Yaminie’s Underground blog

Walter Benjamin puts great emphasis on ‘Aura’. Which is in turn related to tradition - say magic or ritual.

And his main point of discontent with mechanical forms of reproduction is it’s “parasitical dependence on ritual”. Well, that to me is a complete positive statement.

He goes on to say how getting rid of ritual has now only been replaced by politics - however I feel Art always has been interlinked with society….so it is obvious that magic, then rituals(religious) and now politics will influence art. I understand and agree with what he says…only I dont think it’s a negative.

Ditto with his grouse against reproducibility, accessibility and the shattering of the aura. To me, Art is something that is dynamic. It must change it’s form and role with the times. Walter Benjamin’s work interests me to see the change in form…and as with Walter Ong’s work, it is helpful in understanding psychodynamics of the changing forms…I stress again…I dont see it as a negative. 

The absence of the reproduced material in time and space - it’s unique existence, is not so important according to me. I am happy to know the story. And view the reproduced work. Rather than not see it at all…

Went to see the India-Australia cricket match at an Australian bar in Bleeker…Boy! was it fun to see the match with Ponting on one side and Sehwag on the other!! Well…a highly charged audience with the bar filled with supporters of both teams!And then India won! Superb match…

BTW…I was late in posting this message. India played Pakistan in the finals. And won!

Incredible India….a govt of India initiative is right here in NY to celebrate 60 years of independence and promote India.I was quite happy to see so much publicity….But Alas…creativity is amiss! Or maybe bureacracy is too rampant. The festival agenda is a photocopy of what could have been the schedule some 20 years back. Cliched brochures adorned with the same age old pictures of the Tiger, folk dancers in elaborate costumes and yes…the Taj Mahal. Some programmes that I ended up seeing were at best mediocre…actually they were more like school annual funtions.Anyways, what was good was the card board structure of the Taj in Bryant Park. It cut quite a striking picture…And made for an interesting landscape. Here are some pictures. 

We (Jason, Jon, Jong Min) worked on some 4 pictures…Passed it along like a chain. This was the picture that ended with me.We took a bikini picture and dressed it up with tattoos, a kitten, beads and treated the picture with some filters…. 

I hate subways. Dark walls staring at you from the window… It’s just depressing ( It’s great cause it’s an efficient mode of transport…but it’s depressing just the same…) And to top it I have to change trains as well. Red to Yellow. Number to Alphabet. 1 to N.But I’ve been taught that there are always 2 sides to a coin… The other side to this one the whole underground is the subway musical acts/performances…They’re quite remarkable…given the crowded, busy and noisy environment!However, the musical acts/performances almost always end up attracting the transit population - bringing smiles, generating energy and loosening up the wound-up bodies…(With people always running late and in a hurry to catch the train that just left…this is pretty much the only time I see them stop!)Today I saw one such performance…. Michael Jackson of our very on MUNY (Music under New York)…Just a couple of feets shorter though. It was wonderful!Here are some pictures from his performance.Some acts are good, some are average…sometimes brilliant. But in my mind these musical acts are closely associated with the NY culture. This is public art for me.

This is the link to the pong game.

However still working on this…more balls, varying speeds, keeping scores etc etc (and yes a cleaner shorter code!)

So the blog/ journal/ documentation for my first ever circuit! No words to describe the joy of seeing your first LED light up!!

So I basically started out with first creating a 5 volts circuit…as my power source was giving me 16Volts.

Step1: First solder a power plug and connect your breadboard to the power supply

Step2: Use a 7805 voltage regulator to convert the 16 V to 5 V. We also used a capacitor between the 2 to regulate the power supply

Step3: Connected my LED to the output from the 7805

Step4: Again used a capacitor (of a lower capacity now!) to regulate supply to the LED

Step5: Finally used a 220 ohm resistor to complete the circuit

(BTW, a resistor is added to the circuit to regulate the supply of current to the LED — it’s needs only about 1.8V to light…whereas it being supplied 5 V!!)

And oh…I forgot about the switch. I added it later on - and I must add…this one was soldered nice and smooth! 

my first bit of code

My youtube video. Simple process…

Though what I had fun with was making the video. This clip was made out of a video I took in 2005, at the Disney park - epcot. It fascinated me….this small miniature train chugging along, in the midst of the entire Disney wonder…

I put together this track from Tracy Chapman and the ending words from Queen’s bicycle race(added through a JPEG)…and used a couple of video transitions to complete the project. And the end result is….

video

So we needed to go out with this really cool mp4 camera in groups of 4 and come back and upload our video….

So here is what we (Celine, Josh, Armanda and Yaminie) did…