WEBVTT 00:00:00.721 --> 00:00:03.976 Of the five senses, vision is the one that I appreciate the most, 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:06.976 and it's the one that I can least take for granted. 00:00:07.650 --> 00:00:10.551 I think this is partially due to my father, who was blind. 00:00:10.575 --> 00:00:13.678 It was a fact that he didn't make much of a fuss about, usually. 00:00:13.702 --> 00:00:17.336 One time in Nova Scotia, when we went to see a total eclipse of the sun -- NOTE Paragraph 00:00:17.360 --> 00:00:18.378 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:18.402 --> 00:00:20.491 Yeah, same one as in the Carly Simon song, 00:00:20.515 --> 00:00:23.339 which may or may not refer to James Taylor, Warren Beatty 00:00:23.363 --> 00:00:25.195 or Mick Jagger; we're not really sure. 00:00:25.219 --> 00:00:27.755 They handed out these dark plastic viewers 00:00:27.779 --> 00:00:29.828 that allowed us to look directly at the sun 00:00:29.852 --> 00:00:31.119 without damaging our eyes. 00:00:31.143 --> 00:00:33.879 But Dad got really scared; he didn't want us doing that. 00:00:33.903 --> 00:00:36.761 He wanted us instead to use these cheap cardboard viewers, 00:00:36.785 --> 00:00:40.445 so that there was no chance at all that our eyes would be damaged. 00:00:40.469 --> 00:00:42.739 I thought this was a little strange at the time. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:42.763 --> 00:00:44.231 What I didn't know at the time 00:00:44.255 --> 00:00:47.313 was that my father had actually been born with perfect eyesight. 00:00:47.337 --> 00:00:49.996 When he and his sister Martha were just very little, 00:00:50.020 --> 00:00:52.498 their mom took them out to see a total eclipse -- 00:00:52.522 --> 00:00:54.053 or actually, a solar eclipse -- 00:00:54.077 --> 00:00:57.634 and not long after that, both of them started losing their eyesight. 00:00:58.382 --> 00:01:01.844 Decades later, it turned out that the source of their blindness 00:01:01.868 --> 00:01:04.676 was most likely some sort of bacterial infection. 00:01:04.700 --> 00:01:07.331 As near as we can tell, it had nothing whatsoever to do 00:01:07.355 --> 00:01:09.278 with that solar eclipse, 00:01:09.302 --> 00:01:11.970 but by then my grandmother had already gone to her grave 00:01:11.994 --> 00:01:13.423 thinking it was her fault. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.517 --> 00:01:17.494 So, Dad graduated Harvard in 1946, 00:01:17.518 --> 00:01:18.676 married my mom, 00:01:18.700 --> 00:01:20.931 and bought a house in Lexington, Massachusetts, 00:01:20.955 --> 00:01:24.545 where the first shots were fired against the British in 1775, 00:01:24.569 --> 00:01:27.644 although we didn't actually hit any of them until Concord. 00:01:27.668 --> 00:01:31.242 He got a job working for Raytheon designing guidance systems, 00:01:31.266 --> 00:01:34.318 which was part of the Route 128 high-tech axis in those days -- 00:01:34.342 --> 00:01:36.777 so, the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the '70s. 00:01:37.583 --> 00:01:39.942 Dad wasn't a real militaristic kind of guy; 00:01:39.966 --> 00:01:43.111 he just felt bad that he wasn't able to fight in World War II 00:01:43.135 --> 00:01:44.785 on account of his handicap, 00:01:44.809 --> 00:01:46.591 although they did let him get through 00:01:46.615 --> 00:01:50.352 the several-hour-long army physical exam 00:01:50.376 --> 00:01:53.398 before they got to the very last test, which was for vision. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:53.422 --> 00:01:56.064 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:56.088 --> 00:01:59.239 So Dad started racking up all of these patents 00:01:59.263 --> 00:02:02.732 and gaining a reputation as a blind genius, rocket scientist, inventor. 00:02:02.756 --> 00:02:06.704 But to us he was just Dad, and our home life was pretty normal. 00:02:07.343 --> 00:02:09.238 As a kid, I watched a lot of television 00:02:09.262 --> 00:02:12.900 and had lots of nerdy hobbies like mineralogy and microbiology 00:02:12.924 --> 00:02:15.444 and the space program and a little bit of politics. 00:02:15.468 --> 00:02:16.688 I played a lot of chess. 00:02:16.712 --> 00:02:19.855 But at the age of 14, a friend got me interested in comic books, 00:02:19.879 --> 00:02:22.729 and I decided that was what I wanted to do for a living. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:23.146 --> 00:02:24.930 So, here's my dad: 00:02:24.954 --> 00:02:29.954 he's a scientist, he's an engineer and he's a military contractor. 00:02:30.855 --> 00:02:32.654 So, he has four kids, right? 00:02:32.678 --> 00:02:34.782 One grows up to become a computer scientist, 00:02:34.806 --> 00:02:36.734 one grows up to join the Navy, 00:02:36.758 --> 00:02:39.000 one grows up to become an engineer ... 00:02:39.024 --> 00:02:41.984 And then there's me: the comic book artist. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:42.008 --> 00:02:45.738 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:45.762 --> 00:02:48.450 Which, incidentally, makes me the opposite of Dean Kamen, 00:02:48.474 --> 00:02:50.936 because I'm a comic book artist, son of an inventor, 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:53.295 and he's an inventor, son of a comic book artist. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:53.319 --> 00:02:54.548 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:54.572 --> 00:02:55.735 Right? It's true. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:55.759 --> 00:02:58.413 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:58.437 --> 00:03:00.772 The funny thing is, Dad had a lot of faith in me. 00:03:00.796 --> 00:03:02.948 He had faith in my abilities as a cartoonist, 00:03:02.972 --> 00:03:06.259 even though he had no direct evidence that I was any good whatsoever; 00:03:06.283 --> 00:03:07.950 everything he saw was just a blur. 00:03:07.974 --> 00:03:10.686 Now, this gives a real meaning to the term "blind faith," 00:03:10.710 --> 00:03:13.302 which doesn't have the same negative connotation for me 00:03:13.326 --> 00:03:14.799 that it does for other people. 00:03:14.823 --> 00:03:17.967 Now, faith in things which cannot be seen, which cannot be proved, 00:03:17.991 --> 00:03:21.716 is not the sort of faith that I've ever really related to all that much. 00:03:21.740 --> 00:03:23.167 I tend to like science, 00:03:23.191 --> 00:03:27.678 where what we see and can ascertain are the foundation of what we know. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:28.651 --> 00:03:30.779 But there's a middle ground, too -- 00:03:30.803 --> 00:03:34.358 a middle ground tread by people like poor old Charles Babbage 00:03:34.382 --> 00:03:37.167 and his steam-driven computers that were never built. 00:03:37.834 --> 00:03:40.883 Nobody really understood what it was that he had in mind 00:03:40.907 --> 00:03:42.400 except for Ada Lovelace, 00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:46.268 and he went to his grave trying to pursue that dream. 00:03:46.978 --> 00:03:49.374 Vannevar Bush with his memex -- 00:03:49.398 --> 00:03:52.375 this idea of all of human knowledge at your fingertips -- 00:03:52.399 --> 00:03:53.927 he had this vision. 00:03:53.951 --> 00:03:55.793 And I think a lot of people in his day 00:03:55.817 --> 00:03:57.756 probably thought he was a bit of a kook. 00:03:57.780 --> 00:04:00.195 And, yeah, we can look back in retrospect and say, 00:04:00.219 --> 00:04:02.440 "Yeah, ha-ha, it's all microfilm -- NOTE Paragraph 00:04:02.464 --> 00:04:03.487 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:03.511 --> 00:04:06.597 But that's not the point; he understood the shape of the future. 00:04:06.621 --> 00:04:11.211 So did J.C.R. Licklider and his notions for computer-human interaction. 00:04:11.235 --> 00:04:14.104 Same thing: he understood the shape of the future, 00:04:14.128 --> 00:04:17.730 even though it was something that would only be implemented 00:04:17.754 --> 00:04:19.145 by people much later. 00:04:19.169 --> 00:04:21.888 Or Paul Baran, and his vision for packet switching. 00:04:21.912 --> 00:04:24.069 Hardly anybody listened to him in his day. 00:04:24.771 --> 00:04:26.963 Or even the people who actually pulled it off, 00:04:26.987 --> 00:04:29.597 the people at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, 00:04:29.621 --> 00:04:32.533 who just would sketch out these structures 00:04:32.557 --> 00:04:35.093 of what would eventually become a worldwide network, 00:04:35.117 --> 00:04:38.735 and sketching things on the back of napkins and on note papers 00:04:38.759 --> 00:04:41.057 and arguing over dinner at Howard Johnson's -- 00:04:41.081 --> 00:04:43.471 on Route 128 in Lexington, Massachusetts, 00:04:43.495 --> 00:04:46.728 just two miles from where I was studying the Queen's Gambit Deferred 00:04:46.752 --> 00:04:48.852 and listening to Gladys Knight & The Pips 00:04:48.876 --> 00:04:51.044 singing "Midnight Train to Georgia" -- NOTE Paragraph 00:04:51.068 --> 00:04:52.071 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:52.095 --> 00:04:53.937 in my dad's big easy chair, you know? NOTE Paragraph 00:04:53.961 --> 00:04:55.898 So, three types of vision, right? 00:04:55.922 --> 00:04:58.899 Vision based on what one cannot see, 00:04:58.923 --> 00:05:01.692 the vision of that unseen and unknowable. 00:05:01.716 --> 00:05:05.176 The vision of that which has already been proven or can be ascertained. 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:11.725 And this third kind, a vision of something which can be, which may be, 00:05:11.749 --> 00:05:14.751 based on knowledge but is, as yet, unproven. 00:05:15.477 --> 00:05:17.531 Now, we've seen a lot of examples of people 00:05:17.555 --> 00:05:19.873 who are pursuing that sort of vision in science, 00:05:19.897 --> 00:05:22.851 but I think it's also true in the arts, it's true in politics, 00:05:22.875 --> 00:05:25.063 it's even true in personal endeavors. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:25.087 --> 00:05:27.736 What it comes down to, really, is four basic principles: 00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:28.959 learn from everyone; 00:05:28.983 --> 00:05:30.309 follow no one; 00:05:30.811 --> 00:05:32.218 watch for patterns; 00:05:32.659 --> 00:05:33.838 and work like hell. 00:05:33.862 --> 00:05:36.882 I think these are the four principles that go into this. 00:05:36.906 --> 00:05:38.737 And it's that third one, especially, 00:05:38.761 --> 00:05:41.902 where visions of the future begin to manifest themselves. 00:05:42.429 --> 00:05:45.804 What's interesting is that this particular way of looking at the world, 00:05:45.828 --> 00:05:47.960 is, I think, only one of four different ways 00:05:47.984 --> 00:05:50.700 that manifest themselves in different fields of endeavor. 00:05:50.724 --> 00:05:55.207 In comics, I know that it results in sort of a formalist attitude 00:05:55.231 --> 00:05:57.290 towards trying to understand how it works. 00:05:57.314 --> 00:05:59.545 Then there's another, more classical attitude 00:05:59.569 --> 00:06:02.152 which embraces beauty and craft; 00:06:02.176 --> 00:06:06.208 another one which believes in the pure transparency of content; 00:06:06.232 --> 00:06:10.179 and then another, which emphasizes the authenticity of human experience 00:06:10.203 --> 00:06:11.621 and honesty and rawness. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:11.645 --> 00:06:14.449 These are four very different ways of looking at the world. 00:06:14.473 --> 00:06:15.625 I even gave them names: 00:06:15.649 --> 00:06:18.396 the classicist, the animist, the formalist and iconoclast. 00:06:18.420 --> 00:06:20.960 Interestingly, they seem to correspond more or less 00:06:20.984 --> 00:06:23.555 to Jung's four subdivisions of human thought. 00:06:23.579 --> 00:06:26.367 And they reflect a dichotomy of art and delight 00:06:26.391 --> 00:06:27.606 on left and the right; 00:06:27.630 --> 00:06:30.130 tradition and revolution on the top and the bottom. 00:06:30.154 --> 00:06:32.797 And if you go on the diagonal, you get content and form, 00:06:32.821 --> 00:06:34.062 and then beauty and truth. 00:06:34.086 --> 00:06:38.172 And it probably applies just as much to music and movies and fine art, 00:06:38.196 --> 00:06:41.173 which has nothing whatsoever to do with vision at all, 00:06:41.197 --> 00:06:44.078 or, for that matter, nothing to do with our conference theme 00:06:44.102 --> 00:06:45.434 of "Inspired by Nature," 00:06:45.458 --> 00:06:48.138 except to the extent of the fable of the frog 00:06:48.162 --> 00:06:51.430 who gives a ride to the scorpion on his back to get across the river 00:06:51.454 --> 00:06:53.664 because the scorpion promises not to sting him, 00:06:53.688 --> 00:06:56.222 but the scorpion stings him anyway and they both die, 00:06:56.246 --> 00:06:59.135 but not before the frog asks him why, and the scorpion says, 00:06:59.159 --> 00:07:00.358 "Because it's my nature." 00:07:00.382 --> 00:07:01.537 In that sense, yes. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:01.561 --> 00:07:04.906 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:04.930 --> 00:07:06.160 So this was my nature. 00:07:06.184 --> 00:07:09.298 The thing was, I saw that the route I took 00:07:09.322 --> 00:07:13.167 to discovering this focus in my work 00:07:13.191 --> 00:07:15.035 and who I was -- 00:07:15.059 --> 00:07:17.286 I saw it as just this road to discovery. 00:07:17.310 --> 00:07:19.533 Actually, it was just me embracing my nature, 00:07:19.557 --> 00:07:24.403 which means that I didn't actually fall that far from the tree, after all. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:25.540 --> 00:07:30.075 So what does a "scientific mind" do in the arts? 00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:33.931 I started making comics, but I also started trying to understand them, 00:07:33.955 --> 00:07:35.106 almost immediately. 00:07:35.130 --> 00:07:38.212 One of the most important things about comics that I discovered 00:07:38.236 --> 00:07:40.083 was that comics are a visual medium, 00:07:40.107 --> 00:07:42.951 but they try to embrace all of the senses within it. 00:07:43.073 --> 00:07:47.140 So, the different elements of comics, like pictures and words, 00:07:47.164 --> 00:07:49.682 and the different symbols and everything in between 00:07:49.706 --> 00:07:50.893 that comics presents, 00:07:50.917 --> 00:07:53.485 are all funneled through the single conduit, a vision. 00:07:53.509 --> 00:07:55.486 So we have things like resemblance, 00:07:55.510 --> 00:07:58.750 where something which resembles the physical world can be abstracted 00:07:58.774 --> 00:08:00.536 in a couple of different directions: 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:04.160 abstracted from resemblance, but still retaining the complete meaning, 00:08:04.184 --> 00:08:06.901 or abstracted away from both resemblance and meaning 00:08:06.925 --> 00:08:08.181 towards the picture plane. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:08.205 --> 00:08:11.039 Put all these three together, and you have a nice little map 00:08:11.063 --> 00:08:13.178 of the entire boundary of visual iconography, 00:08:13.202 --> 00:08:14.987 which comics can embrace. 00:08:15.011 --> 00:08:17.849 And if you move to the right you also get language, 00:08:17.873 --> 00:08:20.850 because that's abstracting even further from resemblance, 00:08:20.874 --> 00:08:22.874 but still maintaining meaning. 00:08:23.477 --> 00:08:26.227 Vision is called upon to represent sound 00:08:26.251 --> 00:08:29.822 and to understand the common properties of those two 00:08:29.846 --> 00:08:31.986 and their common heritage as well; 00:08:32.010 --> 00:08:34.395 also, to try to represent the texture of sound 00:08:34.419 --> 00:08:38.135 to capture its essential character through visuals. 00:08:39.136 --> 00:08:43.243 There's also a balance between the visible and the invisible in comics. 00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:46.056 Comics is a kind of call and response, 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:49.222 in which the artist gives you something to see within the panels, 00:08:49.246 --> 00:08:52.248 and then gives you something to imagine between the panels. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:53.025 --> 00:08:57.290 Also, another sense which comics' vision represents, 00:08:57.314 --> 00:08:58.599 and that's time. 00:08:58.984 --> 00:09:01.901 Sequence is a very important aspect of comics. 00:09:02.652 --> 00:09:04.763 Comics presents a kind of temporal map. 00:09:05.946 --> 00:09:09.582 And this temporal map was something that energizes modern comics, 00:09:09.606 --> 00:09:12.527 but I was wondering if perhaps it also energizes 00:09:12.551 --> 00:09:14.069 other sorts of forms, 00:09:14.093 --> 00:09:15.525 and I found some in history. 00:09:16.606 --> 00:09:19.290 You can see this same principle operating 00:09:19.314 --> 00:09:22.298 in these ancient versions of the same idea. 00:09:22.322 --> 00:09:23.475 What's happening is, 00:09:23.499 --> 00:09:25.841 an art form is colliding with a given technology, 00:09:25.865 --> 00:09:27.206 whether it's paint on stone, 00:09:27.230 --> 00:09:29.627 like the Tomb of Menna the Scribe in ancient Egypt, 00:09:29.651 --> 00:09:32.255 or a bas-relief sculpture rising up a stone column, 00:09:32.279 --> 00:09:34.307 or a 200-foot-long embroidery, 00:09:34.331 --> 00:09:36.308 or painted deerskin and tree bark 00:09:36.332 --> 00:09:38.770 running across 88 accordion-folded pages. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:38.794 --> 00:09:40.959 What's interesting is, once you hit "print" -- 00:09:40.983 --> 00:09:42.840 and this is from 1450, by the way -- 00:09:42.864 --> 00:09:45.997 all of the artifacts of modern comics start to present themselves: 00:09:46.021 --> 00:09:47.537 rectilinear panel arrangements, 00:09:47.561 --> 00:09:49.329 simple line drawings without tone, 00:09:49.353 --> 00:09:51.351 and a left-to-right reading sequence. 00:09:52.763 --> 00:09:57.771 And within 100 years, you already start to see word balloons and captions, 00:09:57.795 --> 00:10:00.756 and it's really just a hop, skip and a jump from here to here. 00:10:01.509 --> 00:10:04.944 So I wrote a book about this in '93, but as I was finishing the book, 00:10:04.968 --> 00:10:06.884 I had to do a little bit of typesetting, 00:10:06.908 --> 00:10:09.576 and I was tired of going to my local copy shop to do it, 00:10:09.600 --> 00:10:10.845 so I bought a computer. 00:10:10.869 --> 00:10:12.543 And it was just a little thing -- 00:10:12.567 --> 00:10:14.733 it wasn't good for much except text entry -- 00:10:14.757 --> 00:10:18.597 but my father had told me about Moore's law back in the '70s, 00:10:18.621 --> 00:10:20.098 and I knew what was coming. 00:10:20.549 --> 00:10:23.247 And so, I kept my eyes peeled 00:10:23.271 --> 00:10:25.312 to see if the sort of changes that happened 00:10:25.336 --> 00:10:27.946 when we went from pre-print comics to print comics 00:10:27.970 --> 00:10:30.844 would happen when we went beyond, to post-print comics. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:31.335 --> 00:10:33.083 So, one of the first things proposed 00:10:33.107 --> 00:10:35.461 was that we could mix the visuals of comics 00:10:35.485 --> 00:10:38.296 with the sound, motion and interactivity of the CD-ROMs 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:39.526 being made in those days. 00:10:39.550 --> 00:10:41.129 This was even before the Web. 00:10:41.153 --> 00:10:43.114 And one of the first things they did was, 00:10:43.138 --> 00:10:45.049 they tried to take the comics page as is 00:10:45.073 --> 00:10:46.533 and transplant it to monitors, 00:10:46.557 --> 00:10:48.558 which was a classic McLuhanesque mistake 00:10:48.582 --> 00:10:51.081 of appropriating the shape of the previous technology 00:10:51.105 --> 00:10:53.166 as the content of the new technology. 00:10:53.190 --> 00:10:55.670 And so, what they would do is have these comic pages 00:10:55.694 --> 00:10:57.329 that resemble print comics pages, 00:10:57.353 --> 00:10:59.769 and they would introduce all this sound and motion. 00:10:59.793 --> 00:11:03.034 The problem was that if you go with this basic idea 00:11:03.058 --> 00:11:05.406 that space equals time in comics, 00:11:05.430 --> 00:11:08.145 what happens is that when you introduce sound and motion, 00:11:08.169 --> 00:11:11.568 which are temporal phenomena that can only be represented through time, 00:11:11.592 --> 00:11:15.896 they break with that continuity of presentation. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:16.820 --> 00:11:18.362 Interactivity was another thing. 00:11:18.386 --> 00:11:21.153 There were hypertext comics, but the thing about hypertext 00:11:21.177 --> 00:11:23.886 is that everything in hypertext is either here, not here, 00:11:23.910 --> 00:11:25.068 or connected to here; 00:11:25.092 --> 00:11:26.442 it's profoundly nonspatial. 00:11:26.466 --> 00:11:28.919 The distance from Abraham Lincoln to a Lincoln penny 00:11:28.943 --> 00:11:32.028 to Penny Marshall to the Marshall Plan to "Plan 9" to nine lives: 00:11:32.052 --> 00:11:33.203 it's all the same. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:33.227 --> 00:11:34.420 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:34.444 --> 00:11:37.296 But in comics, 00:11:37.320 --> 00:11:40.190 every aspect of the work, every element of the work, 00:11:40.214 --> 00:11:43.349 has a spatial relationship to every other element at all times. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:43.373 --> 00:11:44.541 So the question was: 00:11:44.565 --> 00:11:47.542 Was there any way to preserve that spatial relationship 00:11:47.566 --> 00:11:49.914 while still taking advantage of all of the things 00:11:49.938 --> 00:11:51.581 that digital had to offer us? 00:11:51.605 --> 00:11:53.636 And I found my personal answer for this 00:11:53.660 --> 00:11:55.970 in those ancient comics that I was showing you. 00:11:55.994 --> 00:11:59.334 Each of them has a single unbroken reading line, 00:11:59.358 --> 00:12:03.051 whether it's going zigzag across the walls or spiraling up a column 00:12:03.075 --> 00:12:04.603 or just straight left to right, 00:12:04.627 --> 00:12:08.676 or even going in a backwards zigzag across those 88 accordion-folded pages, 00:12:08.700 --> 00:12:10.094 the same thing is happening; 00:12:10.118 --> 00:12:12.904 that is, that the basic idea that as you move through space 00:12:12.928 --> 00:12:14.083 you move through time, 00:12:14.107 --> 00:12:16.191 is being carried out without any compromise, 00:12:16.215 --> 00:12:18.246 but there were compromises when print hit. 00:12:18.270 --> 00:12:21.186 Adjacent spaces were no longer adjacent moments, 00:12:21.210 --> 00:12:24.429 so the basic idea of comics was being broken again and again 00:12:24.453 --> 00:12:25.609 and again and again. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:25.633 --> 00:12:27.959 And I thought, OK, well, if that's true, 00:12:27.983 --> 00:12:30.890 is there any way, when we go beyond today's print, 00:12:30.914 --> 00:12:32.674 to somehow bring that back? 00:12:34.065 --> 00:12:39.302 Now, the monitor is just as limited as the page, technically, right? 00:12:39.326 --> 00:12:41.453 It's a different shape, but other than that, 00:12:41.477 --> 00:12:43.382 it's the same basic limitation. 00:12:43.406 --> 00:12:46.406 But that's only if you look at the monitor as a page, 00:12:46.969 --> 00:12:49.329 but not if you look at the monitor as a window. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:49.691 --> 00:12:50.938 And that's what I propose, 00:12:50.962 --> 00:12:54.079 that perhaps we could create these comics on an infinite canvas, 00:12:54.103 --> 00:12:57.013 along the X axis and the Y axis 00:12:57.037 --> 00:12:58.297 and staircases. 00:12:58.834 --> 00:13:01.740 We could do circular narratives that were literally circular. 00:13:01.764 --> 00:13:04.826 We could do a turn in a story that was literally a turn. 00:13:05.206 --> 00:13:07.642 Parallel narratives could be literally parallel. 00:13:08.977 --> 00:13:10.694 X, Y and also Z. 00:13:12.239 --> 00:13:13.561 So I had all these notions. 00:13:13.585 --> 00:13:15.093 This was back in the late '90s, 00:13:15.117 --> 00:13:17.948 and other people in my business thought I was pretty crazy, 00:13:17.972 --> 00:13:20.497 but a lot of people then went on and actually did it. 00:13:20.521 --> 00:13:22.244 I'm going to show you a couple now. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:22.763 --> 00:13:26.275 This was an early collage comic by a fellow named Jasen Lex. 00:13:29.636 --> 00:13:31.411 And notice what's going on here. 00:13:31.435 --> 00:13:33.955 What I'm searching for is a durable mutation -- 00:13:33.979 --> 00:13:35.956 that's what all of us are searching for. 00:13:35.980 --> 00:13:39.160 As media head into this new era, 00:13:39.184 --> 00:13:41.676 we are looking for mutations that are durable, 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:44.293 that have some sort of staying power. 00:13:45.237 --> 00:13:49.341 Now, we're taking this basic idea of presenting comics in a visual medium, 00:13:49.365 --> 00:13:52.676 and we're carrying it through all the way from beginning to end. 00:13:52.700 --> 00:13:55.871 That's that entire comic you just saw, up on the screen right now. 00:13:55.895 --> 00:13:58.954 But even though we're only experiencing it one piece at a time, 00:13:58.978 --> 00:14:01.560 that's just where the technology is right now. 00:14:01.584 --> 00:14:03.322 As the technology evolves, 00:14:03.346 --> 00:14:06.330 as you get full immersive displays and whatnot, 00:14:06.354 --> 00:14:09.124 this sort of thing will only grow; it will adapt. 00:14:09.148 --> 00:14:14.701 It will adapt to its environment; it's a durable mutation. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:14.725 --> 00:14:15.890 Here's another one. 00:14:15.914 --> 00:14:18.211 This is by Drew Weing; this is called 00:14:18.235 --> 00:14:21.250 "'Pup' Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe." 00:14:46.062 --> 00:14:47.554 See what's going on here 00:14:48.579 --> 00:14:51.579 as we draw these stories on an infinite canvas 00:14:53.835 --> 00:14:58.983 is you're creating a more pure expression of what this medium is all about. 00:15:03.660 --> 00:15:06.233 We'll go by this a little quickly. You get the idea. 00:15:06.257 --> 00:15:08.257 I just want to get to the last panel. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:14.045 --> 00:15:17.141 [Cat 1: Pup! Earth to Pup! Cat 2: Come play baseball with us!] NOTE Paragraph 00:15:17.165 --> 00:15:18.228 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:18.252 --> 00:15:19.852 [Pup: Did either of you realize 00:15:19.876 --> 00:15:23.171 that eventually the universe will be nothing but a thin, cold gas 00:15:23.195 --> 00:15:25.155 spread across infinite, lonely space?] NOTE Paragraph 00:15:25.179 --> 00:15:27.801 [Cat 1: Oh ... Cat 2: We'd better hurry, then!] NOTE Paragraph 00:15:27.825 --> 00:15:29.825 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:31.517 --> 00:15:32.667 Just one more. 00:15:35.144 --> 00:15:37.089 Talk about your infinite canvas. 00:15:37.113 --> 00:15:39.900 It's by a guy named Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, in Britain. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:40.263 --> 00:15:41.660 Why is this important? 00:15:42.898 --> 00:15:45.231 I think this is important because media -- 00:15:46.397 --> 00:15:47.739 all media -- 00:15:47.763 --> 00:15:50.074 provide us a window back into our world. 00:15:50.568 --> 00:15:54.890 Now, it could be that motion pictures and eventually, virtual reality, 00:15:54.914 --> 00:15:58.093 or something equivalent to it, some sort of immersive display, 00:15:58.117 --> 00:16:02.234 is going to provide us with our most efficient escape 00:16:02.258 --> 00:16:03.676 from the world that we're in. 00:16:03.700 --> 00:16:06.480 That's why most people turn to storytelling, to escape. 00:16:06.504 --> 00:16:12.897 But media provides us with a window back into the world we live in. 00:16:13.255 --> 00:16:16.398 And when media evolve 00:16:16.422 --> 00:16:21.399 so that the identity of the media becomes increasingly unique -- 00:16:21.423 --> 00:16:24.623 because what you're looking at is comics cubed, 00:16:24.647 --> 00:16:27.022 you're looking at comics that are more comics-like 00:16:27.046 --> 00:16:28.641 than they've ever been before -- 00:16:28.665 --> 00:16:31.317 when that happens, you provide people with multiple ways 00:16:31.341 --> 00:16:35.319 of reentering the world through different windows. 00:16:35.343 --> 00:16:39.110 And when you do that, it allows them to triangulate the world they live in 00:16:39.134 --> 00:16:40.509 and see its shape. 00:16:40.533 --> 00:16:42.310 That's why I think this is important. 00:16:42.334 --> 00:16:44.389 One of many reasons, but I've got to go now. 00:16:44.413 --> 00:16:45.563 Thank you for having me.