In the Vocabulary of Comics and from the video's on Ways of Seeing, we are shown how we associate meanings to pictures directly with ourselves. This reflects onto recent online parlance with the popularity of User-comments and ratings by others on websites, blogs, videos etc. Why then (mostly in academia) are we constantly asked to be objective about viewing art, news, advertisements, movies etc.?

I don't know how we are constantly asked to be objective about viewing art, news....etc. I guess we are asked to give a certain perspective in academia that is not based solely on our feelings or instincts about certain things. However, even in academia people usually tend towards topics that they like. I think that we are asked to look for evidence rather than feelings in order to communicate with other people. The idea of objectivity sort gives the idea of credibility and universality, so that it is relatable to other people.

Picasa album

http://picasaweb.google.com/MeganRim

Questions

1. What is one way in which you feel that an inanimate object has the power to transform your identity?

Response to Raquel

Question

On page 125 Wysocki states "But reading in our time is changing." I think that it changing in the way that we don't have to physically turn a page if we are reading on line, but I think the act of reading or how we read things is the same whether on print or online. Do you think our reading is changing?

Response:
So I think that reading is constantly changing because literacy does not always mean the same thing. I am sure that compared to societies hundreds of years ago we are able to read faster and more comprehensively. While before education may have relied more on memorizing and an oral component, we have come to rely heavily on the written word so that we do not have to actually memorize as many things since we can easily reference. I think that one interesting thing is the different types of reading we have developed. I really don't know the history of reading but at some point we decided to have different types of reading: pleasure reading, academic reading, analytical reading, skimming...etc. Wysoki definitely touches on how typeface changes our attitude toward reading but what I think we are seeing now is a move towards skimming. We are constantly on the internet, looking things up on wikipedia, and if we are really lazy we won't even read the whole article but go immediatley to a section and read only that and these readings don't stay in our memory. As Walter Ong points out, literacy affects memory. Oral stories are not only entertainment but shared cultural memory banks and literacy changes the way we memorize.

Questions for Wysoki

1.In the article Wysoki talks about how important the visual presentation of the page is in terms of how the reader is informed by it. How do you think the reader is then affected by the hypermediated characteristics of a webpage that is fluid and changing?

2. Wysoki makes the point that there was much less literacy in the middle ages and perhaps even a different kind of literacy, which would cause people to contemplate each word more deeply. How do you think that literacy affects the way we think?

3. Wysoki references some works that subvert audience expectation, what sort of effect do you think that this has on the genre?

Graffiti Project

The idea for my stencil really came from this video. I spent a lot of time thinking about what problem I would like to address and I just stumbled upon that parody and I thought it was hilarious. It might not be as 'serious' as I would have liked but I think it is still important and relevant because 'Twilight' is such a cultural phenomenon today and teens AND adults go bonkers over it. I have to admit that I was curious so I read the book and watched t he movie and both fell flat in my opinion. On the other hand I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I realized that the missing component is humor. Buffy had a self-effacing humor about it that made the angst easier to stomach while Twilight just takes itself and its angst way to seriously. The fans, in my opinion, take it to seriously too. Thus I wanted to incorporate humor into my shirt.

For the picture I really decided to go with flipping the traditional picture of the girl being ravished or attacked by a vampire so I wanted a picture of a girl about to stake a man. I spent a good couple hours on the internet looking for a picture that I could make into a stencil and since I couldn't find one I decided to sort of compose my own. I imaged searched a cowering man and then searched something like 'aggressive girl' I found two pictures that I felt I could use-one was of a cowering business man and the other of a really aggressive looking girl softball player. I used the online image editing app at pixlr.com and put the pictures together, adjusting the size to make the girl a bit bigger and changing the contrast and brightness as well as saturation to make good stencil material. I printed out my picture which looked like this:



I made the necessary adjustments with pencil like adding a cape for my vamp and deciding where to cut.


Cutting out the stencils was really the most time consuming part and it took hours, especially the words which I had in a Buffy font.


It lead to some casualty...

I think the finished project looked great:



In terms of the words I really was stumped about what to do because I knew I wanted it to be clever but not too long as to avoid having to cut out all those words. I came up with 'Angsty Vampires (can't) suck!' I don't know if it's really that clever but my roommate thought it was funny. With the picture and text together I was really aiming at a specific fan audience, I guess the one that likes to wear t-shirts that say 'BITE ME EDWARD' on them. I guess the message is to lighten up.

In terms of environment or audience, as I just stated, I would be aiming at sort of a Twilight audience since it is such a big force really in pop culture today. I put my graffiti on a t-shirt because it is in someways more commercial and spreadable than putting it on a wall. I guess since twilight is such a commercial franchise I would be putting my message in a similar medium. T-shirts are also something that you can wear to specific places and venues, so while putting your message up on a wall might have a lot of people see it, the lack of context might confuse them but to wear it on a t-shirt to maybe a gathering of twilight fans or something would definitely get the message across.

Response to Rasheena's questions

Question

1. Do you think that this negatively affects people living in these neighborhoods considering the effect that language can have?

Rasheena made the point about language and signs in poverty-stricken neighborhoods having very powerful and very intentional meanings beyond the face value. I do think that the type of language that the residents see on their signs in their streets does affect their perceptions of their neighborhood and themselves. Already, poorer areas have been portrayed in the media in a largely negative light, as the news reports mainly on crimes that have happened in the area. Signs like 'stop the violence' seem to tell the residents that they first of all, have the power to stop the violence, which is usually not the case as many people really are innocent bystanders, and second sort of pinpoint the residents as the origin of the violence. So basically the signs put the responsibility on the shoulders of the residents. The blue flashing police lights also tell the residents that they need to be policed constantly and that they are dangerous in some way.

Graffiti Assignment

I found these at the art and design building in a stairwell. There seems to be some tags as you can see in the bottom left two pictures. this would indicate that these graffitti have been someone who has legitimate street cred or is recognizable to people who know graffiti. However, taking into account the location of the graffiti as being the art building, we might be tempted to think that the graffiti is an art project. Thus this graffiti in particular plays with the notions of graffiti as vandalism or being illegal and what constitutes art. Perhaps it is both, so that while the graffiti artist did not mean for his art to be taken a certain way its merit was recognized by the viewers and preserved

Questions for Drucker and Elkins

1. James Elkins says that seeing is a "soundless activity" and that "it happens best in solitude" however do you think it is possible to get the full meaning of visual objects without using your other senses as well?

2. Drucker tells us that 'only language tries to tell us what we see' in Drucker's concept of language how do you think pictures fit in? Is there a difference between a picture and letters especially taking into account pictographs?

3. In the article Drucker touches on how the form or register of a language creates meaning and also reveals the intent behind the sign, however, how do you suppose that the audience, who is meant to understand these signs, affects this transaction?

Blog Response

Question From Nick

So my question is about the ideas of media within the introduction. What makes us so convinced that this expansion of information and sharing is a good thing? They talk about "like TV only better," but is that necessarily a good thing? It seems like our society is collapsing on itself in the entertainment industry anyways, so how is an exponential expansion of it necessarily good?

Response

I think that what may be happening is the transformation of entertainment and the 'entertainment industry altogether. Yes alot of the media that is coming out today seems to be pointless and inundating but with the proliferation of technologies the concept of mass-media is changing altogether. With youtube, garageband, imovie..etc. media is being put in the hands of the consumer. Expansion means more choice for the consumer and while the burden of that choice might feel overwhelming to us it also signifies a new type of freedom. And we can choose what to and what not to watch. So as we have seen in the case of some viral videos that corporate sponsorship or industry backing are not as necessary for the person who want their works to be spread. I think that it is true that this massive expansion of available media might reach a critical point one day but technology and media are not a new development as the article points out. The concepts of hypermediation, immediacy, and remediation have histories reaching back further than the internet. People have learned how to deal with the constantly changing world of media and I think that we have the capacity to deal with the next stage.

Reading 1 Questions

1. The article talks about technologies moving towards a more 'authentic' representation. How are peception and authenticity tied together?

2. On page 22 Bolter says that a in a virtual reality system "the viewer is given a first-person point of view, as she gazes on s graphic world from a station point that is always the visual center of that world. This gives the viewer a sort of increased agency in that they may even change their view point. What does this mean for human relations and interactions? Is this in support of a sort of Solipsitic perspective?

3. On page 48 Bolter talks about how the goal in Disney's Toy Story is to make the computer disappear and appear as human-like as possible. Does this suggest an acceptance by society of the concept of artificial intelligence?

Let me introduce...myself

Hey! My name is Megan and this is my blog for my Writing Across Media or WAM class INFO 303. I am currently a senior at the University of Illinois hoping to finish my degree at the end of the summer. My major is World Literature in the Comparative and World Literature department and my (tentative) minor is in Asian American Studies. I am originally from the north Suburbs of Chicago and besides my parents I have two brothers and one sister. I love music and I have played violin and piano for a while now. In terms of sports I cannot play any sport that has the word ‘ball’ in it. I do Kumdo, which explains my weird profile picture.I love to watch TV and surf the internet and sometimes I combine those and watch TV on the internet.

On the internet I like to go to: Ninjavideo , D-addicts , Allkpop, Rootforum1, CNN, IMDB, Youtube, and Pandora.