Plastic Bag Street Art

This video is about Joshua Allen Harris, a street artist, who cuts and tapes old trash bags and shopping bags together and proceeds to tape them to subway vents. When a train passes by underground, air is pushed upward to the street and the bags inflate into whatever shape he has designed whether it be a bear or a centaur. After the train passes, the bags slowly fall to the ground and appear to be trash again. I find this method of artistry is looked down upon by conventional artist lovers as a crude expression of thought that isn’t on the same level as more orthodox art. This methodology, though, speaks to city life directly. Large cities are often referred to as concrete jungles and when the city is bustling (when the train goes by) the animals spring foreword with life to greet them and as soon as the train leaves, they die again. They are composed of material that is scattered throughout the streets which makes them a literal part of the city they inhabit. Street artists put their art out free for the public, they almost never write their name on their art, and they tend to use materials they find around them. I see this as the evolution of art because it as we become more of a “global village” art is no longer locked inside a museum but is coming to life in the very streets we walk.

Spring

When I think about spring, the first thing that comes to mind is planting season. I love medicinal herbs and plants used as incense. Every spring I hoe out a part of my backyard by hand and plant all sorts of plants. It's always rewarding to be able to watch something you planted grow. Other than planting, not much comes to mind in spring for me. It's a pretty uneventful season as far as I'm concerned. I enjoy fall and winter the best.

Substitute Swear Sayings

This picture depicts Dr. Evil, a character from the Austin Powers movies, using the substitute swear word “frickin’” in place of the word “fucking.” Although he does not in fact use the profanity, he replaces it with a similar sounding word that carries exactly the same meaning, but, oddly enough, is deemed with much less stigma. The role of language is to convey thoughts in a way that can be understood to other people. In the case of profanities, the thought is normally interpreted as rude, vulgar, and disrespectful and therefore using the words is generally considered coarse. There is now a whole array of words that are used in place of these profanities but are used in the same manner, are spelled very similarly, and carry the exact same meaning, but because they aren’t themselves profanities, they are inoffensive. If we can substitute words for each other to abstain from vulgarity, would it be possible to substitute other vulgarities with new inoffensive actions or is this phenomena purely lingual?

Knowledge and Experience

This song uses blues style instrumentation to tell the story of three people who are lower-working class and who have been faced with various challenges. The general hook of the song (it varies with each character) talks about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes so that you can understand what it’s like to know what they know. Do you actually have to experience something to know truth about it? Experiencing something first hand implies that you use your senses to derive an emotional response from a situation. This is hardly a reliable means of finding truth, seeing as your senses are biased to your relative world. If your senses are biased then any emotional response that is elicited by them cannot be held as fundamentally true. Experiencing something first hand is not a means of extracting truth, it is instead a means of clouding judgment and forming a biased opinion based on an emotional response that is passed as truth.

The Stranglehold of English Lit

This website has posted what they believe to be the 100 greatest novels of all time. Of all the authors on the list only one was born in a non-English speaking country, Vladamir Nabokov, but he wrote almost all of his major works in English including the work that made the list. This clearly demonstrates the dominance of English literature on the artistic world. We know that there have been great works written in other cultures in different languages but none of these works have made the list. Why has this specific language taken over literature and do the same criteria that judge English literature transcend other cultures? Are there qualities of some books that are lost in translation? Can literature be universally good? Has this dominance had an effect on the literature written in other cultures so that they may compete with such a competitor?

Shamanism or Shizophrenia?

This video is about the way that Western society views people with schizophrenia in contrast to the way tribal cultures view shamanism. The video explores the stigmata assigned to people who have mental processes that we can’t understand and the resulting casting off that these people must go through. Is it productive to treat people who are different by ostracizing them into lock-up the same way we do criminals? Shaman’s act in very similar ways to people who exhibit schizophrenic behavior but they are treated as polar opposites in their respective societies: the former as an outcast who must be treated; the latter as revered leader from which there is much to be learned. We feel it necessary to treat schizophrenics in hopes that we can coax them to think more normally but in shamanistic cultures they are armed codes, traditions, and tools that have been handed down for generations so that they can expand their thought. Is it morally justifiable to stamp someone as diseased and prescribe treatment because we can’t understand them? Why as a culture, do we fear madness?

Friendship

This proverb definatly doesn't hold true to me. It is very possible for it to be flipped the other way around and have your joy cut in half while your grief is doubled. If you are someones friend then you trust them. If you trust them then you respect them. If you respect someone and they let you down, then it hurts. It hurts much worse then if you were to be let down by someone you don't respect. Friendship is a fantastic thing, like anything, when it works how its supposed to but in a 3 demensional world you can't sum something up so finitely.