"Around two and a half years of age a child can actually begin to recognize himself in the mirror." This is a quote from the first source, "The Empathic Civilization" that I found interesting and because it states further that after that happens they can begin to recognize others having an emotion or feeling and understand why they are reacting that way, i.e. mixing emotion with cognition. In Jonathan Lethem's article he covers many topics from technology to blues and jazz, but the one quote that stood out to me was about the different types of media and how they became central in expressing ones self; "Visual, sound, and text collage... became explosively central to a series of movements in the twentieth century." In "The New Literacy," it talks about how the Internet is not necessarily a bad thing and also the parallels between learning and living, and essentially to me says that to live in this world, you are always learning and they go hand in hand. Some learn from book, some from the Internet, and some from experiences depending on your generation and where you live in the world, but you are always learning.
Helene Hegemann's piece was very interesting, it was cool to get a perspective from someone close to our age, one thing that he said I though was fascinating but also true was "Creative culture is dominated by borrowing and repurposing," although that isn't a good thing, its how the best ideas and thoughts are forced, by reading, others work, discussing with others, and forming an opinion based off of multiple sources and then making it your own and putting your twist on it. I loved the piece by Lawrence Lessig because the topic is very similar to my topic for Wikileaks about freedom of the press. He is correct in saying we as a nation put freedom and rights in two separate boxes, but if we could just break that border or boundary line and think of them together, it could really help open up for some great discussion and might even help form new ideas and viewpoints.
"The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined." this is from us copyright information and to elaborate on this quote, I think its good to explore and experiment with blending things like creativity and intellect, and even freedom and rights, but if the line were blurred between these two it could be a recipe for disaster. This may be one thing that needs to remain the way it is. The "Creative Commons" website visually pulled me in by the layout, under the creative section was culture and on the other side was science, although that may not be something that they purposely did, it still orchestrated to me a sense of boundary between intellect and creativity. "Bound by Law translates law into plain English and abstract ideas into ‘visual metaphors.’" This sounds so awesome! It is helpful in making some complicated topics easier to understand by putting them in black and white. This quote was pulled from the "Bound by Law" link.
Les Manovich talks about how he uses technology to digitally display art work and break different pieces up into quadrants or sections so you can focus on different areas, this mixes the boundary between pieces that had originally been drawn or painted on paper, and technology and pixels. He uses technology to help assist benefit the art in a positive way. Although I found the two pieces Issa and "The Old Spice Guy" interesting, I feel like they didn’t really reveal anything new to me. I don’t really think there is much of a boundary to be blurred between the artist, and the people behind it all, they seem to be in the same category and already mix quite well.
"The Story of Cosmetics" was pretty much telling us that everything in everything is poisoning and giving cancer to everyone and all of their friends and families. In my opinion everything gives you cancer, and so I don't think that walking on eggshells with everything you use and do to prevent cancer is silly. The two articles by Steve Dixon talked about how the Internet comes into play with performances. He used the example of; "New dramatic forms and performance genres emerged in interactive installations and on the Internet." This is true with moms wanting to show their daughters dance recital online for family or even friends posting part of a one act they did on facebook and tagging their friends that did it with them. But posting performances and using the Internet to show your favorite show or your own work can be helpful to others. It can help give a performer ideas of different takes on a song they want to use for an audition, and also can help them get a better idea of what song to pick.
Blending art and science seems like a stretch but when you think about it, that kind of blending happens everyday. Here is an example of that; "Her voice is electronically treated to make her phrases shorter in mathematically precise increments and the orchestra matches this shorter phrasing." This is a quote from the piece Hypermusic Prologue. Lastly were the Hip-Hop and Remix links, the one on Wikipedia had a very fascinating fact; "The roots of hip hop are found in African-American music and ultimately African music." I never would have guessed that but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The second part to it is the remix part, and its origin, found in the second Wikipedia link, is Jamaican. So Hip-Hop remixes origin is Africa-Jamaican. Cool right??
In my own life as a student at UNCSA, I am asked to blend boundaries all the time, not only in my arty classes, but also in academics. Like it is with mostly everyone, it can be hard to break that line between two things at first, but you just have to ignore the part of your brain that’s been told, "you can't mix those two things" and think creatively. For example, one of my projects I’m working on right now I am making my spiritual dwelling place and am asked to mix creativity, planning, perspective, and realism all in one. At first it was hard for me to put a tree inside and a wooden fence in an ice cave with mountains next to stairs, because it didn’t seem right, but when i was finally able to mix fantasy with realism, it turned out really cool. Also in a drawing class, simultaneously, I am asked to mix science with art, by drawing a skull and then making it not as real, and that is another thing that was difficult, but good in the long run to experiment and play around with. I think it’s very important to explore breaking boundaries and to be able to blur and even dissolve them.
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