What Happens When I Experiment with Locative Writing...

I am determined to create the project I had originally intended: using typography at different locations. Unfortunately, these are some not so pretty surfaces. I'll have to wait for more ideal locations and conditions.

I don't want to take every note from Shirley Jackson's "Snow" and only use snow for words, but it's surprisingly difficult to find mud without rocks on this campus.

I'll return to this project some day soon I hope.

Something New

After my last post about blog envy, I realized I needed a new look. Cold starts early here at UPJ and I cannot wait for the snow. So I decided why not some cute pine trees, one of my favorite smells. This just to hold me over before I get down to some real blog revamping.

Before:

After:

Blog Envy

As I've been searing for inspiration on how to present work and blogs, I've come across some favorites. I follow a lot of beauty blogs (Carli Bybel's blog and Youtube channel are addictions of mine), but the blogs I love the most for content and style are actually PR and  blogs. Here you can find descriptions of two PR blogs and a Chicago fashion blog that I am taking style points from.

Millennial Marketing

This is one of my holy grail websites that appeals to a wide range of my interests like food, fashion, digital trends, and social media. I love following it for it's informative and understandable articles on media and public relations. The writing isn't the same marketing jargon you see on a lot of marketing/PR blogs. It's something relatable while also giving expert advice on topics that I would encounter in my desired career path.

Style wise, it's clean and bright and often uses single pictures to articulate article topics. If I were to use aspects from this blog on my own blog or portfolio, I would definitely use the straight forward pictures, the nice use of space, and the blue and white palette.

The Suburban Poppy

Suburban Poppy could be considered "life goals" for this girl. I love everything this blogger covers: art shows, food, projects, fashion/retail, and city life. I am dying to move to a city, so this blog makes me green with envy at every post about urban life and a modern take on PR professionalism.

This site is actually already one of my muses for blog style. I love the pink and white palette mixed with cute graphics and great pictures. IF I were to continue to use this as style inspiration alone, I would change my blog from dark to bright and white, much like Suburban Poppy's and play with creating more of my own media like gifs and graphics.

Taking hints from a writing and content perspective, this is my first choice in conveying myself through a professional but personal website. She is relatable and comes off as knowledgable in her writing, so I would strive for that same persona.

The CHICago Life Blog

As mentioned, I can't wait to move to a city. Chicago in particular is my top choice! This blog may not appeal to as much of my career path as the other two I mentioned but it still appeals to lifestyles and hobbies I enjoy. I love design of all kinds: fashion, interior, makeup, typography, print making, the list goes on. So I love this mix of design and life in Chicago the blog presents.

Like the other blogs mentioned, this blog uses a bright and white layout with smart photo choices. I adore the fonts used on this website and would definitely be snagging them where I can. What I hate is some of the overbearing advertising, so this is a good example of what I don't want on my websites and portfolios. But outside of that, the articles appeal to my interests and I would love to mirror some of its writing.

"Sit With Me" Locative Project

As cliche as it can seem, campus has been the most important location to my life. Despite the traveling I've done, this has been a home I've made. So I decided to celebrate the location and the two and a  half years I've been here. I wanted to demonstrate what it means to me that I met my best friend at this location. 

I originally wanted to make a Locative Narrative that resembled "Snow" by Shelley Jackson, but if I wanted to make typography, I could only find a few sights on campus with a soft, flat surface. If only it had rained more. 

I chose to use Google Maps as my tool to demonstrate this narrative. I actually really enjoy how this turned out and have put below the full text, though it is short. While I have listed in a chronological timeline, you can view them in whatever order you feel. The locations of the events are what matter to me more so than the order.

I didn't want to pick out every single location that demonstrated how our relationship grew, just the ones that are the most important to me. Hence why it is in first person primarily. After walking around campus, I realized that my favorite thing to do with my favorite person is to just be still, sit a while. So I tried to capture some locations on campus that meant something to me when I sat there with him.



I was new and unprepared. All I had to do was turn to see the laugh that I knew would belong to someone important. We were sitting, he and I. I was sitting one row ahead with only him in my sights when I turned around. He wore the same shirt I had: light blue, white text. I couldn't hide my smile. 
Down the hall. He was just around the corner from me. Walk with me. Talk with me. 
Sit with me. "Sit with me," he called across the room. English Composition I. I was taken.
Hours and hours. Fog in front of our faces in the cold air. Hours of us on this bench. He took the time to know me. He gave me his coat to sit longer. Hours before he kissed me. He kissed me until morning.
"You're my favorite person." his shoulder being my familiar lounge for almost two years now. Rain dances under the lights and I'm wrapped in him. His hoodie, his arms, his smell. I couldn't be warmer. I sit with him for hours.
Home. This blanket, this wall, and this nook in an otherwise shitty dorm is home. Sit with me. Stay with me. 

Locative Narrative Practice

To start, I don't know where my mind has been this past week and a half. I am falling apart at the seams in one way or another. Time to snap out of it.

I've been working on a lot of projects recently, many of them being at my internship. Program ads, catalogs, and one-sheeter handouts seem to be running my life now. But I'm happy with that. I've been feeling really important with I'm doing. As for classes, a subject I'm dipping my feet in is Locative Narrative Writing.

I teamed up with a classmate (Rachel Addoms) and tested out some Locative Narrative methods by mixing photography, storytelling, and social media. It was a simple recipe: take pictures around campus, geotag them, and tweet a little story pertaining to the photo. We were of course using daily life at UPJ to demonstrate this.

We didn't post them in the best order possible, but I've arranged them into the narrative we were after here:

In the crisp morning air, I make my daily trek to one of my writing classes. pic.twitter.com/P0yiJigq50

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

My morning fix of caramel and cream. I don't know how I'd get through the fall chill without it. pic.twitter.com/XxtF2Lc0D7

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

I take breaks where I can find them. Today I had the luxury of silence and a room to myself. pic.twitter.com/HHPXkoodJh

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

"Can I have the 1/2 Sandwich and Cup of Soup Combo, please?" Tomato Bisque warms my soul. pic.twitter.com/iqdsJ0l8N7

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

As I watch the sun set, it reminds me that I'll be returning here for my night shift in only a few hours. pic.twitter.com/9bCzeLQMje

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

A bed to myself. A nap until 11. It's the little things that keep me going before my night shift. pic.twitter.com/txg7q4LmeZ

— Victoria Kelly (@vicrum113) November 16, 2015

Looking at what we came up with, I'd say we have it sweet here. Despite a night shift and some noise (we couldn't capture hustle and bustle so late in the afternoon), our campus is easy going. Of course I wanted to include food. How can it not be someone's favorite thing?

RJ's Cafe and Lounge on Main in Johnstown

Having an internship in the city, I have a few more options for lunch than the usual Sodexo or Sheetz (aka the life blood) of eating at school. I'm trying to get out there and test out more restaurants. Of course I'm itching to have dinners, but lunches in Johnstown will have to do for now. 

So I tried RJ's Cafe and Lounge on Main and I wasn't disappointed. I ordered a club with their chips. The club was with really thick turkey, ham, bacon, tomato, lettuce, and avocado on Italian toast. It came with the side of chips and they were surprising in being perfectly peppery (I'm not a black pepper kinda girl, so this is big). 

All of it was really fresh and the portion was huge. I only ate half at lunch and saved the rest for the inevitable night hungers of a college student. Even after sitting in my dinky fridge, it tasted fresh and satisfying. 

I would highly recommend RJ's lunch! I hear nothing but good about their dinner. They have an adorable atmosphere (though, I was only there for a few moments to carry out my lunch), great food, and an impressive bar for its size. 

They have a wine and craft beer selection but those seem just a tad pricey. I'm in love with Not Your Father's Rootbeer by Small Town Brewery (which I'm so glad to see its rise in popularity and production), but they sell them for $4 a pop. Maybe I'm just that new to buying at a bar, but I'd rather go hunt for six pack of them for that price. 

Another perk of RJ's lunch, it makes for quite the desk accessory. 

"Urban Decays" Generative Project

Taroko Gorge poems are interesting in that they never stop generating content. They are the epitome of Generative Literature for giving a new text at every view, using a logarithm as a set of "rules" for generating the text, and questions the role of an author.

I decided to take Taroko Gorge code and change the subject matter to be about makeup. Specifically, Urban Decay makeup. While most of the verbs consist of makeup techniques and gestures, the nouns and adjectives are terms of the face, makeup textures, and Urban Decay cosmetic names. I chose names that could be ambiguous and taken in one of two ways with the title: those familiar with the brand would know these colors, and those who don't know it could end up with a different, more literal interpretation. "Urban Decays" could be taken as literally city rot and my poem of random smudges, gunmetal, busted, blackouts, etc.

This project took some html that I was fine with until it came to completion. Being generative, I couldn't seem to find a way of hosting it without some lag time. So please excuse my hot mess html before viewing my "Urban Decays" poem.

Iguana Love Poems

Dear heart,

You are precious things. My pretty hero extraordinarily shining your luminous truth.

You are my azure flame.

Yours sweetly,
Eyes

It's funny that little, romantic quip was basically made from a mad lib. After dissecting a piece of writing for nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, I simply plugged them into a "formula" for a love letter. 

Dear [noun],
You are [adj.] [noun]. My [adj.] [noun] [adv.] [v.] your [adj.] [noun].
You are my [adj.] [noun].
Yours [adv.],
[Noun]

I chose to comb "The Iguana" from Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). It is one of my absolute favorite novels and I especially love the short stories within it. The story is about how the author coveted the iguanas' skin and wanted to use it for other pretty things. But after shooting one, she saw the once beautiful colors turn to grey. She compares this to when she saw a litter girl's leather and beaded bracelet and bought it from her. Like the iguana, she saw the colors and life fade from the bracelet once she put it on her wrist.

This excerpt is full of beautiful imagery and adjectives; however, being mainly about a big lizard, the nouns are not too romantic. So I had a thought to make this love letter from the perspective of the stone that the iguana sits upon: 

Dear Iguana,

You are luminous colours. My strange heap lively swishing your light blue skin.

You are my leather fish.

Yours nobly,

Stone

And for the sake of showing you this lovely little short story, you can find it after the jump.

Cut-Up Method

As you can see from my post last week, I'm playing with Generative literature. William S. Borough's Cut-Up Method renders some pretty interesting results. Unlike the "rules" I had set up for the True Detective quote, this is a pretty pure exercise.

I was simply given a handful of words and I created poems with that (free to punctuate how I see fit, thankfully).

The words and phrases I was given:

their dad, when I first picked, to school anyway, to great things, with crushed mulberries, one evening, the goose-feathered pillows, because that's how, unconscious and unresponsive, so strong it rips, against ocean view, and the prominence

Here are some of the poems I came up with (voiding a phrase here and there):

No. 1:

Their dad, unconscious and unresponsive, one evening.

When I first picked the goose-feathered pillows and the prominent

Because that's how, against ocean-view,

with crushed mulberries.

To great things, to school anyway so strong it rips

No. 2:

One evening, with crushed mulberries 

and the prominent to great things,

The goose-feathered pillows against ocean-view

So strong it rips.

Because that's how when I first picked.

Unconscious and unresponsive.

No. 3:

When I first picked their dad one evening,

the goose feathered pillows and the prominent.

To great things, so strong it rips.

Against ocean-view, unconscious and unresponsive, to school anyway.

Because that's how with crushed mulberries.