0:00:00.000,0:00:01.000
Of the five senses,

0:00:01.000,0:00:04.000
vision is the one that I appreciate the most,

0:00:04.000,0:00:07.000
and it's the one that I can least take for granted.

0:00:07.000,0:00:10.000
I think this is partially due to my father, who was blind.

0:00:11.000,0:00:13.000
It was a fact that he didn't make much of a fuss about, usually.

0:00:13.000,0:00:14.000
One time in Nova Scotia,

0:00:14.000,0:00:16.000
when we went to see a total eclipse of the sun --

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
yeah, same one as in the Carly Simon song,

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
which may or may not refer

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
to James Taylor, Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger; we're not really sure.

0:00:24.000,0:00:27.000
They handed out these dark plastic viewers

0:00:27.000,0:00:29.000
that allowed us to look directly at the sun

0:00:29.000,0:00:30.000
without damaging our eyes.

0:00:31.000,0:00:32.000
But Dad got really scared:

0:00:32.000,0:00:33.000
he didn't want us doing that.

0:00:34.000,0:00:37.000
He wanted us instead to use these cheap cardboard viewers

0:00:37.000,0:00:40.000
so that there was no chance at all that our eyes would be damaged.

0:00:41.000,0:00:42.000
I thought this was a little strange at the time.

0:00:43.000,0:00:44.000
What I didn't know at the time

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
was that my father had actually been born with perfect eyesight.

0:00:47.000,0:00:49.000
When he and his sister Martha were just very little,

0:00:49.000,0:00:52.000
their mom took them out to see a total eclipse --

0:00:52.000,0:00:53.000
or actually, a solar eclipse --

0:00:53.000,0:00:54.000
and not long after that,

0:00:54.000,0:00:57.000
both of them started losing their eyesight.

0:00:58.000,0:00:59.000
Decades later,

0:00:59.000,0:01:01.000
it turned out that the source of their blindness

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
was most likely some sort of bacterial infection.

0:01:04.000,0:01:05.000
As near as we can tell,

0:01:05.000,0:01:09.000
it had nothing whatsoever to do with that solar eclipse,

0:01:09.000,0:01:11.000
but by then my grandmother had already gone to her grave

0:01:11.000,0:01:12.000
thinking it was her fault.

0:01:14.000,0:01:17.000
So, Dad graduated Harvard in 1946,

0:01:17.000,0:01:18.000
married my mom,

0:01:18.000,0:01:21.000
and bought a house in Lexington, Massachusetts,

0:01:21.000,0:01:25.000
where the first shots were fired against the British in 1775,

0:01:25.000,0:01:27.000
although we didn't actually hit any of them until Concord.

0:01:27.000,0:01:29.000
He got a job working for Raytheon,

0:01:29.000,0:01:31.000
designing guidance systems,

0:01:31.000,0:01:34.000
which was part of the Route 128 high-tech axis in those days --

0:01:34.000,0:01:37.000
so the equivalent of Silicone Valley in the '70s.

0:01:37.000,0:01:40.000
Dad wasn't a real militaristic kind of guy;

0:01:40.000,0:01:43.000
he just really felt bad that he wasn't able to fight in World War II

0:01:43.000,0:01:44.000
on account of his handicap,

0:01:44.000,0:01:46.000
although they did let him get through

0:01:46.000,0:01:50.000
the several-hour-long army physical exam

0:01:50.000,0:01:51.000
before they got to the very last test,

0:01:51.000,0:01:52.000
which was for vision.

0:01:52.000,0:01:56.000
(Laughter)

0:01:56.000,0:01:59.000
So, Dad started racking up all of these patents

0:01:59.000,0:02:02.000
and gaining a reputation as a blind genius, rocket scientist, inventor.

0:02:02.000,0:02:03.000
But to us he was just Dad,

0:02:03.000,0:02:07.000
and our home life was pretty normal.

0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000
As a kid, I watched a lot of television

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
and had lots of nerdy hobbies

0:02:11.000,0:02:14.000
like mineralogy and microbiology and the space program

0:02:14.000,0:02:15.000
and a little bit of politics.

0:02:15.000,0:02:17.000
I played a lot of chess.

0:02:17.000,0:02:18.000
But at the age of 14,

0:02:18.000,0:02:19.000
a friend of mine got me interested in comic books,

0:02:19.000,0:02:22.000
and I decided that was what I wanted to do for a living.

0:02:23.000,0:02:24.000
So, here's my dad:

0:02:24.000,0:02:29.000
he's a scientist, he's an engineer and he's a military contractor.

0:02:30.000,0:02:33.000
So, he has four kids, right?

0:02:33.000,0:02:34.000
One grows up to become a computer scientist,

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
one grows up to join the Navy,

0:02:37.000,0:02:38.000
one grows up to become an engineer,

0:02:39.000,0:02:40.000
and then there's me:

0:02:41.000,0:02:43.000
the comic book artist.

0:02:43.000,0:02:46.000
(Laughter)

0:02:46.000,0:02:47.000
Which, incidentally, makes me the opposite of Dean Kamen,

0:02:47.000,0:02:49.000
because I'm a comic book artist, son of an inventor,

0:02:49.000,0:02:51.000
and he's an inventor, son of a comic book artist.

0:02:52.000,0:02:53.000
(Laughter)

0:02:53.000,0:02:55.000
Right, it's true.

0:02:55.000,0:02:58.000
(Applause)

0:02:58.000,0:03:00.000
The funny thing is, Dad had a lot of faith in me.

0:03:00.000,0:03:03.000
He had faith in my abilities as a cartoonist,

0:03:03.000,0:03:06.000
even though he had no direct evidence that I was any good whatsoever:

0:03:06.000,0:03:08.000
everything he saw was just a blur.

0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000
Now, this gives a real meaning to the term "blind faith,"

0:03:10.000,0:03:14.000
which doesn't have the same negative connotation for me that it does for other people.

0:03:15.000,0:03:18.000
Now, faith in things which cannot be seen, which cannot be proved,

0:03:18.000,0:03:22.000
is not the sort of faith that I've ever really related to all that much.

0:03:22.000,0:03:23.000
I tend to like science,

0:03:23.000,0:03:25.000
where what we see

0:03:25.000,0:03:28.000
and can ascertain are the foundation of what we know.

0:03:29.000,0:03:31.000
But there's a middle ground, too.

0:03:31.000,0:03:34.000
A middle ground tread by people like poor old Charles Babbage,

0:03:34.000,0:03:38.000
and his steam-driven computers that were never built.

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
Nobody really understood what it was that he had in mind,

0:03:40.000,0:03:43.000
except for Ada Lovelace,

0:03:44.000,0:03:47.000
and he went to his grave trying to pursue that dream.

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
Vannevar Bush with his Memex --

0:03:49.000,0:03:52.000
this idea of all of human knowledge at your fingertips --

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
he had this vision.

0:03:54.000,0:03:55.000
And I think a lot of people in his day

0:03:55.000,0:03:57.000
probably thought he was a bit of a kook.

0:03:57.000,0:03:59.000
And, yeah, we can look back in retrospect and say,

0:03:59.000,0:04:03.000
yeah, ha-ha, you know -- it's all microfilm. But that's --

0:04:03.000,0:04:06.000
that's not the point. He understood the shape of the future.

0:04:06.000,0:04:10.000
So did J.C.R. Licklider and his notions for computer-human interaction.

0:04:10.000,0:04:13.000
Same thing: he understood the shape of the future,

0:04:13.000,0:04:16.000
even though it was something that would

0:04:16.000,0:04:19.000
only be implemented by people much later.

0:04:19.000,0:04:22.000
Or Paul Baran, and his vision for packet switching.

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
Hardly anybody listened to him in his day.

0:04:25.000,0:04:27.000
Or even the people who actually pulled it off,

0:04:27.000,0:04:30.000
the people at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston,

0:04:30.000,0:04:32.000
who just would sketch out these structures

0:04:32.000,0:04:35.000
of what would eventually become a worldwide network,

0:04:35.000,0:04:39.000
and sketching things on the back of napkins and on note papers

0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000
and arguing over dinner at Howard Johnson's --

0:04:41.000,0:04:43.000
on Route 128 in Lexington, Massachusetts,

0:04:43.000,0:04:46.000
just two miles from where I was studying the Queen's Gambit Deferred

0:04:46.000,0:04:48.000
and listening to Gladys Knight & the Pips

0:04:48.000,0:04:50.000
singing "Midnight Train to Georgia," while --

0:04:50.000,0:04:51.000
(Laughter)

0:04:51.000,0:04:54.000
-- in my dad's big easy chair, you know?

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
So, three types of vision, right?

0:04:56.000,0:04:59.000
Vision based on what one cannot see:

0:04:59.000,0:05:02.000
the vision of that unseen and unknowable.

0:05:02.000,0:05:05.000
The vision of that which has already been proven or can be ascertained.

0:05:05.000,0:05:07.000
And this third kind

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
of vision, of something which

0:05:10.000,0:05:11.000
can be, which may be,

0:05:12.000,0:05:15.000
based on knowledge, but is as yet unproven.

0:05:15.000,0:05:20.000
Now, we've seen a lot of examples of people who are pursuing that sort of vision in science,

0:05:20.000,0:05:22.000
but I think it's also true in the arts, it's true in politics,

0:05:22.000,0:05:25.000
it's even true in personal endeavors.

0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000
What it comes down to, really, is four basic principles:

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
learn from everyone,

0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000
follow no one,

0:05:31.000,0:05:33.000
watch for patterns,

0:05:33.000,0:05:34.000
and work like hell.

0:05:34.000,0:05:37.000
I think these are the four principles that go into this.

0:05:37.000,0:05:39.000
And it's that third one, especially,

0:05:39.000,0:05:41.000
where visions of the future

0:05:41.000,0:05:43.000
begin to manifest themselves.

0:05:43.000,0:05:45.000
What's interesting is that this particular way of looking at the world,

0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000
is, I think, only one of four different ways

0:05:48.000,0:05:50.000
that manifest themselves in different fields of endeavor.

0:05:50.000,0:05:52.000
In comics, I know that

0:05:52.000,0:05:55.000
it results in sort of a formalist attitude

0:05:55.000,0:05:57.000
towards trying to understand how it works.

0:05:57.000,0:06:00.000
Then there's another, more classical, attitude

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
which embraces beauty and craft.

0:06:02.000,0:06:06.000
Another one which believes in the pure transparency of content.

0:06:06.000,0:06:08.000
And then another

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
which emphasizes the authenticity of human experience --

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
and honesty, and rawness.

0:06:12.000,0:06:14.000
These are four very different ways of looking at the world. I even gave them names.

0:06:14.000,0:06:18.000
The classicist, the animist, and formalist and iconoclast.

0:06:18.000,0:06:19.000
Interestingly, it seemed to correspond more or less

0:06:19.000,0:06:22.000
to Jung's four subdivisions of human thought.

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
And they reflect a dichotomy of art and delight

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
on left and the right;

0:06:28.000,0:06:30.000
tradition and revolution on the top and the bottom.

0:06:30.000,0:06:32.000
And if you go on the diagonal, you get content and form --

0:06:32.000,0:06:34.000
and then beauty and truth.

0:06:34.000,0:06:35.000
And it probably applies just as much

0:06:35.000,0:06:38.000
to music and to movies and to fine art,

0:06:38.000,0:06:41.000
which has nothing whatsoever to do with vision at all,

0:06:41.000,0:06:44.000
or for that matter, nothing to do with our conference theme of

0:06:44.000,0:06:45.000
"Inspired by Nature" --

0:06:45.000,0:06:48.000
except to the extent of the fable of the frog

0:06:48.000,0:06:51.000
who gives the ride to the scorpion on his back to get across the river

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
because the scorpion promises not to sting him,

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
but then the scorpion does sting him anyway and they both die,

0:06:55.000,0:06:58.000
but not before the frog asks him why and the scorpion says,

0:06:58.000,0:06:59.000
"Because it's my nature" --

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
in that sense, yes.

0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000
(Laughter)

0:07:03.000,0:07:04.000
So --

0:07:05.000,0:07:08.000
so this was my nature. The thing was, I saw

0:07:08.000,0:07:10.000
that the route that I took to discovering

0:07:10.000,0:07:13.000
this focus in my work

0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000
and who I was,

0:07:15.000,0:07:17.000
I saw it as just this road to discovery.

0:07:17.000,0:07:19.000
Actually, it was just me embracing my nature,

0:07:19.000,0:07:21.000
which means

0:07:21.000,0:07:24.000
that I didn't actually fall that far from the tree after all.

0:07:26.000,0:07:28.000
So what does a "scientific mind"

0:07:28.000,0:07:30.000
do in the arts?

0:07:31.000,0:07:32.000
Well, I started making comics,

0:07:32.000,0:07:34.000
but I also started trying to understand them, almost immediately.

0:07:34.000,0:07:37.000
And one of the most important things about comics, I discovered,

0:07:37.000,0:07:39.000
was that comics are a visual medium,

0:07:39.000,0:07:43.000
but they try to embrace all of the senses within it.

0:07:43.000,0:07:47.000
So, the different elements of comics, like pictures and words,

0:07:47.000,0:07:50.000
and the different symbols and everything in between

0:07:50.000,0:07:51.000
that comics presents

0:07:51.000,0:07:53.000
are all funneled through the single conduit of vision.

0:07:53.000,0:07:55.000
So you have things like resemblance,

0:07:55.000,0:07:58.000
where something which resembles the physical world can be abstracted

0:07:58.000,0:08:00.000
in a couple of different directions:

0:08:00.000,0:08:02.000
abstracted from resemblance,

0:08:02.000,0:08:04.000
but still retaining the complete meaning,

0:08:04.000,0:08:08.000
or abstracted away from both resemblance and meaning towards the picture plan.

0:08:08.000,0:08:10.000
Put all these three together, and you have a nice little map

0:08:10.000,0:08:13.000
of the entire boundary of visual iconography

0:08:13.000,0:08:15.000
which comics can embrace.

0:08:15.000,0:08:18.000
And if you move to the right you also get language,

0:08:18.000,0:08:21.000
because that's abstracting even further from resemblance,

0:08:21.000,0:08:23.000
but still maintaining meaning.

0:08:24.000,0:08:26.000
Vision is called upon to represent sound

0:08:26.000,0:08:29.000
and to understand the common properties of those two

0:08:29.000,0:08:31.000
and their common heritage, as well.

0:08:31.000,0:08:34.000
Also, to try to represent the texture of sound

0:08:34.000,0:08:38.000
to capture its essential character through visuals.

0:08:39.000,0:08:41.000
And there's also a balance

0:08:41.000,0:08:43.000
between the visible and the invisible in comics.

0:08:44.000,0:08:46.000
Comics is a kind of call and response

0:08:46.000,0:08:47.000
in which the artist gives you

0:08:47.000,0:08:48.000
something to see within the panels,

0:08:48.000,0:08:52.000
and then gives you something to imagine between the panels.

0:08:53.000,0:08:55.000
Also, another sense

0:08:55.000,0:08:58.000
which comics' vision represents, and that's time.

0:08:59.000,0:09:02.000
Sequence is a very important aspect of comics.

0:09:03.000,0:09:05.000
Comics presents a kind of temporal map.

0:09:06.000,0:09:09.000
And this temporal map was something that energizes modern comics,

0:09:09.000,0:09:12.000
but I was wondering if perhaps it also energizes

0:09:12.000,0:09:14.000
other sorts of forms,

0:09:14.000,0:09:15.000
and I found some in history.

0:09:16.000,0:09:19.000
And you can see this same principle operating

0:09:19.000,0:09:22.000
in these ancient versions of the same idea.

0:09:22.000,0:09:24.000
What's happening is, the art form is colliding

0:09:24.000,0:09:25.000
with the given technology,

0:09:25.000,0:09:29.000
whether it's paint on stone, like the Tomb of the Scribe in ancient Egypt,

0:09:29.000,0:09:31.000
or a bas-relief sculpture rising up a stone column,

0:09:32.000,0:09:34.000
or a 200-foot-long embroidery,

0:09:34.000,0:09:36.000
or painted deerskin and tree bark

0:09:36.000,0:09:39.000
running across 88 accordion-folded pages.

0:09:39.000,0:09:41.000
What's interesting is, once you hit print --

0:09:41.000,0:09:43.000
and this is from 1450, by the way --

0:09:43.000,0:09:45.000
all of the artifacts of modern comics start to present themselves:

0:09:45.000,0:09:47.000
rectilinear panel arrangements,

0:09:47.000,0:09:49.000
simple line drawings without tone

0:09:49.000,0:09:52.000
and a left-to-right reading sequence.

0:09:53.000,0:09:54.000
And within 100 years,

0:09:54.000,0:09:57.000
you already start to see word balloons and captions,

0:09:58.000,0:10:00.000
and it's really just a hop, skip and a jump from here to here.

0:10:01.000,0:10:03.000
So I wrote a book about this in '93,

0:10:03.000,0:10:05.000
but as I was finishing the book,

0:10:05.000,0:10:06.000
I had to do a little bit of typesetting,

0:10:06.000,0:10:08.000
and I was tired of going to my local copy shop to do it,

0:10:08.000,0:10:10.000
so I bought a computer.

0:10:11.000,0:10:14.000
And it was just a little thing -- it wasn't good for much except text entry --

0:10:14.000,0:10:17.000
but my father had told me about Moore's Law,

0:10:17.000,0:10:20.000
about Moore's Law back in the '70s, and I knew what was coming.

0:10:21.000,0:10:23.000
And so, I kept my eyes peeled

0:10:23.000,0:10:25.000
to see if the sort of changes that happened

0:10:25.000,0:10:28.000
when we went from pre-print comics to print comics

0:10:28.000,0:10:31.000
would happen when we went beyond, to post-print comics.

0:10:31.000,0:10:33.000
So, one of the first things that were proposed

0:10:33.000,0:10:35.000
was that we could mix the visuals of comics

0:10:35.000,0:10:37.000
with the sound, motion and interactivity

0:10:37.000,0:10:39.000
of the CD-ROMs that were being made in those days.

0:10:39.000,0:10:41.000
This was even before the Web.

0:10:41.000,0:10:42.000
And one of the first things they did was,

0:10:42.000,0:10:44.000
they tried to take the comics page as-is

0:10:44.000,0:10:45.000
and transplant it to monitors,

0:10:45.000,0:10:47.000
which was a classic McLuhanesque mistake

0:10:48.000,0:10:51.000
of appropriating the shape of the previous technology

0:10:51.000,0:10:53.000
as the content of the new technology.

0:10:53.000,0:10:54.000
And so, what they would do is,

0:10:54.000,0:10:56.000
they'd have these comic pages that resemble print comics pages,

0:10:56.000,0:10:59.000
and they would introduce all this sound and motion.

0:11:00.000,0:11:02.000
The problem was, that if you go with this idea --

0:11:02.000,0:11:05.000
this basic idea that space equals time in comics --

0:11:05.000,0:11:07.000
what happens is that when you introduce sound and motion,

0:11:07.000,0:11:11.000
which are temporal phenomena that can only be represented through time,

0:11:11.000,0:11:16.000
then they break with that continuity of presentation.

0:11:17.000,0:11:18.000
Interactivity was another thing.

0:11:18.000,0:11:19.000
There were hypertext comics.

0:11:19.000,0:11:20.000
But the thing about hypertext

0:11:20.000,0:11:23.000
is that everything in hypertext is either here, not here or connected to here;

0:11:23.000,0:11:25.000
it's profoundly non-spatial.

0:11:25.000,0:11:28.000
The distance from Abraham Lincoln to a Lincoln penny,

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
the Penny Marshall to the Marshall Plan

0:11:30.000,0:11:31.000
to "Plan 9" to nine lives:

0:11:31.000,0:11:33.000
it's all the same.

0:11:33.000,0:11:34.000
(Laughter)

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
And -- but in comics, in comics,

0:11:37.000,0:11:39.000
every aspect of the work, every element of the work

0:11:40.000,0:11:43.000
has a spatial relationship to every other element at all times.

0:11:43.000,0:11:44.000
So the question was:

0:11:44.000,0:11:47.000
was there any way to preserve that spatial relationship

0:11:47.000,0:11:49.000
while still taking advantage of all of the things

0:11:49.000,0:11:51.000
that digital had to offer us?

0:11:51.000,0:11:53.000
And I found my personal answer for this

0:11:53.000,0:11:55.000
in those ancient comics that I was showing you.

0:11:56.000,0:11:59.000
Each of them has a single unbroken reading line,

0:11:59.000,0:12:01.000
whether it's going zigzag across the walls

0:12:01.000,0:12:03.000
or spiraling up a column

0:12:03.000,0:12:06.000
or just straight left to right, or even going in a backwards zigzag

0:12:06.000,0:12:08.000
across those 88 accordion-folded pages.

0:12:08.000,0:12:10.000
The same thing is happening, and that is that the basic idea

0:12:11.000,0:12:13.000
that as you move through space you move through time

0:12:13.000,0:12:15.000
is being carried out without any compromise,

0:12:15.000,0:12:18.000
but there were compromises when print hit.

0:12:18.000,0:12:21.000
Adjacent spaces were no longer adjacent moments,

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
so the basic idea of comics was being broken again and again

0:12:24.000,0:12:25.000
and again and again.

0:12:25.000,0:12:26.000
And I thought, O.K., well,

0:12:26.000,0:12:28.000
if that's true, is there any way,

0:12:29.000,0:12:31.000
when we go beyond today's print,

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
to somehow bring that back?

0:12:34.000,0:12:36.000
Now, the monitor

0:12:37.000,0:12:39.000
is just as limited as the page, technically, right?

0:12:39.000,0:12:41.000
It's a different shape, but other than that

0:12:41.000,0:12:43.000
it's the same basic limitation.

0:12:43.000,0:12:46.000
But that's only if you look at the monitor as a page,

0:12:47.000,0:12:49.000
but not if you look at the monitor as a window.

0:12:50.000,0:12:52.000
And that's what I proposed: that perhaps we could create these comics

0:12:52.000,0:12:53.000
on an infinite canvas:

0:12:54.000,0:12:58.000
along the X axis and the Y axis and staircases.

0:12:59.000,0:13:01.000
We could do circular narratives that were literally circular.

0:13:01.000,0:13:04.000
We could do a turn in a story that was literally a turn.

0:13:05.000,0:13:07.000
Parallel narratives could be literally parallel.

0:13:09.000,0:13:11.000
X, Y and also Z.

0:13:12.000,0:13:14.000
So I had all these notions. This was back in the late '90s,

0:13:14.000,0:13:17.000
and other people in my business thought I was pretty crazy,

0:13:18.000,0:13:20.000
but a lot of people then went on and actually did it.

0:13:20.000,0:13:22.000
I'm going to show you a couple now.

0:13:23.000,0:13:26.000
This was an early collage comic by a fellow named Jason Lex.

0:13:30.000,0:13:32.000
And notice what's going on here.

0:13:32.000,0:13:34.000
What I'm searching for is a durable mutation --

0:13:34.000,0:13:36.000
that's what all of us are searching for.

0:13:36.000,0:13:38.000
As media head into this new era,

0:13:38.000,0:13:41.000
we are looking for mutations

0:13:41.000,0:13:45.000
that are durable, that have some sort of staying power.

0:13:45.000,0:13:49.000
Now, we're taking this basic idea of presenting comics in a visual medium,

0:13:49.000,0:13:52.000
and then we're carrying it through all the way from beginning to end.

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
That's that entire comic you just saw

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
is up on the screen right now.

0:13:56.000,0:13:59.000
But even though we're only experiencing it one piece at a time,

0:13:59.000,0:14:01.000
that's just where the technology is right now.

0:14:01.000,0:14:03.000
As the technology evolves,

0:14:03.000,0:14:06.000
as you get full immersive displays and whatnot,

0:14:06.000,0:14:08.000
this sort of thing will only grow.

0:14:08.000,0:14:10.000
It will adapt. It will

0:14:10.000,0:14:12.000
adapt to its environment:

0:14:12.000,0:14:14.000
it's a durable mutation.

0:14:15.000,0:14:17.000
Here's another one I'll show you. This is by Drew Weing;

0:14:17.000,0:14:18.000
this is called,

0:14:18.000,0:14:20.000
"Pup Contemplates the Heat Death of the Universe."

0:14:46.000,0:14:47.000
See what's going on here

0:14:48.000,0:14:51.000
as we draw these stories on an infinite canvas

0:14:53.000,0:14:56.000
is you're creating a more pure expression

0:14:57.000,0:14:59.000
of what this medium is all about.

0:15:04.000,0:15:06.000
We'll go by this a little quickly -- you get the idea.

0:15:06.000,0:15:08.000
I just want to get to the last panel.

0:15:14.000,0:15:17.000
(Laughter)

0:15:17.000,0:15:18.000
There we go.

0:15:20.000,0:15:22.000
(Laughter)

0:15:25.000,0:15:28.000
(Laughter)

0:15:31.000,0:15:32.000
Just one more.

0:15:34.000,0:15:36.000
Talk about your infinite canvas.

0:15:37.000,0:15:39.000
It's by a guy named Daniel Merlin Goodbrey in Britain.

0:15:40.000,0:15:42.000
Why is this important?

0:15:43.000,0:15:45.000
I think this is important because media,

0:15:46.000,0:15:47.000
all media,

0:15:48.000,0:15:51.000
provide us a window back into our world.

0:15:51.000,0:15:53.000
Now, it could be that motion pictures --

0:15:53.000,0:15:56.000
and eventually, virtual reality, or something equivalent to it --

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
some sort of immersive display,

0:15:58.000,0:16:03.000
is going to provide us with our most efficient escape from the world that we're in.

0:16:03.000,0:16:06.000
That's why most people turn to storytelling, is to escape.

0:16:06.000,0:16:09.000
But media provides us with a window

0:16:09.000,0:16:12.000
back into the world that we live in.

0:16:13.000,0:16:15.000
And when media evolve

0:16:16.000,0:16:21.000
so that the identity of the media becomes increasingly unique.

0:16:21.000,0:16:24.000
Because what you're looking at is, you're looking at comics cubed:

0:16:24.000,0:16:27.000
you're looking at comics that are more comics-like than they've ever been before.

0:16:28.000,0:16:31.000
When that happens, you provide people with multiple ways

0:16:31.000,0:16:34.000
of re-entering the world through different windows,

0:16:35.000,0:16:38.000
and when you do that, it allows them to triangulate the world that they live in

0:16:38.000,0:16:40.000
and see its shape.

0:16:40.000,0:16:42.000
And that's why I think this is important.

0:16:42.000,0:16:44.000
One of many reasons, but I've got to go now.

0:16:44.000,0:16:45.000
Thank you for having me.