Stacks of Obits

"Stack of Obits," a performance by Stephanie Batiste.

The following is a list of thoughts and emotions jotted down while watching the 15min performance.

•                     A writer and Instructor who knows no bounds

•                     Actual deaths of people, known to the author or the family of the author

•                     The drastic inequities that life offers in a certain amount of space

•                     In the performance it closes the emotional gaps that exist

•                     Attempts to collapse the distance between performance and experience

•                     High level of empathy with a refusal of catharsis

•                     Important to avoid melodrama

◦                     There is a need to give an understanding of the violence without alienating the viewer

•                     A story about a normative family situated in a web of violence

•                     Piece is a kind of intervention against media caused numbing towards the subject

Confession

My first idea is to bring a small roll of scotch tape to class and have a thin black marker. what I will do is throughout the class time I will right single words on the roll of tape and place them around the room. I think writing the words as small as possible will work well so that the words or possibly the project won’t be so noticeable. I think it's a way of emphasizing how we hold tightly to these inner feelings that we try not to confess.


I currently can't think of a huge confession I might like to bring out but if so I think a good way of presenting it would be to set up my confession in a random kind of out of sight location in the room. Then with either a flashlight or light pointer I'll point at it every five minutes or so until people see it. Once again it’s a symbolism for the content of the confession being buried down inside and the flashlight acts as a means of bringing it to light.


I don't have a potential third interpretation to the project but I'd like to create a way of expressing a confession through a more direct form of symbolism or using symbolism that has to do with the confession being told rather than the idea of confessing.

Comic Ch 3 + 4

Within Chapter 3, the author Scott McCloud depicts the importance of closure. It is a heavily usable ability of recognizing and relating to other people. Although there is much we haven’t or can’t see, closure allows us to relate objects to things of familiarity in order to create images.  Basically closure is the rhetoric control of change, time and motion. Within comic books the usage of gutters, the space in between the panels, is a direct interpretation of the technique. The gutter space allows us to mentally connect the images within the panels in a logical way that isn’t necessarily given. McCloud goes on to say, “If visual iconography is the vocabulary of comics, closure is its grammar . . . then in a very real sense, comic is closure.” But closure is only powerful and as useful as the reader allows it to be.

Within Chapter 4 we learn that time and space is one and the same. Surprisingly enough, through the study of physics we also learn that time and space are one and the same. Time varies on the space or location. The panels and the bubbles create a timeline of the events occurring throughout the pages and ultimately the entire comic or work. When using closure it can be deduced that all actions have a set amount of time in which they occur.  It is the reader who incorporates his own experiences of actions and gives life to the comic.

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a 20^th century artist who is deemed as being one of the most influential artists for the modern era. In order to create art that was in a level of its own, Duchamp states “I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before.” Yet he takes no credit for the modern era of artist uprising with a wider view or interpretation of art.

Duchamp had a mind state of looking beyond the widely accepted views of what constituted for art. He believed that there were (and still) are three trends that dominate the art scene; retinal painting, high seriousness and commercialism.  Within the reader we find that Duchamp was against the commercial views of art.  More importantly than creating unique images Duchamp saw the importance of the spectator to any piece of art. Commercialism was just a means of manipulating the viewers rather than invoking emotions and perceptions of importance to another individual.

What makes a painting great is not only the individual presence of the work but a collection of the painting and the spectator. The spectators are those who allow the image to live. The importance of the spectator is not only on the existing art but also on those to come. The spectators drive the flow of art and style, either by viewing or become the artist themselves. Thus, art is in everything and can be deemed as anything as long as the “spectator” is amongst its presence.

Art

A simple plate of Panda Express is pure art on multiple levels. The dish itself is an interpretation of the world. A subtle mixture of rice and chow mean create a vivacious assortment of color and texture. The shifts in shade of brown throughout the piece create an earthly effect. The dashes of green vegetables include the aspect of life in this still work of art. The pees were once a part of a living and breathing system of life but now the single seeds are left to branch on their own. They have found their own paths in life. The beef are the crevices and curves of the earth while the broccoli is the natural clothing of the planet. Because the piece is created of food, a second direct sense can be affected. The taste of the food in itself is an interpretation of art. The different meats and wheat’s bring a diverse sensation of flavors within each bite. The flavor is a symbolism of the different styles of people and emotions felt across the planet. The flavors are the soul of the earth; a soul created by the living being found within its presence. When mixed together the context within this Chinese style of food creates a beautiful canvas of the planet Earth.

The importance of this excersize is the to come to the realization that almost anything can be viewed as art. Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Personal Space

Within Sociology, personal space is categorized under the “Territories of the Self” and is perhaps the most important territory. The seven other territories can fall under personal space.

On Wednesday April 6, 2011 I took to the public world and began to question the boundaries each individual holds.  I chose to do so in the gym because I feel like it is an environment where people most feel inclined to a set personal space.

Experiment 1: As a male individual is running on the tread meal or biking on the biking machines I plan to creep up quietly to their side as close as possible, continually staring at them and seeing how long it takes them to realize my presence as well as their reactions to my actions.

Example 2: While someone is doing abdominal workouts on a mat I will place a mat directly by theirs and begin doing the same thing. Again the goal is to see how long it takes them to notice and what their response will be.

Example 3: While people are on the machines I will go to their faces as close as possible and begin talking to them. Once again the goal is to see what their reactions will be.

I couldn't do this one so I changed locations and went to library and did a few more personal space experiments.

Redone video documentation. Higher Quality

Assignment "Breaking News"

Reality or truth is definitely a necessity in media but I do believe that at times it is best to omit certain facts. You may say that this is a form of lying to the public and it may so be but why worry people when they don't need to be. Some aspects that occur can be kept in the dark so that the general public not only don't panic but also don't stress about the occurrence. In contrast there are certain things that everyone needs to know, such as the meaning to the wars our countries enter. Its a matter of judgement that I feel I may not have the right to define the fine line.

So I wrote 300 words about a conspiracy theory between the Daily Nexus and The Bottom Line. I do hope it doesn't get me in trouble but I ended it in a way that hints to the reply being a prank itself. The majority of my post is fake with like two to three statements of truth. I felt like this was a creative way to express ourselves while learning an art technique especially since it created a great deal of leeway. I will say that while submitting the post I could not get it to work when I included my blog website so I submitted it without it. After a little more than a week, there were no replies to my post.