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arts & culture
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KANSAN.COM | THURSDAY, FEB. 4, 2016
Aries (March 21-April
The next two days bring lots of career action. Prepare for a test. Find another way to solve your problem. The opposition holds out, and it could get tense. Take a time-out, if necessary.
Taurus (Apr. 20-May 20)
Dream big. Plan your vacation today and tomorrow.
Include a creative challenge.
Get into study and research.
Your wanderlust is getting worse. Travel, romance and fun are favored. Have a backup plan for obstacles.
Gemini (May 21-June
Discuss shared finances over the next few days. Work together on the numbers. File papers. Create a roadmap and budget for future plans. Take your partner to a new spot to celebrate completion.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Negotiate to refine the plan.
Work with a partner over the next few days. Work out a disagreement about household matters. Take a carefully calculated risk.
Navigate surprises gracefully. Finish and clean up.
Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)
Postpone shopping, and focus on your work today and tomorrow. Saving money doesn't need to cramp your style. Take a creative tack. Jump a hurdle. Soothe someone who's irritated.
Relax after work with a colleague
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Get into your game over the next few days. Enjoy your practice. Do something fun with someone interesting. Don't try to buy favor. Study your strategies. Play together with common passions. Create love.
Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) The next two days are good for making changes at home.Family takes priority. Technological fixes ease a breakdown.Adapt your place to new circumstances. Research options before compromising.Maximize savings with organized hunting.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) You're firing on all creative cylinders. Write, edit and broadcast over the next few days. Issue communications. Figure out solutions. A technical breakthrough reveals new options. Resist impulsive purchases. Research and then choose.
Sagittarius (Nov. 22- Dec. 21) Take a pass on socializing for now. Work and make money over the next two days. Tap another source of revenue. Keep your deadlines and satisfy an authority. Take charge, and make something happen.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan.
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Relax into a confident two-day phase. You're taking control. Listen carefully. Does the plan work for you? Everyone won't like everything. Compromise for what's most important. Aim for a happy ending. Keep a
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb.
Get into thoughtful planning mode. You're entering a two-day pensive phase. Clean, sort and organize. Schedule into the future. Travel later. Update the budget. Luxuriate in privacy. Settle into your cocoon.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March
You're looking exceptionally fine. Set up meetings, parties and gatherings. The next two days favor socializing and networking. Intuitive insight increases. Heed advice from experts, even when you disagree. Go ahead and make a
change.
University student Jared Morris a.k.a. Ricky Roosevelt, said he is still in the development stage as a rapper.
Jared Morris a.k.a Ricky Roosevelt
▶ JARRET ROGERS
@JarretRogers
During interviews, musicians are often asked when they started, how they started and who they started with.
An artist's development is often paired with a humanizing story that many musicians around the world have to share. Fans hear that once upon a time they were just like them: living in some small town trying to make their dreams a reality.
University senior Jarred Morris is in his own developmental stage as the first month of 2016 comes to a close. Morris, a 21-year-old rapper from Minnesota, is currently performing under the moniker Ricky Roosevelt.
Morris said he always had an understanding of how music works, although it wasn't until January 2015 that he started transforming his written rhymes into
songs.
"I've just started to make real songs; it's something I've always wanted to do," Morris said. "I've always understood music; I've always been hip-hop heavy. Like, my whole life — it's been a language I spoke."
His sound echoes a time not too long ago when Odd Future was putting out tracks that felt less and less like hip-hop and more like a new genre. Morris cites Odd Future as an influence but says lately his ear is tuned into a waning amount of hip-hop.
"When I came to college I tried to expand my boundaries. I've been listening to less and less hip-hop as time progresses. I'm really huge on Little Dragon. I really love Toro y Moi," Morris said.
Morris' music references one of his passions, comic books, as well as stories he takes from real life, often fantasies, and turns into song.
"They say art imitates life and basically I'll just take something that happened and kind of expand it into something bigger," he said, "sometimes just to tell a story or also to tell life reflecting things and things that I've done."
His sound and content can be all over the place but he said he hopes to tighten up the screws and develop a more identifiable sound.
"I feel like even the point I'm at now as an artist, I'm still developing. It's always development, but I think I would [like] to try and get, not a more streamlined sound, but more of an, 'Oh yeah. That's Ricky Roosevelt.' based off the content," Morris said.
"I feel like 2015 was kind of the building year. I
Morris' SoundCloud page is littered with singles but right now he has no mixtapes that attempt to achieve a distinct sound with fluidity. In 2016, Morris plans to change that.
feel like I'm at a place right now, where [putting out a mixtape] is going to be the step I need to take and that, that's going to be a definitive tape for me," he said.
Morris said the most significant move in his career has been joining a group of other musicians, primarily producers, who call themselves Vivid Zebra. He believes joining the group was a step forward into a more serious place in music.
"I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for them. I wouldn't be able to make the music I want to make," Morris said.
Brian Rogers, a producer and acquaintance of Morris and Vivid Zebra, has worked with Morris on couple of tracks. Rogers said working with Morris is a process filled with energy and speed.
"He doesn't like waiting. He has an idea and he wants to develop it quickly," Roger said. "He always has the lyrics ready before I'm even
ready to start talking about the track. He is a good, creative individual.
"I've met a lot of different rappers and only worked with two. So many people say they're rappers because it's so accessible to just sit down and write lyrics, but Jarred is committed and actually releasing songs. I hear him getting better with every track," Rogers continued.
For now, it's unlikely that Morris will be getting large amounts of attention, but he said the goal is to create and keep up his momentum.
"I want to get my voice out as much as possible," he said. "Primarily I just want to keep creating as much as possible, get my name out as much as possible and perform as much as possible. Just, kind of, keep the ball rolling this year."
- Edited by Sam Davis
MEDIA REMIX
KU student uses love for movies to research and create fan edits of films
▶ CAMERON MCGOUGH
@cammcgough
As a child, Joshua Wille was always fascinated with movies and how they allowed him a peek into the lives of the characters onscreen. He would watch them over and over again, envisioning himself as an astronaut, a firefighter and even a spy.
He soon realized that a career in movies was the creative doorway he needed to pursue. Now, as a doctoral student in film and media studies at the University, Wille has honed a passion for movies into his academic study of fan edits.
Wille's essay, "Fan Edits and the Legacy of "The Phantom Edit," was included in Transformative Works and Culture, a peer-reviewed journal that includes a variety of topics, including fan fiction, comic books, television and video games.
Around 2008, he discovered the fan-editing community online, which began to take off at that time. "The Phantom Edit," a fan edit of "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," brought fan-editing out of the shadows and garnered wide publicity for the craft.
Before coming to Kansas, Wille completed his undergraduate studies at New York University and his
master's at Northern Illinois University. His studies at Kansas focus on fan-editing and media revisionism, and he's taking note of the relationship between the fan-editing community and the mainstream media.
"We, as a society, are starting to move toward a more transformative understanding of media, film and television," Wille said. "We are becoming accustomed to the fact that there are remixes and modified versions all around us. With more and more fan editors willing to tackle different movies, it's breaking out of the mold."
"Watchmen: Midnight," released in 2012, is Wille's only feature-length fan edit. With this edit, he said he wanted to restore the narrative structure and spirit of the original comic books that was lost in the theatrical release of the film, "Watchmen."
Andreas Stuhlmann, a professor at the University of Alberta, met Wille at the University of Hamburg in Germany while organizing a symposium on remix and remediation. The two have remained in contact through the years by exchanging a few emails each year and following each other's work. Stuhlmann said he has great admiration for Wille's work, namely his interpretation of "Watchmen."
Josh Wille, a graduate student at KU, creates "Star Wars" fan edits.
In addition to "Watchmen: Midnight," Wille's other fan-editing work includes an alternate ending to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," implementing the famed critic Roger Ebert's suggestions for the film. Ebert believed Hitchcock's film was nearly perfect, but the ending was a misstep.
Kelcie Matousek/Kansan
"What strikes me is the mixture of creativity and dedication that he brings to this ['Watchmen: Midnight']," Stuhlmann said. "The dedication probably comes first — going to the source, in this case with 'Watchmen,' he indicates that the narrative should be more in tune with the arc of the comic. For him, this is more of a fundamental critique of the Hollywood studio system and all that, so it's an important creative practice. We need these kinds of people for future generations of academics."
This alternate ending, titled "Psycho: The Roger Ebert Cut," was originally done by a different fan editor. Wille said he searched online for the video, but he could never find it. With the vision of Ebert and his own creative force, Wille constructed a unique ending to the Hitchcock classic.
Wille said he knows just how hard it can be to get fan edits out to people. There are many legal and logistical hurdles the fan-editing community must overcome
"Fan edits are unfortunately compared to outright media piracy, and they are disparaged simply because they are modified versions of film - because they apparently violate a perceived sanctity of the filmmaker's version," Wille said. It's very important to understand that fan editors don't make fan edits to replace the original. They make it as an alternative or a different perspective."
With his time dedicated to academia, Wille said he has not had much time to create any more fan edits of his own, though he would love to. Wille said he would love to implement his passion for fan-editing in his future career as a film professor.
"In my teaching in the future, I want to bring in fan-editing," he said. "I think one of the best ways to learn how a story or a film is structured is to disassemble
it and put it back together. Not only can you see if you can put it back the way it was before, but you can also see what you can do to tell the story a different way using the same material."
Wille is starting to gear up for his dissertation, and his education at Kansas will soon come to a close. Through the film and media studies department, he has focused his passion for fan-editing into something he wants to continue to share throughout his career. Wille said fan-editing is progressively becoming more accepted and that he hopes more and more artists will resist complacency and join this expanding art form.
"We are getting to the point where we realize we don't have to accept a movie, a song or a television show, the content of it, for what it is," he said. "We don't have to sit there and be passive spectators but rather active participants. Fan edits are works of art, and they should be recognized as works of art."
- Edited by G.J. Melia