Author: Jackie Zhou

To talk about some creative works that move me is a rough topic. It’s big—it can be a movie, music, drawings, books, etc.—and it’s also small—it has to be creative and it has to move me. After giving careful thought, I decided to talk about one of the first twist movies I watched: Witness for the Prosecution.

Overall, the plot of this movie is about a court defense. The man Leonard Vole is suspected of murdering Emily French, a wealthy, childless widow who has become enamored of him and has named him as the main beneficiary in her will. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Vole as the killer, but Sir Wilfrid, who serves as the defense for Vole, believes Vole to be innocent. The only witness that could verify Vole’s innocence is Vole’s wife, Christine, but a loving wife’s alibi cannot be used. However, it is surprising to see that Christine is actually summoned as a witness for the prosecution, and she testifies that Vole has committed the murder. Before the court is about to close, Sir Wilfrid is contacted by a mysterious lady who provides evidence that shows Christine’s testimony is perjury. Therefore, the court declares Vole innocent. Then comes the twist. The mysterious lady is actually Christine herself. She deliberately perjures so that the court would trust Vole because she loves him too much. Eventually, it turns out that Vole has an affair and leaves Christine, causing Christine to angrily kill Vole.

Certainly, the part of the movie that moved me was the twist. The strongest feeling I had when I first saw the twist was shock. I even sensed some cold sweat, since the twist came so unexpectedly. While it’s not the only twist movie I’ve watched, the reason this movie leaves such an impression is that I never expected a twist. Throughout the movie, I was in the shoes of Sir Wilfrid. From the way Sir Wilfrid talked, I sensed that he’s very experienced, knowledgeable, and smart. His method of using the reflection of the monocle to check Vole’s innocence, along with some clumsy behaviors of Vole, fooled me into thinking that Vole is just an unlucky but innocent person. Until the last 10 minutes of the movie, the setting was somewhat relaxing, if not like a comedy. The various conversations Sir Wilfrid had with Miss Plimsoll, his private nurse, as well as the part where the maid could not hear clearly in court, brought a humorous tone to the whole movie. I admit, the fact that the movie was black-and-white also played a huge role in assuring myself that the plot would go as I expected (I didn’t know Agatha Christie at that time!). In recall, I was thinking exactly the same way the director wanted the audience to. The initial implication of Vole being innocent lies in implicit details, making the audience believe that it’s their smartness that discovers Vole’s innocence. Ironically, although Sir Wilfrid insisted many times in the court on the importance of evidence, his, as well as the audience’s, trust in Vole lies completely not in evidence. Vole’s act in the court of such despair and agony also resonated with people getting wronged. Christine’s pretense as a cold and self-possessed lady successfully deceived most people as well. Overall, the reason why it moved me was clear: it made me feel like I was the smart person knowing the truth, whereas the ending showed that all my ideas were manipulated by the director. Probably due to the influence of chess, I’m really afraid of letting others know what I’m really thinking about. Therefore, mindreading me is as terrifying to me as stripping me. So, in the last ten minutes of the movie, I felt shocked, excited, but at the same time, a little bit scared.

A poster I found

Look how confident Sir Wilfrid (me as well) is at this point.

So far, he’s my favorite guest speaker. Ming is very thoughtful. He clearly knows what he wants to do and he’s implementing his idea creatively. Ming’s focus on Asian queer community is insightful: as an Asian myself, I’ve never paid attention to how Asian queer communities might have been differentiated from the traditional white queer community. Also, I like his idea of relating art to political events. Indeed, safe arts (in his term, arts that are distant from politics) may not leave me with much impression but “wow”, whereas arts related to politics are memorable. His ability to give all explanations for every element in his project further demonstrates that he’s given full thoughts for everything he’s doing. Finally, I agree with his idea that if we’re against colonialism, then colonialism of all kinds (not only white’s) are to be against. Growing up, I have seen so many people that have double standards on this issue: as if a miserable past makes muscle-showing now justifiable. I’m really glad that he pointed this out.

I resonate a lot when reading the lateral thinking piece. I am the type of person who’s afraid of making mistakes. I’m not sure if I’m born with trait, but it’s further aggravated with playing chess. The number 1 rule that I follow is that, for every move I make, I have to think in my opponent’s shoes to make sure there’s no mistake. Therefore, I have the habit not risking to do things unless I’m at least 99% sure that it will succeed. Upon reading this, I feel like there’s a need for me to try to put away such mentality. Especially for not important business, like sharing my opinions in class, I could be less worried about making mistakes.

Similarly, the second piece of reading about art and fear talks about how art belongs to ordinary people. For most of my life, I consider myself bad at drawing (if viewed in a conventional lens, it’s indeed true…). Therefore, for most making assignments, I choose not to draw because of my lack of talents. But this reading piece gives me the idea that I shouldn’t stop myself from doing that. Art is made even before people consciously make them: art should be an expression of feelings (and sometimes no one cares about your work), so why bother hiding it?

Using analogy step to solve a complex-analysis question involving finding the integral around a closed curve (defined as r).

Processes

1. Find out the domain of analyticity of the function within the curve
2. Find out all singularity points
3. If there’s no singularity, result is 0
4. For each singularity points, find out the residue
5. Sum up all the residue
6. Multiply 2pi i with the sum of the residue

Abstract

1. Solving a huge problem resembles zooming in and solving each small problem respectively
2. Spotting all small problems
3. Sometimes there are lucky cases
4. Transforming unknown questions to known questions
5. Link what you come up with to what’s already given

Analogy

1. Finding a way out from a forest
2. Surviving in the wilderness
3. Ruling a country

The work that I made was simply an example question with solution using the processes given.

For the individual assignment, Linda created an audio. Jason created a drawing, and I created an outline of a game.

Combining all our work, our final group assignment is an animation of someone playing our game. While playing, an advertisement will pop up. It advertises an album, save our world, which contains the music that Linda created. The front cover and back cover of our album will be like the following.

The video of someone playing our game will be the following.

The advertisement page will be the following.

Our works lament all destructions that imperialistic expansions bring upon. The front cover of the album is about the people that’s been killed (although it’s a little abstract, the round circles are the heads that’s been chopped down) with a mushroom cloud at the back., while the back page is about the celebration of the imperialists.

Merche and her works were all very interesting. I notice that all three musicians we had were all good at doing improvisation. Probably for music, improvisation demonstrates creativity the most. I’m very impressed that Merche said she never had formal musical education. My favourite work of hers is her wood bucket creation that records the music of water. The sound of the dripping water is healing and reminds me of the beautiful nature. All three musicians talked about not afraid of making mistake, which is a key part towards creating creative creations.

This is the picture of our tunnel machine

These are our why questions

Why do we need to dig a tunnel

Because I want to

Why do you want to dig a tunnel

Because I’m bored

Why are you bored

Because I’ve got nothing to do

Why do you have nothing to do

Because i have no friends

Why do you have no friends

Because I spent all of my time building this machine

Why do you build this machine

Because I want to dig a tunnel

Why do you want to dig a tunnel

Because I’m bored

Now there’s a loop

The ideas that our group came up with that we could create include

1. Outline of game
2. A space station
3. A song
4. A light show

I decide to create an outline of a game.

The game I design is 2d. The player would be driving the tunnel digger. He/she will be firstly placed inside the tunnel digger, with wasd controlling the character’s movement. The tunnel digger is made up of two parts. The control room and the energy room. The character shall drive the digger in the control room and eat and fuel the machine at the energy room. It’s a never ending game because the character will be stuck in the loop forever, and the character will die when there’s no food left in the energy room. Therefore, it’s a matter of how long the character can survive.

Upon entering the control room (pressing tab when close enough), the wasd will be used to control the digger. Press j to use laser to cut and k to absorb the debris and convert them to energy. This energy can be served both for the machine and the player. There will be some underground monsters that obstruct the player. But they contain more energy since they are moving creatures. Getting hit by the monster decreases HP of the machine, and this is irreversible (player can never fix the machine). Game also ends when the machine has 0 HP. When the character is hungry or when the machine is low in MP, the character needs to go to the energy room and eat/fuel. The machine is extremely vulnerable at this point. The nature of the game dictates that it’s very likely that the digger will be back at the place where it started from, thus the player will be stucked in this loop forever.

I decide to start off with a discussion question that I once had with my friends. The central question that we have is

Does there exist an absolute objective value judgment, or all the values we consider follow some constructed social contrasts?

Of course there are, as you can see that the human civilization is developing and the worldview of most people are getting better. These are all thank to the common values that we hold about love and peace. It’s with these beliefs that we all work towards a same goal.

Why do you think the human civilization is developing? Is it due to technological innovations? Then the society of cyberpunk is a paradise. And also, why do you think the worldview of most people are getting better. To a monarchist, our current society is a disaster.

The defeat of Nazi’s, end of slavery, and rising women’s rights all demonstrate such development. Now in most places we have equality, democracy, and freedom. On the one hand, we enjoy the advancement of technological innovation, while on the other hand, we are not backlashed by it.

Why do you think equality, democracy, and freedom are good? From which standpoint that you jump to this conclusion?

Equality means everyone is given similar amount of opportunities. Democracy guaurantees our government to be listened by our people. Freedom promotes chances so that no one is controlled. They are all better off than the characterisitcs of a slavery society, where a lot of people have no freedom nor voices. Their very well-being are highly dependent upon their masters.

Why is given the chance a good thing? You mentioned about being better off, why is it so? In math we can compare two numbers as to 4 less than 5, but here what is the comparison based off?

Following your logic, if these moral standards don’t exist, why is it the unemployment rate decreasing, economy prosperating, violence decreasing. Objectively speaking, these are all values that humans endorse. Otherwise, would you think that killing, bullying, stealing is a good thing?

Why is it not? For a strong person who could take advantage of his/her body strength, it’s a good thing for sure. You are not answering the question of “why” are they good, but simply listing things. Your logic is based upon having some basic “good” things, like axioms in math, whereas they don’t actually exist.

Okay… But if you ask 100 people, I believe there’s 99 of them would argue in a similar way, calling for love and peace. Is this a pure coincidence?

To be honest, if you asked the same question to the people centuries ago, they would have given you totally different, or even opposite answers. So, the central question is back , does there exist an absolute objective value judgment, or all the values we consider follow some constructed social contrasts?

It then enters into a loop, as the debate ended with the winning of the post-modernist view – our subjective value judgement depends upon the constructed social contracts with barely any “objectivity” involved. Some of the questions can be answered in an economic or biological point of view, like why do we avoid violence or why do we promote love and peace, but speaking of the moral value judgements, there’s no universal answer of what’s good or bad, but only subjective ideas that’s subjected to the constructed social construct. Therefore, I made this small collage that demonstrates this.

Finally, this chapter discusses, in details, of why we need lateral thinking. Indeed, I kind of resonate with many parts of what’s been discussed in the book. For example, at first when it talks about how communication works like a sender and a receiver passing codes. This is normally what happens to us when we’re trying to recall something ourselves or remind others of something which happens on a daily basis. Also, the part where it says that our memory works like pouring water, in which some create the contours of the surface and then some leave marks and create sequences. This reminds me of what I read from some psychology books in which there’s the concept of confirmation bias. We usually don’t have a full picture of what really happened, in fact in most cases are just some blurry overall pictures. When someone talks about something that seems that align with the big picture, we immediately confirm with them and believe that it’s indeed what’s happened. Using the metaphors from book, this is like someone steps into the water hole that we create beforehand in our memory system. Also, I agree with the idea of how important restrcuturing is, in which when we process information, even though we could be correct at every stage but we still need to restructure before proceeding. Indeed, when I was reading this piece myself, I did a lot of back and forth reading/restructuring although I felt like I understood every single piece of it. Overall, I find this piece of reading very informative. It’s a little bit abstract, to be honest, and I don’t think I would fully comprehend it without the helps of the diagrams it provided.

Mariana’s work is quite different from Otis’s, but both are very creative. I like how Mariana closely links her ideas to her work. I remember she talking about making music of inside and outside (not sure about the exact words), then she introduced her projects of having others sing in her mouth and putting the speaker in her mouth. This really surprised me. I’m curious how exactly she came up with this idea because it’s so creative. Indeed, her music is not the type that I would normally listen (I’m more of a classical guy), but having experimental artists like her trying these creative stuffs certainly helps the devlopement of art.