Bad Science

Howdy, yalls!

I feel as if I'm still building the background for anyone reading about my work, so I'll introduce another side of the things I do. Science in general has built up its own sort of aesthetic. This is something that is directly influenced by the way it is introduced to the public. I mean, when we are little we are exposed to science with goofy characters, strange sterile environments, and almost a form of narrative to mask the fact that we are learning. A good number of these things stick with it as we grow up. Through the years of developing different kinds of media, we link whatever sounds or looks "new" (anything from synthesizers to crazy digital graphics) to that idea of exploration and and investigation. Hence why we would describe some kind of new wave electronic music as "spacey". These two things are completely unrelated, but by both being somewhat new and unknown to us, they become one in the same.

Here is a video series I have been working on for a while that tries to both be a part of, and enjoy the fiction of that aesthetic:
Episode 1:

and Episode 2:

I mean it's taking influences from a whole bunch of different places, like trying to capture really genuine moments of Bill Nye the science guy, with a weird, sort of self-aware, dead pan comedy. I almost feel like being goofy is necessary, because we really don't know all of the facts. It's kind of like how a teacher would tell someone to "write what they know", it's also taking into account that we have big gaps of not knowing what we are talking about at all, and using that as material in itself. Ultimately, I would like to get more in depth with the different subjects that are being looked at. I think that the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves, the funnier it will be when we fall on our faces.

So, in short: I'm making this out to be like a bad high-school science report.

At the same time, I wanted to use this as a vessel to reflect all of the things I get excited about when I see old documentaries and things like that. I already mentioned how much I loved the environment that Bill Nye set up. There was another old kid-oriented show I used to watch when I was little called "Eyewitness Documentaries", the opening sequence will stick in my head until I die:

This captures everything I ever wanted to make or be when I was little. I wanted to live inside of this fictional museum, and spend everyday learning random facts. Actually, this still kind of encompasses everything I've been trying to do with this. Almost. Maybe? I don't know, it's still something that is almost coming together by itself.
Another one of those old shows that I loved to watch was Wild America with Marty Stouffer-

I've tried to do this project before, but it always quickly died, or was just too much work for the time:

Now that I've got a whole year of thesis to work with, I decided to finally have fun and make this the way I wanted to. There is something I enjoyed about the length and overall actual investigation of the early versions though. That, and how there were multiple characters and whatnot. I wanted to use this as something that my friends and I could work on. There aren't a lot of times that I can collaborate with my roommates or friends, but this has proven to be pretty damn fun. Hopefully it's something that keeps growing.