THE BAD YEARS: Out of "The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait" website

domingo, 11 de outubro de 2009

Out of "The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait" website

Millions of fans from more than 165 countries are coming together to become part of Michael Jackson’s legacy in The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait, wich will surely became the largest Michael Jackson Tribute in the World.

Artist David Ilan is creating an original portrait of Michael Jackson using only dots. Each dot in the drawing represents a real fan. Everyone who signs up gets a free hand-drawn dot in their honor added to the portrait.

Dot = 1 Fan

At The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait page and social network, these little "dots" can share messages they would like their idol to receive... But «Bad» "dots" jump and share out of the box!

Welcome

A subjective initiative such as this can’t be properly explained in objective terms. Never the less, this blog’s author is accountable for its contents and must try to prepare visitors for their journey through The «Bad» Years.
So, if you think this blog’s content description is somewhat farfetched for what appears to be nothing but a Michael Jackson fan blog, you might as well stick to home-page posts and sidebar contents. Never mind The «Bad» Years narrative, because you shouldn’t experience it if you’re not in the mood. And if you're not, that's cool - thanks for visiting anyway.
You may find sidebar topics and approaches a bit self-indulgent, but you may also be unfamiliar with one or two subjects pointed out to describe this blog and warn random visitors about what they will find here. In this case, maybe you’ll appreciate the sidebar texts specifically related to these subjects.
The rare external links available in sidebar contents might satisfy snooping impulses and even be nice passing-points on your cyber way, but they’re not indicated because they’re “holy cows”. If you don’t know and would like to learn something substantial about some of the subjects that are suggested here, you ought to do your own research (you know the drill).

Music

When a pop-artist tells stories as magnificently as he once did and - thank God and technological media - he still does, then "becoming music", as he would put it, is probably the best way to play and replay life stories. We've (still) got body and soul, data-bases, tributes, remakes and we'll surely continue to have releases, because money has to roll. Make your choices, but if you want to live fully you really should let music into your life: listen to it, dance to it, sing it, play it, choreograph it, draw it, film it, write, compose, mix, jam and have fun.

Applied Narrative

The purpose of The «Bad» Years narrative is not to get a message through, but to get it out and open it, as a personal tribute to extraordinary people. Theoretical grounds such as incommunicability or reception scepticism are redundant to sustain such disdain for communicational effectiveness, since the message is arranged to have a deceased addressee.
As a story-teller, good-girl-gone-bad tends to apply narrative theory and principles in life not exactly by chance, but because stories have a way of telling themselves when they serve gathering, enthralling or healing purposes. Sometimes she can shut it and stay in the box, but she can’t do that all the time: she needs to get “out there” every once in while and act on stories’ urges, just like dolphins need to jump out of the water. Well, she’s actually beginning to feel more like a flying bug, so you better watch out, but please don’t smack a living creature just because it flies!
Anyway, this tribute is a specific course of action and reactions are bound to occur. This is real life, these are real feelings and the fact that you read this blog may affect you one way or the other, so fell free to act in response.

Snapshot Aesthetics

The unveiled stories are true and will remain the same but, for a time period that might be as long as 2 decades, they will also remain open, considering that The «Bad» Years will be available online and that its stories can be retold every now and then. This way, if you read the narrative in different timeframes between 2009 and 2029 you may find missing and added excerpts, renewed metaphors, as well as video and audio elements. Yet, no personal remembrance will be suppressed or bended in its authenticity to suit those who appear as anonymous characters in any of the stories. Praised ones will eventually discover and accept this «Bad» homage and others shouldn’t fell «Bad» to find themselves in a story-teller’s words after 20 years, give or take (they’ll even have the chance to forgive themselves for what they could have done differently).
Snapshot aesthetics is called upon to complete the content description of The «Bad» Years precisely because of this narrative’s altering nature. Memory can frame, focus, defocus, illuminate and set shadow upon a single event as if it was photographed over and over again, allowing imagery to be replaced when a intimate recollection becomes a story-teller’s tribute to a private hero or a close friend. It doesn’t really matter is this tribute is produced as a photo-slideshow, a performance, a song, a poem, a bedtime story or a «Bad» blog, just like this one. Personal tributes need to pay no attention to aesthetics or reason, really; they just have to be felt as genuine and produced, preferably while the honoured ones are still alive and can be reached.

Pop-Poetics

Feelings shouldn’t have to be concealed at all. They make us real people, they are meant for expression and there are suitable expression forms for all temperaments, which can be used to share not only what we feel, but also how we perceive, sublimate and treasure feelings in order to live a fulfilled and happy life, in our time and in our society.
Actual and potential aesthetical categories in all art forms grant feelings supreme expression, but our ability to understand and enjoy art is diminished when we disregard what we honestly feel. Madness and eccentricity are still common labels for those who express themselves with unbounded creativity, generosity or passion. Michael Jackson did it these three senses throughout is long dramatic pop-stardom, and you can forget about aesthetics if you think this is a matter of taste.
Allow your sensitivity and imagination to embrace living and life-changing art, instead of fearing it and picture this: for this man’s poetic misfortune, his own skin turned lighter and lighter until he became almost transparent, as if he couldn’t actually withdraw a thing from us when all attentions were drained from the giving performer and human-being he was, to superfluous and uncertain aspects of his life.
Well, for the sake of a little pop-poetic justice, The «Bad» years are felt and expressed, but will stay black and absolutely private for as long as they last. These “years” shall honour the King of Pop and also some “popular plebeian”, who make this World a better place.

Mediation

Information and communication technologies provided us with a sense of mediation that goes beyond the idea of in-between places and intermediaries. Unless you prefer the immediate approach of primitivism or choose to explain it otherwise, you’ll find there’s communication worth not only in technological media, but in all the means by which we experience things (the light that allows us to see; the sounds that make reality audible; the words that enable us to express and understand each other verbally; touch and movement that position us in the World). The available media resources and mediation processes permit us to jump mass-information barriers in order to reach those who’ll welcome our message and find it valuable. Through self-determined mediation we keep our integrity when (and just when) we share nothing but our own true experience.

Shame

Feel free to mock, censure, slander and, by all means, "copy & paste" this little story-telling exercise. You should know personal memoirs are quite a precious thing and even if you don’t feel that way, there are copyright protection mechanisms that help claim and sustain this kind of “garbage”, so: shame on you!

The Bad Years - Story-Telling
Tribute by C. Vau (aka
goodgirlgonebad) is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição 2.5 Portugal
License.
Based on a work at the-badyears.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available
at http://the-badyears.blogspot.com.

THE BAD YEARS

domingo, 11 de outubro de 2009

Out of "The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait" website

Narrator: Good girl gone

What is this?

3-2-1... Go!

Welcome

Music

Playback

Applied Narrative

Snapshot Aesthetics

Pop-Poetics

Mediation

Shame

Arquive

AddThis

Followers