WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.000 Of the five senses, 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.000 vision is the one that I appreciate the most, 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000 and it's the one that I can least take for granted. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000 I think this is partially due to my father, who was blind. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:13.000 It was a fact that he didn't make much of a fuss about, usually. 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:14.000 One time in Nova Scotia, 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.000 when we went to see a total eclipse of the sun -- 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:19.000 yeah, same one as in the Carly Simon song, 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:21.000 which may or may not refer 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.000 to James Taylor, Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger; we're not really sure. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.000 They handed out these dark plastic viewers 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 that allowed us to look directly at the sun 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:30.000 without damaging our eyes. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:32.000 But Dad got really scared: 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:33.000 he didn't want us doing that. 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:37.000 He wanted us instead to use these cheap cardboard viewers 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.000 so that there was no chance at all that our eyes would be damaged. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:42.000 I thought this was a little strange at the time. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:44.000 What I didn't know at the time 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.000 was that my father had actually been born with perfect eyesight. 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:49.000 When he and his sister Martha were just very little, 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:52.000 their mom took them out to see a total eclipse -- 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:53.000 or actually, a solar eclipse -- 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:54.000 and not long after that, 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000 both of them started losing their eyesight. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:00:59.000 Decades later, 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 it turned out that the source of their blindness 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:04.000 was most likely some sort of bacterial infection. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:05.000 As near as we can tell, 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:09.000 it had nothing whatsoever to do with that solar eclipse, 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:11.000 but by then my grandmother had already gone to her grave 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:12.000 thinking it was her fault. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 So, Dad graduated Harvard in 1946, 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:18.000 married my mom, 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 and bought a house in Lexington, Massachusetts, 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:25.000 where the first shots were fired against the British in 1775, 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:27.000 although we didn't actually hit any of them until Concord. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.000 He got a job working for Raytheon, 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:31.000 designing guidance systems, 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:34.000 which was part of the Route 128 high-tech axis in those days -- 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000 so the equivalent of Silicone Valley in the '70s. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.000 Dad wasn't a real militaristic kind of guy; 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:43.000 he just really felt bad that he wasn't able to fight in World War II 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:44.000 on account of his handicap, 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.000 although they did let him get through 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:50.000 the several-hour-long army physical exam 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:51.000 before they got to the very last test, 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:52.000 which was for vision. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:56.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000 So, Dad started racking up all of these patents 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:02.000 and gaining a reputation as a blind genius, rocket scientist, inventor. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:03.000 But to us he was just Dad, 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:07.000 and our home life was pretty normal. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 As a kid, I watched a lot of television 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.000 and had lots of nerdy hobbies 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:14.000 like mineralogy and microbiology and the space program 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:15.000 and a little bit of politics. 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:17.000 I played a lot of chess. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:18.000 But at the age of 14, 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:19.000 a friend of mine got me interested in comic books, 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:22.000 and I decided that was what I wanted to do for a living. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:24.000 So, here's my dad: 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:29.000 he's a scientist, he's an engineer and he's a military contractor. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 So, he has four kids, right? 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:34.000 One grows up to become a computer scientist, 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 one grows up to join the Navy, 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:38.000 one grows up to become an engineer, 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:40.000 and then there's me: 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.000 the comic book artist. 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:46.000 (Laughter) 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:47.000 Which, incidentally, makes me the opposite of Dean Kamen, 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:49.000 because I'm a comic book artist, son of an inventor, 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.000 and he's an inventor, son of a comic book artist. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:53.000 (Laughter) 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.000 Right, it's true. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.000 The funny thing is, Dad had a lot of faith in me. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000 He had faith in my abilities as a cartoonist, 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:06.000 even though he had no direct evidence that I was any good whatsoever: 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.000 everything he saw was just a blur. 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Now, this gives a real meaning to the term "blind faith," 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:14.000 which doesn't have the same negative connotation for me that it does for other people. 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:18.000 Now, faith in things which cannot be seen, which cannot be proved, 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:22.000 is not the sort of faith that I've ever really related to all that much. 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:23.000 I tend to like science, 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:25.000 where what we see 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:28.000 and can ascertain are the foundation of what we know. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.000 But there's a middle ground, too. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:34.000 A middle ground tread by people like poor old Charles Babbage, 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:38.000 and his steam-driven computers that were never built. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.000 Nobody really understood what it was that he had in mind, 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:43.000 except for Ada Lovelace, 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:47.000 and he went to his grave trying to pursue that dream. 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.000 Vannevar Bush with his Memex -- 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 this idea of all of human knowledge at your fingertips -- 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 he had this vision. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:55.000 And I think a lot of people in his day 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:57.000 probably thought he was a bit of a kook. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000 And, yeah, we can look back in retrospect and say, 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:03.000 yeah, ha-ha, you know -- it's all microfilm. But that's -- 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:06.000 that's not the point. He understood the shape of the future. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:10.000 So did J.C.R. Licklider and his notions for computer-human interaction. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 Same thing: he understood the shape of the future, 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:16.000 even though it was something that would 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.000 only be implemented by people much later. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.000 Or Paul Baran, and his vision for packet switching. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 Hardly anybody listened to him in his day. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:27.000 Or even the people who actually pulled it off, 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:30.000 the people at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:32.000 who just would sketch out these structures 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.000 of what would eventually become a worldwide network, 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:39.000 and sketching things on the back of napkins and on note papers 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:41.000 and arguing over dinner at Howard Johnson's -- 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:43.000 on Route 128 in Lexington, Massachusetts, 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:46.000 just two miles from where I was studying the Queen's Gambit Deferred 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.000 and listening to Gladys Knight & the Pips 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.000 singing "Midnight Train to Georgia," while -- 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:51.000 (Laughter) 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:54.000 -- in my dad's big easy chair, you know? NOTE Paragraph 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.000 So, three types of vision, right? 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:59.000 Vision based on what one cannot see: 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:02.000 the vision of that unseen and unknowable. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 The vision of that which has already been proven or can be ascertained. 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.000 And this third kind 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:10.000 of vision, of something which 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:11.000 can be, which may be, 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.000 based on knowledge, but is as yet unproven. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:20.000 Now, we've seen a lot of examples of people who are pursuing that sort of vision in science, 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.000 but I think it's also true in the arts, it's true in politics, 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 it's even true in personal endeavors. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.000 What it comes down to, really, is four basic principles: 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:29.000 learn from everyone, 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:31.000 follow no one, 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:33.000 watch for patterns, 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:34.000 and work like hell. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:37.000 I think these are the four principles that go into this. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:39.000 And it's that third one, especially, 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000 where visions of the future 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:43.000 begin to manifest themselves. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 What's interesting is that this particular way of looking at the world, 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:48.000 is, I think, only one of four different ways 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:50.000 that manifest themselves in different fields of endeavor. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 In comics, I know that 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:55.000 it results in sort of a formalist attitude 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:57.000 towards trying to understand how it works. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000 Then there's another, more classical, attitude 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:02.000 which embraces beauty and craft. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:06.000 Another one which believes in the pure transparency of content. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:08.000 And then another 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.000 which emphasizes the authenticity of human experience -- 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:12.000 and honesty, and rawness. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:14.000 These are four very different ways of looking at the world. I even gave them names. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:18.000 The classicist, the animist, and formalist and iconoclast. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:19.000 Interestingly, it seemed to correspond more or less 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:22.000 to Jung's four subdivisions of human thought. 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000 And they reflect a dichotomy of art and delight 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 on left and the right; 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 tradition and revolution on the top and the bottom. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.000 And if you go on the diagonal, you get content and form -- 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.000 and then beauty and truth. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:35.000 And it probably applies just as much 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:38.000 to music and to movies and to fine art, 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.000 which has nothing whatsoever to do with vision at all, 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:44.000 or for that matter, nothing to do with our conference theme of 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:45.000 "Inspired by Nature" -- 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.000 except to the extent of the fable of the frog 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.000 who gives the ride to the scorpion on his back to get across the river 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:53.000 because the scorpion promises not to sting him, 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000 but then the scorpion does sting him anyway and they both die, 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:58.000 but not before the frog asks him why and the scorpion says, 00:06:58.000 --> 00:06:59.000 "Because it's my nature" -- 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:01.000 in that sense, yes. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:03.000 (Laughter) 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:04.000 So -- 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:08.000 so this was my nature. The thing was, I saw 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:10.000 that the route that I took to discovering 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:13.000 this focus in my work 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.000 and who I was, 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.000 I saw it as just this road to discovery. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:19.000 Actually, it was just me embracing my nature, 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.000 which means 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.000 that I didn't actually fall that far from the tree after all. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.000 So what does a "scientific mind" 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.000 do in the arts? 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:32.000 Well, I started making comics, 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:34.000 but I also started trying to understand them, almost immediately. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:37.000 And one of the most important things about comics, I discovered, 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 was that comics are a visual medium, 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:43.000 but they try to embrace all of the senses within it. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:47.000 So, the different elements of comics, like pictures and words, 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:50.000 and the different symbols and everything in between 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:51.000 that comics presents 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:53.000 are all funneled through the single conduit of vision. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 So you have things like resemblance, 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.000 where something which resembles the physical world can be abstracted 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 in a couple of different directions: 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:02.000 abstracted from resemblance, 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.000 but still retaining the complete meaning, 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:08.000 or abstracted away from both resemblance and meaning towards the picture plan. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.000 Put all these three together, and you have a nice little map 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:13.000 of the entire boundary of visual iconography 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.000 which comics can embrace. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:18.000 And if you move to the right you also get language, 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.000 because that's abstracting even further from resemblance, 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:23.000 but still maintaining meaning. 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:26.000 Vision is called upon to represent sound 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:29.000 and to understand the common properties of those two 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:31.000 and their common heritage, as well. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:34.000 Also, to try to represent the texture of sound 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:38.000 to capture its essential character through visuals. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:41.000 And there's also a balance 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.000 between the visible and the invisible in comics. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:46.000 Comics is a kind of call and response 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:47.000 in which the artist gives you 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:48.000 something to see within the panels, 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:52.000 and then gives you something to imagine between the panels. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.000 Also, another sense 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:58.000 which comics' vision represents, and that's time. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 Sequence is a very important aspect of comics. 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:05.000 Comics presents a kind of temporal map. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 And this temporal map was something that energizes modern comics, 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:12.000 but I was wondering if perhaps it also energizes 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:14.000 other sorts of forms, 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:15.000 and I found some in history. 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.000 And you can see this same principle operating 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:22.000 in these ancient versions of the same idea. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.000 What's happening is, the art form is colliding 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:25.000 with the given technology, 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:29.000 whether it's paint on stone, like the Tomb of the Scribe in ancient Egypt, 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000 or a bas-relief sculpture rising up a stone column, 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000 or a 200-foot-long embroidery, 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:36.000 or painted deerskin and tree bark 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:39.000 running across 88 accordion-folded pages. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:41.000 What's interesting is, once you hit print -- 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.000 and this is from 1450, by the way -- 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.000 all of the artifacts of modern comics start to present themselves: 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:47.000 rectilinear panel arrangements, 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.000 simple line drawings without tone 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:52.000 and a left-to-right reading sequence. 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:54.000 And within 100 years, 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:57.000 you already start to see word balloons and captions, 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000 and it's really just a hop, skip and a jump from here to here. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.000 So I wrote a book about this in '93, 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.000 but as I was finishing the book, 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:06.000 I had to do a little bit of typesetting, 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.000 and I was tired of going to my local copy shop to do it, 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.000 so I bought a computer. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:14.000 And it was just a little thing -- it wasn't good for much except text entry -- 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:17.000 but my father had told me about Moore's Law, 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.000 about Moore's Law back in the '70s, and I knew what was coming. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.000 And so, I kept my eyes peeled 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.000 to see if the sort of changes that happened 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.000 when we went from pre-print comics to print comics 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000 would happen when we went beyond, to post-print comics. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:33.000 So, one of the first things that were proposed 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:35.000 was that we could mix the visuals of comics 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:37.000 with the sound, motion and interactivity 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.000 of the CD-ROMs that were being made in those days. 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:41.000 This was even before the Web. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:42.000 And one of the first things they did was, 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:44.000 they tried to take the comics page as-is 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:45.000 and transplant it to monitors, 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:47.000 which was a classic McLuhanesque mistake 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:51.000 of appropriating the shape of the previous technology 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 as the content of the new technology. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:54.000 And so, what they would do is, 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000 they'd have these comic pages that resemble print comics pages, 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.000 and they would introduce all this sound and motion. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 The problem was, that if you go with this idea -- 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:05.000 this basic idea that space equals time in comics -- 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:07.000 what happens is that when you introduce sound and motion, 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:11.000 which are temporal phenomena that can only be represented through time, 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:16.000 then they break with that continuity of presentation. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:18.000 Interactivity was another thing. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:19.000 There were hypertext comics. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:20.000 But the thing about hypertext 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:23.000 is that everything in hypertext is either here, not here or connected to here; 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:25.000 it's profoundly non-spatial. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:28.000 The distance from Abraham Lincoln to a Lincoln penny, 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:30.000 the Penny Marshall to the Marshall Plan 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:31.000 to "Plan 9" to nine lives: 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:33.000 it's all the same. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:34.000 (Laughter) 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.000 And -- but in comics, in comics, 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.000 every aspect of the work, every element of the work 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000 has a spatial relationship to every other element at all times. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:44.000 So the question was: 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.000 was there any way to preserve that spatial relationship 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:49.000 while still taking advantage of all of the things 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:51.000 that digital had to offer us? 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:53.000 And I found my personal answer for this 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:55.000 in those ancient comics that I was showing you. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:59.000 Each of them has a single unbroken reading line, 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.000 whether it's going zigzag across the walls 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.000 or spiraling up a column 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:06.000 or just straight left to right, or even going in a backwards zigzag 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.000 across those 88 accordion-folded pages. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:10.000 The same thing is happening, and that is that the basic idea 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.000 that as you move through space you move through time 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:15.000 is being carried out without any compromise, 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:18.000 but there were compromises when print hit. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.000 Adjacent spaces were no longer adjacent moments, 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:24.000 so the basic idea of comics was being broken again and again 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:25.000 and again and again. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:26.000 And I thought, O.K., well, 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.000 if that's true, is there any way, 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:31.000 when we go beyond today's print, 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.000 to somehow bring that back? 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.000 Now, the monitor 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:39.000 is just as limited as the page, technically, right? 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.000 It's a different shape, but other than that 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.000 it's the same basic limitation. 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:46.000 But that's only if you look at the monitor as a page, 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:49.000 but not if you look at the monitor as a window. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:52.000 And that's what I proposed: that perhaps we could create these comics 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:53.000 on an infinite canvas: 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:58.000 along the X axis and the Y axis and staircases. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:01.000 We could do circular narratives that were literally circular. 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:04.000 We could do a turn in a story that was literally a turn. 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.000 Parallel narratives could be literally parallel. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.000 X, Y and also Z. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.000 So I had all these notions. This was back in the late '90s, 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:17.000 and other people in my business thought I was pretty crazy, 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.000 but a lot of people then went on and actually did it. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.000 I'm going to show you a couple now. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:26.000 This was an early collage comic by a fellow named Jason Lex. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.000 And notice what's going on here. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:34.000 What I'm searching for is a durable mutation -- 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 that's what all of us are searching for. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 As media head into this new era, 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:41.000 we are looking for mutations 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:45.000 that are durable, that have some sort of staying power. 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:49.000 Now, we're taking this basic idea of presenting comics in a visual medium, 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:52.000 and then we're carrying it through all the way from beginning to end. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.000 That's that entire comic you just saw 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 is up on the screen right now. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.000 But even though we're only experiencing it one piece at a time, 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:01.000 that's just where the technology is right now. 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:03.000 As the technology evolves, 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:06.000 as you get full immersive displays and whatnot, 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:08.000 this sort of thing will only grow. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000 It will adapt. It will 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:12.000 adapt to its environment: 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.000 it's a durable mutation. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:17.000 Here's another one I'll show you. This is by Drew Weing; 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:18.000 this is called, 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.000 "Pup Contemplates the Heat Death of the Universe." 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:47.000 See what's going on here 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:51.000 as we draw these stories on an infinite canvas 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 is you're creating a more pure expression 00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:59.000 of what this medium is all about. 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.000 We'll go by this a little quickly -- you get the idea. 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:08.000 I just want to get to the last panel. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:17.000 (Laughter) 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:18.000 There we go. 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:22.000 (Laughter) 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:28.000 (Laughter) 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:32.000 Just one more. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:36.000 Talk about your infinite canvas. 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:39.000 It's by a guy named Daniel Merlin Goodbrey in Britain. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:42.000 Why is this important? 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:45.000 I think this is important because media, 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:47.000 all media, 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:51.000 provide us a window back into our world. 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000 Now, it could be that motion pictures -- 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:56.000 and eventually, virtual reality, or something equivalent to it -- 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:58.000 some sort of immersive display, 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:03.000 is going to provide us with our most efficient escape from the world that we're in. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.000 That's why most people turn to storytelling, is to escape. 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000 But media provides us with a window 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000 back into the world that we live in. 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:15.000 And when media evolve 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:21.000 so that the identity of the media becomes increasingly unique. 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:24.000 Because what you're looking at is, you're looking at comics cubed: 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000 you're looking at comics that are more comics-like than they've ever been before. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:31.000 When that happens, you provide people with multiple ways 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:34.000 of re-entering the world through different windows, 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:38.000 and when you do that, it allows them to triangulate the world that they live in 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:40.000 and see its shape. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.000 And that's why I think this is important. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.000 One of many reasons, but I've got to go now. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:45.000 Thank you for having me.