This week’s reading of Walter Benjamin brought up the question for me of once a work of art is divorced from any sort of specialization, what is the point of what you are looking at?
My weekend was spent down in DUMBO at the annual arts fest. My friend and I wandered in and out of the open studio spaces on Jay and Front Streets for hours. My brains were fried at the end and I find it notable only for all I’ve forgotten compared to the three artists I remember. There was art in excess, but it was easy to tell who the talented artists were on sight and those were the pieces that drew interest. The ones that shone through all the noise to me had bold colors, strong perspectives, and a sense of vibrancy. Also a sense of technical skill.
Benjamin mentioned that with the invention of mechanical reproduction, anyone could take a photo. Or write a page or use their video camera to make a movie. But not anyone can be a photographer, writer, or cinematographer. There is a definite division between something that was made and something that was created. He calls it the aura. The unique pull of a work created by someone who has mastered their artform. When confronted with art that had the aura of good work, my friend and I were easily able to separate that experience from all the crap that came before and after. “Wow, they were really talented,” we’d say before moving on to the next studio. Hours of sifting through art to find three talents is definitely worth it.
I decided to do a video about my ICM homework for a few reasons.
1) All the other classes I have are mostly sitting around and listening to people talk or readings….which really aren’t that interesting.
2) It’s probably the class I’m worst at out of the 4 and this video might end up being funny to watch if I get better or survive the semester.
This week’s reading was fascinating. The panic of the crowds reminded me of the Doomsday scenarios that were spread around when Y2K was a disaster specter in the late 90s. I think it’s always in human nature to panic. Panic is defined as: “a sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior, and that often spreads quickly through a group of persons or animals.”
It made me think about the supposed differences between human and animals, especially in the 3rd part when The Machine finally stopped. It is thought that crucial difference is consciousness and actually contemplating their existence. The problems arose for the people in the story when they gave up free will and curiosity in order to live complacently. It was ironic and fitting that the state of total self-interest and lack of mental exercise was called ideas.
My favorite saying that my father likes to trot out at me is: just when you think you have all the answers, they change the questions.
The in class exercise to make a narrative short movie was probably the most fun I’ve had in a class yet. If only because it felt like the playing field was kinda leveled for once. Kody was a whiz with editing, but Mike and I were still able to contribute a lot. We spent a fair amount of time trying to think or something to do, bouncing a lot of ideas off of each other, until we came up with the concept of the two students working and being surprised by a practical joker out in the hallway.
The process was fun because I got to loosen up a bit and not take myself as seriously as I unfortunately have been. The transition to doing things I’m not especially good at has been tough for me. Having spent most of the past six years as project manager and being tasked with setting things up and keeping them on track with minimal problems, it’s like I’m fighting an uphill battle to not be an unhappy control freak. And it’s really tough.
The best part for me was the Xacti. I am in love with that camera. I definitely want one.
Coming into ITP, I thought the class that would give me the greatest challenge would be P-Comp. I even decided to hold it off until spring semester, so I could work my way through everything else without feeling too much overwhelming pressure all at once. Over the past week, I’m unbelievably happy that I did that. Because I think ICM is going to be this semester’s wrecking ball.
It’s only the second week, but I totally suck at processing. That picture above? Took me days and days and days of moving things pixels to get them to line up sorta right. And it’s basic and still looks like shit. Things like that frustrate me.
I consider myself a thinker, a writer, verbal based. I can draw a little, but my greatest strengths lie in description, not visual representation. Because of that, I find Processing totally non-intuitive. I already have trouble translating words to pictures and now there’s the added frustrating step of creating something in basically a foreign language. It’s going to be hard as hell to retrain my brain in order to output something I don’t consider total crap. Then again, that’s what I’m here for. I guess.
I just finished reading the first 4 chapters in Orality and Literacy. The book is interesting, mostly talking about the differences between oral and writing-based cultures and what that means for the modern world where new technology is replacing books as learning sources.
The difficulties in bridging the gap between the type of thought processes that the new ways of expression is one that I know well. I’ve spent many years as the resident guru at work and home, trying to find ways to translate things the computer does/needs that I find innate to others who are not as fluent. As people steeped in oral traditions struggle with how to answer hypotheticals beyond their experience, non-savvy users struggle with why certain settings make all the difference on a Facebook profile, how SEO applies to a site, or even simple (to me) keyboard shortcuts.
The passages about the differences in audience between the oral traditions and the literary world also apply between print and the web. Where print is isolating and the reaction needs another step (a rebuttal writing or a call) to reach the creator, the world of the web has brought back the immediacy of reactions. A scathing comment on a blog can provide instant reaction to a piece. The web has also worked to occasionally soften the fixed nature of words. You can illustrate with an emoticon or picture. Or instantly fire back your own rebuttals and explanations if you feel misinterpreted. Or even better erase offending words into nonexistence — a fool-proof method unless someone has a cached version and knows how to use it.
As computers have become more sophisticated, I almost feel like I’ve forgotten more things that I learn new as time goes on. I have a clear memory of typing in DOS commands to run programs and how exciting games with no graphics and only text commands were. Now an OS can start itself without much prompting and the graphics on games are hyperreal. I think about the joys of watching late night video programs, digging for CDs in the used record shop and waiting impatiently for the UK end of the year music issues to discover new music. But now, I can hear something new in a store or on TV and have all the songs, complete bio, and a collection of articles about an artist I’ve never heard of previously in a few hours or less. I lament with my friends, as Plato did about writing, about how much easier the kids nowadays have it, but that also the sheer pleasure of a new discovery isn’t as great as it would be if you had to work for it. It’s also a similar paradox because only a person who has been exposed to both sides could have the required nostalgia needed to get upset about such a thing.
With technological advances, you can also feel caught between feeling that things are easier than the old way, but still not ideal. For this assignment, I read the e-book instead of getting a paper copy. The pluses for me were the lack money spent and the hassle involved in getting it from the book store/waiting for it to arrive in the mail. But the minuses were also very apparent: trying to read 130 pages on a computer screen basically sucks and it took me more time due to breaks and getting tired/bored than it would’ve if I had a small paperback that I also could’ve been working on bit by bit when I wasn’t with my computer. I joked to friends that I could use the money I saved on books to get some glasses to make my eyes feel better. Net culture tends to be short-attention span based and I struggled with sticking only to this reading when there was email/Facebook/IM to be done. Books are fixed objects, made to totally immerse you, but on a screen that is most often used to multitask, that is a hard thing to do. In contrast, when I did get the book for another class, I found myself breezing through the reading because of the lack of distraction. A good question that can come out of it is: does the problem lie with me since I spent many years reading paper books and am biased against e-books because I don’t think of my computer in that way?
I found myself not very surprised when I hit my first roadblock trying to install WordPress.
It’s probably a Murphy’s Law that when you feel comfortable using a certain technology that it will prove itself the most difficult when you least expect it. I’ve been working with WordPress about four years (I think) and it wasn’t until Comm Lab that I first heard about setting up a MySQL database. On my personal site, I guess I used wordpress.com and for the sites at work, the developers did all of that, so I didn’t have to care. The one new piece proved to be the thorn in my side. I was one of the rare people without a ready made MySQL doc on my server space, so I had to hunt that down for a bit before I could really get started with this. Once I had it, it was a painless install (though my new themes got a little lost for a while).
My background is a longtime computer dabbler and college lab help person turned interactive project manager (via stints in print media, fashion and events). I have a domain where I’m thinking of mirroring this blog and have been blogging about six years on WordPress and mostly Movable Type, before that hand-coding HTML on a Geocities site. I come to ITP with base knowledge in a wide variety of programs and technology because in order to do my job well, I had to understand the mechanics of how things worked to communicate the goals, problems, and needs. My main interests are interaction design and user experience, but I want to learn as much as I can.
