Just Anne Things

A junior blogging for writing class on thoughts, life, and interests.

[rannedomthings]

Post #10: Final Post

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn12meFUoig

This class made me more aware of social media and forms of writing on the internet. I am not very active on social media so I think this class was really eye opening to writing in other forms besides essays. While writing Wikipedia, photoshop, blogs, and Youtube I had think about the message I wanted to send to my entire audience compared to essay writing. In essay writing, I write about a topic and it is (usually) only read by a professor so it has to be written professionally to educate, argue or prove a point with references. On the other hand, when I am writing for media, I am concerned with evoking emotion or informing my audience in a simple way since my media is available for the public to access. When writing for the Wikipedia project, I had to make difficult to read research into something simpler for the audience to understand. For the floral telegram project, I chose colors that evoked emotion. Sets of red, pinks, purples, oranges were chosen to represent the passion of the piece. When writing my tumblr blog, it taught me how to be more comfortable writing in first person while answering my prompts. This is the first class that I have written in first person and although it felt awkward at first (because I was taught not to write in first person), I learned how to write my thoughts and opinions better. These different forms of media writing relate to essay writing by making me think about proving and arguing to a broader range of people than my professor. 

The video writing process was more difficult than Wikipedia, photoshop, and blog writing. While writing for these forms of media, after finding a topic or message, I would have to choose a topic/research and put together a piece of media. Writing for video I had to be more creative thinking about a topic, what kind of scenes I wanted to take, and how I would educate my audience. For my video, I was confused at first what I wanted to do a video on but eventually I decided to do it on Che Thai, a dessert that I enjoy making for my friends and family. By doing a video on this dessert, I can educate on a dessert food from my culture without it being ‘just’ a cooking video. Editing the clips took quite some time because I wanted to do a still frame and I had to cut a lot of them so they were not too long. Also, I had to find a balance between the length of text scenes and how long the video was. I could have made the video shorter by shortening all the draining and cutting scenes into a couple scenes but I was not sure about minimum time and was worried it might have seem too easy. I chose a theme to my video because I feel like cooking videos usually have a theme so that people will come back and subscribe to their channel for more videos and views. For the tags, I just used some that were related to the video such as che, Vietnamese, dessert, Thai, cooking, food and so on. My friend posted the video to her school page and I shared it to my family members and friends. At most, I think I will reach 500 views from these groups of people. It is interesting to see that when I search “Che Thai”, my video is on the front page (but lower on the list) of the Che Thai videos. This video writing project was different than essay writing because I had to think more creatively about a topic instead of being limited to a topic. Also, I thought more about the clarity of my voice, and how easy and clear my instructions are unlike essay writing. 

Viral literacy has taught me more about how useful media writing is and thinking more about evoking emotion. It has not made me want to gain more digital approval but it taught me many things about how social media has become very dominant in our generations and how to effectively use it to promote products or videos. I probably will not try to create something viral again unless I need to for a marketing or PR job. By improving the chances for something to go viral, perhaps I can market a product I am trying to sell better and make it go viral. However, I do not see myself doing a job similar to do this because I do not think I am not very good at selling information to people. If I ever encounter a viral situation, I will probably avoid popularity by not responding to offers or posting a post (since I will have followers if I was viral) saying that I will not respond to media attention. I will be very inactive on social media if I was gaining viral attention. 

Overall, I enjoyed this class and it was fun discussing about social media effects and virality on different types of media. 

[rannedomthings]

Post #9: Video Review and Comments

I thought Kasey’s idea of google maps directions to a park was a really interesting and creative idea for the viral video project. Her video starts out with her in the car and then filming the entire trip at a faster speed (or else the viewers would lose interest). Afterwards, there are images of the park played in slow motion. 

I really liked the shots that Kasey has taken on her trip to the park. They were really picturesque photos of trees and nature and it made me feel really relaxed looking at them. The pictures looked professionally done even though it was done on an iPhone.

I only have a few suggestions for Kasey’s video. We talked about how there could be more background text incorporated in the video such as the ending where she arrives at the park. I think providing background in the video would be better than in the description because I personally do not like to read the description unless I am interested in certain products the video uses. This should be an easy fix for Kasey because she seems to “catch on” quickly or is very knowledgeable with video editing. Personally, I really liked how the music fit at the beginning as the car was setting off to drive but towards the middle or end I think other music could be used. However, this is just a personal issue and I do not think of it as a major edit that she has to do. I do not exactly remember what else we talked about but those are the two “major” ones.

Overall, I think Kasey’s project is well made and I wish I had the artistic skill that she has with video. I am not a video editor so I do not actually know if what she did to edit the scenes were difficult or not but I think if I could learn to use software like her I could improve on my own video.

[rannedomthings]

Post #8

The workbook was different from the prewriting because it helped organize my ideas better. It got me thinking deeper about what kind of video I wanted to make and how to target and evoke images to my audience so that it could be more viral. When I was doing the prewriting, my ideas were very broad and general and not together. There were simply too many ideas such as doing something funny or surprising but by doing this video, I want to educate others on ethnic foods and my culture.

Writing in the workbook is similar to writing an essay in the aspect that I have to capture my audience’s attention. However, in an essay, the reader has to read through my entire essay for my points while in a video, the audience does not have to watch my video unless it captures their attention or they want to watch it. Essays are also to criticize or respond to a topic while videos can be of anything a person wants to show to their audience. 

I actually changed my idea for my video. I am doing a cooking video on a Vietnamese dessert that I really enjoy making for my friends and family. I am hoping to teach my audience about the kind of food that I eat. By doing this video, I hope to use good images and videos to help trigger the audience into making a sweet and colorful dessert that makes them craving for more. I am going to add information about the food and pictures of tropical fruits to show the types of fruits that east Asians consume. By making it into a channel type of video with a theme, I hope that also captures my audience to subscribe and watch “future” videos. By making a “channel” it gives the idea of people coming back to watch more videos about ethnic foods that they want to learn how to make. 

[rannedomthings]

Post #7: Video Project

For the viral video project, I want to make a video on sleep based on a brochure I found online. I think sleep is a good subject because the college community on average does not get enough sleep. Sleeping is really important for the body as it repairs and enables a person to function correctly. By making a video highlighting the damages of the lack of sleep, perhaps it can encourage people to not waste time as much as they do with all the media around them. With social media and education for future careers, college students are not getting enough daily sleep. In my video, I want to talk about basic sleep information and functions, statistics of college students’ sleep, and how to improve sleep.

I have some experience with using iMovie as a platform for video making. I am still unclear if I want to use videos of actual people performing or animated videos using the computer. But, I am leaning towards drawn out characters to demonstrate my project. I do not have any experience with the adobe premiere program but I hope to look into it and see what features it has to offer that I could incorporate into my video.

[rannedomthings]

Post #6: The Floral Telegram

This is my first time using photoshop so navigating through this project took a lot of clicks and re-clicks. When I was finding my phrase, I wanted to incorporate the idea of death and life (in a sense) into my project. I ended up choosing the phrase “Beautiful despot, I adore you. My passion is consuming. I wither as will these flowers.” I chose 9 different flowers to represent this message. I wanted the colors to have a scheme of passion and adoration so my flower colors were mainly pinks, purples, and reds. Starting from the bottom right flower my numbers were 125-226-119. In respective order, the flowers I chose were sweet William, heart’s ease, larkspur, primrose, rose, ivy, aconite, myrtle, and amaranth. I chose these flowers partially based on their meaning, color, name and/or texture.

For the first set of flowers I used sweet William because the person is adoring the despot and honoring him and I thought the name could be representative of what they would call the despot. I used heart’s ease because I wanted to display the color of the oppression of the tyrant consuming the person’s heart. The larkspur was used to show how the heart has been taken over by the ruler.

For the second set of flowers I used primrose, rose and ivy. I used primrose and rose to represent the color of passion. Roses are known for “love” and “enduring passion” (teleflora.com). The irony of this is associated with thorns on the roses which I wanted the audience to feel the evil pricking the person’s heart and the passion seeping through and taking over. The last flower I used for this set was ivy, which evokes the thought of poison ivy and the image of poison taking over the heart.

For the third set of flowers, I used aconite, myrtle, and amaranth. The aconite and myrtle were used for their wispy look to show the flowers withering. The dark, red, and spikes of amaranth represent the death and withering of the person as the despot consumes their life.

The color of the text was representative of the feeling evoked from the phrase. Adoration of an oppressor, passion, and death of the person over time. I wanted the background to produce a dreamlike consciousness that the person sees while withering into death. The pitch black on the outside is them settling into the darkness of death. For the ring of the flowers, I used vine and I cut them into three’s to separate each flower phrase. Vine makes me feel suffocation and I wanted to display the suffocation (unknowingly) of the person from the tyranny of the despot.

I think searching for images labelled only for reuse or reuse with modification really limited my choices in picking flowers. Cutting the flowers took some time because it was difficult to navigate through photoshop. I added shadows at the end to show depth and make the flowers look more realistic on the canvas. Overall, this project made me think a lot about the message I wanted to send to the audience and how to creatively incorporate the message I put together.

Special thanks to my sister for creating the background for me and LoveofAnna for helping me with shadows and photoshop. :)

[rannedomthings]

Post #4: Instagram/Flickr group

For the Instagram/Flickr challenge, I chose to search #apple on both Instagram and Flickr to see the types of images between the two sources. I am not really familiar with how to search on Instagram so I ended up googling a hashtag search tool and picked Findgram to search for the images.

When I picked apple to search on Instagram, there were a variety of images that popped up. There were pictures of breakfast, apple pie, drinks, tablets, laptops, iPhones, headphones, shoes in an apple red color, chargers, purses, apple cider vinegar, apple slices, yogurt, watches, the list goes on. On the flip side, when I searched the word apple in Flickr, all the pictures were of an actual apple and some of them were photoshopped pictures of apples that the artist created. This shows a certain professionalism to the pictures on Flickr versus pictures on Instagram.

The many different pictures I found on Instagram demonstrate how a common fruit’s meaning is changed. On one side there are people who Instagram about their healthy diet or breakfast with apples or even desserts such as apple pie. On the other, there are those who post pictures of their brand name Apple watches, iPhones, laptops, and tablets. Since Instagram is for people to “Capture and share the world’s moment”, you can find a lot of variety in the images because at that moment, people want to share their own use of “apple” whether or not it is used in its fruit or market form. Although Instagram and Flickr are both similar in filters and for uploading photos, Flickr’s target is the “world’s largest photography community” which could be the reason why when I looked up apple, I did not see pictures of apple laptops or other uses for apple because this community wants to display its apples as an art and not as a casual everyday update.

Perhaps, hashtags are more powerful than we think they are. Hashtags unite people such as #blacklivesmatter or even create a new meaning for a fruit. It shows how easily the meaning of a common thing can be changed or lost just by a ‘#’ and a brand named after it. Nowadays, people do not even call the pound sign as it is and it really shows how media has affected our everyday lives. It seems that media makes it so we exchange face-to-face communication for publicly displaying our day to day lives. 

[thebabyanimals]

[rannedomthings]

Post #4: Wikipedia Edits

When I first edited wikipedia, my edit actually got taken down (probably because I did not cite and source a credible article but I learned this time). For my wikipedia project, I edited a topic called the Fan Effect. This effect is a psychology effect that says that as more things are learned about a concept, the longer it takes for a person to retrieve it. I first became interested in this topic as I was searching for stubs to work on. I couldn’t find any I really liked so I thought, “Wait, how come I’m not researching on my own major?” So, I researched psychological stubs and randomly clicked this one. It was mostly empty and only had one sentence in it. I searched for articles on the Fan Effect on PsycArticles - a psychology database with a lot of articles about experiments and information about psychology. I first made a small edit by adding a sentence in and then I edited the original sentence by adding more details to it. Afterwards, I went to research more information about the articles and actually made my edits. I added a section on how the Fan effect works in the brain and a section on some possible theories behind the fan effect. I also added in a free use picture of a network of links that represents the fan effect idea.

My article was not marked unimportant by wikipedia users. It was difficult writing and researching my article because wikipedia does not allow any original experiments as part of the encyclopedia. I ended up combining many sources together to write the ‘Plausible Theories’ section and tried my best to sound neutral while writing. I had to go back and check my post many times to make sure that my writing was still there. The only edit someone made was to make some of the coding more concise. Other than that, no one has done anything else to my post and I just made a small grammar correction to it today. Although I did not receive any feedback, perhaps someone will find it and correct something I wrote. Another problem I had was that some of the experimental writing was very dense and difficult to read. It was demanding to decipher these words and clear up what the author wanted to say about the topic.

For this project, I learned how to write in a neutral, and easier tone for people to understand what I want to say. It was difficult for me to understand the articles, but eventually I got the gist of the points made in the articles and wrote what I thought was a simpler version of the articles. I also learned how difficult it is for people to accept an article on wikipedia and that it is not completely sourceless. Although there could be many articles that contain incorrect information, most are sourced and we could use those sources to our advantage. Although wikipedia is not completely credible, the information contained in it could be good for background knowledge before putting someone in a completely boring topic that he doesn’t want to research. It tells people if they are interested in a topic or not and its references can be used to extend research in that area.

wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_effect

Database: http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycarticles/index.aspx?utm_source=ljxpress&utm_medium=display_email&utm_campaign=psycarticles

Sources that I added:  - Radvansky, Gabriel A. (June 1999). "The Fan Effect: A Tale of Two Theories". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 128 (2): 198–206. - Radvansky and Zacks, Gabriel and Rose (September 1991). "Mental Models and the Fan Effect". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 17 (5): 940–953. - Anderson and Reder, John and Lynne (June 1999). "The fan effect: New results and New Theories". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 128 (2): 189–197. - Moeser, Shannon Dawn (March 1979). "The Role of Experimental Design in Investigations of the Fan Effect". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 5 (2): 125–134.

[rannedomthings]

Post #3: Media Free Challenge

I took the media challenge on 4/18 but did not write about it until now because I finally found time to do it. I had 2 midterms last week and a job application due and I felt that media free would increase my concentration. I started my media challenge around 12:30 pm and I spent that time until 5:30 preparing for my exam. It actually worked really well and I avoided all forms of media until dinner time. As I was driving to dinner, I didn’t realize that the radio was on until it was too late (it just plays in the background without me realizing it). Although I could have cancelled the challenge by then, I decided to carry on and avoid as much media as I can. After dinner I went to a relative’s house and they turned on the t.v. so I couldn’t decline watching. Afterwards I went home and studied some more. At 3 AM I decided I was still hungry and went out to eat. The restaurant had a t.v. running and I instinctively looked at it. I realized I was still doing media free and looked away after a minute. I went to bed later that night and woke up for dim sum. At 12:45 I finally pulled out my phone and contacted my friends and family about the end of my media free challenge. 

I think it is really hard to do the media challenge. In this day and age, media is everywhere and even if I try to avoid it, it’s still there. I did not use any of my own electronics but external factors made it hard for me to be completely media free such as the radio in the car, my relative’s t.v., and the t.v. in the restaurant. Media has become so integrated in our society that it is difficult to think of a world without it. I would encourage others to try to go media free for a day to experience a world without the influence of technology that has so tightly bound our lives. Without the distractions of technology, perhaps people could focus and concentrate on work more like I did. 

[rannedomthings]

The Hunting Ground

I went to watch the Hunting Ground documentary on Monday and I felt that the documentary was very informative about how campuses deal with rape. It was very astonishing how little victims get justice and how often they get blamed for the rape. This made me think about who is running this institution. Colleges are supposed to be a support system for students to help them grow and become the leaders of the future. However, the people who run these campuses seem to stress more importance on their public image than their own students. When parents hear about acts about violence on campus, these acts deter the parents from wanting their child/children on that campus. This would be a bad outcome for the colleges because they could lose funding and even their pride. Acts of violence can happen anywhere and the saddest part is that they are hidden from the public eye to upkeep a university’s name. Those who are raped are told to not say a word to anyone and the guilty party gets away. Why is our society not giving these victims justice? Why are they hiding the problem? 

The psychological effects of rape are very deep and may cause victims depression and many other disorders. Even seeing the face of their perpetrator may cause them mental flashbacks and breakdown and yet these criminals are not given punishment that fits the crime. For men it is even harder to speak of their rape. For generations, women are the victims and men who think about speaking of their rape might feel like they are demasculinized by voicing themselves.

An interesting point I would like to mention is the role of media in this film. Media advanced Annie and Andrea in the process of their fight against rape. Media brought together people like them and they began to build a community that allowed those who were raped to feel safe and let go of their inner thoughts. Through use of cell phones and Skype, they connected with many others who experienced rape and have now built a website dedicated to ending rape on campus. Using the internet, they are spreading awareness of their cause. The film itself, is spreading a message to raise awareness about rape on campus. If the film was made more public, more people can know more about this problem that is widespread throughout the world. 

I learned a lot from this film and I think it would be better if other people can access it also and learn more about this hidden problem on every college campus. 

[rannedomthings]

Wikipedia Project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_effect

For my wikipedia project, I would like to edit and develop a stub on the fan effect. I am interested in this topic because after reading about it, I realized it effects me and it was something I never paid attention to. The fan effect is a phenomenon that is associated with longer recognition times as more information about a concept is learned or obtained. Stubs like these may be edited because researchers are continually finding new details and creating more hypotheses of these kinds of topics in their experiments. I am hoping to add in more details to the main section and add information about past experiments and theories. I looked at psyArticles for my references. PsyArticles is a great database for psychology material (I learned of this database in my research methods class). It contains a lot of articles and journals on psychology experiments, results, and theories. There may be more that I may find to include in my project but these are the sources that I am looking into referencing to:

Radvansky, G. A. (1999). The fan effect: A tale of two theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(2), 198-206. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.128.2.198

Anderson, J. R., & Reder, L. M. (1999). The fan effect: New results and new theories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(2), 186-197. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.128.2.186

Radvansky, G. A., & Zacks, R. T. (1991). Mental models and the fan effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17(5), 940-953. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.17.5.940

McGuire, M. J., & Maki, R. H. (2001). When knowing more means less: The effects of fan on metamemory judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(5), 1172-1179. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.5.1172

[drobbinskelley]

Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón: Math is forever | TED

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGlZi2SwETc

Charlie bit my finger - again !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

The videos above, while both awesome in their own rights, have very different goals and means of attracting viewers. The...

[rannedomthings]

I agree with this post. The charisma of the speaker is very important when it comes to lecturing to an audience. Humans lose interest easily when one cannot capture their attention. The clarity of the speaker allowed the audience to be engaged during his talk. When filming educational videos, it is harder to grasp attention because the topics are “boring” to most. People rather watch funny videos such as the “Charlie Bit My Finger - Again” video than a talk about math. However, by using an effective speaker, attention can be sustained in an educational video (besides viewer interest). Eduardo’s ability to capture the viewer’s attention is important to maintaining a connection to the people he is speaking out to. The shortness of the video (10 mins) also encourages people to watch because it is not an hour long. The home style video of “Charlie Bit My Finger - Again” may make the audience feel more relatable to the subject. The “cuteness” factor and the accents also influences how popular the video is. After watching, many people try to imitate the kids and show their friends how cute and funny the video is. 

[rannedomthings]

Post #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiKg6JfS658&spfreload=10 (Are You Sitting Too Much?) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWu9o5zrj3g&spfreload=10 (Uptown Funk Treadmill Dance - Carson Dean)

The internet makes media so instantly accessible that it also creates many uses for some mediums. Video, for instance, can be used not only for entertainment but also for educational purposes. In the first link, AsapScience, a channel on Youtube,  posts videos about interesting science topics for people to watch out of curiosity or even to learn something new. In this video, the content features facts about how sitting makes a person more unhealthy because of reduced calorie activity which leads to other health problems. The subject of this video makes it appealing because it affects our generation. A lot of our time is spent in school sitting and listening to the professor and studying in the library. Even when in our down time, the technological age makes us more susceptible to surfing the net or watching T.V. at home instead of being more active. Even a lot of jobs nowadays puts people in an office to do their jobs or sitting in long meetings. Other factors that influence the attention of the audience include: drawings, light music, a white board, flow of pictures, and a short video draw the audience's attention. First, the author draws pictures with dry erase pens to depict what he is saying. By using these quick drawings with color, it makes the viewer feel like learning about science is not as boring and hard as they would think. Second, the music is very subtle while the voice of the author is loud and clear to grasp attention. Third, the white background makes the viewers feel like they are in a learning environment and the brightness of it keeps the audience awake. Fourth, after one scene, the author quickly draws the next scene so he does not lose their attention. He effectively taught the lesson and flowed to the next part so watchers would not lose interest. Finally, in the age of instant gratification, the author used time wisely. With such speed, this generation has become impatient and do not receive long videos as well. By teaching a 3 minute lesson, they think to themselves that it is not going to take long and they can sit and watch it and then move on to another video. Utilizing these tools, the author makes the audience more engaged in learning about science in hopes of them subscribing, watching and sharing the video to gain popularity and (hopefully) generate funds. Most educational videos teaching subjects usually are longer to teach students how to do a problem. They are usually more on the dry side (such as Khan Academy) but they are still used for students to learn how to understand specific problems instead of learning for fun. The AsapScience channel allows its viewers to learn interesting information rather than solving or understanding a problem.

The second link is a video that accidentally went viral overnight. The content contains a man dancing to "Uptown Funk" on a treadmill. Unlike the first video, this video is more for entertainment purposes for the author. He intended it for his friends and family to watch but one slip of not changing his Facebook settings from public to private caused him to be an overnight internet sensation. What made this video interesting is that it cannot be done by people without practice or ease. The song that the author danced to is a popular and catchy song that also captures the viewer's attention. His skill in doing flips and walking backwards on a treadmill is considered a difficult task for most people because we fear of falling off and getting hurt. Although it is not an educational video, it might make people want to learn how to do such a feat. Other accidentally viral videos may be shared because they make the audience see them as funny, sad, cute or even disgusting.

Although these two videos served different intentions, they do agree on entertaining their viewers, short video length, and perhaps causing the audience to want to learn. Videos need to capture the attention of their audience for them to watch it and share it. Also, the short length of the video does make the audience engaged to stay and watch the whole thing. The longer the video (unless it is a movie), the more likely the viewer skips through parts of it and do not share it to their friends because it is "boring". Lastly, after watching one science video, the viewer may want to watch another and learn more while for the treadmill dancing, perhaps some people feel like they can accomplish and learn the same thing as the creator.

[rannedomthings]

Post #1

The works of Hickey, McLuhan, and Benjamin present their individual concerns of the effects of art, technology and media in society. Each of them demonstrates similar views of uniformity that ominously foretells the acts of society in proceeding generations. Hickey views Santa Barbara as a utopia because the people do not communicate their concerns. He argues that art allows us “a safe place where we may nonviolently come to terms with disorientation situations and adjudicate their public and private relevance in a public discourse” (Hickey, 2). This permits us to critique with sophistication and to discuss our opinions among others instead of hiding them. Hickey has a valid point that perhaps art would make us raise questions more easily instead of masking our thoughts. Hickey’s example of teenage inability to cope with anxiety is demonstrable in the May 2013 massacre. However, the angst that a teenager feels can also be a result of a psychological disorder because of family background or birth and not entirely dependent on art to civilize our society through discourse. On the surface level, McLuhan talks about the importance of “the medium is the message” which means the medium is crucial to how content is perceived. On a deeper level, McLuhan sees the change in society as it relies on new innovations. He says, “The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (McLuhan, 31). For example, the internet is a medium that has expanded our knowledge instantaneously. The news, journals, celebrities and many other popular content go viral because of this one source of technological advancement. It has become integral to our culture and we allow it to control our perceptions because it lets us share information and communicate with others quickly. McLuhan has an excellent point on how advancements can make us into a society that cannot be individualistic. There is an invisible guideline to how social media should be used and we blindly follow this. Benjamin talks about how the modern age of art lacks authenticity because of new technology. For example, movie making changes the perception of viewers so they miss moments in between scenes. He compares film to art saying that a “…painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations” while movies make his “thoughts…[replaced] by moving images” and does not give the viewer a chance to think and contemplate what is happening before them (Benjamin, 13). We do not have time to explore our own ideas because everything is laid out in plain sight. Although our perceptions are unified because we are controlled by the director, we discuss movies afterwards and critique them which allows for some individualistic response to art. The ideas of Hickey, McLuhan, and Benjamin all show the idea of how the media and modern art is decreasing our individuality because of the uniform ways it is presented to us. Our society needs to unbound these chains of technology in order to move forward and innovate.

[psychoempathetic-deactivated201]

The three most deadly toxins are human selfishness, contentedness in ignorance, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement. Without fail, these will kill all that resists them and poison the minds of the living.

A.M.M Taylor, 2015 (via psychoempathetic)

[ladiesof-shield]

[accidentalight]

this joke only works for the next ten months and then it will never ever apply again and I think that’s beautiful

[sunflowercocoa]

2016: when ppl ask me what im doing in 4 years 2017: when ppl ask me what im doing in 3 years 2018: when ppl ask me what im doing in 2 years 2019: when ppl ask me what im doing next year

knock yourselves out

[verboselyme]

So I recently read this article that talked about what exactly goes on in your brain when you’re in love. I’m a huge fan of biopsychology, so this obviously got me super excited.

According to that article (plus some other reading up I did), there are parts of our brain that are activated...