Vision & Textuality

My image is a result of rolling: 2, 14, 2

Seeing the new way these lines are played out, it gives Lord Henry a more dominate tone. In the passage it is a light back and forth followed by Lord Henry monologue on Dorian’s youth. Sure, the large amount of talking he does gives off an air of importance, but nevertheless he only does it as an explanation after having a conversation.

Here though, I have reversed the order in which things are being said. I have clipped parts of Lord Henry’s long-winded prose and put them before Dorian responds. It gives Lord Henry a more substantial initial power.

I think of passage as representing Lord Henry’s ability to refute people’s dissenting opinions. Meanwhile, I find my reorganized comic to be a representing Lord Henry’s desire to make a point in the first place. The difference being where the effort of a conversation lies.

Fields of Gold by Andreas Rocha 

Artstation Link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d4zBx

Without fail I find myself drawn in by this piece. It just hits all of the kinds of features that I come to look for in... anything really. 

The colors have this alluring warmth that clashes with the edges darkness. At the same time, there is a gradient of color that flows and doesn’t starkly compare without some distance, except for the tombstone in the field.

The openness of the field and the lone rider allows me to just soak in the calmness of it. Similarly, the distance between the rider and the structure allows for the depth of the field to come to my mind. This depth gives me the chance to distance myself from anything that might be in the perspective.

Taking a moment to reflect, I don’t normally think on what characterizes a piece that I enjoy, normally I just follow a sense of things. Taking these moments to really look at this piece opens up the picture. It sets me up to recognize things I didn’t notice at first, such as the ruin like structures behind the “church”.

Honestly, all of this may just be due to my fascination with medieval/Gothic fantasy that stems from much of the reading I did when I was younger. A lot of my tastes have been developed by the knowledge I gained while enjoying my time reading things like parts of the Magic Tree House, Merlin, or even the Eragon series. 

When I was deciding on what pages I was going to use for this post, I couldn’t help but get drawn to the pages around the line that I used for my previous post. I took pages 1-23 in an attempt to grab hold of all the context before the line.

The first thing I noticed about voyant is its attention to individual words, making it the system’s main focus. There is an almost declared intent to pay attention to words on their own. Though, it does attempt to downplay that by including context in the bottom right.

The main thing that stands out in the way voyant represents the pages, is the number of times the word “men” appears. There are more occurrences of men than women leading up to the page of my focus. The word dominates in quantity compared to all the other words’ occurrences.

At the same time, there were an equal amount of occurences of the words young and old. I am left finding the poem as more of a gendered poem without a care for the age of those it is talking about.

Edited Version of Scroll of Truth meme, originally from artist Tate Parker from Robottatertotcomics.

The line inserted is Line 10, from page 23, of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”.

     “The Scroll of Truth” is a meme that introduces a character who has worked for a large amount of time to find something. Only to find that it is something they disagree with so much, that they are willing to discard it and all the effort they put into getting it. The moment of sheer disregard is what people seize upon when they turn this into a joke. People try to play on it by using it as a hyperbole for their opinion on something.

     The Scroll of Truth meme, in a way, is a very impacting meme to me. There are so many times I find myself going against what I think is true or right. It does have this depth to it, though I don’t necessarily think that that is its main draw. I find it hilarious due to the inserted lines that people put in. Usually a shared opinion rather than actual truths, such as disagreeing with milk before cereal or which direction people have their toilet paper face.

     In the context of Walt Whitman’s poem, the line plays out as a degrading self reflection. It is this comparison of oneself to that of the sky and how insignificant a person can be. However, now that I have inserted it into the meme there is this reversal of its idea. It is being revealed as a truth, but then unlike in the poem there is an abrupt abandonment for such a truth. Almost a more inspiring view of, even if it is the truth I don’t care.

When I think about my home, or at the area that I kind of thought of as the area I was from. I think of the suburbs of Orchard Village in Camillus. I was almost always within 10 minutes from my house for a majority of my life. Never really needed to go all that far. If I thought I could get the whole area of Camillus in a screenshot that was legible, I would. But for now I will settle with the cozy Orchard Village. 

The first thing I notice when I compare my drawing to a picture is that I have the whole thing flipped. My house was on the northern side of North Way and almost everything I did was South from my house; School, Shopping, Friends, and more. I just inherently assumed everything was “in front” of my house.

Other than positions, I notice that I tend to leave out bigger picture touches. I left out the actual forest of the park and the houses that made up the neighborhood. Mostly because it kind of just blends together as the noise of the area. It was just trees and houses I never cared for.

On the other hand, I noticed the closer details I brought in. I pointed out the trails, and yards, I would walk on.This was probably because I tended to almost prefer a 20-30 minute walk home over a bus ride from school, so much so that I think I only took the bus in winter. I also included any house that had people I knew in them, and even specified the ones that had my friends. I had such a kind of anchoring in the neighborhood from the way I was positioned in relation to these houses.