Medium Specificity

Haiku--succinct sonnets

Just five syllables

Two more for the second line

Five more syllables

It does not take many

Words, syllables or phrases

To say quite a lot

In fact,

You can change the rules

To fit.

Artist's Statement:

                     Both the Rankin photos and McCloud’s “Show and Tell” take their respective mediums (photography and comics) and use the basic core elements to describe/illustrate how the medium works. Having considered these ‘readings’, there was a wide world of mediums from which I could choose, though within bounds of time, reason, and budget. It was a welcome challenge, and originally I was going to explore the medium of CGI. However, while I was brainstorming ideas for this project, a friend jokingly suggested using haiku. At first, I laughed along with them, but then I realized that there was a lot to be discovered with haiku. Yes, they are short, but they are also beautiful, and they use that succinctness to say so much more than the 17 words they use. So, in order to capture the spirit of haiku, I read over 50 different haiku online, both contemporary and classic, from a few different sites, as well as did some light research into the history and form of haiku as well. Their whole purpose is to make brief, beautiful statements that act like a picture (in that a ‘picture is worth a thousand words’). Not only is it an art form, but it is a way of looking at the world.

I wrote three haiku to use for this particular assignment, each one exploring a particular element of haiku. The first is a humorously frank explanation of haiku structure. Just like the Rankin photos and McCloud’s “Show and Tell” comic, it simply lays out ‘how’ to write a haiku. However, it lacks a lot of the spirit and poetic nature of the haiku form. To remedy that, I wrote the second haiku. This explains and illustrates the beauty of the form, showing one of the greatest and most valuable effects haiku can have. However, I noted that not all haiku fit the 5-7-5 rule exactly, so I wrote the third for a more complete illustration of the concept. The serial haiku was in part inspired by serial art such as Andrew Grassie’s serial paintings known as Windmill. Individually, they all say something about haiku, collectively they are designed to embody haiku.