Author: Kofi
Sk8: Visualizing Data
Through the information collected in this graph, I wanted to track the relationship between my mood and what playlists I listened to throughout the day. For context, the two playlists I collected playback data from are “Vibey Scs” and “Feels Scs.” Vibey Scs acts as my happy playlist, for times when I’m enjoying my day and living life in a positive light. Feel Scs acts as my pick-me-up playlist when I’m feeling down because I find that listening to music that tells the stories of other people’s groggy days is therapeutic. From collecting this data, I was able to see that on days where I wasn’t feeling the best because I missed the homecoming concert, like on Saturday for example, there was an increase in the number of times I played my sadder playlist “Feels Scs.” While on days where I felt like I was winning in life, using Tuesday when I got some good sleep and had time to really unwind over break as an example, there is a significant domination of Vibey Scs playback count over Feels Scs playcount. It’s also important to note that the average number of times I listened to Feels Scs per day this week was 1, while the average for Vibey Scs was 2. This speaks to the fact that this was a solid week for me and one that I enjoyed a fair amount.
The chart communicates the idea that my mood does indeed have a relationship to the number of times I played each playlist throughout the week. It shows that the genre or style of music I listened to had a direct relationship to how I was feeling on different days. This relationship’s presence is likely due to the role music plays in my life as auxiliary to my wellbeing. If I were to do this project again I would look more into the songs that I listened to and the messages behind them in order to track if it has any connection to the current events in my life. This would be interesting to see because I feel that a lot of the time when I’m listening to music, I try to find songs that I can relate to more deeply and it’s those songs that reflect my mood the most. I enjoyed doing this “Visualizing Data” assignment because it was fascinating to see how intensely music is connected to my everyday life.
Spinning + Stitches Reflection
I feel that this assignment was an all encompassing task that allowed us to examine comics in the way that we have tried to in our class discussions. The process of tracing the pages made me more aware of the choices author’s made when drawing their comics and encouraged me to deep dive into what these choices did for their expression. I noticed more of the little details like how shading and reflections were used to emphasize mood in the Stitches page. My writing process was made more free with the concept of putting the thesis in the concluding part of the essay. It was more “free” in the sense that I felt that my argument structured my thesis instead of the other way around. This allowed me to go down different paths in arriving at the expression of my argument that Tillie and Small both make intentional choices in the “secret language of comics” in order to show their journeys in dealing with different traumatic experiences. I feel that by close-reading and asking myself why each author made specific choices, I am able to better understand the secret language of comics and how it is used to make a comic that successfully tells a story. Working on this assignment has enlightened me in the sense that I can now see that even the smallest details like, the different facial expressions shown on characters faces, can change how a certain panel of a page is viewed. This has encouraged me to read closer and dissect comics or illustrations that accompany texts with greater intention.
Spinning & Stitches Analysis
The first pattern that I would like to point out is the author’s choice of frame in order to depict a certain atmosphere of sadness that is characterized by its prevalence in each of the pages that I traced. In Spinning, Tillie Walden uses the absence of words in order to draw readers’ focus to the drawing being shown in the bottom left portion of the panel. The absence of words is what makes the reader focus in on what Tillie has drawn and from this focus, there is great emphasis on this melancholic atmosphere that is the result of the traumatic sexual assault experience in earlier pages. In the sketches shown, there is a range of emotions on characters being illustrated, including sadness, a blank expression, happiness, and discomfort. I feel that the range of emotions depicted is what makes the drawings that have sad faces stand out as they are the most prominent figures. The range of emotion also points to how emotionally isolated she felt in her sadness as those around her couldn’t see what she had felt and experienced. Choice of frame along with Tillie Walden’s choice of image with the broad range of emotions being shown is what creates this sorrowful atmosphere. In Stitches however, Small uses choice of frame in a different way, utilizing repetition as a means of emphasizing and expressing this down mood. The overwhelming atmosphere of sadness is created through the recurring images of rain that dominate the span of the page. Unlike what Walden does with adding empty space to the frame, which she used to emphasize a sad atmosphere, Small uses the lack of empty space in order to bombard the reader with rain and create this sorrowful tone that cannot be ignored. So much so, that the reader can then understand the depression Small felt was inescapable. This undismissable atmosphere is also created through Small’s choice of frame, showing rain patter down the window from a view inside the house, conveying this idea that the sadness is unavoidable. The fact of the matter is that even though there is cover, the rain is still present, meaning that sadness doesn’t simply disappear when you try to remove yourself from the source.
Another pattern I would like to point out is that both of these pages followed shortly after a traumatic event or a connection to trauma had been established. In Spinning, this gloomy page falls shortly after Tillie is sexually assaulted by her tutor and in Stitches, the page showing the different rain scenes follows shortly after David comes to deal with the fact that he hasn’t felt his mother’s love all throughout his childhood. This brings me to the idea of graphic narratives being labeled as feminist by Hillary Chute who states, “I claim graphic narratives, as they exhibit these interests, ‘feminist.’ All of the authors I discuss here investigate concerns typically relegated to the silence and invisibility of the private, particularly centered on issues of sexuality, and all address childhood trauma.” Chute labels these graphic narratives as feminist as they address issues often kept hidden. This statement connects to the idea that through comics, both Walden and Small are utilizing this form of literary expression and intentional choice of frame, image, and moment in order to convey the dominance of sadness in their emotional composition in their pursuit of dealing with traumatic experiences.
Small and Walden are attempting to show how trauma changed their lives but they had different experiences to convey, therefore the differing choices they made in expression were likely the result of such. Small felt he had to show how prevalent and long-lasting his depression was, being the consequence of ignoring his trauma for years, failing to deal with his mother’s absence of love, so he used repetition as his main tool of expression. On the other hand, Walden felt she wanted to show the emptiness in life that resulted from her trauma so she utilized the choice of frame as a tool to show empty space on the page, conveying the void created by her experience. All in all, both authors are very intentional with the choices they made to show how depression had a significant presence in their dealing with their trauma and how their experiences affected them in different ways.
Different Choice of Frame to show different means of expressing how trauma made author feel
Stitches
MLA Citation: Chute, Hillary L. “Introduction.” Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, Columbia University Press, New York, 2010, p. 6.
Sk7 Reflection
For this quadriptych, the process started with coming up with a story that I could tell in just 4 panels. I used a similar method to one I used in my triptych of hitting the reader with a surprise of sorts at the final panel after using the earlier panels to build into it and give the fourth panel more emphasis. I got the idea of ending with “Sir, this is Wendy’s” when I remembered seeing a comment under a social media post where this user had rambled on about something that I can’t remember now, to which someone replied, “Sir this a Wendy’s drive thru”. The whole concept of being hit with such a response after pouring your heart into communicating a message is something that I find humor in. I knew what I wanted the fourth panel to look like but I didn’t know what I wanted the preceding panels to illustrate. A challenge I faced in creating this quadriptych was figuring out how I could build into that final panel. It was kind of difficult stretching similar dialogue across the first three panels because I wanted to do so in a way that the audience doesn’t get bored of what they’re reading. I did so by trying to change the scene in which dialogue was taking place. This also helped to emphasize the duration of the character expressing his feelings just to realize that he was talking to a Wendy’s employee the whole time.
