Response # Scott McLoud

I have discovered that there are two problems that come with writing things down on paper. The first is that I inevitably end up writing on top of something that I would have preferred not too have writing on it. Luckily enough I have managed, mostly by accident, not to write on top of any impending bills. The second however, and apologies to Zara for this one, is that I never get around to typing anything up on my computer. Logically I have a much harder time posting anything here. Whoever invented paper seems to have forgotten a copy and paste function. I am going to turn the page on this habit. Or more appropriately, perhaps, I will not be turning any more pages. Print is dead and all that, etc. I cannot dismiss the Scott McCloud reading that were, in fact, printed.
As of late I have become increasingly interested in models. The kind you would snap together with small colored bricks, not the ones with the arms, legs, torso and other human accouterments.
Here’s where my year log western lit class did me well. Because, Descartes was concerned with this as well. He used it to prove the existence of god if I remember correctly. We as a species are unable to draw a perfect circle, unable to experience one in nature, and yet we can superimpose the idea of the PERFECT circle onto that which we can create. Descartes called this God. Clearly he was something of a romantic. What he says in less than two pages illuminates to a frightening degree. I do not take this to be God, but it does lend itself to a kind of faith.
I may have just had a religious moment here. Thinking about the Cartesian proof of God. No booming voice, but i have become and am right now, as I am typing, enamored with this idea. Like I was clipped by a bicycle messenger. I cannot and do not agree with Descartes, but in his indoctrinating way he may have actually stumbled on something larger than himself. We don’t need to create perfection because we have evolved to see it. We as a species, on the whole, everyone, is capable of imposing perfection over each and every object, situation, they see. Intuition allows us to make a jump that is incalculably farther than achievement.
I think at their worst artists desire to function as some sort of creator. A roll which has already been taken by the participant. Art in its best, most whole hearted functioning allows for this. The gap between artist and viewer is, in the end, never bridged by artist. Look at that giant bean Anish Kapoor made. It literally superimposes the viewer over the top of its self. It is invisible. I believe he got a holiday for it.
I need to go to Chicago.
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Scott McCloud is a more practical Descartes, I think he’s got the idea right. Certainly he elaborates in a less abrasive way. Abstraction, inaccuracy, allows for “closure”. We fill in what the briefest of hints allude to. The human head we see in the smily face is the same as the circle Descartes saw in the wagon wheel. Where McCloud goes that Descartes does not is inconsistency. Humans lack a steadiness in this skill. Hand in hand with the uncanny valley, the more realistic something becomes the less universal it becomes. Until, I guess, it becomes perfect. Descartes might disagree here. Whatever. The point is abstraction lends itself to universality. This is where I get really interested.
Because McCloud covers comics, which is essentially a two-dimensional, rigid, medium, and Descartes covers God, which is the exact opposite, their ideas tend to cling to the polar ends of representations range. McCloud works within sequential narration and Descartes trying to work almost entirely in theory. Myself, I am interested in scale. You abstact far enough, you scale far enough, you do not need sequencing for narration. We should be looking to create experiences that self narrate. The viewer should be imposing themselves over the work. Kapoor let Chicago narrate through reflection. Cool.