Chapter 6 Part 2

I think the first article was really interesting. Honestly space in general amazes me and I think it’s cool that they can even get some sort of a picture. However, it’d be nice for them not to lie to us. If they’re going to make up colors and stuff why can’t they just tell us that? I mean, really…who’s going to care if they make up a planet color?? I know I wont. It’s not like someone is going to be like, “YOU GUY’S LIED ABOUT SPACE COLORS!” Come on now, people probably get more upset because they ARE lying to us. To me, it’s not a big deal. In the second article was really really really boring. The only thing I thought was somewhat interesting was about how an artist fell in love with his painting. It’s a little weird, but it happened, which is interesting. I remember reading a story about that of my Senior year in high school. Even then I thought that guy had problems. Who can really LOVE a painting? To be in love with a painting is just strange. You might really like the picture and say, “I just love this!” But to go to the extreme of actually wanting the artwork as a wife is odd. The third article wasn’t as boring as the other two because it was talking about modern day media. Yeah they use green screens all the time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If it makes for a better movie, then so be it. To me it doesn’t matter if the background of a movie is fake, it’s entertaining right?

Chapter 5 Part Two

These three articles caught my attention and were fun to read. The first article about the cartoons and how it’s subconsciously putting images into children’s heads I think is very true. I mean think about it, SPONGE BOB!? Hello! Wake up! It’s not normal for a BOY sponge and a  BOY starfish to hold each others hands all the time. I do believe it’s sending messages to kids having them think to themselves that the next time they see their best friends its okay to run down the street holding each others hands. I’m not saying its a bad thing to be gay, I’m just saying that normally the child wouldn’t be thinking that.  The second article about reality T.V. kind of caught me off guard. There are two different kinds of reality tv, you have shows like the real world (which isn’t real at all) and the Hills, and then you have shows like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. I guess you can classify these shows into two categories. the first category could be unreality tv shows and the second one could be actual reality tv shows. Shows like The Real World and The Hills are a fallacy to the word REAL. Nothing is real about partying every night or getting anything you want. On the other shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars you watch the contestants compete for what they want and in REALITY you have to do that same exact thing. If you want something, you need to peruse yourself in doing so. The last article about art and how it can be perceived in many ways i don’t agree with it at all. art CAN  be looked at through alot of things but not EVERYTHING. what’s so artistic about a paper bag??

Chapter 5 (1&2)

these two articles were much more interesting than the artciles from last week. they deffinatly kept my interest. its crazy how images can “pursuade” you to do something. the two ideas that stuck out most to me were the uncle same poster saying “I WANT YOU” and how Hilter used the suasticka to pull people into his idea of nazism. With the Uncle Sam poster having “I want you” bolded on it and that being the first thing you noticed made people belive that joining the army was the thing to do. so after seeing that many men went and signed up. even though they would most likely get drafted aways. its just crazy to me how just certian articles bring people into something. this is commly used today as well. as your reading the weekly news paper you see many many articles saying SALE or 50% off! you see those are think to youself “hey! i should go shopping” its the same thing that the goverment was doing wtih the uncle sam posters. now hitler on the other hand is just crazy but smart in his sadistic ways. even though what he was doing was wrong, he was doing a good job doing it. he had a perfect explaination as to why he chose the suasticka as the nazi symbol and why he chose the red and white background, and its sad to say but it worked. it made pepole join the nazis. thank god there aren’t anymore nazi’s but at the time they were rapidly growing. anyways, its just crazy how adds and posters and symbols can seem to be so little but can mean so much.

Chapter 4

I honestly found this chapter really boring. Like in a way it was interesting on how in the first article about the cave drawings and how art work has evolved into much more complex things. but my favorite article was the one i had to discuss. it was about the savant children. I found it so amazing how these children are able to do all these intese things. the girl who was 3 years old and could draw a really detailed horse. the other person i found amazing was the guy who could name any date and day of week. he asked the author of the article the day of birth and year and he instatly said the day of week he was born on. i think its amazing how these people have these special abailites. the only downside is that they are autistic. also, the article about dreams was really intersting. it made me think how dreams can relate to how you are feeling. it just makes me think of how every single dream has a specific meaning. over all i didn’t like the chapter better than the other ones. the other ones had meaning to them and i thought this one was just random articles put into a chapter. i felt like i had to push myself to read it.

Chapter 3 (cont.)

when i first read these articles i thought to myself that it was very true. the media does make the people think of violence as “fun and games”. there are many movies, books, video games, and even commericals that portray violence. you have everybody watching these or reading these. i think that the video games are the worst out of all of them. its allowing anybody to put a gun in their hands and shoot at people, animals, aliens, zomibies, etc. if you have alittle kid doing this he’s going to think to himself “well if i can do it in the video game, why can’t i do it in person?” I can agree with the fact that not all people think this way but it does happen. in the second article i liked how it made you think. it didn’t really interest me though. the third one however caught my eye. i think that people that wear brand names do it to feel good that they are wearing soemthing that’s in a way “popular” also, i think that people buy it because that’s “what everyone else is doing” whether your in high school, college, or at a job your going to want to have nice things. don’t get me wrong i have some brand name things, but i don’t do it to be “in with the crowd” i do it to feel good about myself. but then again, if i saw a shirt for let’s say 10 dollars and the almost exact shirt for 40 dollars at the 40 dollar one was brand name, i’d go for the 10 dollars one; espicaly in this time of day. but anyways, i just think people do it to either feel good about themselves or have others think “oh wow look at them, they have something name brand.”

Chapter 3: The Visual Surround Part 1

Both articles, The Perfect Icon for an Imperfect Postliterate World by Read Mercer Schuchardt and Eden by Wire: Webcamera and the Telepresent Landscape by Thomas J. Campanella caught me by surprise. The first one I found was very interesting. I didn’t realize how much a symbol of a label ment to the company. It makes sense that the Nike swoosh would read left to right. Starting with the curve and ending with the tail. Like they said in the article, “It’s the last sound you hear before coming in second place, the sound of a basketball hitting nothing but net.” Having that fact, would in a way brain wash us into buying their product. If the swoosh is what you want to hear, subconsicously the swoosh is what you’re going to want to buy. The second article I thought part of it had no meaning to it. Yeah the world is improving its technology as the years go bye, but that’s how it’s always been. Ever since the cave men were on earth we’ve been improving our technology. That’s just the way it is. With the webcamera cituation I think it is kind of creepy in a way that you don’t know if the company you buy your camera from can actually look at what your doing with your web camera. It is on the internet and you can do alot of things on the internet. Let’s say you buy a webcamera from LogiTech. You go to log on and chat to your mom that lives in Alaska. You don’t know for a fact that LogiTech is looking into your chat either. They have the serial number of the camera and all the information you need in order to set up your camera, so what is stopping them from viewing the chat? That in a way is kind of disturbing. Also, with survallience cameras in stores. They have them in dressing rooms at department stores to make sure you’re not stealing. It is very awkward when your trying on a top and you have to undress to put it on, and there is a big black video camera looking at you the whole time. It just is very surreal that places are allowed to do that.

My Identity Image

Chapter 2: Mirroring Ourselves

After reading the last three articles in this chapter: The Body Jigsaw: Borrowing Body Decoration from Other Cultures by Philippe Liotard, Visual History and African-American Families of the Nineteenth Century by Donna M. Wells and New Jersery Trying a New Way for Witneses to Pick Suspects by Gina Kolata and Iver Peterson I was really stumped on how all those articles tie in together. But after thinking about it I realized that it was about indiviualism. I didn’t really agree with the third article because I thought the idea was beside the point. I think that the way things are going now with the law enforcements are perfectly fine. My favorite article of the three was the first one. I can really relate to that one because it’s examples are from the modern day. People determine what tattoo they get or what pericing to get by their characteristics. For example, if you have some big husky guy wanting a tattoo it’s probably not gonna be of a butterfly. So from reading these articles I have learned that everybody is different in their own way.

Mirroring Ourselves: Chapter 2

While reading the first two sections Equation for Beauty Emerges in Studies by Daniel Goleman and Never Just Pictures by Susan Bordo I really thought about how much the media effects our perspective on life and beauty. In the first article about beauty, I found it interesting that men perfer beautiful women, whereas women prefer personality and a “big wallet”. Goleman states, “Moreover, any given man may be drawn to a particular feature– dimples and freckles, say, or a strong, classical nose– that the ideal lacks.” This made me realize that the different things about people are indiviualistic to others. I can relate to that statement because I have freckles and people always tell me how much they wish they had freckles, I guess its a good thing I have tiny dots all over my face. It makes me an individual so I’ve learned to love them.
          The second article I one hundred percent agreed with. I find it sickening that the media tries to get us to belive the more skinny you are, the more beautiful you are. If you haven’t had the chance to actually see an anorexic female or male before it has got to be the most unattractive thing ever. All you can see is skin and bones. It’s unhealthy and can eventually kill you.
          I found it strange that the way you are raised determines your self esteem when your older. After reading it though, it made sense. Also, when I read, “Those who underwent the surgery were seen by others afterward as more self-assertive, intelligent, likable, and able to succeed than they were before the surgery,” I thought to myslef, “Now why would that happen?” and suddenly realized that because your self esteem is higher, you’re more likley to engage with conversation. In my experiences, when I’m having a “lazy day” and don’t feel like doing anything, I hardly get up from the couch. But when I wake up and feel good about my self, what I’m wearing, and how my hair turned out I want to get out of the house and do something. 
          From reading both these sections in Chapter 2 I’ve learned to love the skin I’m in. It may not be perfect, but it’s not worth it to try and get perfection. It’s not important what others think about you, it’s what you think about yourself.

The World of the Image by: Trudy Smoke and Alan Robbins Chapter One The Act of Seeing

     After reading the chapter and thinking about what I just read, I instantly became thankful for having the ability to see. Many people look at things in different ways as explained in chapter one of the book. Although I can’t see well and have to use contacts, I am still grateful with what I have. I can only imagine how things would be if seeing wasn’t as simple as the brain makes it seem. While reading “Seeing and Awareness” by Deborah Curtiss, I was intrigued by the exercises she explained in her essay. I wanted to try one so I decided to practice the exercise for scanning vision. Towards the end of the exercise I learned that I have horrible “eye strength.”

          The Vision Thing: Mainly in the Brain written by Denise Grady, wrote about how different people used these so called “reversing goggles” and how it affected their visual perception on life. Having read the essay I wanted to actually try the goggles out for myself just to get the hands on experience of what it was like. Reading, “At the curb, cars whizzing by didn’t look real. They looked like toys coasting along on white platforms, which were actually their shadows,” made me want to try the goggles even more. Just the curiosity of the way I would consider the world astonishes me.

          Reading about how babies don’t recognize themselves until about age two got me thinking as well. Not to long ago I held a six month old baby into the mirror and she noticed me and pointed to my face in the mirror but when she looked at herself it seemed as if she was scarred or nervous around “their new friend” and looked away.

          I found it amazing how studies show that most  people who got their blindness fixed would prefer to stay blind. After reading more into it I realized that it makes a lot of sense. They were used to just feeling things for years until it all got changed. I guess it would be as if I were to all of a sudden turn blind. I’m used to seeing and I would want to persue my life by seeing things rather than feeling them. For the blind, it’s opposite. They’d rather feel things, than actually see them because that’s what they’re used to.

          I didn’t disagree with most of the reading. However, some of the parts in the last section of the chapter I found hard to believe. Reading about the “dark noise” and how eventually your eyes play tricks on you came across as odd to me. I would have to experience it for my own to really believe it one hundred percent.

          Overall I found the chapter making me really think about things and how the mind works. Thinking about how some take seeing for granted and others can’t have the gift of seeing I learned that seeing is not believing, believe is seeing.