How, Why, What do you PRACTICE?

"When imformation is brushed against information...

the results are startaling and effective."

--- Marshal McLuhan, p.76, 78

“Undermine the harmony of the educational system.” These wise words by Carol Emmons have been sitting with me since her talk.

Art is a lot of things: self-expression, world discovery, understanding, politics, and so on. Art is not without purpose, however. It serves a purpose because it's creation was meant for something to happen. It could be a conversation or an interaction, or even to invite the audience to engage in self-reflection.

Miasma (2022), overall view, Carol Emmons

Emmons gave a talk at Lawrence University about practice, which is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. What is practice, really? When, and how, does someone…practice? The simple answer is by doing; but what happens if your mind undermines you and makes you think that all that practice amounted to nothing? These are valid questions and ones that have stopped me from pursuing things in the past.

And yet, the past is the past.

Emmons' art focuses on how humans navigate this world. Her art is interactive and thoughtful. She puts time into researching the topics her art consist of. She treats her art with care, and that care can change depending on what tone she is wishing to convey to the audience through a piece. She didn’t wake up one morning with these gifts, with these eyes for detail. She cultivated them through one word: practice.

This is where I return to Emmons' comment about undermining the “harmony of the educational system.” The educational system is, in a way broken, or at least outdated because it can keep up with a world ever-changing and growing at a high rate. We need to be able to define what practice looks like to us, separate from a learning environment. It only can do so much for a student before the artist has completely been removed or beheaded by the system masquerading as a way of ‘cultivating talent.’

Cosmogony 2.4: The Cosmic Egg (2019), cart with eggs, Carol Emmons

In Emmons’ practice, she discovered a staple of her art: making it interactive rather than keeping to the ‘see, don’t touch’ rule that many museums and art galleries still have on their collections today. This to her was important. She wouldn’t have discovered this simply sitting in a classroom, rather than physically getting involved with her work. She needed to practice her practice.

Thanks to Emmons, I need to find ways of breaking the expected rules of the educational system within my art forms to truly grasp my full potential as an artist.

I Got Instagram 7 Years Ago!

 

""Time" has ceased, "space" has vanished. 

We now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening."

    --- Marshal McLuhan, p.63

When I was 14 years old, I made my first social media account on Instagram.

Nowadays, with a Youtube, Tiktok, Vimeo, Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest account I never could imagine my life without social media. It's what I check every morning before getting out of bed, scroll through during lunch, and clear of all my notifications before I go to bed. This routine continues again the next morning, and the cycle never stops. 

It comes with so much responsibility, and privacy does not exist. As McLuhan puts it, our world is one of "total involvement...and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore" (61).

Youtube: A Universal, Linear, Backwards Walk by Nayla J. Brunnbauer

My short film, A Universal, Linear, Backwards Walk is my take on my own relationship with social media and the digital world. I notice how often I walk the line between a digital existence and a real-life experience. When I'm not lost in the imagination of my head (a conversation for another time), I'm constantly struggling to stay in reality because I'm fighting off the constant pull of the digital world. The film's main character feels this pull too, expressed through the overlay of the Facebook screen with herself. The beginning of the film also emphasizes this pull as it clips between a colored stage and the Facebook screen. Eventually, the main character's friends begin appearing and ultimately succeed in pulling her from the digital world and back into the colorful world of reality.

There is so much I wish to discuss, but not here and now. What I'd like to end on is this: life is short. (Yes, we all know this.) However, I focus on the truth of the matter, which is I'd rather have physical, tangible connections than that of the digital space. I've decided to not get rid of the digital world, but instead live linearly with it while keeping my attention on those around me, who keep me going and grounded in the real world.

Welcome to My Experience!

 

"Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eye? 
That we by tracing magic lines are taught, how to embody, and color THOUGHT?"

    --- Marshal McLuhan, p.48    

I experience my world in four dimensions and through multi-sensory glasses. 

Starting something, especially starting something about myself, is always a challenge for me. I inevitably feel like I need to sound profound, but then, after I've written my profound thought, I find it cheesy or un-understandable and ultimately give up on it altogether; putting myself right back where I started. I think too much. I overthink much more than I think. It's a cycle, a dangerous one, I like to get caught in. My friends and family know this but they'll only ever see a fraction of that part of me. I feel it all, and will forever be subjected to feeling it because this is my body; my experience.

And yet, I continue to push forward. Anything I am capable of writing, I do. Short stories, academic papers, skits, plays. It flows into my fingers and onto my keyboard or through my pen. Writing is the one tool that organizes my thoughts.

Photo: writing prompt from my journal; two girls sharing an evening out together

Over time, I've found new ways of channeling my creativity. Film is one of them. Our eye sees what it wants, it is subjective, but the camera is not. It forces me to be aware. Animation, too, archives this and most importantly gets my hands physically involved; both in between shots and during the shots. 

Video: 2 seconds from my animation Our Love; two lovers being close either each other

Finally, I'm mastering the art of becoming someone else: acting. Theatre is powerful, whether a person is behind the scenes or on stage. It's collaboration. Acting itself is something I hadn't dabbled in until college. What I have found is how useful it is in centering myself in someone else shoes and broadening my scope of existence to include the other.

Photo: Lawrence University's production of Scapan's Tricks

My name is Nayla J. Brunnbauer. I am not a profound person. I'm the collection of 21 years of life.  I have so much more to learn and, yet, I am a well of creativity.