Saturday, October 31, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Response to "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin
Benjamin raises a good point in his essay: the concept of aura. He explains aura as the power of an artwork as it is tied to tradition and historical context. Aura is minimized by reproduction because it takes away the uniqueness of an object. The fact that we can now reproduce almost anything takes away the "specialness" of an object.
Building on his argument, there is the constant concern of ownership. Is something worth owning if anyone can own an exact copy? Artists borrow (or steal) and remix each others' ideas and works. While mechanical reproduction can bring the work to anyone, it seems to have taken away some of the security that came with craftsmanship. The human errors and endurance of time used to make an original stand out from fakes, but now copies can be made, effectively doing away with originality of a work.
It was also interesting how he brought politics into the essay. Now that we can manipulate and redistribute images, people are able to use media to manipulate and misinform the public. Today, no image can be taken at face value whereas it was easier to discern any tampering on an image. And with current and future CGI technology, even film is no exception.
Building on his argument, there is the constant concern of ownership. Is something worth owning if anyone can own an exact copy? Artists borrow (or steal) and remix each others' ideas and works. While mechanical reproduction can bring the work to anyone, it seems to have taken away some of the security that came with craftsmanship. The human errors and endurance of time used to make an original stand out from fakes, but now copies can be made, effectively doing away with originality of a work.
It was also interesting how he brought politics into the essay. Now that we can manipulate and redistribute images, people are able to use media to manipulate and misinform the public. Today, no image can be taken at face value whereas it was easier to discern any tampering on an image. And with current and future CGI technology, even film is no exception.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Propaganda Project
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
Friday, October 9, 2015
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Response to "The Money Spent Selling Sugar to Americans is Staggering"
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/the-money-spent-selling-sugar-to-americans-is-staggering/407350/
The picture, more than the title, was what really pulled me in. It's what appears to be a Pop Tart cut into the shape of a gun. It was an interesting concept because food is supposed to create a sense of comfort, yet the photograph implied that there is a silent threat disguised as high fructose corn syrup in most of the foods Americans eat.
Moving onto the actual content, Hamblin's statement about "real" food stood out the most. He explained that we have come to associate "real" with the idea of "healthy" when it comes to food. And when a snack is "made with real fruit" the consumer subconsciously thinks that it must be healthier than a completely artificial equivalent, even though the percentage that is "real" is unspecified. This is only one of the many ways marketers get us to buy their products.
In addition, he also brings in how "real" food, like fruits and vegetables, have come to be classified as "specialty crops" by the USDA. In another class, I had seen a documentary on the American diet, which seemed to correlate very closely to this article. It's often not a choice that many Americans eat so much high fructose corn syrup. Because the government subsidizes corn so much, many people can't afford to eat real food, and have to settle for processed, cheap alternatives.
It seems like many of the world's problems can be traced back to money: processed food, climate change, exploitation, deforestation, the list goes on. And the more money is spent on selling cheap, sugary food, the more easily available and accessible it is.
The picture, more than the title, was what really pulled me in. It's what appears to be a Pop Tart cut into the shape of a gun. It was an interesting concept because food is supposed to create a sense of comfort, yet the photograph implied that there is a silent threat disguised as high fructose corn syrup in most of the foods Americans eat.
Moving onto the actual content, Hamblin's statement about "real" food stood out the most. He explained that we have come to associate "real" with the idea of "healthy" when it comes to food. And when a snack is "made with real fruit" the consumer subconsciously thinks that it must be healthier than a completely artificial equivalent, even though the percentage that is "real" is unspecified. This is only one of the many ways marketers get us to buy their products.
In addition, he also brings in how "real" food, like fruits and vegetables, have come to be classified as "specialty crops" by the USDA. In another class, I had seen a documentary on the American diet, which seemed to correlate very closely to this article. It's often not a choice that many Americans eat so much high fructose corn syrup. Because the government subsidizes corn so much, many people can't afford to eat real food, and have to settle for processed, cheap alternatives.
It seems like many of the world's problems can be traced back to money: processed food, climate change, exploitation, deforestation, the list goes on. And the more money is spent on selling cheap, sugary food, the more easily available and accessible it is.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
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