one go unread everyday. Damn it, my pet frog is going to die. Why couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it have been me? Why does the tooth have to pain so badly? So paint to the sky and keep in secret your goal and fetcher.

Good boyhood your horse is starved and has no shoes so hoof it. Belieber warning, newfound glory. Earth-shake, milk bound.

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your preferred time?

And mode of delivery for the livery streaky steaks and head giving bro down?

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jean-michel a couple words back if ya caught it Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m selling skate decks but moving on for goddess sake.

The warm liquid is down.

Not spilt your tie is throat creasing. Pinks and blues right now the pastel goth scene has arrived among others.

Infinity too many.

Been dumb. Been had. Tiffany blue.

booklet five

3 Growing up, my asthma made engaging

in sports difficult. The few times that I did try out playing on a team, I always had to make sure to use my inhaler before and after practice, and even that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t rule out the possibility of an asthma attack being induced, which would result in my chest tightening and allowing me only shallow gasps for air. There is a photo of me being walked off the soccer field in tears by my father, my face flushed and mouth gaping desperately in attempt to both sob and fill my lungs with air at the same time. It always smelled of fresh mowed lawns at soccer games, and the air was either wet with early morning fog or it was a hot afternoon and the air felt so dry that it was dusty. I had allergies which were also exacerbated by prolonged exposure to the outside world (nature).

Itchy, swollen eyes, clogged sinuses, irritated patches of skin, the works really. This is all to say that my fondness and inclinations towards fictionalized virtual reality projections (television, cartoons, video games, etc…) is the result of numerous (perhaps easily overlooked or disregarded) factors which contributed to a vexed relationship between myself and reality as it seemed to me. To put it more plainly, engaging in physical activity or even just being outside (depending on the air quality or surrounding plant life) caused me pain and discomfort. All of that suffering only to kick a ball into a structure made of hollow metal poles with nylon netting stretched between, or to go for a walk and “enjoy” nature was not worth it. Especially not compared to the sorts of adventures I could go on in cartoon worlds. As a cartoon I could inhabit multiple personas, explore fantastical worlds made of sugar or hot lava or star dust, interact with strange creatures both friendly and terrifying, and display talents and special abilities otherwise deemed impossible in “reality”. Sure, cartoons (or virtual reality projections or whatever) may not be “real” in the 4

same way that catching a frisbee or mountain biking is real, but it is my view that there is real value in a â&#x20AC;&#x153;cartoonâ&#x20AC;? experience.

Yes. Say something more. Speculate. --Mijke

Okay. Commencing speculation: A cartoon experience is capable of unrestraint. In cartoons we laugh at pain, or wail in pain, or sing a song of pain. All lines (may be crossed) no damnation in cartoon. Not crossed when it feels bad. Crossed to learn the line was drawn for no super real reason at all. A cartoon experience can expand what it means to be alive. A cartoon experience can expand what it means to be dead. A cartoon experience can make things feel better. Can make things less scary. A cartoon experience can choose to follow any rules it wishes. Maybe some rules keep the cartoon going. Maybe others bring it to an end. A cartoon experience can remind us that rules, just like most things, are at some level (be it macro, micro, atomic) in perpetual motion.

Now, it is probably a good time to mention that as I grew up, my relationship and appreciation towards “reality” did evolve and expand. There became more room for nuance and an increased capacity to appreciate nature and humanity and the simultaneous limitation and infinite complexity of it all. Yes, my allergies do still bother me sometimes, but that doesn’t negate the value of a hike through the woods or the strangely rewarding feeling one is left with after mowing the lawn on a hot day. A sense of responsibility towards my surroundings is developing inside of me as I progress through life. Responsibility can be a bummer sometimes, but the sense of pride and belonging that accompany contributions to progress and healing far outweigh whatever burdens arise along the way. Plus, all we’ve really got is time and while there is never quite enough, we do have to fill it doing something. Can you write about this in relation to cartoons in relation to chain-sawing the earth to bits. It seems to shift cartoon images around. --Mijke

Sure thing. I’ll give it a shot starting on the next page.

For starters this cognitive dissonance forged by the clashing of responsibility-senses and chainsaw-to-the-world-desires is a noisy beast. Haha, I guess the truth is brutal and love is tough. If hell was real they said the road there was paved with good intentions. To chain-saw the Earth to shreds could be seen as an act of destruction or evolution. In some ways it is a matter of perspective. Do you have an opinion? Some people think the Earth is flat.

I love this place. I love the Earth. It is the only home Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve know as far as I know. It will all burn one day. Reduced to void. Might as well test the limits of what is possible. How far can we bend the rules? Is this dangerous thinking? Who makes it dangerous? Dangerous for who?

Have you done harm to others? Who hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t? But have you taken the time to Question your actio ns? Investigative detec tive, Magnifying glass, Human heart.

ok, that was fun. letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get back on track. 9

Of course, attaining a satisfactory time management scheme proves to be quite tricky. Personally, I’d use the term “once in a blue moon” to describe the frequency with which I reflect on how I’ve spent my time and feel good about it. There are infinite variations of what “time well spent” could be. Given the context in which we find ourselves currently situated, I’d like to introduce a segment of this text I like to call: “TIME IN NORULESNESS!!” (muppet show pigs in space voice)

Just in the norulesnessnick of time.

each day is a frame of animation. each second is a frame of animation. each detail is there, your brain is designed to either ignore it or observe it.

Expand this section... ...but how?

With Help From Friends As we explore time in norUlesness it will help to ask others for some help/support. I’ve already typed the word “help” three times on this page. Oops. there goes four. So in this section we are gonna call upon three brilliant friendo sources. We’ll be weaving in and out of dialogues. I’ll make sure to show y’all the book and citation as we go along. But now, without any further ado... Killing Time So I don’t know how you’re feeling at this point, but I figure if anybody is ever interested in living their life with a little more NORULESness then it’s a good idea to think about what that means for our relationship to time. Remember earlier when Halas and Manvell noted that our world is understood through four dimensions? Three measured with a ruler and the fourth with a watch? Well my friends...watch out.... it is time to get fourth dimensional! 12

Thinkinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; About How to Spend It

Massumi, Brian. Parables For the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, 2007.

Oh gosh. time can be spent on so many things. The choices are overwhelming. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good time to look to a friend for some suggestions. All I can think of right now is dental hygiene.

" # #

# ! #

First up let’s look to Parables for the Virtual (2007) by Brian Massumi for some insights. [One could spend their time]:

(Brian) Engaging with the vague

“Vague concepts, and concepts of vagueness, have a crucial, and often enjoyable, role to play...Generating a paradox and then using it as if it were a well-formed logical operator is a good way to put vagueness in play. Strangely, if this procedure is followed with a good dose of conviction and just enough technique, presto!, the paradox actually becomes a well-formed logical operator. Thought and language bend to it like light in the vicinity of a super dense heavenly body. This may be an example of miraculation. (As if lucidity itself could be invented.)” 15

(John) Engaging with the vague

Dang, I don’t even want to act like I know what you’re talking about dude. But I love it. To be honest, writing this big-indulgent-poofy piece of academic text makes me feel like a total phony.

(Brian) Foster or Debunk

“So why not hang up the academic hat of critical self-seriousness, set aside the intemperate arrogance of debunking-and enjoy? If you don’t enjoy concepts and writing and don’t feel that when you write you are adding something to the world, if only the enjoyment itself, and that by adding that ounce of positive experience to the world you are affirming it, celebrating its potential, tending its growth, in however small a way, however really abstractly-well, just hang it up. It is not that critique is wrong. As usual, it is not a question of right and wrong-nothing important ever is. Rather, it is a question of dosage. It is simply that when you are busy critiquing you are less busy augmenting. You are that much less fostering.

There are times when debunking is necessary. But, if applied in a blanket manner, adopted as a general operating principle, it is counterproductive. Foster or debunk. It’s a strategic question. Like all strategic questions, it is basically a question of timing and proportion. Nothing to do with morals or moralizing. Just pragmatic.”

(John) Foster or Debunk

BRIAN!!!! Where were you in the beginning of this whole mess, dude?? You mean I could have been enjoying this process all along? AND you’re telling me that there is inherent value in engaging with things we enjoy??? And then at the end you bring it back to time...and also say something about proportion. You’re crazy. This is great. What else do you got?

(Brian) Thinking about the body

“Is the body as linked to a particular subject position anything more than a local embodiment of ideology? Where has the potential for change gone? How does a body perform its way out of a definitional framework that is not only responsible for its very “construction,” but seems to prescript every possible signifying and counter-signifying move as a selection from a repertoire of possible permutations on a limited set of predetermined terms? How can the grid itself change?”

(John) Thinking about the body

Sometimes I look at my body and wonder if I am betraying this contraption. Homeostasis is a pretty neat thing. You mention a body performing its way out of a definitional framework...that reminds me of plasmatic stuff. Shit dude, all this noruLEsness stuff is wild. And then you talk about change. Change is something that takes time and we’re talking about time in noruleSness, right?

(Brian) Sing along with changes

“Ground is not a static support any more than air is an empty container. The ground is full of movement, as full as the air is with weather, just at different rhythm from most perceptible movements occurring with it (flight of the arrow). Any geologist will tell you that the ground is anything but stable. It is a dynamic unity of continual folding, uplift, and subsidence... The slightness of ongoing qualitative change paled in comparison to the grandness of periodic ‘rupture’... If the everyday was no longer a place of rupture or revolt, as it had been in glimpses at certain privileged historical junctures, it might still be a site of modest acts of ‘resistance’ or ‘subversion’ keeping alive the possibility of systemic change.”

(John) Sing along with changes

Turn and face the strange. Um, but, so, it sounds like if change and progress are desired then it is not super likely that a big-fast-sudden rupture is gonna be the way it happens. Like, there is slim chance of that sort of thing happening, but that, really, change and progress find sustenance and footing in the everyday. Like, a cumulative thing. Like what gives life to cartoons. Day by day. Frame by frame. Thanks for your time.

As the Days Go By Wow, that was a pretty great conversation with Brian Massumi. I wonder if we’ll ever hear from him again. I’d be curious to know a bit more about the virtual. You guys heard of that VR stuff? Wild... But for now, I’d like to talk to Adrienne Maree Brown through her book Emergent Strategy (2017). I bet she’s got all sorts of insights. Let’s see.

Adrienne Maree Brown

Hey Adrienne, where ya at?

“I came to this edge of Mexico to pull a book together because, a few years ago, it was here, near this tiny portion of the massive ocean, that I began to realize how important emergent strategy, strategy for building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions, is to me—the potential scale of transformation that could come from movements intentionally practicing this adaptive, relational way of being, on our own and with others.”

Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changin Worlds. AK Press, 2017.

woah, nice. that edge of Mexico sounds like a real swell place. and emergent strategy sounds super intriguing...this dude Brian and I were just talking about systematic change and its place in the dayby-day. what is something that inspired your thinking about emergent strategy? â&#x20AC;&#x153;I love the scene at the end of The Matrix where Neo sees everything in green-on-black code. Emergent strategy is a way that all of us can begin to see the world in life codeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;awakening us to the sacred systems of life all around us. Many of us have been and are becoming students of these systems of life, wondering if in fact we can unlock some crucial understanding about our own humanity if we play closer attention to this place we are from, the bodies we are in.â&#x20AC;?

good movie. hey, you got any wisdom to share with a student of life exploring norulesness? “Life is not happening to us. We are learning to be in the actual current moment, to recognize where we have choice ... where do we have choice? “In a terrifying twist, it turns out we always have it. So the great question is: how to be intentional, in the present moment, to take responsibility for your state of being, and for your life?” oh gosh...that is a great question. i don’t really know “Another participant-teacher in the community of practice, Jane Sung E Bai, asked us to consider, “What if I am responsible for everything?”

yikes! that question raises the stakes even higher! “It’s not a singular task, to be responsible for what happens in this world-we do not exist or transform in isolation. We are in this universe. We are actively reflecting on how to be in our lives, to best embody our greatness and to yield a more liberated future for ourselves, and thus, in the fractal sense, for all of existence.”

“There is a lot to be careful of. We are not yet masterful, even though there are moments of collective genius. Sometimes we misread each other, push each other too hard, get defensive, or give unsolicited coevolution pressure. Sometimes what is happening in the world is so terrifying and urgent that we forget our complexity, or wonder why we would spend time on ourselves or take time for our friendships when there is so much external work to do. What I am noticing is that it is not a privilege to practice coevolution through friendship - it is the deepest work.”

friendship, huh? i like the sound of that. “I believe it is how communities have survived. I believe it is Harriet Tubman going back to free others, because it wasn’t enough to free only herself. I believe it is Ubuntu active in my life.I believe it is the freedom that we are longing for, which will never be given to us, which we have to create, the pulsing life force of the collective body we are birthing, the rhythm of a shared heart.” i’m not sure what “Ubuntu” is. I’ve only ever heard of the linux operating system called that, but i have a feeling Adrienne referring to something else. so i am gonna look it up on wikipedia*. Ubuntu /zulu pronunciation: ([ùɓúntʼù]) a Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity”. It is often translated as “I am because we are,” or “humanity towards others”, but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”.

*Tutu, Desmond, “Who we are: Human uniqueness and the African spirit of Ubuntu”, (2013). “About the Name”. Official Ubuntu Documentation. Canonical. (Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. Retrieved 2 February 2017).

do you have any thoughts related to time? “...in my twenties, when I was gutshaking about things that were leaping out of me like emo tweens, that’s when I learned about the time traveling emotion.” what is the time traveling emotion? “...it is like anything else that traverses time, both fully of another time, and fully present in the place when it appears.” would you elaborate? “... in the case of grief, the time traveling emotion touches into your sadness over a present day experience of absence, and then drags forward a living satchel of the most tender innocent moments, the smallest memory. or perhaps sucks your heart back in time. my grandfather, impossibly big and godly, hugging me, in his own garage, just out of the near-georgia sun, with the smell of hay and horses around us. it isn’t just the senses, but the complex spectrum of a moment completely felt .” 26

time travel seems really complicated. how do you think emotions do it? “Music is one of the systems by which emotions traverse time, both in tone, content, and something as simple as age. Some emotions stay in the soundtrack of their root memory. There is a Janet Jackson song that opens the way to an emotion of innocence. A new song can surprise me when it opens the way to something dusty and eager to be felt.” y’know, it’s funny that you bring up music and time. earlier in this text i went through a bit of a time travel experiment where i listened to songs relevant to different periods of my life. somehow there always seems to be more new things to feel, even in old things.

Adrienne, I know you are super inspired by science fiction. I still need to check out those books by Octavia Butler. I was wondering if people ever criticize your belief in science fiction as “woo-wooimaginary-dribble-nerd-pipe-dream-fantasies”... what do you say in response to such viewpoints? “Science fiction is not fluffy stuff. Afrofuturism is not just the coolest look that ever existed. The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice and pleasure, the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go.”

i sure would like to see a future ripe with justice and pleasure. i want the future to know i’m here for it. and you’re right...science fiction is a great way to engage with notions of the future. like saying “hey multiverse! we’re thinking about ya!!”. since we find ourselves on the page of a text I wrote about my obsession with cartoons, i gotta ask: do you think cartoons can help tell the future that it’s on our mind? “Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status-quo, advancing or regressing justice. We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future. All organizing is science fiction. If you are shaping the future, you are a futurist. And visionary fiction is a way to practice the future in our minds, alone and together.” thank you so much for existing, Adrienne. and for being here on this page with me to talk about time and the future and imagination and all that good stuff. i gotta go talk some more about cartoons... so this is goodbye for now. stay groovy, dude. cya.

30 Sturm, James, and Marek Bennett. The World Is Made of Cheese: The Applied Cartooning Manifesto. The Center for Cartoon Studies, 2014.

To Live As Cartoon So if one seeks to spend their time engaging in future thoughts like what we talked about with Adrienne Murray Brown, what are some ways to do such a thing as a cartoon? If each passing moment is like a frame in our animated world,how do we stretch and squash our time here to our heartsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; content? NORULesness is a bit of an amorphous blob, an existence with plasmatic DNA...but out there are some people thinking through cartoons with a more straight-forward, practical approach. James Sturm and Marek Bennett are part of The Center for Cartoon Studies. Together they have written: The World is Made of Cheese: The Applied Cartooning Manifesto (2014). Maybe they have some insights to share on how to live as a cartoon in this friendly-crazy-terrifying world. (if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re into practical sorts of things)

Hey Marek, Hey James

Hello there.

What is applied cartooning? Allow us to explain

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Applied cartooning is finding voices, deepening understanding, discovering new models, building new networks, educating, reaching new audiences, growing as an artist and sustaining a healthy professional practice.â&#x20AC;?

Oh cool.

Thx.

So, why “applied cartooning”? We think so too

“Naming an idea [like ‘Applied Cartooning’] gives it visibility, gravity, and momentum allowing opportunities to flourish.”

cartoons can be used for...

literacy campaigns

graphic medicine comics journalism

â&#x20AC;&#x153;From the rise of the graphic novel to the current web comic boom, from glossy full-color critical acclaim to grassroots neighborhood comics campaigns, cartoonists embed narrative in visual architecture...around the world and throughout history we find images and stories woven together to inspire and inform.â&#x20AC;?

picture-writing and visual literacy

have once again become our primary modalities

for sharing & shaping ideas & information can ya dig it?

“What if art isn’t merely a form of self-expression, but also a way to interact with, explore, and change our world? What if our work is about not only a sense of identity, but also a sense of community? What [cartoons] aren’t simply a quaint feature of ‘geek culture’, but the way the world processes information?”

for sure i dig it cool dude

thx for talking

so...whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s next?

happy to do it

Is it about that time? So that about wraps up “TIME IN NORULESNESS!!!”... What kinds of conclusions? AUGH. I don’t know. It’s so sad. We made so many great new friends. I want to live everyday as a noruLesneSS cartoon. Whatever that means...wait yeah...what does that mean? More on that in a sec.... Brian taught me how everything is always in motion, and that it is important to make strategic choices about how time is spent. But also it seems like it’s up to us to define the strategy. Speaking of choices and strategy, Adrienne taught me to live in the moment and to sit with and ponder on all the infinite choices existence presents to us. It’s a big crazy world, and it’s broken in a lot of ways, but the future can be bright if we hold onto eachother and ourselves and embrace fiction and embrace truth. She taught me time travel does exist. Marek and James provided a bunch of great insights on how to apply cartooning to the world. It’s great to share the multiverse with so many great thinkers... 37

okay cornball...enough with the gushy stuff... the showâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s almost over.

NOruLesNESs is amorphous as heck and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made a real mess of this place...

you got any final words? sure do.

passion is the inverse of fear of death, (but fuck binaries am I right?) (or am I wrong?)

(lol) (lol)

(more binaries...) (wait, but like are there instances where binaries are useful?) (Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve definitely observed binaries falling short of truly and accurately representing people/experiences/ phenomena many times.)

short vs tall fat vs skinny How do these pairings relate to what you know about the societal beauty standard you are most familiar with? individual vs collective

short fat

tall skinny

tall & fat & short & skinny & fat & short & tall ...or somewhere in between? or neither at all? is it easier to pick one? or to make up something else? what are the consequences of either decision? can you hypothesize over these questions? do you want to? why do you like the things you like? why do some things make more sense than others? can something that confuses me make sense to you? how about that person over there?

how honest can I be until I realize I am the devil and kill myself? you shall believe that god is also you and attain eternal life. again with binaries. devil vs god life vs death god vs devil death vs life you vs me yin/yang

rules, no rules norulesness itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all around us always/never your mind is good enough and worthy your mind is good enough and worthy your mind is good enough and worthy your mind is good enough and worthy

noruleSness

For me the inverse of fear of death is cartoon. I gotta bunch of questions to ask... rulesness

no So what if the subversion gets absorbed by the mechanics of pop culture?

Why does it feel like things lose their power and meaning as they progress through societal dilution? rulesness

no Is the subversion inspiring just because it is potent, concentrated, and radical in appearance?

Or does the inspiration materialize/manifest through the collective/ societal-consciousness/zeitgeist of a specific context and group of people? Does capital taint all it touches? Why do I like collecting stuff? Nothing will ever be perfect, but what else are we doing with our lives?

For me the inverse of fear of death is cartoon. I gotta couple thoughts to express... ness

norules The subversion is an attempt to call attention to various forms of pain and abuse caused by lapses and faults in the system.

When they say time heals all wounds they forget to mention how many steps are in between wounded and healed. Laughter is the best medicine, but these things do take time.

TRAGEDY

TIME

sometimes

COMEDY

In time, it is good to nurture. Forced laughter is depressing. There are precious things. (I will continue to

nse.)

make very little se

WE ARE ALL THE FOOL AND THIS IS OUR COLLECTIVE JOURNEY

in norulesness I find myself working a lot with the idea of mutual negation. relational objects in direct proximity of one another that somehow cancel each other out, but somehow do not. somehow

not to fester, not to cancel out.

norulesness isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t to say that there are no rules in existence. norulesness is to say that it is up to us to observe, consider, and create them. all I can offer is norulesness. anybody everybody is norulesness soul, mind, bodyâ&#x20AC;Ś what are the parts in your world? how do you see things? let us share with each other, each other is all we got.

a bee flew into the eye of a child and the child did not scream. they held their eye shut and held the bee tight between the eyelid and the surface of the eye (sclera) to form a deliberate tear there is a small pink house in the distance with a trampoline in the backyard. honey suckles grow woven between fence posts and dandy lions glow yellow in patches dispersed in quiet chaos across the lawn the aircon box hums low and steady as the hot sun bakes roof shingles and driveway pavement and asphalt. cicadas and crickets join the choir by early evening a lawnmower starts and stops in the distance red rover squeals and dogs bark somewhere underneath porch lights a charcoal grill tonight parents will say things that hurt heated over finances and depleted intimacy. adolescents will try on vices and self-harm. the children will be less sheltered from the goings on

than loose toothed smiles show.

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