Let's All Be More Human: A Zine
The zine format of my project was born out of adaptability. My original intent for my project was to create a vlog, which is often the content that younger people are consuming on Youtube. Vlogs essentially the blog format in a video, hence the name vlog. I thought that it would be nice to give students that of a typical day in a university of Connecticut student in a learning community. This is not an entirely new concept and I was playing into an already popular genre of video that is particularly popular among college vloggers in which you are along for their day. Many students including myself, before entering college, used these videos almost as a way to gauge what college is like. I chose this format because I thought it was the best way to express myself as someone who feels firm in my decisions in academia, those decisions are coming to the University of Connecticut and joining the humanities house. I felt that the format closely resembled in tone what I wanted to display my college experience. This quickly had to be changed once I was not able to complete filming before school was moved to remote learning from the semester. I began thinking of a way to display my project that still encapsulates the things I love about being at my college: humanities house, my friends, and creating things. The format of a zine came naturally to me. A zine is a small publication of appropriated and/or original means of work. A zine is often hand-printed by photocopiers and often has a public or social message to them but they can also not. Zines are, in my opinion in the quintessential out of the mainstream media form of expression by small communities or individuals. I made them often in highschool and groups I am part of like the Women’s Center create one about women’s issues. They have been used in the 1940s as early expression forms in LGBT+ communities and were used by the 1970s Vietnam war protesting college students. The history of zines being used during times of change and unrest in the world is not novel and dawned on me that I would like to take this approach. Below, I detail the three steps of my project: conceptualization, webpage creation, content-creation, and conclusion.
Conceptualization
One of the important things that I learned from being in the Humanities House is that the humanities; combining history, art, and sciences are integral to being a well-rounded human being. Everything that you are doing in the classroom will be integrated into the residential area of life. This is done partly by facilitating my academic experience while also showing my creativity. As an homage to that, I decided to move in the more non-traditional route and digitize my zine. I thought I needed to mark the point in-transition from in-person (vlog style) to the more remote learning (digitized media) in my zone by changing its traditional format. I wanted to play in the DIGITAL part of the zine, reverting to the idea of the 21st-century world and early 2000, a point of nostalgia for many students. This idea forced me back into an old hobby of mine, which is coding on Tumblr. Tumblr is sort of in my mind, the ‘zine’ in the online form. Each person has their Tumblr page that is completely customizable through coding and integral web design which oftentimes was done by young teenagers of marginalized communities using Tumblr as their creative outlet. In my time, using social media Tumblr, I created many themes and also used my different themes on my blog by other creators and I remember the creativity and invention in these themes. These themes (HTML code) created mostly by women and queer people who began to express themselves creatively in a sphere considered to be very pragmatic. I thought it was much the sprite of my college experience as a humanities scholar and student at the university of connecting.
Webpage Creation
One of the best things about an obsession with Tumblr in my early tweens and teens was that I had learned to code my themes using HTML code. I first created a Tumblr account with a URL and a blog title. The title, FAZED meaning bothered and feeling off which also doubles as the name of my zine.
The main Web Page itself is coded into the theme of a Windows 98, which in zine-style is appropriately partly appropriated and partly original. The page uses a base theme created by Tumblr base coders, the coding was modified by me to include a popup screen, folder icons for my pages, with an infinite scroll to allow it for better mobility on the screen.
The playlist page features an animation appropriating from Japanese online cooking and fighting pixel games which were popularized in the early 2000s by online gaming sites for kids, (ie. Cooking MAMA). The page is styled after the same retro wave pixel-art style. The animation and icons are appropriated, coding, and arrangement on the page is my original work. The style is modeled after a loading menu of these games and their whimsical nature to further said theme.
THE VIRUS page is a playful spin on the spam messages that early internet users had grown associated with, on the hold clunky computers from the past. It leads to a Nintendo star dew valley inspired page which includes original coding and arrangement and approved stardew valley icons and border style. This page includes movie recommendations.
These pages along with the main web pages are all centralized around my theme of the old cyber world. It is my effort to revert to the nostalgia of technology as my life is moved onto the online sector.
Content Creation
This was probably the easiest but most important part of the creation of my zine. It is not very hard to get humanities scholars to freely express themselves, especially in trying times. I began by interviewing a handful of my friends and fellow UCONN students about their experiences. Those interviews and along with my self-reflection helped me create the digital collages that preceded some of the posts in my piece. These colleges represent, mostly my friends and I attempt to soothe our anxiety about the world by overconsuming media, reverting to our old hobbies, or attempting to explore different parts of ourselves. They also include a big part of a change, online school. The eclectic nature of the posts that involve technology signal the distress students are feeling navigating their online education which can be as overwhelming as 3,000 pop-ups appearing on your computer. Some posts contain more structured images that are like the 2000s vogues, those images are used to invoke the feeling of community and togetherness some of us are still trying to foster through a screen.
Conclusion
This juxtaposition of using articulation of the struggles of people in difficult times while adapting to a changing political and social landscape reminds me of the core principles behind my UCONN experience and skills that I gained from being in my unique position in my learning community. The fostering of community and sharing a moment of personal struggle and personal exploration, to me, is a skill that I learned from college and what I want this zine to reflect.
