HOLLA! 9/26/2009

I initially did my post-class-post on Zizek’s reading and after class on Thursday I was able to familiarize myself even better with his work. There were a few of his quotations that really stuck with me after class as well, one of them being, “The ‘terrorists’ themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage, but for the spectacular effect of it” (231). This quotation can sort of go off on the bases of the plot of an action Hollywood movie. We go to the theaters to see explosion, action, and horror and during September 11th we could turn on the television and it was everywhere, on every newspaper, and at every corner. This is the point that Zizek was trying to get across when he wrote this article. “America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise” (233). By this Zizek meant that if you read the images created in America, the movies, what we buy, the spectators in film, it’s only logical that that’s what we wanted. Zizek’s article was quiet short but had big meaning to it. In class we also discussed how Zizek showed individuals that American’s didn’t and still almost don’t see some things as real like the actual carnage we see even when it happens in our backyard. Dr. Rog talked about Katrina and September 11th and it was almost like something you’d see in a third world country or in the movies. Images are what we see and yet to believe images like these as real is so hard because these images are what we see on the movie screens across America. By Zizek saying, “America got what they fantasized about” he meant that we got what we see on television, we got what we see as entertainment. I am really looking forward to the Zizek sessions this week, to hear his thought on other media forms that we see and how we actually do interpret them.

BiegieGo, 9/26

So this week in class we focused on Zizek and the question of what is real? “In today’s market we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant properties: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol…” these are things what we never stop to think of in our day to day lives. What is the point of drinking coffee without the caffeine or beer without the alcohol? Well, this is where virtual reality comes into play, “it provides reality itself deprived of its substance.” We see these images on the screen and we start to believe them because they are repeated over and over again until the product become second nature to us and we done even notice what is happening.

For example “the ‘terrorists’ themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage, but for the spectacular effect of it.” Someone in class explained this quote very well. He said that the terrorist are not trying to mainly hurt people, but it is the only way to get the camera on them so they can get their message out to the world. They think that is the attack is bigger them the more coverage to their story they will get. The image of the planes hitting the WTC on September 11 was what the people of America were repeatedly shown and therefore it led to an up-rise in anger and took us into war. I believe if the images that the media displayed were not repeated so often on the news then the anger of the Americans would have not been so high. Another thing is that in America the people tend to believe that nothing should ever happen to us. They think we are the greatest nation there is and if something ever happens or if there is a bomb that explodes in our country then we must fight back because we are Americans.

Ace Ventura, 9/22

This week we went to the Cornell Art Museum which I thought provided an interesting perspective on post modernism. So many of the theorists that we have read talk about the interpretation of literature and art and all the different ways of looking at things and going to the museum really allowed us to create our own interpretations. I thought the Andre Kertesz On Reading exhibit was the most relevant to our class. In all of the photographs, people were reading in diffferent settings and reading different things, whether they be novels, magazines, newspapers, or street signs. Some of the photos reminded me of Barthes idea of jouissance or the pleasure that one gets from reading. Many of the readers in the photographs were in seclusion, alone with their novels or magazines and just enjoying the pleasure of reading and the pleasure of interpreting the text to way they feel necessary and in a way that is applicable to their lives. And as a viewer of the photographs, I was able to come up with my own interpretation of the meaning of the photo and what meaning the reader was coming up with and the emotion behind that. So it was really like a third person perspective on reading voyeurism.
Warhol's Personalitie exhibit applied to Lyotard's idea of realism and verisimilitude, or having art that mirrors real life as close as possible. Some of these polaroids were just of ordinary people. And even the polaroids that were of celebrities didn't appear to be any fancier than the ones of ordinary people. As the tour guide pointed out, the women in the photos were wearing make up and that came into question when Warhol first produced these photos, but his response was that women wear make-up and dress themselves up in every day life so why should they be any different in these photos? Being able to view these different exhibits and relate our new theories to them made some of them a bit more clear and easily applied to the world around me.

BiegieGo, 9/25

So I know this is super later but I thought I should post on it anyways. Our class took a little field trip to the museum this past week and was introduce to what are museum has to display to us. The main exhibit that our class went to see was called “On Reading.” The show before this one was about printing and print making. I could kind of relate to the printing show because I took a art class here at rolling and we worked with making different kinds of prints and we were shown how to layer prints. One would think that printing can possible be that hard but it is very difficult because you have to line everything up and mix the right paints properly or else you will not get the color you wanted. I had never seen printing like that before I took the art class and I am glad I was able to experience it.
The show “On Reading” was about this one man, I forgot his name, which went around taking pictures of people reading. I thought it was an awesome idea to make a show on this topic because a lot of people like to read but you never really focus on what the people look like when they are in the act of reading. I felt the artist did a great job of getting the emotions of the people while they are reading. The tour guide as the class “if on reading was not on the wall, would you look at the pictures differently?” I believe I would have look more closely. I think that the title “On Reading” made me look for the person doing the act and made me move more quickly though the exhibit. I saw the person reading and I just move right along to the next picture not really taking in the surroundings of what was around the picture.

Kiwi, 9/24/09

This week we visited the Cornell arts museum which I thought was very interesting. We were able to apply what we have been reading and discussing in class to everyday images. Our class visited three exhibits; Michael Phillips and The Internal Method of William Blake, Andre Kertesz on Reading and Andy Warhol.
The first exhibit, Michael Phillios and The Internal Method of William Blake was an artist at the end of the 18th century. He was a visual artist as well as a poet. Blakes revolutionary technique was, facsimile copy which meant to be a perfect copy. All of the original plates of Blackes were lost in the 19th century so Phillips began to study how to reproduce them. Benjamin says a copy is not authentic. What is the first print? Is there really a first? Is it the plate, the first print, or the first drawing? Phillips plates were etched from a picture of Blake’s plate, so it is not that original. I thought that this exhibit was very interesting and the plates were something I have never seen before. However this was not my favorite exhibit.
The second exhibit was Andre Kertesz on reading. Andre Kertesz was the pioneer of the 20th century of photography. He drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and was wounded. After that emigrated from Budapest to Paris to pursue his photography. He traveled to American, and made his living as a commercial photographer (1930’s-1960’s). After that he became bitter because he was had seperated himself from the higher art he loved. Then In the 1960’s he stopped doing commercial art. His archive was found and moved back into high art/ fine art. 1915-1970’s he had a range of photographs; that were from all over the world. His recurring theme is reading (quiet, personal, introspective). The Concept of surveillance; always being watched, like reality TV Many are on still life (inanimate object); which offers space for recreation of meaning. The whole world is text; these photos are text and are about text. If a lot of the photos come before the 1960’s do they fit in with postmodern critique of society? These arbitrary dates are meaningless. Many people argue postmodernism is just a continue of modernism. So why do we have to continue to organize and categorize this? Simply because history repeats itself. These items can help us structure our thought process. Art used to be taught sequentially, now it is taught in themes. So does this mean we cannot agree on postmodernism because we are already in it?
The second exhibit was probably my favorite because I thought that photographs were unique and different and I like how they all applied to the theme of reading. I guess I never really took the time to think of all the different ways we apply reading to our daily tasks.
The third exhibit that we visited was Andy Warhol who was known as a chaser of celebrities the curator thinks, without Andy Warhol there would be no Paris Hilton. He coined the term “superstars”
Famous not because of talent, but photographed with the right people, they demonstrate a larger than life persona. For example, Edie Sedgwick. Being famous for being famous. Andy Warhol was known for breaking the rules or art. His postmodern sketches equaled Polaroid, which he would call his studio “the factory”. We also discussed how Warhol’s artwork came from the environment of kitsch. His work as the curator said was, “kitsch mass-produced”, inexpensive image into high art.
Overall I thought the museum field trip was a lot of fun and I thought that it was very beneficial, because it helped me to better understand the readings that were assigned in class. I enjoyed this field trip a lot and I hope we will have more to come.

Graham, 9 / 24/ 09

I think that going to the art museum was really beneficial, because it helped me to better understand the readings that were assigned in class. We discussed the concept of what is the first? What is the original? It is hard to determine, because there are copies and sketches and prints…so it becomes difficult to say exactly what the first one was.
Then, we went into the 2nd exhibition, where the photographer took over a hundred photos of people reading. I thought that this was creepy, because the people did not know that they were being photographed, so it was almost like they were being spied on. I think that the point of this project was to show that different people read in different ways, and they also read different things. In some photos we saw people sitting under a tree reading, but in some photos we saw people stopping and reading newspapers that were scattered on the floor. I didn’t understand this at first, but after someone pointed it out I thought that it was really interesting.
I also liked the 3rd exhibit that we saw, with the faces of the celebrities, and other everyday people. I found it interesting when someone asked why he put white powder on a majority of the women that he photographed. The group leader said that women cover themselves every day with all types of makeup and everything else, so it was just something that was “normal” to do.
In Thursday’s class we went over some more architecture that we did not get to finish the week before. We also discussed the realness of products. For example, Diet Coke…is it real coke? They just try to sell the product and make it more popular, but by doing so they are taking away the very thing that made the product popular in the first place. People like the taste of Coke, but they do not like what it is doing to our bodies so we sell them the same products without caffeine and sugar. Advertising is a crazy thing.

Ron Burgundy, 9/22

Today’s lesson took us out of the classroom and into the Cornell Fine Arts Museum. Having never been there before I didn’t know what to expect from the exhibits, I only had the knowledge of what he learned from the recent theorists to aid in my experience of the works. The three different exhibits that we looked at were all extremely interesting and played a different role in explaining some aspect of the postmodern era and key terms recently discussed in class. While looking at one exhibit in particular, “Kertesz: On Reading”, a profound point was made by the museum guide that connected largely with one of the theorists discussed in class. The guide asked the class what the most prominent aspect of the different photographs in the exhibit were and several students answered all noticing different elements of the works. As he noted this observation he went on to discuss how each picture could be seen as a text that speaks differently to each observer and how the story can change each time you approach the picture as you may view it in a different way or notice different things you never saw before. This idea is directly connected to the concept that Macherey discusses in his piece, “A Theory of Literary Production”. Macherey explains the importance of the said versus the unsaid within a text and the meaning that the unsaid, once acknowledged, can bring to the whole of the text. The guide asked us if in fact these pictures could be considered texts, and because of the several different responses that were given from different students about a single picture I believe that they can. Each person that had spoken up in the discussion of the picture recognized a different aspect of the unsaid within the “text” that was the image, and therefore the picture could have told a different story to them than another person. As I heard different responses from my peers on the image I also connected their ideas with the concept of how the author cannot fully appreciate their text because they cannot anticipate what experiences their audience may bring to a text to understand it, a key concept of Macherey. Each student seemed to recognize something different in the image because they looked at it with their own perspective, which led them to see certain things and ignore others.