Blox for Lightness

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Cornell for Lightness

For my blox, I had to examine what Morrie had said, and put it into my own world. I had to look back, remind myself how I felt, and how I could best portray this in a blox. Morrie’s biggest theme was love. He lived and died by his quote, “Love each other or perish.” Throughout the novel he talks about loving yourself, your family, and your community.

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act,’.”

Morrie believed in love all the way. He believed that love is the answer to and the reason for everything. In my blox, I tried to represent that theme. I combined images of self-love, love between one and another, and group love all into one. Love was so supreme in his life, yet surprisingly simple. It rose above everything else. It was both the underlying and overlying theme of everything for Morrie.

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Adaptation for Lightness

Seger writes the following,

The subjects of true-life stories can move us with their courage. They can point the way, by helping us explore careers, relationships, other realities. they can teach us values as well as issue a warning about dangers and the consequences of certain behavior. They can take us into dark worlds, educating us about corruption and injustice, manipulation and victimization, wasted and decadent lives. (Pg 48)

While this stays true, Morrie dictates to Mitch and the audience everything he’s learned through his life’s experience. He tells us about all that is found in the above quote, but he rarely takes us into “dark worlds”, but rather gives a positive spin on every mistake he’s done in his life. He makes it all lighthearted, so even though his story pulls at your heart, it doesn’t break it with heavy, or dark story telling. He always reassures us, and makes us feel great about living.

Morrie closed his eyes. “I know, Mitch. You mustn’t be afraid of my dying. I’ve had a good life, and we all know it’s going to happen.”

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Experience for Lightness

In this novel, (as I’ve mentioned before a few times) lightness is what appeals to me the most. I mean, all of Calvino’s qualities appear in the book, but lightness I think is the most prevalent one. One theme talks about “transcending” mass, popular culture and coming up with your own. The masses try to tell us what to wear, how to feel, and what to think at times. He challenges Mitch, and the audience, to come up with your own personal culture, and rise up away from what everyone else tries to feed down our throats. Like Calvino, Morrie asks us to float away from humanity when it is tied down to its burdensome heaviness.

As Morrie’s body deteriorates, he literally becomes lighter, closer to death, and depends on his family and friends to hold him up lest he sink into his doom. The themes of love, openness, and personal satisfaction, are put in a simple, light manner. For love, Morrie lives by a simple quote, “Love each other or perish.”

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Emblem for Lightness

All e-literature (and regular literature for that matter) have a message. What’s the message for this e-lit? Well, right now, that’s not my concern. My concern is how the e-lit uses the qualities of Calvino and graphics to show and tell the message. For this piece and lightness in general, I’d like to think of its emblem as a paper airplane.

A message in flight

On a piece of paper, you can write anything. Anything you’d like. A question, a statement, a picture, or complete gibberish. A paper airplane can deliver this message. There are many different ways and forms to create a paper airplane, just like there are an infinite amount of ways to create an e-lit, combining visual images, sounds, text, and effects.

Paper airplanes are light enough to fly for a few feet if thrown correctly, just like the letters, words, and images floated across the screen in the e-lit. If done right, one can share their message to another person via the vehicle of the paper airplane. In a similar fashion, authors of all media try to convey something: a message, an image, or an idea. They want to connect to as many people as possible.

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Analogy for Lightness

Blowing bubbles. We’ve all done it. We love it. In a simple fashion, we dip the bubble-maker in the soapy water, pull it out, and blow softly to create a stream of bubbles. They float for a few seconds and before you know it — pop! They’re gone. Their short lives exist solely for our amusement.

Bubbly creations

In this e-lit, Alison Clifford does the same thing. She presents small ideas floating around, and after they touch the pointy end of our mouse, they are destroyed. However, something new comes out of their destruction. Their original form is gone, yes, but a more complicated idea takes its place. The light language is transformed to something with more weight, but not necessarily more beauty.

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Time and Motion

For “The Sweet Old Etcetera”, time and motion play a very big part. As explained in the Graphics Design The New Basics,

“As images appear to move and come alive, the illusion is powerful and fascinating. These still images differ from frame to frame by successive deviations in scale, orientation, color, shape, layer, and/or transparency.”

Motion over time brings out the life in a still image

This e-lit exemplifies all these deviations. The images seem to come out at you, and bounce around in a very playful manner. However, none of the techniques are especially extravagant. They are simple, and keep true to the lightness of the whole piece. Motion shows change, it breathes life into the piece. Even the trees seem to breathe as they bounce side to side .

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E-lit for Lightness

The e-lit I found that represents the quality of Lightness is “The Sweet Old Etcetera” by Alison Clifford.

Scenery constructed by letters, words, and sentences

The e-lit starts off with a blank screen and a small click-able piece. After you click on it, it branches into a line full of words. From there, the branch takes form of a tree trunk and branches further, and with each click, a short, light sound (reminiscent of a wind chime) is heard.

The word “leaves” appears, and as you click it, letters start falling like leaves themselves. They float, so very light, swaying left and right until they fall off screen. After this segment, a landscape begins to form, made out of longer sentences.

In Calvino’s sense of Lightness, the words float, fall, and fly across the screen, and the individual segments make up a larger scheme. The sounds and sights are simple, yet build upon one another to expand. There’s plenty of open space, and in the beginning, a lack of color. As the piece expands, sounds turn into songs, words into sentences, and colorless images to vibrant landscapes.

For me, this e-lit reminds me of a simpler, more playful time in my life. This piece invites me to interact with it, like a child’s game, and it offers me a pleasant, simple reward: unlocking the rest of the piece. I feel light in my heart as I watch and play this piece.

http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/clifford_the_sweet_old_etcetera.html

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Calvino’s Lightness

Calvino begins by explaining that his overall definition of his own, personal work has “more often than not involved the subtraction of weight.” Like all his other memos, Calvino explains that all the qualities that he writes about is one side of a polarity. In this case, he writes about lightness, the opposite of weight.

In a nutshell, Calvino states that two opposite tendencies have competed in literature: one tries to make language into something weightless, something that hovers above things like a cloud while the other gives language weight, density and concreteness. In lightness, he describes three different senses of lightness. First, a lightening of language (the choice of words). Second, a description or train of thought that involves subtle elements and a high degree of abstraction. Third, a visual image of lightness that acquires emblematic value, such as Cavalcanti hopping over a tombstone.

Calvino suggests that “whenever humanity is condemned to heaviness”, he wanted to fly like Perseus, the Greek hero, to somewhere else. In this sense, he states that he needs to change his views, perspectives, and approach in regards to the world. Calvino talks about Perseus and his usage of the lightness in the world. He flies on the wings of Pegasus, uses winged sandals, and defeats Medusa indirectly (by looking into a mirror). He doesn’t just go running up to the monster, carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders, hacking and slashing away. If he had, he would have been petrified. Perseus, like Calvino would like to do, has to look at the battle in a different light, and somehow overcome his obstacles in a different manner.

Perseus with his winged horse Pegasus and Medusa's head

One piece of literature I can compare lightness to is Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. The story uses characters with the lightest of hearts: Peter Pan, a boy who refuses to grow up, and his gang of children, the Lost Boys. Peter Pan is so light in heart and body, that he can fly and gives others the power of flight with the help of fairy dust and wonderful thoughts. The lightness of the characters are amplified by the heavy hearts and dark characters of Captain Hook and his pirates. Even the heavy theme of death is portrayed through the experiences of the light characters.

Peter Pan floating above Wendy

Like Perseus, Peter Pan has the ability to hover above things both literally and figuratively. Peter Pan hovers above aging and adulthood while Perseus hovers above his quest and his own life as he battles Medusa.

 

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