#we’ve just seen it with the George and caiti thing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kalinara · 8 years ago

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Crazy LoT theory time (brought to you by the same person who suggested that the team would kill Vandal Savage with Rip Hunter’s nudie pen. Basically, my predictions are 95% wrong. But usually pretty entertaining.)

I’ve been reading a few interviews and synopses, and I have developed a theory/prediction. (This theory involves Rip Hunter. Which should only surprise you if you have never been to my blog.)

I was thinking of this interview, and specifically this part:

“The crazy thing is there won’t be just one new version of Rip’s character this season. There will be multiple versions, and they’re not all improvements,” Klemmer previews with a laugh. “You will get to see Arthur Darvill do a full-on Jekyll and Hyde transformation — maybe Jekyll-Hyde-Jekyll, or Hyde-Jekyll-Hyde.

And then I thought about the summary for Turncoat:

A GOOD FIGHT — When The Legends find a new Time Aberration they learn they must travel to the winter of 1776 to protect George Washington and the American Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, forcing Sara (Caity Lotz) to send out Nate (Nick Zano) and Amaya (Maisie-Richardson-Sellers) to help. Meanwhile, Jax (Franz Drameh) and Stein (Victor Garber) who are busy protecting the incapacitated Waverider from their new enemy, are forced to step into roles that they don’t think they are prepared for. Brandon Routh, Dominic Purcell and Arthur Darvill also star, Alice Troughton directed the episode written by Grainne Godfree & Matthew Maala (#211). Original airdate 2/7/2017.

And I have a theory.

I think the “new enemy” will be Rip Hunter. We’ve seen linked images of him as a red coat. And if anyone knows how to incapacitate the Waverider, it would be the Captain who’s flown her for thirteen years.

So maybe, when he realizes he can’t get any info from Phil, Eobard tries something else, and we get a genuine adversary Rip in the process?

I’m a little nervous about the Jekyll and Hyde comparison, because while I LOVE the idea of adversarial-Rip, I’m not really interested in EVIL Rip. Rip Hunter is a man who couldn’t kill Vandal Savage when he had him helpless in Egypt, and couldn’t kill Per Degaton as a child. That core of morality is part of who Rip is, and I have no interest in seeing some kind of conscienceless mass murderer wearing his face.

But...it occurs to me that there’s a way that this could work that could really appeal to me.

Say Eobard scrambles his brain to the point where Rip recognizes that he’s a Time Master, but convinces him that the team are Time Pirates.

It might not even be that hard to do, depending on how much knowledge Eobard has regarding the team’s shenanigans. I’ve said many times that I think Sara is an infinitely much leader than Rip, but he’s the better Time Master. We don’t see her keeping as close an eye on the timeline as Rip does (see: the constant reminders of Louis XIV in Out of Time), or checking up on alterations later. Season One had quite a few instances where Rip caught the after effects of a fuck up, and ended up undertaking efforts to have the team fix them. We don’t see Sara engage in the same level of oversight.

This is not a knock on Sara, by the way. She’s still a fantastic Captain. It’s just, I think, the difference between someone who’s trained all his life to keep the timeline intact and someone who’s had the job thrust on her.

But, for all that the team has done pretty damn well overall, there are a couple of glitches that I think would look really bad from an outside point of view.

The first, and biggest, is Shogun. Because in Shogun, the team, and ONLY the team, was the time aberration. There were no time pirates, no machinations by Eobard Thawne, nothing except Ray Palmer not being able to keep hold of his Atom suit, and Nate Heywood not wanting his new friend to get married to the Shogun.

And because of those two things, they end up in a massive battle with the Shogun’s forces during a time when isolationism from the West is a pretty big thing, and causing said Shogun to die ten years before his historical death.

That’s actually a pretty big deal. A bunch of foreigners murdered a Shogun ten years early. What effect is that likely to have on the country’s isolationism in general? Do we think that would inspire Tokugawa Ietsuna, assuming he is still Iemitsu’s successor, to be more or less open to commerce with the West. (And who’s to say Ietsuna would have the same policies in 1641 as he does in 1651? How many of us would have made the same decisions ten years ago as they would today.)

That’s not even getting into how the colonial powers eventually would force open Japan’s borders two hundred years later, or how Iemitsu’s isolationist ideals were revived in the sonno joi movement which led to the Meiji Restoration. Or how the switch to expansionist policies afterward during Meiji and Taisho ended up influencing the idea of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and Japan’s role in World War II.

History isn’t just one event, it’s one event impacting another, impacting another. George Lucas didn’t go to film school, and Ray Palmer never invented the atom suit, and a bunch of people may not have been saved by the Atom. And so on.

Maybe it didn’t end up changing much. But it absolutely could have. And it only happened because of the Legends. No one else.

Another one that could easily be turned back on the Legends is Compromised. Compromised was the Ronald Reagan episode. If you recall, Nate introduces his device to help them find time aberrations before they happen. They go to the White House, where Sara sees Damien Darhk, Martin Stein’s younger self is fooling around and so on.

But...did the Legends really prevent a time aberration there? Or were they the aberration?

I mean, obviously Damien Darhk was there and up to no good. He’d infiltrated the White House for some nefarious purpose. But here’s the thing. Damien Dahrk was the natural Darhk of that timeline. He’s already there and scheming before Eobard (an actual time traveler) shows up. So presumably Damien and his entire plan are ALREADY a part of history. Since history doesn’t record an explosion there, something else must have happened to change it.

Eobard is a time traveler, of course. But what exactly did Eobard do in the episode except try to recruit Darhk. There is no real evidence that he influenced Darhk’s scheme. Which means that Eobard did not cause this time aberration.

The Legends did. The Legends attacked Darhk, stopped his scheme, revealed their powers publicly, and created a lot of havoc. That’s not even getting into Martin getting his younger self laid. Now, we know from season one, how dangerous public power use can be. Firestorm’s appearance in 1975 led to the Soviets creating a whole Firestorm project in the 80s. So what might the White House do, now that THEY’ve seen metas?

Maybe nothing will come of it. But it could have. Because of the LEGENDS.

I mean, most of the other episodes are different. Something else happened to fuck up time first: time pirates causing civil war zombies, Eobard killing the JSA, Turnbull getting dwarf star metal, the Legion of Doom. And so on. The Legends do a fine job dealing with them.

But Shogun and arguably Compromised are situations where fairly big potential changes can be laid exactly at the Legends’ feet.

So. We have Eobard Thawne, a man who managed to control and manipulate the Flash for almost an entire year. And he’s got in his hands an already mind-fucked Rip Hunter. How hard would it be for Eobard to convince his very confused captive that the Legends are far bigger threat to the timeline than he is?

Especially if he can point to the events of Shogun and Compromised as “proof”

And as we learned from Marooned, Rip Hunter is legendary when it comes to bringing down Time Pirates.

Eobard might not be able to get the information from Rip but there’s a nice compass and part of a spear that could be within his grasp...

And for Rip’s part, we’d get a Rip-as-adversary plotline that wouldn’t involve the poor guy turning into a cliched villain. He could still be exactly as kind and moral as he is now. Just...he thinks he’s trying to stop some very bad people.

It’s just a theory, but I think it’s a fun one. Maybe I’ll turn it into a fanfic.

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caveartfair · 7 years ago

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A New Breed of Immersive Art Experiences Offers a Gateway to Alternative Realities

Installation view of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Photo by Kate Russell. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

In mid-May in New York, artist-turned-entrepreneur Vince Kadlubek took the stage at Adobe’s 99U Conference to discuss the potential for creativity to transform reality. He started by showing a series of mundane images of an average American suburb—a freeway, a house, a classroom, a partly cloudy sky—then cut to a family watching television together, and another family in a movie theater.

Kadlubek explained that while TV shows and movies once offered an escape from reality, over time, they’ve become just another part of the everyday. At present, he said, we need something more to satiate the human desire for what he calls “mind-blowing experiences.” And artists can lead the way.

Kadlubek is the CEO of Meow Wolf, an artist collective and production company that creates large-scale, interactive, multimedia installations. The for-profit company currently operates one meandering, art-filled venue—packed with a Victorian-era house and trippy passageways—known as The House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It brought in $6 million in revenue during its first year; Meow Wolf has plans to build two more unique spaces in the next two years, in Las Vegas and Denver.

Installation view of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Photo by Kate Russell. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

This momentum speaks to the broad appetite for experiential art at present—from immersive exhibitions, like those of Yayoi Kusama, to Instagram-friendly “museums,” like the Museum of Ice Cream—particularly among experience-hungry, selfie-loving millennials. Meow Wolf, however, aims to offer more than just photo ops. Rather, Kadlubek and his colleagues are working towards a future where high-quality, thought-provoking art environments are the norm.

Meow Wolf started out on a humble DIY scale back in 2008. (The collective’s name doesn’t hide any mysterious meaning—it came from picking words out of a hat.) Kadlubek and his fellow co-founders—Emily Montoya, Corvas K Brinkerhoff II, Sean Di Ianni, Caity Kennedy, and Matt King—were in their twenties, living in Santa Fe, and pooling their cash and ideas to fill the city’s warehouses and concert venues with DIY installations.

“I feel like we started creating experiential art out of necessity, in a weird way,” Kadlubek told Artsy. Meow Wolf, he noted, was launched at the end of an era—President George W. Bush was on his way out, with Barack Obama in the wings. “It was a big generational transition—millennials coming into being adults,” he said. Meow Wolf’s principals were artists and poets, working as promoters for concerts and raves. They decided that more than anything, they craved space.

Performance image of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Photo by Lindsey Kennedy. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

The first opportunity came in the form of a music venue where Meow Wolf was initially promoting shows and dance parties, while also covering its walls in art. “It shifted from music venue to art venue pretty fast,” Kadlubek said. Eventually, the team realized they didn’t even need music to be able to offer an entertaining experience.

They instituted an open-door policy so that any new artists who wanted to join in could. This led to a maximalist, collaborative, ever-growing installation, where artists were physically building onto each others’ work. Kadlubek describes the ethos as something akin to the “Yes, and…” principle of improvisational theater, where participants always accept their peers’ contributions.

The approach became more orchestrated, however, in 2015. That year, Meow Wolf landed a $3 million investment from Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin (a Santa Fe resident), and its members purchased a 20,000-square-foot former bowling alley. This would become its first permanent space, The House of Eternal Return, which has since been compared both to Disneyland and to the immersive theater of Sleep No More. Meow Wolf—by then counting roughly 100 members—aimed for a high-production-value experience with a unique, sci-fi-inflected narrative.

Installation view of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

The House of Eternal Return is built around the saga of a family living in Mendocino, California, who go missing one night after performing an experiment in their Victorian-era home. Visitors to the installation explore this structure, wander its manicured rooms, and then venture (through a refrigerator door) into an alternate universe of Day-Glo forests, neon creatures, topsy-turvy mirrored rooms, and interactive light and music installations.

Meow Wolf took cues from other buzz-worthy immersive art experiences—like Kusama’s “Infinity Rooms,�� James Turrell’s light installations, and enveloping animations by teamLAB. “We’ve been inspired by them because they showcased credibility in this type of space,” Kadlubek explained. But at its core, he explained, Meow Wolf has looked to fellow collectives—like Wham City in Baltimore and the Do LaB in Los Angeles—as well as the art that gets made annually at the Burning Man festival.

Despite its DIY roots, Meow Wolf is serious about its business model. Adults pay $25 admission, which enables the collective to pay its artist-employees. “We want to be known as a company that stands for artists, that supports artists, that puts artists front and center and gets away from that kind of curator mentality,” Kadlubek explained. “And the way that we’ve really done that is by committing to a salaried, full-time creative team.” Rather than replicating The House of Eternal Return in other cities, Meow Wolf’s members plan to have a full-time staff of over 300 artists who will produce new work for the new spaces—working on everything from architecture and sculpture to augmented reality and audio engineering. “That’s probably the biggest sign that we’re putting our money where our mouth is,” Kadlubek said.

Installation view of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Photo by Lindsey Kennedy. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

In 2019, the team will inaugurate a new permanent space in Las Vegas (they were invited by developers to be the anchor to a mall called Area 15), and 2020 will see them open an installation in Denver (situated in a new, standalone, 90,000-square-foot, four-story building across the river from the city’s Mile High Stadium). Then, Kadlubek explained, Meow Wolf has ambitious plans to open a space in another city every year thereafter.

In planning its two future installations, Meow Wolf circulated a request for artists to propose plans for what they’d do with the space; the idea is to align with the tone and aesthetics of the local artistic community. Denver will have “a DIY, grungy feel to it,” while Vegas will be “new media-centric,” Kadlubek said, adding that they’ll be collaborating with the augmented-reality company Magic Leap to layer AR experiences on top of their physical installations.

And while one might expect—in the age of the Museum of Ice Cream, and copycats like the forthcoming Museum of Pizza—that Meow Wolf would have a focus on Instagrammable moments, that’s not really the case. Kadlubek said that he finds it more interesting to create experiences that can’t be summed up in a handful of iPhone images. “We want to create something where I could put up a thousand images, I could put up video, but it doesn’t at all even capture the feeling of it,” he said.

Installation view of Meow Wolf, House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe. Photo by Lindsey Kennedy. Courtesy of www.meowwolf.com.

Kadlubek envisions a future where the lines between things like art, theme parks, role-playing games, and augmented reality will be blurred. The emerging term, he explains, is “alternative reality.” For Meow Wolf, this will mean providing a multitude of alternative reality experiences that are, for the audience, spontaneous and unpredictable.

“Meow Wolf in Santa Fe is a node—it’s an art experience seen through the context of consumerism and entertainment,” Kadlubek explained. “People go to a location, they have an experience, and then they go home.” The ultimate goal is for time spent in these spaces to actually change real life—to “subvert” the everyday.

Kadlubek compares today’s influx of experiential attractions to the internet in the late 1990s. Back then, using the internet was an isolated, novel activity—we would sit down and log onto the computer to send an email or go on instant messenger. We hadn’t realized, Kadlubek said, “that it was going to permeate and actually envelop reality. I think that that’s the direction these experiences are going in.”

He proposes that 10 years from now, particularly with the proliferation of augmented reality, we’ll be able to access alternative realities that are akin to high-tech “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. “I think that [the] Museum of Ice Cream, Meow Wolf, and immersive theater are all just precursors to what is about to really pop-off for everyone,” Kadlubek said. “I don’t even know if it’s art anymore. There’s a whole way of being that’s going to be shifting soon.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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