How very true. CCS is quite industrial-technically oriented. If anything it was even moreso when I was a student in the illustration department. It is getting less industrial, but it is a slow process.
I have theories about why this is so, and they run kind of deep. CCS is, of course, reflective of the surrounding community. There is a rust belt tendency to worship industry, even as it flees for greener pastures leaving devastated communities behind. There is something of a mythology about industrial technology that actually stretches back centuries. If anything, rural people are actually more enraptured with industrial technology than are urban people.
Imagine yourself a farmer in Roman Gaul, AD 300 or thereabouts. The local Roman legion orders you to beat your plow into a pike and shield, take up arms, and defend the empire. To a peasant farmer, this is the adventure of a lifetime. After it is over, the farmer returns to his fields and tells tales of his exploits and how his simple technology saved the civilized world. Repeat this scenario over and over until you have tractors and tanks instead of plows and pikes. WWII was a boon to this kind of thinking, and Michigan was a central supplier (Willow Run, etc). Of course this has nothing to do with art or animation or filmmaking but the influence remains. If one is steeped in it, techno-rapture is seen as quite normal. I know this because I have been inside of it and managed to get out. Use technology for what it can offer, sure, but recognize that without creativity it will not save us.
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Date: 2005-07-18 07:21 pm (UTC)I have theories about why this is so, and they run kind of deep. CCS is, of course, reflective of the surrounding community. There is a rust belt tendency to worship industry, even as it flees for greener pastures leaving devastated communities behind. There is something of a mythology about industrial technology that actually stretches back centuries. If anything, rural people are actually more enraptured with industrial technology than are urban people.
Imagine yourself a farmer in Roman Gaul, AD 300 or thereabouts. The local Roman legion orders you to beat your plow into a pike and shield, take up arms, and defend the empire. To a peasant farmer, this is the adventure of a lifetime. After it is over, the farmer returns to his fields and tells tales of his exploits and how his simple technology saved the civilized world. Repeat this scenario over and over until you have tractors and tanks instead of plows and pikes. WWII was a boon to this kind of thinking, and Michigan was a central supplier (Willow Run, etc). Of course this has nothing to do with art or animation or filmmaking but the influence remains. If one is steeped in it, techno-rapture is seen as quite normal. I know this because I have been inside of it and managed to get out. Use technology for what it can offer, sure, but recognize that without creativity it will not save us.