Ud af de fem sanser Er det synet jeg værdsætter mest og det er det jeg tager mindst for givet. Jeg tror det tildels skyldes min far som var blind. Det var ikke noget han gjorde særlig meget ud af, for det meste. Engang i Nova Scotia da vi skulle se en fuld solformørkelse - ja, den samme som i sangen med Carly Simon - som måske, måske ikke refererer til James Taylor, Warren Beatty eller Mick Jagger; det vides ikke rigtig. De delte nogle mørke plastikbriller ud som gjorde, at vi kunne se direkte på solen uden at skade vores øjne. Men far blev meget bange: Han ville ikke have os til at bruge dem. I stedet ville han have os til at bruge de her billige papbriller så der ikke var nogen sandsynlighed for, at vores øjne kunne komme til skade. Jeg syntes det var en lille smule mærkeligt.
Of the five senses, vision is the one that I appreciate the most, and it's the one that I can least take for granted. I think this is partially due to my father, who was blind. It was a fact that he didn't make much of a fuss about, usually. One time in Nova Scotia, when we went to see a total eclipse of the sun -- (Laughter) Yeah, same one as in the Carly Simon song, which may or may not refer to James Taylor, Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger; we're not really sure. They handed out these dark plastic viewers that allowed us to look directly at the sun without damaging our eyes. But Dad got really scared; he didn't want us doing that. He wanted us instead to use these cheap cardboard viewers, so that there was no chance at all that our eyes would be damaged. I thought this was a little strange at the time.
Hvad jeg ikke vidste på det tidspunkt var at min far faktisk var blevet født med perfekt syn. Da han og hans søster Martha var meget små havde deres mor taget dem med ud var at se en formørkelse, eller, en solformørkelse og kort tid efter det begyndte de begge at miste deres syn. Årtier senere viste det sig, at kilden til deres blindhed sandsynligvis har været en slags bakteriel infektion. Så vidt vides havde det overhovedet intet at gøre med den solformørkelse, men på det tidspunkt var min bedstemor allerede blevet begravet i troen at det var hendes skyld.
What I didn't know at the time was that my father had actually been born with perfect eyesight. When he and his sister Martha were just very little, their mom took them out to see a total eclipse -- or actually, a solar eclipse -- and not long after that, both of them started losing their eyesight. Decades later, it turned out that the source of their blindness was most likely some sort of bacterial infection. As near as we can tell, it had nothing whatsoever to do with that solar eclipse, but by then my grandmother had already gone to her grave thinking it was her fault.
Så min var blev færdig med sine Harvard studier i 1946, blev gift med min mor, og købte et hus i Lexington, Massachussetts, hvor de første skud blev affyret mod briterne i 1775, selvom vi ikke ramte nogen af dem før slaget ved Concord. Han blev ansat til at arbejde for Raytheon hvor han designede guidance-systemer, hvilket var en del af det højteknologiske omdrejningspunkt, der på det tidspunkt drejede var Rute 128 Så det var hvad der svarer til 70'ernes Silicone Valley. Far var egentlig ikke militaristisk; Han havde bare rigtig dårlig samvittighed over, at han ikke kunne slås med under Anden Verdenskrig på grund af hans handicap, Selvom de dog trak ham igennem den timelange fysiske hærundersøgelse før de kom til den allersidste test, som var en synstest. (Latter)
So, Dad graduated Harvard in 1946, married my mom, and bought a house in Lexington, Massachusetts, where the first shots were fired against the British in 1775, although we didn't actually hit any of them until Concord. He got a job working for Raytheon designing guidance systems, which was part of the Route 128 high-tech axis in those days -- so, the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the '70s. Dad wasn't a real militaristic kind of guy; he just felt bad that he wasn't able to fight in World War II on account of his handicap, although they did let him get through the several-hour-long army physical exam before they got to the very last test, which was for vision. (Laughter)
Så far samlede en masse patenter sammen og fik hurtigt ry for at være en blind geniraketvidenskabsmandsopfinder Men for os var han bare far, og vores liv derhjemme var meget normale. Som barn så jeg meget fjernsyn og havde mange nørdede hobbyer som mineralogi og mikrobiologi og rumprogrammer og en lille smule politik. Jeg spillede meget skak. Men da jeg var 14, præsenterede en ven mig for tegneserier, og jeg besluttede at det var det jeg ville leve af som voksen.
So Dad started racking up all of these patents and gaining a reputation as a blind genius, rocket scientist, inventor. But to us he was just Dad, and our home life was pretty normal. As a kid, I watched a lot of television and had lots of nerdy hobbies like mineralogy and microbiology and the space program and a little bit of politics. I played a lot of chess. But at the age of 14, a friend got me interested in comic books, and I decided that was what I wanted to do for a living.
Så der er min far: Han er videnskabsmand, han er ingeniør og han er militærentreprenør. Og han har fire børn; En vokser op og bliver datalog, en vokser op og melder sig ind i flåden og en vokser op og bliver ingeniør, og så er der mig: tegneserietegneren. (Latter) Hvilket forøvrigt gør mig til det modsatte af Dean Kamen, Fordi jeg er en tegneserietegner der er søn af en opfinder, og han er en opfinder, der er søn af en tegneserietegner. (Latter) Det er sandt. (Klapsalve)
So, here's my dad: he's a scientist, he's an engineer and he's a military contractor. So, he has four kids, right? One grows up to become a computer scientist, one grows up to join the Navy, one grows up to become an engineer ... And then there's me: the comic book artist. (Laughter) Which, incidentally, makes me the opposite of Dean Kamen, because I'm a comic book artist, son of an inventor, and he's an inventor, son of a comic book artist. (Laughter) Right? It's true.
Det sjove ved det er, at far havde masser af tillid til mig. Han troede på mine evner som tegner, selvom han jo ikke havde noget direkte bevis på, om jeg var god eller ej: Alt hvad han kunne se var bare utydeligt. Det giver en ny betydning til udtrykket 'blind tillid,' som ikke har de samme negative konnotationer for mig som det kan have for andre mennesker. Tillid til ting der ikke kan ses, der ikke kan bevises, er ikke noget jeg har følt mig særlig forbundet med. Jeg kan godt lide videnskab, hvor hvad vi ser og kan fastslå er grundlaget for hvad vi ved.
(Applause) The funny thing is, Dad had a lot of faith in me. He had faith in my abilities as a cartoonist, even though he had no direct evidence that I was any good whatsoever; everything he saw was just a blur. Now, this gives a real meaning to the term "blind faith," which doesn't have the same negative connotation for me that it does for other people. Now, faith in things which cannot be seen, which cannot be proved, is not the sort of faith that I've ever really related to all that much. I tend to like science, where what we see and can ascertain are the foundation of what we know.
Men der er også et mellemleje Et mellemleje der bliver betrådt af folk som stakkels Charles Babbage, og hans dampdrevne computere, der aldrig blev bygget. Der var aldrig rigtig nogen der forstod hvad han havde i tankerne, bortset fra Ada Lovelace, og han døde, mens han forsøgte at forfølge den drøm. Vannevar Bush med Memex - idéen om at have al menneskelig videnskab på fingerspidserne - det var hans vision. Og jeg tror mange mennesker på hans tid sikkert betragtede ham som lidt af en skør kugle. Og ja, vi kan tage se tilbage i dag og sige, Ja, ha-ha, du ved - det er alt sammen mikrofilm. Men det er- det er ikke pointen. Han forstod hvordan fremtiden ville forme sig. Det gjorde J.C.R. Licklider også med hans ideer om computer-menneskelig interaktion. Det er det samme: han forstod hvordan fremtiden ville forme sig, selvom det var noget der først ville blive indført af folk meget senere. Eller Paul Baran, og hans idé om 'packet switching'. Næsten ingen lyttede til ham dengang. Og selv de mennesker det faktisk lykkedes for, folkene på Bolt, Beranek og Newman i Boston, der bare skulle optegne de strukturerne for hvad der ville blive et verdensomspændende netværk og tegne ting på bagsiderne af servietter og på notepapir og skændes under middagen hjemme hos Howard Johnson på Rute 128 i Lexington, Massachussets, bare tre kilometer fra hvor jeg studerede berømte skakåbninger og lyttede til Gladys Knight & the Pips der sang "Midnight Train to Georgia," mens - (Latter) jeg sad i min fars store, komfortable stol
But there's a middle ground, too -- a middle ground tread by people like poor old Charles Babbage and his steam-driven computers that were never built. Nobody really understood what it was that he had in mind except for Ada Lovelace, and he went to his grave trying to pursue that dream. Vannevar Bush with his memex -- this idea of all of human knowledge at your fingertips -- he had this vision. And I think a lot of people in his day probably thought he was a bit of a kook. And, yeah, we can look back in retrospect and say, "Yeah, ha-ha, it's all microfilm -- (Laughter) But that's not the point; he understood the shape of the future. So did J.C.R. Licklider and his notions for computer-human interaction. Same thing: he understood the shape of the future, even though it was something that would only be implemented by people much later. Or Paul Baran, and his vision for packet switching. Hardly anybody listened to him in his day. Or even the people who actually pulled it off, the people at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, who just would sketch out these structures of what would eventually become a worldwide network, and sketching things on the back of napkins and on note papers and arguing over dinner at Howard Johnson's -- on Route 128 in Lexington, Massachusetts, just two miles from where I was studying the Queen's Gambit Deferred and listening to Gladys Knight & The Pips singing "Midnight Train to Georgia" -- (Laughter)
in my dad's big easy chair, you know?
Så lad os sige der er tre typer syn: Syn baseret på hvad man ikke kan se: Syn på hvad der er uset og der ikke kan vides. Synet af hvad der allerede er blevet enten bevist eller kan fastslås. Og så er der den tredje slags syn, som er noget der kan være, der måske er, det er baseret på viden, men er stadig ikke bevist. Vi har set en masse eksempler på folk der forfølger den type syn inden for videnskaben, men jeg tror også det er sandt inden for kunst, inden for politik og endda også i personlig stræben.
So, three types of vision, right? Vision based on what one cannot see, the vision of that unseen and unknowable. The vision of that which has already been proven or can be ascertained. And this third kind, a vision of something which can be, which may be, based on knowledge but is, as yet, unproven. Now, we've seen a lot of examples of people who are pursuing that sort of vision in science, but I think it's also true in the arts, it's true in politics, it's even true in personal endeavors.
Hvad det kan koges ned til, er fire grundlæggende principper: Lær af alle, Følg ingen, Led efter mønstre og arbejd røven ud af bukserne. Jeg tror det er de fire principper der er altafgørende her. Og det gælder især den tredje, hvor visioner om fremtiden begynder at tage form. Det spændende ved det her er, at dette særlige syn på verden bare er én ud af fire forskellige veje, der er synlige indenfor forskellige indsatsområder. I tegneserier ved jeg at det ender ud med en formalistisk indgang hvor man prøver at forstå hvordan det virker. Så er der en anden, mere klassisk tilgang der omfavner skønhed og håndværk. En anden forholder sig til indholdets gennemskuelighed. Og en anden igen lægger vægt på autenticiteten af menneskelig erfaring og ærlighed, og råhed.
What it comes down to, really, is four basic principles: learn from everyone; follow no one; watch for patterns; and work like hell. I think these are the four principles that go into this. And it's that third one, especially, where visions of the future begin to manifest themselves. What's interesting is that this particular way of looking at the world, is, I think, only one of four different ways that manifest themselves in different fields of endeavor. In comics, I know that it results in sort of a formalist attitude towards trying to understand how it works. Then there's another, more classical attitude which embraces beauty and craft; another one which believes in the pure transparency of content; and then another, which emphasizes the authenticity of human experience and honesty and rawness.
Her er der fire forskellige måder man kan anse verden på. Jeg har endda givet dem navne. Den klassicistiske, den animistiske, den formalistiske og den ikonoklastiske. Interessant er det, at det mere eller mindre svarer til Jungs fire underinddelinger af menneskelig tanke. Og de afspejler en dikotomi mellem kunst og fornøjelse på venstre og højre; tradition og revolution i toppen og bunden og hvis du ser på det diagonalt, får du indhold og form - og så skønhed og sandhed. og det kan sikkert i lige så høj grad overføres til musik, film og kunst, hvilket som sådan ikke har noget at gøre med syn, eller for den sags skyld temaet for konferencen - "Inspired by Nature"- medmindre man beslutter sig for at inddrage fablen om frøen der giver skorpionen et lift på sin ryg, så den kan komme over floden fordi skorpionen lover ikke at stikke ham. Men så stikker skorpionen ham alligevel, og de dør begge to. Men først spørger frøen ham hvorfor, og skorpionen svarer, "Fordi det er min natur"- I den forstand, jo. (Latter) Så- Så det her var min natur. Sagen er, at jeg kunne se, at den vej jeg tog for at finde fokus i mit arbejde og for at finde ud af, hvem jeg var, Jeg så, at det var min vej til erkendelsen. Faktisk var det bare mig, der omfavnede min natur, hvilket betyder, at jeg trods alt ikke faldt særlig langt fra stammen
These are four very different ways of looking at the world. I even gave them names: the classicist, the animist, the formalist and iconoclast. Interestingly, they seem to correspond more or less to Jung's four subdivisions of human thought. And they reflect a dichotomy of art and delight on left and the right; tradition and revolution on the top and the bottom. And if you go on the diagonal, you get content and form, and then beauty and truth. And it probably applies just as much to music and movies and fine art, which has nothing whatsoever to do with vision at all, or, for that matter, nothing to do with our conference theme of "Inspired by Nature," except to the extent of the fable of the frog who gives a ride to the scorpion on his back to get across the river because the scorpion promises not to sting him, but the scorpion stings him anyway and they both die, but not before the frog asks him why, and the scorpion says, "Because it's my nature." In that sense, yes. (Laughter) So this was my nature. The thing was, I saw that the route I took to discovering this focus in my work and who I was -- I saw it as just this road to discovery. Actually, it was just me embracing my nature, which means that I didn't actually fall that far from the tree, after all.
Så hvad betyder "et videnskabeligt sind" i kunstverden? Tja jeg begyndte at lave tegneserier, men jeg begyndte også at prøve på at forstå dem, næsten med det samme. Og en af de vigtigste ting jeg fandt ud af med tegneserier er, at tegneserier er et visuelt medium, men de forsøger af omfatte samtlige sanser. Så de forskellige elementer i tegneserier, som billeder og ord, og de forskellige symboler og alt derimellem, som tegneserier udgør, bliver alle transporteret gennem synet som den eneste kanal. Så du har ting som lighed, hvor noget der ligner den fysiske verden kan gøres abstrakt i forskellige retninger: Det kan fjernes fra lighed, hvor det stadig bevarer sin betydning eller fjernes fra både lighed og betydning, mod billedplanet
So what does a "scientific mind" do in the arts? I started making comics, but I also started trying to understand them, almost immediately. One of the most important things about comics that I discovered was that comics are a visual medium, but they try to embrace all of the senses within it. So, the different elements of comics, like pictures and words, and the different symbols and everything in between that comics presents, are all funneled through the single conduit, a vision. So we have things like resemblance, where something which resembles the physical world can be abstracted in a couple of different directions: abstracted from resemblance, but still retaining the complete meaning, or abstracted away from both resemblance and meaning
Hvis du lægger alle de tre ting sammen har du et lille kort over den grænse for visuel ikonografi som tegneserier kan omfavne. Og hvis du flytter dig til højre får du også sprog, for der bliver det fjernet endnu mere fra lighed, men bevarer stadig mening. Syn bliver påkaldt som repræsentation for lyd og for bedre at forstå de tos fælles egenskaber samt deres fælles ophav. Også for at repræsentere lydes tekstlighed - at fange deres grundlæggende træk gennem det visuelle. Og der er også en balance mellem det synlige og det usynlige i tegneserier. Tegneserier er en slags 'Call and response' hvor kunstneren giver dig noget du kan se i panelerne, og derefter giver dig noget du kan forestille dig mellem panelerne.
towards the picture plane. Put all these three together, and you have a nice little map of the entire boundary of visual iconography, which comics can embrace. And if you move to the right you also get language, because that's abstracting even further from resemblance, but still maintaining meaning. Vision is called upon to represent sound and to understand the common properties of those two and their common heritage as well; also, to try to represent the texture of sound to capture its essential character through visuals. There's also a balance between the visible and the invisible in comics. Comics is a kind of call and response, in which the artist gives you something to see within the panels, and then gives you something to imagine between the panels.
Der er også en anden sans som synet repræsenterer i tegneserier, og det er tid. Rækkefølge er et vigtigt aspekt i tegneserier. Tegneserier udgør et slags tidsligt kort. Og dette tidslige kort var noget der bragt energi til moderne tegneserier. Men jeg tænker på, om det måske også giver energi til andre ting, og jeg fandt nogle i verdenshistorien. Her kan I se, at det fungerer ud fra samme princip I de her antikke versioner af den samme idé. Hvad der sker er, at kunstformen støder sammen med den anvendte teknologi, uanset om det er maling eller sten, som i denne her grav fra det gamle Ægypten. eller en bundrelief-skulptur, der kommer ud af en stensøjle eller et 60 meter langt broderi, eller malet hjorteskin og træbark der strækker sig over 88 harmonikafoldede sider.
Also, another sense which comics' vision represents, and that's time. Sequence is a very important aspect of comics. Comics presents a kind of temporal map. And this temporal map was something that energizes modern comics, but I was wondering if perhaps it also energizes other sorts of forms, and I found some in history. You can see this same principle operating in these ancient versions of the same idea. What's happening is, an art form is colliding with a given technology, whether it's paint on stone, like the Tomb of Menna the Scribe in ancient Egypt, or a bas-relief sculpture rising up a stone column, or a 200-foot-long embroidery, or painted deerskin and tree bark running across 88 accordion-folded pages.
Det spændende er, at så snart det skal trykkes - og det her er forresten fra 1450 - dukker alle de kendetegn op, som vi kan genkende fra moderne tegneserier: retlinjet panelopsætning, simple linjer uden farvetonation og en læserækkefølge der går fra venstre mod højre. Og inden for 100 år begynder man allerede at se talebobler og billedtekst, og det er bare en spytklat at komme herfra til her. Så jeg skrev en bog om det i '93, men da jeg var ved at blive færdig med bogen blev jeg nødt til at arbejde lidt med opsætningen og jeg var træt af at være nødt til at bruge den lokale kopiforretning, så jeg købte en computer. Og det var bare en lille en - den kunne ikke så meget udover tekstbehandling. Men min far havde fortalt mig om Moore's lov, om Moore's lov tilbage i 70'erne, og jeg vidste hvad der nu var på vej. Og så holdt jeg øjnene åbne for at se, om de ændringer der var sket da vi gik fra ikke trykte tegneserier til trykte tegneserier ville ske, hvis vi fortsatte mod posttryk-tegneserier.
What's interesting is, once you hit "print" -- and this is from 1450, by the way -- all of the artifacts of modern comics start to present themselves: rectilinear panel arrangements, simple line drawings without tone, and a left-to-right reading sequence. And within 100 years, you already start to see word balloons and captions, and it's really just a hop, skip and a jump from here to here. So I wrote a book about this in '93, but as I was finishing the book, I had to do a little bit of typesetting, and I was tired of going to my local copy shop to do it, so I bought a computer. And it was just a little thing -- it wasn't good for much except text entry -- but my father had told me about Moore's law back in the '70s, and I knew what was coming. And so, I kept my eyes peeled to see if the sort of changes that happened when we went from pre-print comics to print comics would happen when we went beyond, to post-print comics.
Så en af de første ting der blev foreslået var, at vi kunne blande det visuelle fra tegneserier med lyd, bevægelse og interaktivitet fra CD-ROM'erne som blev lavet dengang. Det var selv før internettet. Og en af de første ting de gjorde var, at de forsøgte at tage tegneseriesiden som den så ud og overføre den til en skærm, hvilket var en klassisk McLuhansk fejltagelse, hvor man anvender form fra den tidligere teknologi som indholdet for den nye teknologi. Hvad de derfor gjorde var, at de ville have de her tegneseriesider som så ud ligesom trykte tegneseriesider. og de ville indføre forskelligt lyd og bevægelse. Problemet var, at hvis du følger den idé - den simple idé at rum er lig med tid i tegneserier, hvad der sker er, at når du så introducerer lyd og bevægelse, som er tidlige fænomener, der kun kan repræsenteres gennem tid, så bryder de med præsentationens kontinuitet
So, one of the first things proposed was that we could mix the visuals of comics with the sound, motion and interactivity of the CD-ROMs being made in those days. This was even before the Web. And one of the first things they did was, they tried to take the comics page as is and transplant it to monitors, which was a classic McLuhanesque mistake of appropriating the shape of the previous technology as the content of the new technology. And so, what they would do is have these comic pages that resemble print comics pages, and they would introduce all this sound and motion. The problem was that if you go with this basic idea that space equals time in comics, what happens is that when you introduce sound and motion, which are temporal phenomena that can only be represented through time, they break with that continuity of presentation.
Interaktivitet var en anden ting. Der var hypertekst-tegneserier. Men problemet med hypertekst er, at alt ved hypertekst enten er her, ikke er her eller er forbundet hertil. Det er iboende ikke-rummeligt. Afstanden fra Abraham Lincoln til en Lincoln penny-mønt, Fra Penny Marshall til Marshall Planen fra "Plan 9" til ni liv: Det er altsammen det samme. (Latter) Og - men i tegneserier, i tegneserier har hvert arbejdsaspekt, hvert element et rummeligt forhold til alle andre elementer på alle tidspunkter.
Interactivity was another thing. There were hypertext comics, but the thing about hypertext is that everything in hypertext is either here, not here, or connected to here; it's profoundly nonspatial. The distance from Abraham Lincoln to a Lincoln penny to Penny Marshall to the Marshall Plan to "Plan 9" to nine lives: it's all the same. (Laughter) But in comics, every aspect of the work, every element of the work, has a spatial relationship to every other element at all times.
Så spørgsmålet var: Var det overhovedet muligt at bevare det rummelige forhold mens man stadig gjorde brug af alle de ting det digitale kunne tilbyde os? Og jeg fandt mit personlige svar på det i de antikke tegneserier som jeg viste jer. Hver af dem har en ren, ubrudt læselinje, uanset om den kører i zigzag over væggen eller op ad en søjle som en spiral eller direkte fra venstre til højre, eller endda i bagvendt zigzag over de 88 harmonikafoldede sider. Det samme sker, og det er, at den grundlæggende idé, at når du bevæger dig gennem rummet bevæger du dig gennem tiden, bliver udført uden kompromis, men man indgik kompromiser, da trykket blev opfundet. Sidestillede rum var ikke længere sidestillede øjeblikke. Så tegneseriens grundlæggende idé blev mast igen og igen og igen og igen.
So the question was: Was there any way to preserve that spatial relationship while still taking advantage of all of the things that digital had to offer us? And I found my personal answer for this in those ancient comics that I was showing you. Each of them has a single unbroken reading line, whether it's going zigzag across the walls or spiraling up a column or just straight left to right, or even going in a backwards zigzag across those 88 accordion-folded pages, the same thing is happening; that is, that the basic idea that as you move through space you move through time, is being carried out without any compromise, but there were compromises when print hit. Adjacent spaces were no longer adjacent moments, so the basic idea of comics was being broken again and again
Og jeg tænkte: Ok, hvis det passer, er der så en anden måde, når vi bevæger os udover brugen af tryk i dag, hvorpå vi kan bringe det tilbage? Nu er skærmen teknisk lige så begrænset som siden, ikke? Det er en anderledes form, men bortset fra det er det den samme grundlæggende begrænsning. Men det er kun hvis du kigger på skærmen som en side. Men ikke hvis du kigger på skærmen som et vindue.
and again and again. And I thought, OK, well, if that's true, is there any way, when we go beyond today's print, to somehow bring that back? Now, the monitor is just as limited as the page, technically, right? It's a different shape, but other than that, it's the same basic limitation. But that's only if you look at the monitor as a page, but not if you look at the monitor as a window.
Og det er hvad jeg foreslog: at måske skulle vi bygge de her tegneserier ud fra et ubegrænset lærred langs X-aksen og Y-aksen og trapper. Vi kunne lave cirkulære fortællinger, der bogstaveligt talt var cirkulære. Vi kunne lave et vendepunkt i historien der bogstaveligt talt var et vendepunkt. Parallelle historieforløb kunne bogstaveligt talt være parallelle. X, Y og Z, også. Så jeg havde alle de her ideer. Det var tilbage i 90'erne, og andre folk i branchen syntes jeg var temmelig skør, men mange endte faktisk med at gøre lige præcis det her. Jeg viser jer lige et par stykker.
And that's what I propose, that perhaps we could create these comics on an infinite canvas, along the X axis and the Y axis and staircases. We could do circular narratives that were literally circular. We could do a turn in a story that was literally a turn. Parallel narratives could be literally parallel. X, Y and also Z. So I had all these notions. This was back in the late '90s, and other people in my business thought I was pretty crazy, but a lot of people then went on and actually did it. I'm going to show you a couple now.
Det her var en tidlig collagetegneserie af en fyr ved navn Jason Lex. Læg mærke til hvad der sker her: Hvad jeg leder efter, er en holdbar afvigelse - Det er hvad vi allesammen leder efter. Som medierne træder ind i den nye tid leder vi efter afvigelser der er holdbare, der har styrken til at blive. Nu tager vi den grundlæggende idé om at fremlægge tegneserier i et visuelt medium og så tager vi det hele vejen fra begyndelse til slutning. Det er den tegneserier I lige har set. Den er oppe på skærmen nu. Men selvom vi kun oplever den en del af gangen, er det bare der hvor teknologien er nu. Som teknologien udvikler sig Og vi får alt omsluttende visninger og hvad der ellers er på vej, vil ting som den her bare vokse. Den vil tilpasse sig. Den vil tilpasse sig til sit miljø. Det er en holdbar afvigelse.
This was an early collage comic by a fellow named Jasen Lex. And notice what's going on here. What I'm searching for is a durable mutation -- that's what all of us are searching for. As media head into this new era, we are looking for mutations that are durable, that have some sort of staying power. Now, we're taking this basic idea of presenting comics in a visual medium, and we're carrying it through all the way from beginning to end. That's that entire comic you just saw, up on the screen right now. But even though we're only experiencing it one piece at a time, that's just where the technology is right now. As the technology evolves, as you get full immersive displays and whatnot, this sort of thing will only grow; it will adapt. It will adapt to its environment; it's a durable mutation.
Her er der en anden. Den er lavet af Drew Weing; Den hedder "Hvalp Grunder over Universets Varmedød." S, hvad der sker her som vi tegner historierne på et uendeligt lærred, er at der opstår et mere rent udtryk for hvad mediet handler om. Vi går lige hurtigt igennem - I forstår vist princippet. Jeg vil bare hen til det sidste panel. (Latter) Sådan.
Here's another one. This is by Drew Weing; this is called "'Pup' Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe." See what's going on here as we draw these stories on an infinite canvas is you're creating a more pure expression of what this medium is all about. We'll go by this a little quickly. You get the idea. I just want to get to the last panel. [Cat 1: Pup! Earth to Pup! Cat 2: Come play baseball with us!] (Laughter)
(Latter) (Latter)
[Pup: Did either of you realize that eventually the universe will be nothing but a thin, cold gas spread across infinite, lonely space?]
[Cat 1: Oh ... Cat 2: We'd better hurry, then!]
Bare ét til. Her kan man vist tale om et uendeligt lærred. Det er af en fyr der hedder Daniel Merlin Goodbrey fra Storbritannien.
(Laughter) Just one more. Talk about your infinite canvas. It's by a guy named Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, in Britain.
Hvorfor er det her vigtigt? Jeg synes det er vigtigt fordi medier, alle medier giver os et vindue tilbage ind mod vores egen verden. Det kan godt være at film - og i sidste ende virtuelle virkeligheder, eller det der svarer til det - andre former for immersive visninger, kan give os den mest effektive flugt fra den verden vi lever i. Derfor søger de fleste hen mod historiefortælling, for at flygte. Men medierne giver os et vindue tilbage til den verden vi bor i. Og når medierne udvikler sig, så mediernes identitet i højere grad bliver unik. For hvad I ser på, er præcist tegneserier. I ser på tegneserier der er mere tegneserieagtige end de nogensinde har været før. Når det sker, giver man folk mange forskellige muligheder for at vende tilbage til verden gennem forskellige vinduer Og når man gør det, tillader det dem at forholde sig til den verden de bor i og se dens konturer. Og det er derfor jeg synes det her er vigtigt. En af mange grunde, men jeg bliver nødt til at gå nu. Tak fordi jeg måtte fortælle for jer.
Why is this important? I think this is important because media -- all media -- provide us a window back into our world. Now, it could be that motion pictures and eventually, virtual reality, or something equivalent to it, some sort of immersive display, is going to provide us with our most efficient escape from the world that we're in. That's why most people turn to storytelling, to escape. But media provides us with a window back into the world we live in. And when media evolve so that the identity of the media becomes increasingly unique -- because what you're looking at is comics cubed, you're looking at comics that are more comics-like than they've ever been before -- when that happens, you provide people with multiple ways of reentering the world through different windows. And when you do that, it allows them to triangulate the world they live in and see its shape. That's why I think this is important. One of many reasons, but I've got to go now.