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On alternating Fridays, Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art. Expect mathematics and a dash of pessimistic optimism.

In my first post, I posited that math is a sequential art. I’d like to expand on my comment, making a semi-counterpoint to this post.

Mathematics is certainly a sequential art, but math is not comics.

Math can be done completely in words, without images or even symbols outside a written language’s letters and numbers; specialized symbols and pictures are used almost universally to aid in the understanding. It should be pretty easy to see that without these specialized symbols and illustrations, written math would be nigh-unreadable, but it is possible.

While understanding is strongly desired, some hardcore Platonists would probably have you believe that your comprehension is not necessary for math’s existence. As there may be an “ideal chair” or “ideal pizza” from which all chairs and pizzas gain their physical characteristics, your suboptimal, barely-adequate chair and pizza, as just an example of these ideals, give you the idea of them without giving you full access to PIZZANESS or CHAIRNESS.

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Every Wednesday, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

You Wanna Know How I Script?
or It Almost Seems Like Real Magic When the Process Works.

I wrote a script last week. It was for an artist I met at the New York Comic Con and it is a horror story. I wanted to share a step by step process that I use to translate that loose cloud of cosmic dust and nerve endings into a cohesive piece and do it in a way that won’t destroy anyone’s brain.

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On most Fridays, Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art. Expect mathematics and a dash of pessimistic optimism.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between sequences of things and the “time series” those things make. I’ve been straying somewhat from the standard ideas of “sequential art” in what I talk about on this blog; I’m not about to stop now.

Even though I’ve already stated that music, as a temporally-based art, isn’t a sequential art, I firmly believe that the careful construction of a sequence of pieces of art is an art in itself, regardless of the type of art being sequenced.

As a species, we’ve been recording sound for about 130 years. From the beginnings, the wax cylinder and gramophone record^A1 allowed the rich, then the public, to have recordings of audio in their homes. It also allowed, with radio, the evolution of a societal position – the Master of Ceremonies – to move from the religious meeting or performance hall into ever-shrinking boxes in people’s homes. The MC could also become the DJ, gaining the power to sequence acts from their recordings instead of collecting them into one room to perform live. The little discs could be swapped in a two-turntable setup which allowed a predefined (or on-the-fly) sequence to be constructed. The art of the DJ is not the music; it is the sequence of music.

I got two turntables and a microphone
I got plastic on my mind….^A2

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