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crstapor · 4 years ago

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Why I am so Cynical

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” - Zarathustra

Part 3

Let me stop shouting - sometimes I get carried away. Because it needs be clearly stated that my perspective on the matter at hand is not based solely on 'personal' experience (of course one can never deny the importance such datum possess!) but also 'phenomenological' experience, which is, clearly, a different animal altogether. That this menagerie has informed my thought will surprise no-one who's ever tried it; thinking, I mean. How else, if one is being as honest as possible, can one arrive at any conclusions whatsoever? While the first part of this essay waxed rather subjectively poetic, allow me to offer this third as a sort of empirical respite. Facts, good reader, let me proffer facts to further found my cynicism most severe.

But let me first define the scope these facts will express. The working title for this missive to minds who want to think was 'A Polemic against American Modernity'. Allowing that my interests, here, lie not north to Canada or south of Texas, the parameters of this diatribe should be well understood by all with even meager cartographic skill.

Superficial perhaps I've structured these facts into three distinct phenomena; the surface, the self, and the symbol. I do so not to make any sweeping ontologic distinctions or assertions, rather, to help me think through them. System-building is not my purpose here - system-analysis is. The facets of modern America culture were well in place before I came along, and, unless I'm completely mistaken, I've done little to add to or enhance any of them. Apart from the clear truth of my having lived with and through them the vast majority of my mortal years. This 'truth', my citizenship and biography, allow me credence to present what follows as 'fact'; though of course it's still just one man's opinion!

Knowledge!

The Surface

Politics. Democracy. American Exceptionalism. Yeah right. So, help me out here, we have a great democracy because we vote for other people to get to vote on who actually becomes leader? Unless of course nine robes get that special privilege - based off of their admitted political preferences naturally! - like back in 2000. How the legislature is just a club for the privileged, connected, and the rich (which is almost redundant). How once 'money' became speech only those with 'money' had speech. The Founders are grave-rolling and Mussolini's having a laugh - fascism much? Let's remember Benito's definition of the term; which is when State and corporate interests converge (more or less). And we find that just about everywhere we look up in DC these days. Apparently we have the 'political will' to help banks, big oil, agribusiness, gun manufacturers, and all the other consolidated purveyors of terror, hate or control (sure, tobacco had to be sacrificed - occasionally you must throw the peasants a bone to keep the lie alive) but can't find the time to help out 'we the people': see continuing cuts to social programs; see the limp-dick governmental response to the housing/mortgage crisis of 2008 - ?; see the student loan pyramid scheme; see a 'minimum' wage that consistently fails to keep up with inflation; see a 'healthcare' plan that mandates private citizens purchase a product from non-governmental, for-profit companies - and taxes them if they don't; see how prohibition (here considered against natural, earth-born narcotics) continues to fuel a for-profit prison system and further erodes race relations; see how the gravest existential threat to the species (climate change, for realz) is perpetually laughed off and ignored; see how we lecture others on human rights while keeping Gitmo open and denying homosexuals equal protection under the law; see how NASA's (quite possibly, from a historical perspective, the greatest achievement of our modern society) budget keeps getting gutted while their priorities are schizophrenically re-ordered with each administration; see how children keep slaughtering children with weapons of war and no one can even attempt to do anything about it; see how voter ID laws are passed like Jim Crow; see how the innate sovereignty of the nation has been torn asunder now that private corporations can be 'to big to fail'; see an ever increasingly militarized police force; see the constitutional absurdity of 'free speech zones'; see democratic campaigns where one guy runs but once elected that guy's nowhere to be found and in his place is a carbon copy of the last guy who held the office ... See how our 'political parties' are two sides of the same coin ... But let's stop here and consider that last point in greater depth, as it is so vital to any understanding of 'democracy' in America ... Republicans, Democrats; Jefferson has been famously remembered, quoted, as saying once our (more properly his) democracy devolved into a two party system it would be a democracy no more. And I've certainly been a witness to that in my life. Sure, America isn't a dictatorship, but it sure as hell isn't the country Jefferson helped forge. And the main reason for that, to my eyes, seems to be the consolidation of power in the hands of politicians with more in common with each other than their constituents. R or D you can bet they're there for Wall Street or the military-information-industrial complex. Anyone else? Good luck with that citizen ... And while they're both complicit in gutting the middle class, let's take a moment to reflect, ethically, on that matter ... You can't blame the snake for its venom, but you can sure as hell blame the snake-oil salesman for shilling his bullshit wares. In case that metaphor wasn't clear enough allow me to decode it for you:

R = snake. D = snake-oil salesman.

Switching gears - though not by much! - let's shift to the state of modern American entertainment. To the uninitiated possibly a trite transition, any who've watched politics lately will surely see the connection. And just as our politics smell rotten, the main complaint with what passes as entertainment these days is how bad it tastes. Yes, it's a question of taste, as it seems most Americans have none. From 'reality TV' (which is surely anything but - though let's not forget Barnum's maxim!), to a pop-music ecosystem that's cannibalized itself to the point of parody, a movie industry that can seemingly fill ten months of releases with one script, the apotheosis of sport, the devolution of literature into a hobby for diarists, the way the performing arts are continually hoarded into smaller and smaller urban green zones, well, it's just hard to swallow most of that without gagging. Or throwing up. Yet a more concerted analysis along these lines is not called for here - we have much too much ground yet to cover.

Speaking of ground and covering it why not mention war? That old playground of glory now some video game where you might win many things; though honor's not among them. The full transition here is yet to occur, but we're definitely in the middle of it. Drones, air strikes, GPS targeting and bombs dropped from orbit (sure, not yet - wait for it!). The complete impersonalization of the other; that total objectification of the enemy (you better believe the pornographers have drone-envy). Let's not equivocate; it's one thing to look someone in the eye and take their life - quite another to push a button sixteen time-zones away and watch an image of indiscriminate carnage. How long will it be before we don't even let a homo sapien sapien push that button? How long before the machines are killing us on their own .?. Nothing to be cynical about here!

And if killing our 'enemies' has/is becoming so much more impersonal healing our 'own' has a fortiori. I'm not even going to start bandying about statistics but it's well known that of the 'first-world', 'post-industrialized' countries we're the only one that still considers healthcare a cash-grab instead of a human-right. And to what wonderful affect! Go ahead and try to ignore all the horror stories of your fellow Americans who lost it all because they couldn't pay their medical bills, or because they did. Pay no attention to record profit margins at insurance companies while the poor forgo all but emergency treatment and the wealth of the middle class is bled out and transferred to HMO executives. Sure, Uncle Tom tried to change all that - by passing a Republican plan even though the Ds had two branches of the federal government! - but when I tried to sign up for 'Obamacare' I still couldn't afford it even though I had $200 in the bank, no assets, and had been unemployed for over two years. If I lived in any other country where English is the primary language I'd be covered without paying a dime. My solution? To use the actual Republican plan - don't get sick!

But that should be easy since we all know of the three pillars of good health (diet, exercise, genetics) eating right is the easiest of all ... Hell. No, sorry, I was about to go all sarcastic and make it seem America knows nothing about sugar overload, HFCS, preservatives, the increasingly and horrifying inability of urbanites to access fresh foods (specifically the poor ones!), pesticides, pink slime, corn or corn or more corn or when will there ever be enough corn already, price gouging on foods that were produced the way they've been produced for centuries (read: organic, grass-fed, free-range), trans-fats, GMO proliferation in our breadbasket without an honest debate on the merits or looking at the science past what some corporation's panel has assured us is true, sodas, the food-gap, throwing away enough food daily to feed the world's hungry cuz it wouldn't make a dime, slaughterhouses like Auschwitz or Dachau ... That Quite Barbarism ... But that would be foolish - America knows all about that ... Why shouldn't it? America invented most of it …

And we invented the largest consumer-driven transportation system the world has ever seen to move all that food around. Sure, China will catch up with us eventually (if not already), but for the better part of three generations the US led the world in road-building and car-buying. Quite apart from the environmental effects this produced there was a profound psychological positive feed-back loop involved as well: one justifying the pre-dominate narrative of our consumer culture. Choice is sacred; you are special and unique and can reflect that through choice; so choose this product or this other one and express your uniqueness through possessing any one of these infinitely similar products; the choice is yours. Perhaps nowhere else in the market was this ‘story’ sold as diligently and aggressively than in the automobile industry. While it is true the US is, spatially speaking, a very large country, it is not true that every adult American needed or needs their own set of wheels to connect it. There are other options, other technologies that could’ve been employed to bring the masses together with more energy efficiency and communal cohesion. I admit it’s no Copernican Revolution, but the thought that Americans are so stubbornly self-interested and quick to discriminate opposed many of their European or native counterparts can not be divorced from the fact we all love to be in the driver’s seat. That commodified ‘freedom’ we are told awaits us on an open road with our very own internal combustion engine humming along in front of our feet; a freedom trains, buses, or carpooling can never provide. Again, notwithstanding the ecological impact of all this, the psychological dimension is impossible to ignore: even if we all owned Tesla’s that were powered by clean fusion charging stations it would still be me, me, me … which is quite naturally a completely uncynical disposition from which to hold a society together …

American’s fascination with their own value and freedom has of course been a dominate theme in the grand narrative of the country for some time; and while cars and roads were the major technological expression of that for much of the twentieth century, we have turned the corner here, in this regard, finding ourselves lost amid tiny little shiny screens that put the whole world inches from our eyes. With the advent of mobile computing the freedom so many seek isn’t conceived any longer by MPG rather MPBS. The new speed of information, and the promise of perpetual access, have enchanted the newer generations in much the same way vehicles did their antecedents. The technology is different while the story remains the same. It is still a self-centered freedom underlying the need, desire, to own the newest, quickest, coolest gadget. A freedom of information surely, yet one closely connected with the freedom cars brought their older relatives; it is as much economic as it is self-satisfying. The internet changed the game, naturally - and hail and well met etc. etc.! - but a claustrophobic observation remains … for a technology that has brought so many people together - and it has - it sure as hell does an awful good job sundering them as well … for you can’t find a public space anymore where a near-majority of your fellow citizens aren’t more interested in their precious little screens than those flesh and blood humans nearby. Perhaps this is just the necessary evolution of the social fabric - perhaps resistance is futile - though a social contract that has more to do with Facebook’s TOS opposed a Bill of Rights just (and forgive me for being so cynical) doesn’t seem like much of a society worth bothering with to this writer. Certainly not one worth the name.

Speaking of the modern technology we all now can’t live without, it seems to me a funny thing happened on the way to Google’s homepage … we now have access to all the information we can consume, on any topic, just a keystroke away, and look what we’re doing with it … I’m not just talking about social media or pornography, I mean the fundamental epistemological conundrum of an allegedly intelligent species that now has post-scarcity style access to information yet we’ve made of the web one colossal echo-chamber where the tribes huddle together in aggrieved resentment or ignorant bliss of the ‘others’ … look at it like this: in a day and age when the work of science (you know, that thing that made all this ((by which I mean ‘Modernity’ and all its toys)) possible) is more evenly, widely, and objectively disseminated than at any other time in history the public’s grasp and understanding of science and its work is at an all-time low. Basic data are disputed; empirical findings are called into question by anyone with a laptop, forget about a degree in the subject: what used to be considered non-issues, resolved subjects, are now argued over as if the Earth might actually be flat … all of which might just be good for a laugh if there weren’t actual existential threats to the species that only science can solve; yet we can’t even begin that discussion because some car salesman googled Glenn Beck and now we have legislatures that don’t think climate change is real; or they say the data doesn’t support an anthropogenic cause even though they never took a serious science course in their life; or that can’t be right because it doesn’t fit into our time-warp economy and a dollar today is obviously more important than our children’s future; or anyway shut-up idiot scientists just because you actually studied something other than law or business doesn’t mean you know any more than me because I have a high speed internet connection and I bookmarked the Drudge Report … how is it, philosophically speaking, tenable that the more information you have the stupider you become? I don’t know, but if you want a good example of the principle in action take a look at America today. Or just Google it …

Of course there is one thread that ties all these elements of ‘the surface’ together and that thread is consumerism as expressed by our current form of capitalism. The ascendancy of the dollar over all else (sorry God!). The desire to possess, acquire, consume. We are material creatures, we humans, and thus must consume to survive; fine: but do we have to do so in the manner we seem set on here and now? No, not at all, even suggesting that our’s is the only system, the only way to satiate the human hunger is absurd on its face as well as betraying an amnesiac’s conception of history. No, there are other paths, yet we have chosen this one, this ‘capitalism’ that mimics the terrors and rigors of the jungle at every turn. In the act of deifying money (more on that later) we have dehumanized ourselves. For the most part we are simple cogs in a vast machine that cares little or nothing for us; and so we care only for ourselves. The inherent egoism of the modern American psyche is spectacular to behold, certainly, in its primal vanity; at the same time giving the lie to any ethical system we still tenuously cling to as reminder of simpler days (sorry Christianity!). So we are, as a culture, no better than spoiled children grasping for another slice of pie. And while that’s certainly comical, it is also tragic, since such a system is not sustainable whatsoever (there is never enough pie). Neither history or science can provide any examples of such a system expanding into perpetuity (literature has given us a few but they are either satire or utopias ((same thing really))), and yet a sincere, concerted discussion on this issue has yet to percolate through the public sphere, or if so, only in the usual places and thus not given the sort of urgency it requires. But to have this conversation we all have to be ready to listen; it is not enough for the cynics and naysayers to keep shouting into the wild or the web: there has to be an audience, a receptive ear. Which brings us to our next section.

The Self

The problems elucidated in ‘The Surface’ are, to a great extent, symptoms of our sense of self, or, as is more often (if paradoxically) the case, our lack of one. While I am specifically referring to the modern American ‘self’, I’m going to be doing so with large brushstrokes; forming great swathes of colored splotches closer in kind to a rorscharch test than a pointilistic canvass. You may not see a reflection here so much as a sense of remembrance, or deja vu. That’s fine. I can’t be alone in thinking our lifespeeds have altered, and it’s just that alteration I want to discuss.

Lifespeed. Right. Let’s define that quickly so we can move on. By lifespeed I mean that facile quality of Being that tethers us to the ‘now’. Perceptually, our lives happen at a specific point in time, and I’ve conceived the word lifespeed to represent this point, as well as our conscious reaction to it. It’s just a word. Other than this meager definition it means nothing; has no other value. Right.

We were talking about choice earlier and there’s a clear connection between the act of choosing and the extant phenomena adjoining it. Just the relationship that lifespeed is meant to express. On its face, choice is neutral. Neither positive or negative, good or bad. The ‘designed’ choice of our consumer-driven society I find abhorrent, though not from some reactionary impulse, but a genuine longing for what it’s replaced. By making choices we define ourselves and I fear many of us are accepting a story that tells us we can only make this or that choice opposed to this that or the other. That we are told certain stories so many times we think we have no choice how they end; or wether to listen to them at all. In this way our lifespeeds have been damaged; like a bonsai pruned too severely.

Perhaps many are content defining themselves through ‘designed’ choice, or who ‘designed’ it anyway? Yes … there will always be sheep and lemmings in human form, and if that’s your angle you have my pity but nothing else. On the other hand, if you genuinely desire a leveling-up on the self-awareness front but have found this difficult to achieve thus far, you must realize two hard truths; the first that it is your business alone, none others - and the second, that it will be incredibly difficult to achieve because our society was not constructed to assist in this goal - quite the contrary! - it was designed to prevent it, at almost every turn. Here we return to the ‘designed’ component of American choice. Since the beginning the tiny tribes watching the throne have conspired to affect a marked class distinction in the land of the ‘free’. From the original agricultural workers of the new world, to the industrial workers who built a modern nation, to the current service sector workers slipping into poverty those with the firmest grip on the levers of power have continually strived to erect massive obstacles between those that labor for a living and those that live off that labor. Nor are these obstacles simply economic or aspirational in nature, no, due their pervasiveness through the generations they have percolated down into the most subterranean reaches of the mass conscious; into the very stories we use to define ourselves. Egads! a polite-hyper-modern-liberal-minded-triangulator might reply, don’t you know everyone has a TV! A refrigerator! Cheapest food ever! Why yes of course, there is an exception to every rule. While, for about thirty years in the middle of the last century, it seemed America was finally delivering on its promise, just look how long it took for us to devolve into another gilded age (the apparent default position of American society). It is foolish to define a thing based off aberrations, opposed its consistencies. In this way we clearly see the US for what it is … the second most successful marketing scheme in human history (naturally one must award Christianity top honors on that mark) … in the same way tobacco used to be good for you, that sodas were harmless, or how fast food is every bit nutritious as home-made, America cries ‘freedom’ when in so many ways the reverse is clearly the case. From ‘power’s’ perspective it’s nihilistically brilliant sure - give the people a semblance of freedom (in our case economic choice) and they’ll extrapolate that into a veritable cosmos of self-authorized-self-actualization - and you bet the monarchists, dictators, or petty politburos are jealous as hell at the level of control the political classes of America have been able to sustain generation after generation. A state of affairs that continues for no other reason than that an over-whelming majority of Americans keep believing the lies. We are forced to ask: why do they?

Let’s speculate wildly! Is it possible there exists some globe-spanning underground tributary of Lethe that constantly replenishes all the aquifers in the land? Or perhaps when we, on average a truly vain people, look into a mirror our historical consciousness is reset to zero? Or maybe we’ve all become so addicted to the stories we repeat about American Exceptionalism even the most destitute are content to sacrifice any chance they might have of another, better life, so as the stories can keep being told .?. the gyre is constricting at every turn, just like water flowing down the drain we’re becoming closer and closer to ourselves and ours; we’re losing a visceral sense of community and common cause through the ‘designed’ choices of a consumerist economy and specifically the newer technologies of self-absorption. So many of us don’t seem able to see past our own reflections, our problems, that even beginning to consider the larger problems facing our country seems as pointless as sending a manned mission to Mars.

The latent greed of the species is given free reign in America and this greed is destroying us. Making us sick. Stunted, withered, cloying little souls blighted with giga-myopia and eterno-amnesia. Greed. Most cultures have oft thought it a base emotion, one needing constant oversight - not the good ’ole US of A! We saw right through that ethical clap-trap - we saw that by harnessing the simmering greed of a people and putting them to work fulfilling that greed great things could happen … just absolutely amazing things … and we have accomplished quite a bit worth being proud over, and we sure have shown all those historical moralists just how wrong they were about the most solipsistic emotion … but this is a strange greed, our American one, one many may not even be aware of, so deep do its roots dive; a conniving greed that wraps in upon itself like a fresh burrito from Chipotle or those roller coasters you remember from Disneyland or Six-Flags … a greed that we have to learn to turn off, ignore, or quit seeing as so basic and benign in all our lives that there’s nothing you can do about it anyway - because it isn’t benign, it reacts to us and the environment as surely as we do it, and lately it’s been acting badly … yes, there are historical elements to this greed, there is also the question of personal responsibility, mutual complicity, systems of control and power as well - so many factors … I guess I’m nostalgic for another type of human being, one not fueled by avarice or beholden to the choices of others … qualities most seem to have lost somewhere on the way to Walmart … a human being that might never have existed except in a dream …

The Symbol

Human beings have long used symbols to represent value. Symbols are convenient, easy, and incredibly mutable. They can be transferred or translated almost infinitely. With a symbol ideas that might take an incredible amount of energy to explain or describe can be conveyed almost instantaneously. Logic and mathematics could likely not exist without them, nor, indeed, any language. And like any good thing, as is so often the case with any wonderfully useful thing, we humans have become dependent on them. Created for ourselves a world where we can not live without them. We are, in many ways, addicted to their utility. On its face there is nothing ethically challenging about this. Language and math are boons to humanity, practically describing our modern conception of ourselves. Symbols are naturally value neutral, like any high-level epistemological building block. And yet, we modern Americans have found ourselves in a tricky spot. We have crafted a society where one symbol is supreme. Where one symbol, and one symbol alone, holds all the power. A symbol that, if you find yourself without it, without access to it, without a stock-pile of it hiding somewhere, essentially makes you a non-entity. No longer part of the culture, the game. For it is certainly true that the only game in modern America is money. That collecting dollars has superseded all other activities; has supplanted any other endeavor as the only one with value. This state of affairs is the genesis of our cultural decline; of the death of the ideals that the Founders (who themselves were already playing the only game) attempted to instill in the New World: will in the end be understood by future historians as the single greatest crime of our time.

I say crime and I mean it. Don’t use the word for shock or awe. Nor do I want to dwell on this particular subject (not being the place for an extended analysis of this issue I will allow such a discussion its own essay, its own space, a place where it can be a bit more academic and dry, not so emotive or cynical) though we do have to mention a few more things before moving on. Crime. Yes. What was this crime? In short order here we go … it used to be the case that money was a symbol that referred to labor, actual work performed by one human that held value for another. So far as that is all money is, there is nothing ethically suspect about it. Then, at some point in the past, a few cunning paradigm-shifters saw an opportunity and changed the rules regarding what money was; they removed the labor as referent of value, replacing it with rare objects (typically gold) that few among any populace would ever see in their lives. Well, since the promise of alchemy was a lie, and the philosopher’s stone was never discovered, at least this money still referred to something real, something that couldn’t just be made up on the spot. Ah ha! the sons of the sneaky paradigm-shifters thought, that would just be the icing on the cake! Let’s remove the rare objects as value referent as well - let’s go all in on a communal mass delusion and see if anyone believes it … let’s just have money valued at whatever we say it’s valued at. Let’s create a massive shell game that only a very few will ever truly know the rules to, though the outcome, the results, will effect everyone … yes … let’s create the only game worth playing, and let’s give every live birth a turn … which leaves us with a system that, no matter how hard you work, no matter how industrious you are, if you don’t know the rules of the game (in modern America we can think of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers, old money, select members of the Treasury Department etc. as the holders of the rule book) you will not win at it. You will play and play and play and keep losing and losing and losing all the while the rule keepers keep winning and winning and winning because for most players in this game the tokens of victory they collect (dollars) are bought at the hard price of actual labor, as if they never heard about how money grew up - no, they slave and slave for pennies without any chance of leveling up in this game and getting to that haughty echelon where money is no longer about work but having money make money off of someone else’s work … this little narrative I just outlined is a crime because there are clear stealers and victims (of course there are exceptions to every rule, but for every Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, there are a hundred and fifty million working at Walmart for a slave-wage). You see, the architects of the monetary symbol’s paradigm shift knew that by removing any referent to an actual act (labor) or object (gold) they were essentially hollowing out the natural relationship between the symbol and the symbolized, and in that empty space they would find their own El Dorado; their own little universe where they called the shots and none other. They essentially re-wrote the rules of symbolism, and clearly in their favor. And while symbols shift meaning all the time, especially in religious or political environments, these shifts are fundamentally harmless as neither religion or political discourse ever directly affects the physical well being of a human being as does their ability to acquire food, or energy, or health care, or shelter (I understand that by including ‘politics’ in this sense I might seem to be advocating a ‘post-history’ perspective; one where capitalistic-liberalism has won over all other political narratives, and while I hope that isn’t so, at the moment, and especially as an American author, one would be hard pressed to argue the point otherwise). To be clear, I’m not suggesting there was some shadowy cabal that gathered and planned out this great hollowing out of the monetary symbol; as is often the case it happened by fits and starts, here and there, as history would have it, propelled by the innate greed of the least amongst us. And yet they have scored a grand victory, these acolytes of avarice. Have pulled the proverbial wool over so many eyes - and in the process redefined a country that promised freedom into a vassal state completely enthralled to an ugly little strip of green denim that truly means nothing at all …

Of course this transformation did not just occur on American soil. But we sure as hell took the ball and ran it home. More than any other modern nation we are more readily defined by the empty symbology of the dollar than any others. This is not just an American problem; but we must be the first to address it …

America’s enslavement to the dollar is the singular cause of all the problems I put forth in ‘The Surface’, and, in many ways, ‘The Self’. We are a nation of suckers, rats, blind idealists, idiot sensualists, blatant thieves and the occasional dreamer … and knowing that, seeing my country in this way does nothing to alleviate my pathological cynicism … but allow me a query - do you still ask me why I am so cynical .?.

#Essay #Philosophy #c. r. stapor #cynicism #nietszche #modernity #philosophers on tumblr #writers on tumblr

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magicclownengineer-blog · 6 years ago

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50 Possibilities

1. Through my 4 week project I worked with a range of materials, one of these being cloth. I had only ever considered sewing material but this time I used it as more of a sculpting material which led me to the idea of sculpting a interactive scene by folding and laying material. That then gave me the idea of expanding this into maybe a miniature world. I could use different material colours and way of shaping it to create a world out of cloth.

2. A project earlier in the year led me to create a space painting in which I hung paper clips over the front as this piece was to represent all the junk floating in the atmosphere. At the end of this piece my tutor challenged me on scale which gave me an idea for a similar interactive piece where I could craft a globe coming out of the background and use other pieces to create a 3D background but to then use recycling/junk to hang so the scale is increased. This then creates a space where you can stand in all the junk and really get a perspective.

3. Expanding off of this I could even just consider creating a final major piece that represents a current issue in the world or society that really puts it across in the exhibit.

4. On the contrary I could possibly come up with an idea that represents something positive in the world to give people something uplifting to exhibit.

5. Over the year I worked with a range of new materials and machines as well as artists and I could maybe create a piece including each stage of my journey just by taking one part from each stage to let them create a piece on their own.

6. Like the artist I have researched and small pieces I have made along the way I could consider a more complicated piece working with shadows and look into how I can take this a step further.

7. Another idea I could try is to create a line of coherent pieces, possibly I could paint a repetitive picture but each in a different media or this in 3D by creating a repetitive sculpture each out of a different material. Or I could just make multiple pieces that come to create one exhibit.

8. As I researched in my 4 week project I could take the idea of using only recycling only to inspire and idea as I wanted to try this on a larger more professional scale while I have the facilities and space.

9. Before starting this course I had a plan to learn a bit more in electronics and animatronics as I have always been down the props route so I wanted to do a simple animatronic to gain a base of skills within that part of the prop industry so I can keep the idea in mind of how I can adapt something to include this idea.

10. I looked at the artist Alexis Noriega who makes mechanical wings that are like costume props that take a lot of detail so maybe I could go off the props route a little and make a crafted look like I would make props but formed in a way that it can be worn. This would give me a knew outlook on prop making to be making them in such a different form.

11. I could consider choosing one object such as a book and make something out of as many or as little books as I want. I could use the covers to add to the piece or fold the books. I could do this with anything like chairs. Only limiting my self to an object but not quantity or process as I feel the idea of this process would add a lot of interest to the piece its self.

12. An idea I could take from my 50s project could be to create coherent pieces that are also a sort of puzzle. I could look into engineering interlocking systems and maybe find new materials to work with as well as deciding between more 2D or 3D.

13. Another idea I have had is that I could possibly create a prop of something that doesn’t seem very interesting that can open or transform into a completely different piece that is a lot more vibrant and unexpected. I am thinking of taking ideas from a boring every day object.

14. I have recently been interested in practicing with Styrofoam as I feel it would be great to have skills in as I continue in to the prop making route. Maybe I could try a large sculpting piece carving Styrofoam and experiment with decorating and finishing it to get more knowledge on working professionally with this material.

15. Similarly, I can maybe attempt to create a sculpture through casting as I haven’t had much of a chance to work with resin or take a professional cast of my sculpt however I don’t know how I would make this into an exhibit.

16. Like the recycling idea I could just go around buying or collecting on wanted items to possibly create a piece or a sculpture. It would be cool to try and bring a load of objects in to one piece. Working with the objects to connect them up in some way.

17. I could consider creating a large canvas collage using all the materials I have worked with this year. I was originally thinking not creating an image, but I could consider this too.

18. To stick to my props career path, I can look into props and attempt a replica but put my own twist on it. As a replica wouldn’t show my design skills. I could maybe even take inspiration from multiple props.

19. Another idea could be to get the public involved and display my final major of them reacting to a piece I have made.

20. Maybe I could work with the out doors or something already set up in an environment and design a piece/ create a space within it to completely change its look.

21. Another source I could consider getting all my materials from nature and working with what I can find. I could plan to build a structure out of branches and use smaller things for decorations well as letting the materials I find inspire me.

22. Rather then applying materials I could create a piece by carving or taking away from my material using a scalpel by using a large piece of paper or something like cut out a design that creates an intricate image.

23. Further in to new knowledge I could possibly create a piece using computer programming to try out machines such as a laser cutter, 3D printer and maybe other machinery I don’t yet know. This would help me prepare for my university choice as well as they now work a lot with 3D printing for modelmaking.

24. In my 4 week project I found a lot of materials could be used to create pieces through folding to shape them so I could maybe try to take this to a new level by creating a large piece of something just by folding either one material or various.

25. I could consider the idea of creating a piece that works in layer. I not sure how as this is a more open idea but to create a piece either built in layers or comes apart in layers could be interesting.

26. Like the idea I had about limiting my self to possibly on specific material or area I could limit my self to just one process e.g cutting, painting or others as this could direct my piece but it might make it difficult.

27. Another idea that could be interesting would be to let other people pick out my materials, so I don’t have any way of planning until I know what they have chosen.

28. Something I could consider is playing with state e.g solid, liquid and gas as maybe a theme or my materials.

29. I could use junk or recycled materials but use working electronics to create a piece that moves or something, this will also limit what materials I may find.

30. I could maybe create a piece that is interactive by being able to change its shape through touch.

31. I could not only create a material often seen as tough to be soft I could also challenge the dimension materials are often used to work in like my realization within the 4-week project with cloth.

32. I could create a piece to represent all the diversity of art styles by using a range of different styles to create a piece as again this could really bring up some different ways of working in the future as well as making an interesting and engaging piece.

33. I created a painting early in the course by putting everything into block colour and shapes to still capture the image but take away almost all the detail so this is a concept I feel would be good to consider as possibly apart of another idea.

34. Similarly, I could research into a specific art style I haven’t really looked at or worked with before as this would teach me a completely new skill within art and I could consider applying this to whatever I make.

35. From my 4 week project I could possibly attempt to upcycle a large item that would otherwise be thrown away. This could either be the piece or be built of to create a piece, but I feel this idea would really direct my piece.

36. I could research into ways prop making skills are used to make things out side of props e.g costume to gain more skills within the industry but to also expand my making skills in general.

37. Maybe I could research into a target audience to inspire a piece as well as learn some techniques to direct my piece to entertain and engage people as from a career point of view this is a very key feature.

38. I could possibly play with junk that still works but play around with sound so that it creates or represents a message.

39. One idea could possibly be to use materials that in no way match or look good together to try to create a piece that works.

40. I could take inspiration from one specific artists work to either remake their pieces in a completely different way or create a piece completely based off of what inspires them.

41. Maybe I can make a piece that is interactive by moving around people to involve them without them having to involve themselves as this might gain more interest as well as creating a fun feature for my piece.

42. I could make a replica of something however of something natural so I have creative licence for the expression or pose of what I make as this could really contribute to my skills in detail.

43. From pathway I learnt about stop motion and this is possibly something I could try again as making the models for stop motion is possibly something I want to do.

44. I could maybe choose a story to inspire my piece to give me the meaning to work of while designing my piece.

45. Another thing I could do is buy in all new things for what I want to build so that I have completely free range of ideas however the only worry with this is budget.

46. Like the idea of basing a piece off texture I could try coming up with a piece based round one texture or finish such as shiny.

47. What I could do is take 4 or 5 ideas from this list to make a range of piece and then in some way bring those together either in the way I display them or merge them together.

48. As I haven’t worked much with sewing and clothing material, I could maybe build of a stuffed toy to create a character with a lot of personality by sewing onto it.

49. I could possibly create a working prop where its interactive by doing what you’d expect e.g I could make a tree that maybe drops leaves and can change with the seasons or make a flower that loses petals.

50. I could maybe attempt a futuristic, hyper reality theme by taking anyone of these ideas and adding this into the planning.

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rickhorrow · 6 years ago

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15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 15 with Jacob Aere

Step aside, George Foreman. Tiger Woods’ 2019 Masters victory now tops the list of greatest comebacks in sports, and elsewhere. Turning back the clock and delivering another vintage Sunday performance at Augusta, Tiger Woods held off the best players in the world to capture his fifth green jacket and 15th career major championship. In doing so, he joined the likes of boxer Foreman, California Governor Jerry Brown, entertainers Robert Downey, Jr., Glenn Close, and Justin Timberlake and mogul Martha Stewart in making a significant cultural impact years after their assumed peak and following a major gap in their career timeline. As testament to Woods’ wide-reaching impact, Twitter noted that over a span of two hours on Sunday, there were over 1.4 million tweets about Woods and more than 1.8 million about the Masters. Sports celebrities including Jack Nicklaus, Serena Williams, Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Michael Phelps added their voices to the throng, as did two U.S. Presidents, Obama and Trump. For the next weeks, and perhaps months, we will continue to put into perspective what Tiger’s victory on Masters Sunday means to sports, and what it means to society.

Tigers’ Masters victory: other winners and losers. Let’s start with the biggest winner: CBS. According to a release from CBS Sports, Saturday’s Masters coverage was the highest-rated Saturday golf telecast on any network since 2015. It also featured a 5% increase in ratings over last year. Given the Tiger Effect, Sunday’s final ratings will blow the doors off those increases. Other major stakeholders benefitting from Tiger’s victory are Nike, which stuck by him during the troubled years, the PGA and the state of New York, looking ahead to the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black May 16-19, the golf industry as a whole, and fans. But even on this happy sports day, there are losers. The NBA and NHL had to air playoff games across from a Masters final round held early due to weather. Ditto the U.S. women’s hockey team, which defeated Finland to win their fifth consecutive women’s hockey world championship gold medal but likely had few casual fans watching back home. At Bethpage and elsewhere Tiger tees it up, the rest of the field will see its screen time vanish as TigerTV – every hole, every shot – blasts back. The biggest losers? The pocketbooks of 2020 Masters patrons. Secondary market badges averaged $2,500 per day this year. Next year, look for that marker to move north of $3,000.

Augusta National, Westeros collide. When you envision Masters patrons, you don’t necessarily think of “Game of Thrones” fans. Which may be, according to GolfWeek, the precise reason the Masters has pulled off one of the boldest buzz-building moves in its recent history. Over the weekend, the club tweeted out a promotional clip showing the 12th hole under snow before shifting to its normal glorious springtime view. To even further pull at the heartstrings of Masters and Thrones fans, the 30-second promo also morphed Ramin Djawadi’s Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” theme with the Masters’ famous Dave Loggins instrumental score. HBO’s blockbuster series may be entering the most anticipated final season in television history – if the 61 million plus views of the season trailer are any indication. The bridge between the Masters and Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” return was an unprecedented nod to pop culture for Augusta National, which has traditionally not acknowledged much that goes on outside its hallowed gates.

Heads up! This year, Minor League Baseball fans might notice new digital screens and displays at their favorite stadiums. Together with ISM Connect, over 25 MiLB teams will be adding new smart displays to their ballparks. But beyond delivering unique stories and creative ads to fans during each game, these displays are also equipped with smart cameras to measure audience engagement. These smart cameras will help keep ads and content fresh. The cameras record anonymous interactions -- how long someone watches the screen or their age range -- not individual images of specific people. By measuring foot traffic and engagement, MiLB teams and ad sponsors can better understand who their fans are, what resonates with them, and how they’re experiencing each game. The result is a better, more engaging experience for fans, and a better way for teams and partners to learn how to best serve their loyal audience.

Stanley Cup Playoff storylines intrigue as the NHL enters its second week of the post season. Here are a few big picture scenarios for 2019. First, the Tampa Bay Lightning are in the conversation for best regular season team ever. The Lightning won 62 games, something only one other team has done -- the Detroit Red Wings in 1995-1996. However, of the 13 teams that have finished with the NHL's best record since the 2004-2005 lockout, only two -- the 2007-2008 Red Wings and the 2012-2013 Chicago Blackhawks — have gone on to lift the Stanley Cup. Second, the Stanley Cup hasn't been won by a Canadian team since Montreal took it home 26 years ago. However, three Canadian squads are in this year's mix — the Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, and Winnipeg Jets — and Calgary has the second-best odds of capturing the title, per The Action Network. Finally, in his first full season as NHL owner, Tom Dundon helped the Carolina Hurricanes make the playoffs for the first time since 2009. In Raleigh, Dundon is a hero. Elsewhere, he's more of a villain, as he pulled the plug on the Alliance of American Football's inaugural season less than seven weeks after investing $250 million to rescue the league.

As the Stanley Cup Playoffs intensify, the New Jersey Devils won the 2019 NHL draft lottery after entering with the third-best odds. It's the second lottery win in three years for the Devils, who selected center Nico Hischier with the top pick in 2017. The prize of this year's draft is 17-year-old Jack Hughes, who the Devils will almost certainly make the eighth American-born player to be taken with the No. 1 pick. Hughes is set to make history as the first U.S. National Team Development Program player to jump straight to the NHL. There, he rewrote record books, blowing past the likes of NHL standouts Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Patrick Kane, and Phil Kessel. "You can spend the rest of your hockey career trying to find another player like Jack," claimed an anonymous NHL exec quoted by The Athletic. Elsewhere, the Rangers jumped up from No. 6 to snag the second overall pick, and the Blackhawks made an even more dramatic move, going from No. 12 all the way to No. 3.

The average Major League Baseball team is worth $1.78 billion according to Forbes latest valuations, an 8% increase from last year. Additionally, all 30 MLB franchises are worth at least $1 billion; whereas a decade ago, only two were: the Mets and the Yankees. The rest of the league has caught up to the Mets and Yankees, who rank dead last and third-to-last, respectively, in growth since 2009. The Giants saw the biggest increase in value over the last decade. MLB's ownership stakes in MLB Advanced Media (100%), BamTech (15%), and MLB Network (67%), as well as the league's investment portfolio, were included in the valuations and equally divided among the 30 teams, constituting over $400 million in value per franchise. Over the 22 years that Forbes has conducted its valuations, the average MLB team value has increased 11% year-over-year, while NBA and NFL team values have increased 13% and 12%, respectively. The MLB increases are going to get even bigger in 2022, when baseball's seven-year, $5.1 billion deal with FOX kicks in.

Congressmen threaten MLB antitrust exemption over RSN bid. U.S. Representatives Elijah Cummings and Raja Krishnamoorthi threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption over the league’s attempt to buy the 21 Fox-branded RSNs. In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, the two House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform members wrote that they are concerned about the potential for “anticompetitive conduct that harms American consumers” if MLB buys the RSNs. “MLB’s potential purchase of these RSNs raises significant questions about the antitrust exemption that professional baseball has enjoyed for nearly a century,” they wrote. “Although the Supreme Court has upheld baseball’s unique, judicially-created antitrust exemption for nearly a century on the basis of stare decisis, the Court has also described the exemption as an ‘aberration’ and recognized Congress’ ability to limit or even eliminate it.” The congressmen gave MLB only two weeks to produce documents relating to MLB’s potential acquisition and operation of the RSNs.

The Trump administration has nixed Major League Baseball's historic agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation (CBF) that would have made it easier for Cuban players to enter the U.S. legally without needing to defect. According to Axios Sports, the goal of this deal was to help end the dangerous trafficking of Cuban players that has gone on for decades, resulting in players being threatened, extorted or even kidnapped. Take Yasiel Puig, now an outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds. After helping Puig escape Cuba, traffickers affiliated with a notorious Mexican drug cartel held him for ransom on a small island for weeks. The Cuban agreement is similar to the deals MLB has with China, Korean, and Japan, and dates back to the Obama administration’s détente with Cuba, which intended to soften relations between the two nations. However, the Trump White House last Monday argued that the CBF is a branch of the Cuban government and that the agreement, therefore, violates U.S. trade law since MLB would be paying a fee in exchange for each player. A geopolitical war is being waged — and young baseball players with dreams of a better life are the collateral damage.

NCAA March Madness Live set all-time tournament records in live streams – over 100 million – and live hours consumed (over 24 million), up 31% and 29% vs. last year. According to JohnWallStreet, NCAA March Madness Live generated a record for last night’s NCAA Championship Game based on live uniques, with live streams and live hours consumed showing increases of 19% and 7% vs. last year. Competitive intelligence platforms BrandTotal reports that AT&T, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Infiniti ran some of the top social media campaigns during the NCAA men's basketball tournament, with BWW posting fairly evenly across social using Facebook (31%), Instagram (39%), and Twitter (30%) with the most viewed ad, in terms of engagement, being an Instagram Dark post about March Madness. AT&T leveraged YouTube as its main medium, with Instagram as its second and Facebook third, and scored a positive sentiment report of 45% and a negative sentiment 18%. Infinity used Instagram in 85% of its posts with the other 14% coming from Facebook, scoring a 2% negative sentiment report for its campaign and 29% positive. As more and more people consume media online, look for these numbers to continue to increase by double figures for the foreseeable future.

The L.A. Clippers honored retiring Hall of Fame broadcaster Ralph Lawler during their regular-season finale against the Jazz with a special halftime ceremony to celebrate his 40 years with the team. The Clippers unveiled a special logo on the court at Staples Center, and players wore a special shooting shirt. The first 10,000 fans on hand for Ralph Lawler Night also received Lawler bobbleheads. NBA Legend Bill Walton joined Lawler on the call during the game, and CarMax presented “a check to the charity of Lawler's choice," according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The Clippers actions honoring a longtime figure in the Clippers “family” stood in stark contrast to the turmoil surrounding their Staples Center locker mates the Los Angeles Lakers, who fired Walton’s son Luke as their coach after yet another season in which the franchise failed to make the NBA Playoffs and team president and NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson abruptly resigned. An All-Star in his own right, Lawler will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September.

The Boston Marathon passes $200 million in economic impact, and welcomes seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson to its field. This year's Boston Marathon, held Monday April 15 and carried on NBCSports Network, will be the 123rd running of the race that winds its way 26.2 miles from the town of Hopkinton to the finish line at Copley Square. It is the world's oldest annual marathon, starting in 1897 after the successful debut of the marathon at the first modern Olympics in 1896. The Boston Marathon is traditionally held on Patriots Day, the third Monday in April. The Boston Red Sox also have a traditional home game on Patriots Day with an 11:05 a.m. first pitch against the Orioles this year. Boston is among the six largest marathons, along with Tokyo, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City. A special prize purse is given to runners who accumulate the most points in the majors. Here's a bit of trivia: Just five national sporting events were held during the two World Wars, and the Boston Marathon was one. The others? The Kentucky Derby, Penn Relays, Rose Parade, and Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

NASCAR has reportedly rejected an offer from Monster Energy to extend its title sponsorship of the US stock car racing series in order to push ahead with a new tiered partnership model. According to SportsBusiness Journal, the energy drink brand offered to extend its deal for an additional year to give NASCAR more time to finalize its sponsorship restructure. However, NASCAR has apparently turned down that option to keep moving forward with the new model, with Monster now in talks about becoming a lower-level partner. NASCAR’s switch to a tiered sponsorship model has been rumored for some time, and the series is reportedly asking for close to $20 million per year for top-tier deals. SportsBusiness Journal added that Monster would likely land a second-tier sponsorship deal, although it is not yet clear how much NASCAR wants for those slots. Monster was first named NASCAR title sponsor in 2017 as part of a two-year deal estimated to be worth an annual $20 million. The company then extended the partnership for a further season last April. The new arrangement would see NASCAR’s premier series be known as the NASCAR Cup Series, rather than the title-sponsored Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

A new ESPN deal with the Big 12 guarantees three football title games. The Big 12 has agreed to a deal that gives ESPN the rights to all Big 12 football championship games through 2024 and makes the league the first Power Five conference to provide exclusive content to ESPN+, the cable giant's online subscription streaming service. According to USA Today, the new agreement also calls for Big 12 content on ESPN+ to be branded specifically for the conference, creating a de facto digital conference network. Fox and ESPN share television rights to Big 12 games and are in the middle of a 13-year deal worth $2.6 billion signed in 2012. This is good news not only for ESPN and the Big 12, but for college football fans everywhere.

La Liga, Spanish soccer’s top-flight league, has been named the eighth biggest brand domestically, according to a report by valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance. The report places La Liga above major Spanish brands such as the insurance provider Mapfre and telecommunications company Movistar. Using its brand strength score metric, a figure based on calculations regarding emotional connection, financial performance and sustainability, Brand Finance gave La Liga a score of 80.7 out of 100. Fashion retailer Zara topped the Brand Finance list overall, with the likes of Santander and Iberdrola also featuring inside its top ten. The new 2019 report marks the first time a sports league has appeared in Brand Finance’s top ten, highlighting the continued growth of La Liga. Brand Finance values the league body at $548 million. Based on monetary value along it occupies 50th place on the list, a considerable drop. However, taking into account the value of participating league clubs – which includes the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid – La Liga’s overall value jumps to $4.5 billion, which would place it sixth on that list.

Top Five Tech

Opendorse has helped to rank the most “engaging” online PGA golfers. Ahead of Masters Week, the athlete marketing platform released its Top 5 in Gold with the then betting favorite to win the Masters, Rory McIlroy, leading the way by a steady margin with 1.21 million engagements since the start of 2019. According to Sports Media Report, McIlroy’s Facebook engagements alone were nearly eight times that of the second player on the list, Rickie Fowler, whose total numbers amassed 1.05 million engagements. In third, fourth, and fifth were Justin Rose, Justin Thomas, and Ian Poulter respectively. Opendorse was able to calculate these numbers based off every like, share, retweet, comment, and other social factors each players’ posts received during the indicated time period. Using opendorse to track the top PGA golfers can help with advertising as it provides hard numbers for the number of people viewing a single athlete’s social feeds.

At The Masters, IBM tracked over 20,000 golf shots to create its automated highlights. IBM tracked every shot taken by every player during The Masters Tournament and used its artificial intelligence platform Watson to produce three-minute highlights of every round. According to SportTechie, IBM launched automated highlights for a select few players last year and expanded those capabilities to include all of the roughly 90 players at the 2019 Masters. The AI helped power the Masters’ “Round in Three Minutes” feature, which is a highlights package that served fans across the tournament’s digital platforms a bite-sized summary of a single player’s round. One of the most complex artificial intelligence systems around, IBM’s work at the Masters is helping to further teach its already complex Watson to create opportunities for the tech company to repackage and expand its capabilities to clients in other industries outside of sports.

Your Call Football looks to change the future of the game through tech. According to ESPN, YCF is part football, part gaming, part fantasy and allows fans to decide how an actual in-progress game is played, as if Madden came to life. Every Monday night for four weeks in the spring, fans get a notification at 8 p.m. to open the YCF app. They are given a coach-selected "bundle" of three plays to choose from and each fan has 10 seconds to decide what the team's offense should do next on their app. The game is free to play, there are cash prizes, and fans are awarded points when they select what the coach wanted and when their play selection is successful. On the other hand, fans who don't pick with the majority are awarded points when the majority-chosen play results in a negative play, like a sack or an incompletion. At the end of the 10 seconds, the play is radioed into the huddle with the whole sequence taking just 19 seconds, no longer than a normal football game. For a generation of hyper-connectivity, YCF wants to bring the digital world into live sports and give millennials who have stopped paying attention a reason to actually care.

The World Rallycross Championship (WRX) will launch an electric series that will run alongside its traditional format. Launched by WRX promoter IMG Motorsports, "Projekt E" will see electric-powered cars compete on the same weekend as regular Supercars races, with the series reportedly starting in 2020, according to industry outlet Autosport. The move comes after WRX's proposals to shift the main racing series to electric cars for 2021 fell through after failing to garner enough support in a manufacturer vote in March. According to SportsPro, Rallycross is considered by series bosses as the perfect stage for showcasing electrified motorsport. With its short races -- the longest is just over five minutes -- and use of road cars, it is seen as an ideal shop window for manufacturers to display their electric innovations to the mass market.

AKQA uses AI to invent a new sport called Speedgate. According to TechCrunch, the digital agency wanted to do something “really ambitious” for Design Week Portland, and given the team’s work with Nike, it made sense to ask: “What if we invented the next basketball, the next football?” AKQA used an existing recurrent neural network architecture, feeding it data of 400 sports, which it used to generate sports concepts and rules. The AI was good at coming up with descriptions for sports like “underwater parkour” but reviews were mixed. It also suggested creating rules for a sport where players pass a ball back-and-forth while in hot air balloons or on a tightrope. AKQA Creative Director Whitney Jenkins insisted that Speedgate could never have been created by humans alone: “Using AI as a member of a creative team takes us to a new place that we never could have gotten to without it.” But it still took a back-and-forth process with humans to narrow the list down for playtesting.

Power of Sports Five

The USTA Foundation unveils celebrity and player council in New York. According to SportsBusiness Journal, at a lunch with media at the Penn Club in Manhattan, the USTA’s charitable arm last week introduced its celebrity and player council, including Alec Baldwin, Katie Couric, and "Shark Tank" regular Daymond John – all avid tennis fans. “Anything I can do to bring tennis into the lives of young people,” said Baldwin, who serves as Chair of the 15-member council. Also attending the lunch were celebrity and player council members Billie Jean King and ESPN’s Chris McKendry, as well as USTA Foundation Chair Chris Evert. The USTA appointed Evert to the role two months ago, and it was her idea to more aggressively use the celebrity council to raise awareness and funds. The USTA Foundation has awarded $40 million in its history to bring tennis and education to underserved communities.

Chevrolet recently wrapped a fifth season of its GoalKeepers campaign, a program built with the Women’s Sports Foundation surrounding the brand’s Manchester United sponsorship in the U.K. The goal of GoalKeepers is to inspire girls to #BeAGoalKeeper, in soccer and in the pursuit of their dreams. The eight-month-long campaign involved 11 girls ages 11-15 from across the U.S. selected by an application process to immerse themselves in mentorship, regional activities, and a grand finale trip to England for a weeklong workshop. The insight by Ernst & Young guiding the program: that more than 94% of female business leaders played sports as children. Compare that figure to the sad statistic that by age 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys, and Chevy has recognized an opportunity to support female empowerment with a recipe involving its soccer sponsorship and role as official automotive partner of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Sponsorships connect brands to consumer passion points, but they can also open doors to help brands make a real difference in the lives of fans.

AT&T becomes the first non-apparel company with logo on WNBA jerseys. AT&T will become the first non-apparel partner to have its logo featured on all WNBA jerseys as part of a new deal, with the tech company and the league also planning to collaborate on programs that support women in sports. According to Hashtag Sports, the jerseys debuted during last week’s WNBA Draft held at Nike’s new NYHQ. “Whether it’s women in sports, supporting small businesses like those owned by WNBA players, being a leading voice in LGBTQ rights, or giving back to communities in which we operate, we have much in common and many opportunities to empower these incredible athletes and their fans,” said Fiona Carter, AT&T’s chief brand officer. Sports sponsorship deals can be important gateways to philanthropy. With this latest move, AT&T is demonstrating that giving back is as important to the telecom company as selling mobile phones and service plans.

The NHL is recruiting teenage advisors to be a part of its NHL Power Players program. The NHL is recruiting a group of youth advisers to help the league better connect with Gen Z and get them invested in the sport. The council will assist and provide insight and suggestions to the league on matters including marketing, community engagement, events, social content, and understanding rules of play. Applicants must be between the age of 13 to 17, be open, honest and willing to share their ideas with the NHL and their peers as well as have a passion for hockey. Power Players is born from the actions of Sabrina Solomon, a teenaged avid hockey fan. In 2017, just after the NHL’s CMO Heidi Browning had started in that role, Browning did an interview with the Wall Street Journal about her plans for the league. Solomon, who was then just 11 years old, saw the article and wrote to Browning, telling her she had some ideas of her own. Impressed, Browning invited her into the NHL’s offices for the day. The hope is that with these varied insights from the team of Power Players, the NHL can get a better picture of what Gen Z is looking for from a pro sports organization.

April is National Autism Awareness Month, and the MLF Bass Pro Tour roster is participating in the way they know best: by catching fish. Most of the field of 80 anglers competing in the next two Bass Pro Tour events are pledging “dollars per pound” donations to their favorite autism awareness organization, and they’re asking their fans to consider doing the same. “Autism affects so many families, we’re just doing our best to encourage people to do whatever they can for their local autism awareness organization,” said Kevin VanDam, who is pledging a robust $5 for every pound of fish he records on SCORETRACKER. MLF anglers participating in April’s awareness and fundraising effort will combine their weights and contributions from the Stage Four event on Lake Chickamauga in Tennessee, and the Stage Five event on Smith Lake in Alabama. With big weights of Florida-strain largemouth expected on Chickamauga and even heavier overall weights of spotted bass on Smith Lake, those dollars-per-pound pledge could add up quickly. The angler with the most weight at these two tournaments will be recognized as the Autism Awareness Champion.

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