The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away

I found this reading to be very interesting. I have never read something like this before so I was intrigued the whole time. The idea of collecting things for most of your life really connects with me. I am a big collector. I find it very hard to get rid of my material possessions so over the years I have collected so many useless things that have value to me in someway. Now I have so much stuff that it’s hard to even remember why I kept the item in the first place. I’m sure as the years go by I will slowly start to get rid of things, I hope at least.
The quote that stuck out to me the most was “ Moreover, strange as it seems, I feel that it is precisely garbage, that very dirt where important papers and simple scraps are mixed and unsorted, that compromises the genuine and only real fabric in my life, no matter how ridiculous and absurd this may seem from the outside.” I feel this quote is very true. What may look like garbage to other people may be the only “real fabric” in your life.
This reading went along really well with our collections assignments because I feel with this and the discussions we have had in class, I have a really good idea of what a collection is. It also helped me put together my final project in a way that I am happy with.

James Darwin

I chose to do my collection on a fiction character named James Darwin. The poster is a advertisement for his estate sale. Each of the items posted represents a different stage in his life. His story is from rags to riches and I feel that it accuratly represents the character pictured in my mind.

I would post the zine but my only other copy, besides the one my teacher has, is lost on a school computer somewhere.

Culture of the Copy

I really enjoyed this Tshirt assignment. It gave me the opportunity to think outside of the box and allowed me to use medium that I have unfamiliar with. For my tshirt I decided to use the image of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln has a very unique face and top hat that is recognizable to anyone that has an education. For the front of my shirt I would spray paint Abe and his top hat. On the back I would spray paint Abe with a beanie on. I wanted to show how Presidents used to have to be rigid and follow strictly to social norms but now we have a president Obama who is breaking all social norms, and that is why I chose the beanie.

Cooley Galley Visit

I really enjoyed the class visit to the Cooley art gallery in Reed College. I have never been to Reed, let alone the Cooley Gallery so it was a great experience. The curator, Stephanie Snyder, did a good job explaining to us her role as a curator and what it entails. At first it seems like it would be very easy but after listening for awhile I have come to the conclusion that it takes lots of hard work and time to create an exhibition.
I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibit. I thought that the layout was very unique and the room flowed well. It really made me want to concentrate on each section of the exhibition individually but by the end of the exhibit I was able to understand why these pieces were put together in this exhibit. My favorite piece had to be the video of the guy writing on the walls throughout china. He wrote the same thing everytime and no matter how many times he got in trouble he would continue to write. I really enjoyed how their was the video and behind the tv screen was the passage that he continuously wrote. It went together very nicely.

Collecting - So normal, So paradoxical

I really enjoyed this reading, a lot more than any of the Practices of Looking chapter because I feel it was telling a story rather than listing out information. The chapter mainly talks about collecting, the different ways of to do that and what it entails. Everyone collects whether they realize it or not and this was the fact that stuck out most to me.” Before the trash is carried outside, it is collected and perhaps even sorted. The trash itself is made up of whatever is defined and treated as trash.” This quote is an example of how we even subconsciously collect and sort things as we go about our everyday lives. Collecting is also very animalistic; birds and squirrels survive off of the process of collecting, so we should understand that it is a very natural process. “Prior to all conscious reflection, the human view organizes its field of perception and collects what is scattered into groups or connected formulas. Collecting can be loosely compared to the ongoing movement of our normal waking consciousness, Collecting is the imaginative process of association turned material.” This quote accurately describes how the act of collecting occurs.

The collection that really caught my eye was the online Andy Warhol collection on the MOMA website. I have always been a big fan of Andy Warhol’s work and this collection has a wide variety of it. It features his paintings, films and even has vintage reviews on his work.

My favorite of Andy Warhol has always been his soup cans because I feel they are very simple but very creative at the same time. This collection features early soup cans drawings and then the pieces that incorporate the can.

Mark Dion

I attended the Mark Dion lecture apart of PSU’s Monday night lecture series. I found his lecture to be very interesting and I really enjoyed his use of pictures throughout his talk. I find his line of work fascinating. I never realized that his kind of art was considered, well art. I love how he has art pieces around the world, and has done excavation places outside the US such as Italy and England.
When I first got to the lecture I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have never been to a Monday night lecture so I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a boring class lecture or what. It was in fact quite the opposite. My friend and I were very surprised about how enthralling he was and how well his pictures went with his speaking. His lecture was more of a series of stories rather than a professor rambling.
I found his most interesting work to be the excavations of the themes and the river in Venice, Italy. I used to live in London so I was very fascinated with this. I had no idea there was a bank that you could walk on along the themes. The artifacts that he discovered and the way that he conducted the research I found very intriguing. Who knows what a person could find on the bottom of a river. The Venice one was also very intriguing. For centuries people have been dumping in that river so the amount of artifacts a person could find could be endless. This idea of goin through a river I feel is a very ingenious one.
Overall, I enjoyed the lecture greatly. I look forward to maybe one day visiting the tree in Seattle and maybe seeing him talk again. I also hope to return to a PSU Monday night lecture.

Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction and the Copy

Even though this chapter may have had some boring material I feel that I understood it the most. I have never been good with understanding theories like realism and perspective, so this issue of copyrights and things associated with it really stuck to me. Copyright has always been a confusing issue to me because it is really hard to define what is copyright and what isn’t. This chapter goes through methods of reproductions and issued that involve copyright itself.
“In theories of visual culture influences by Marxist theory, the term reproduction is used to describe the ways the cultural practices and their forms of expression reproduce the ideologies and interests of the ruling class. In this view, the reproduction of ideology through media also reproduced the political order and its episteme” pg 183. I feel that this quote describes this chapter quite well. It explains how reproduction is used to please the people of modern days of society and now there are so many ways of reproducing it is hard to keep up. This quote also indirectly talks about copyright but reproduction has everything to do with it.
Photography is a good example of reproduction because it can be a toll used to reproduce a moment in time as well as a piece of art. Photographs can be of an event that could never be reproduced again. The photograph is therefore a way of reproducing the event, without actually doing it. Photography also is controversial in the copyright world because when you take a picture of an art piece is that breaking copyright laws? Your not actually replicating it but you have the exact piece of art in a picture.
Copyright definitely stuck out to me the most out of anything in this chapter. It’s such a confusing and controversial topic that it can be frustrating at times. “The rights to the expression of the idea, as well as rights to reproduce, to distribute, and to make derivative works from the object, all remain with the artist. Within terms of copyright law, reproductions of the painting are considered reproductions of the expression of the idea and not simply reproductions of the physical object.” Pg 205 I feel this quote explains the reason why some people get confused with what copyright really entails. Its not just actual reproductions of peoples works, but also the expression themselves.

Movie Poster

I really enjoyed this assignment. It gave me a chance to use photoshop, a tool that I really enjoy, and I feel i connected with this project more than others. I also feel that the movie poster works with the synopsis well. It was a very vague synopsis so I wanted to make a movie poster that really was mysterious and really drew the viewer in.

Movie Synopsis

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

An individual wakes up and their technology no longer works. They have to deal with the world and learn how to live in the world with out this tech. The film explores their relationship with the world without their tech.

Poster Research

Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors and I feel his posters really speak to the viewer, and accurately portray his films.

Realism and Perspective

I thought that this was the most interesting chapter that we have read so far. It really helped explain what we have been learning more detailed and I enjoyed the new points that it brought up about realism and perspective.
“Realism is an important aspect of our sense of ethics as citizens in a world in which images proliferate as forms of communications and expression.” (141) I feel this was an excellent way to start the chapter off. It is straight to the point and really helps you understand how realism and art mesh. It goes into detail how realism is linked to a varied set of conventions and approaches. Realism and abstraction are big elements in art. Some art include more elements of realism than others but nonetheless they are still there. I enjoy realism art more than other art. I like seeing things as the eye would see it and that is why I enjoy photography so much.
Perspective has something that has always confused me. “Perspective refers to a set of systems or mechanisms used to produce representations of objects in space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame.” (151) This section really put in perspective, “perspective”. The examples used such as the illustrations and diagrams helped me get a grasp on it. Perspective has changed over the years and we have slowly begun to get a better understanding of it.
The chapter goes over many elements of Realism and Perspective such as Visual codes and Historical Meaning, Perspective and the Body, The Camera Obscura and many other elements of it. By going through the topic with such detail it definitely forces you to gain a better understanding.

Postcards

Viewers Make Meaning

I found this next chapter to, again, be very interesting. It went over a lot of material that I have never even thought about or heard of. I enjoy this book very much, even though it gives a lot of information at once, because of the relevant examples that it consistently uses. I feel that the main point that I took from this chapter is the act of interpellating. Interpellating is to interrupt a procedure in order to question someone or something formally. It is the way that images and media texts seem to grab our attention. I found this term to be very interesting because advertisements everywhere cause us to be interpellated.
The text also dicussed French theorist Roland Barthes, who wrote an essay in 1967 on “The Death of the Author”. He discusses how “the text offers a multidimensional space that the reader deciphers or interprets” Many images may have dominant meanings, it is the job of the critical reader to discover how these meanings are made. Producers have intended meanings for images but it is important to realize the dominant meaning as well as how the meanings were made.
One sentence that I found very interesting was “Most if not all images have meaning that is preferred by their producers”. I find this very typical because producers only have one goal and I can see them being discouraged when their image is interpreted differently. Along with this point the author’s acknowledge the fact that knowing a producers intention for a certain image really doesn’t tell us a lot about the image itself. Intentions do not always match up with the viewer’s interpretation of the image or text.
I am not an art major so I am very uneducated in the art department. I feel that this chapter helped me with some basics such as Aesthetics. I have heard this words quite a few times in everyday life but have always been unsure of its meaning. The definition that the chapter gives helped me understand the meaning way better. “Aesthetics is the implication that the value of the work resides in the pleasure it brings us through its beauty, its style, or the creative and technical virtuosity that went into its production.” I think that section of the chapter helped me understand art better as a whole.
Overall I feel that this chapter had too much information to process in one sitting. We should have had more time to read this because I don’t think I have a good understanding of the text because I wasn’t given enough to really think and understand it.

Text/Image Hunt

"A work of the 13th century, but restored in the 18th century, it depicts Christ in the act of benediction surrounded by apostles and the wise virgins and foolish virgins."

Giovanna Magi, Paris, 1981, page 8





This is a literal depiction of the sentence. It shows the piece that the sentence is describing.





This image is empazing a message. It depicts Barack Obama, who can be looked up to as Christ, surrounded by "apostles and virgins"





I chose this because it is a duck surrounded by their ducklings. Mothers normally teach to their children and this is in relation to Christ in the act of benediction, which is speech that gives guidance.

I thought that this was a very interesting assignment. Unfortunately, I was sick the day the class went to the library but i figured out how to use the library resources on my own. I found it had to find images that went along with this quote but I feel the images that I did find go along quite well.

Images, Power and Politics

I found the first chapter, Images, Power and Politics, to be very interesting. It brought up valid points that have never crossed my mind before. The process of looking is so complex that to fully understand takes the analysis of many theories and study of many images.
The chapter addresses many things that intrigued me. First off I really enjoyed the sentence it starts off with. “To those of us who are blind or have low vision, seeing and visuality are no less important than they are to those of us who are sighted, because the everyday world is so strongly organized around spatial cues that take seeing for granted.” I feel that this sentence is really strong in describing how present day culture treats looking. We take the ability of sight for granted and are oblivious to the spatial cues that we see everyday. Sight is a gift and we should learn how to fine-tune it.
I really like how the book uses a variety of art pieces to be examples for the text and then continues to reference the different pictures throughout the chapter. For example, the picture of The First Murder really stuck out to me. It is a picture of a group of people huddling around a body right after a murder was committed. The picture depicts a variety of emotions such as smiling, crying and curiousness, all adding to the intensity of the picture. It is an interesting picture because as the viewer “we look with equal fascination on the scene, catching the children in the act of looking, their eyes wide with shock and wonder.” This picture is raw and real, a perfect example of a looking picture.

My Street

I found “The Street” to be a very interesting article. It really helped me look at the world, especially my street, with a different perspective, causing me realize more than what’s on the surface. I enjoyed the authors directness and clear explanations of his interpretations.

The road is very quiet; all you can hear is the sounds of distance cars and the buzzing of a neighbor’s pest zapper. Four houses sit on the corners of the intersection and all different in many ways. My favorite is unusually large and has a nice porch and white pillars that every family dreams of. The sides of the house are smothered by vines, various shades of green that clenches the house like a child to its mother. I can see into its windows from the porch of my own house. It’s a sturdy, wooden porch that I am standing on and has a vast view of the rest of the neighborhood from it. Nothing is hidden from sight. From the left I can see the for sale sign of the empty green grass next door. It is a part of our backyard soon to be industrialized by its new owner. The beauty and nature of the empty space, most importantly its green grass, will soon be completely destroyed. On the curb of the empty lot are three trashcans, waiting patiently for the garbage truck in the morning. All three trashcans are different colors and different sizes, giving the cans identities of their own. The garbage inside consisting of food, grass, and paper, the treasure of the garbage man. Above that is where the meat factory looms, overlooking the entire neighborhood, the building light shining glaringly. What goes on is a guess to everyone, do they package already slaughtered animals or kill them on location. My guess is that it is already slaughtered being package but we will never know because everyone is too scared to approach it. My street is very different and I wouldn’t have it any other way.