Final Portfolio

Total 12 pieces

O/N:  #1 presentation, #2 street art, #3 video/ audio

W：#1 blog post, #2 Banksy Essay, #3 transcripts, #4 Final Essay

V: #1 Prezi, #2 Banksy project and photo essay, #3 Video, #4 blog

E: #1 prezi/post, #2 photos, #3 audio/ video, #4 blog

Choose draft and final version to illustrate these categories. Items cannot be repeated.

For my portfolio:

O/N: Prezi Presentation

W: Final Essay

V: Banksy Project (Photos not using as first draft)

E: Real Talk (Audio/Video)

Outside Sources Used In Final Essay

1. “Every page is a bent version of reality” (Shields 94)

Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Print.

2. “Facebook are most often used to connect with individuals people know from offline environments, rather than for meeting new people online” (Papacharissi 253).  

Papacharissi, Zizi. A Networked Self: Identity, Community And Culture On Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge, 2011.Print.

3. “The little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting” (Watkins 67).

Watkins, S. Craig. The Young And the Digital: What the Migration to Social-network Sites, Games, And Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009.Print.

4 .In just 20 minutes on Facebook, over 1 million links are shared and almost 3 million messages are sent (Hepburn).
 

Hepburn, Aden. “Facebook Statistics, Stats & Facts For 2011.” Digitalbuzzblog.com. Digitalbuzzblog.com, 18 Jan. 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2011.

5.  Banksy. “Palestine Chairs.” Banksy.co.uk. Banksy.co.uk, n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2011.

Urban Remix Project

Upload by Ruoyu Song at UrbanRemix: sound_20111128_091954.wav

I used zips and pens to finish this recording.

Notes of Verbatim Transcription

When two speakers speak at the same time, indicate this with /, as in:

N: Yes, I have been /living here

K: /Oh you have?

N: for three years.

I.e. ‘living here’ and ‘oh you have’ were said at the same time and N continued on his sentence without stopping.

Use = when two lines come directly after one another without a gap, e.g.

K: Did you like her? =

N: = Yes!

That is a very fast reply.

For short pauses add a full stop, each one representing a second. For pauses longer than 4 seconds, put time in brackets and italicised e.g. [6 second pause]

Class Notes (Nov.4&Nov.7)

In-class key words: Unwieldy & Trill (slang: true+real)
"Black Men and Public Space"

Profiling:
The relationship between assumptions based on appearances and realities.
Stereotyping?

Authenticity?
1. Pragmatic/survival
2. Principles.

Hip-Hop

Shields (Page 87-105)

Art is theft.

In many ways, hip-hop was born out of the Jamaican idea of turning record-playing into an art form.

Reality-based art hijacks its material and doesn’t apologize.

We want rougher sounds, rougher images, raw footage, uncensored by high technology and the powers that be.

Does this mean that we want “reality”?

Realness is not reality, something that can be defined or identified. Reality is what is imposed on you; realness is what you impose back.

Cultural and commercial languages invade us 24/7.

We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge, and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of changes they generate.

My favorite hip-hop song this year is I Need a Doctor singled by American hip-hop artist Dr. Dre. The song features guest appearances from American rapper Eminem and singer Skylar Grey. This song actually told the real story about Dr. Dre and Eminem. 

Short Response (Fragment 278, Reality Hunger)

Do Facebook and MySpace reflect the reality? To some extent, they do reflect the reality since people record their daily life, activities, ideas and feelings on the pages. Facebook and MySpace are new ways for people to communicate with each other not just through words but also pictures and videos. On these pages, people can express themselves freely. However, just like the fragment says, “Every page is a bent version of reality.” Some of my friends are different from the real world when using Facebook. Some of them are shy in real world but become good talkers on the internet. Some other people may be too self-conscious and then use software such as Photoshop to edit their photos and post them on their own pages, which cannot be considered as Reality.  The fragment also mentions user-made content on YouTube. Some common people who want to be superstars make their own video then post on YouTube. If the video is interesting enough and can attract lots of viewers, the video-maker can eventually become famous. Also, people who are not singers can become “singers” using Karaoke. As my own experience, when I am singing by using Karaoke, I can sing in my own way to express my unique feeling of this song. In other words, I become self-conscious in those three or four minutes.

Oct.26 In-class Notes (Real Talk)

Key word: macabre

Topics can be used:

Jade Simmons' project:
Specific value of found stuff when it's incorporate into art/rhetoric, etc.
http://urbanremix.gatech.edu/

Cornel West:
Pain, difficulty, mortality as central to reality, realness, truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West

Hip-Hop:
Poetics/ ethics

Jade Simmons's Lecture Notes

Rhythm of the way to walk is important. Three Hollywood artists and also President Obama do well in walking.

When practicing football, rhythm is also essential.(The flexibility)

Simmons played hand games with a student in lecture to show the simple concept of rhythm.

In Simmons art works, two cultures collide, piano and electronics.

Rhythm in healing gave so much power in ancient culture.

Urban Remix project--to record unexpected samples in rhythm

Reality TV: a dearth of talent and the death of morality

Success on this scale insists on being examined, because it tells us things about ourselves; or ought to.

It is good to be bad.

Add the contestants’ exhibitionism to the viewers’ voyeurism and you get a picture of society sickly in thrall to what Saul Bellow called “event glamour”.

If we are willing to watch people stab one another in the back, might we not also be willing to actually watch them die?

Comments: “Reality” TV with “direct” appearance is essentially unreal.  To a certain extent, all humans are voyeurs. These “voyeurs” want to watch something “evil” to fulfill their emotional needs. So participants in reality TV become devious, exhibitionistic and bad in order to achieve their final goal—fame. For the participants, they, on the screen, are not their real selves since they will do something that they will not do in their daily life. For the society, the mean and lying people on the show are not able to motivate the “voyeuristic” viewers to improve society.

 There are also some Reality stars in China. The following is a video in Youtube talking about the two China’s most hated Reality stars.

Shield （Page 106-111)

Reality TV

Different people get sucked into reality shows for different reasons.

Our primary goal is to make a show that's compelling.

There's no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.(Is there even narrative?)

We want our viewing or reflect our complicated, messy, difficult, overloaded, overstimulated lives.

In Charles instructs Mrs. Flanders to stop moving, he's altering the world in order for it to match what he wants to paint, rather than shaping his painting to reflect what's actually occurring in the world.

The success of the genre reflects our lust for emotional meaning. We really do want to feel, even if that means indulging in someone else's joy or woe. We have a thirst for reality(other people's reality, edited) even as we suffer a surfeit of reality(our own--boring/painful).

Simulacra and Simulation

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

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:
1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy.
2. The second stage is perversion of reality.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality.
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation.

Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
1. Premodern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
2. The modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible copies of items.
3. Postmodernity, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes.

Additional Reading:

Jean Baudrillard: “Simulacra and Simulations”

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~xinwei/classes/readings/Baudrillard/Simulacra+Simulations.pdf

Reality Hunger (Page 1-19)

Instruction of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto from Wikipedia

Every artistic movement from the beginning of time is an attempt to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. (The situation)

Zola:"Every proper artist is more or less a realist according to his own eyes."

All the writing takes place in the editing room.

In antiquity, the most common Latin term for the essay was experior, meaning "to try, to rest, experience, prove."

Before the Industrial Revolution, culture was mostly local; niches were geographic.

Comment: before Industrial Revolution, transportation was not convenient. Information could not be spread rapidly and effectively.

The origin of the novel lies in its pretense of actuality.

The world itself is no longer our private property, hereditary and convertible into cash.

The aim of science is the discovery of truth, while the aim of literature is the production of pleasure.

Collage, the art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, was the most important innovation in the art of the twentieth century.

PREZI-Review

Using Prezi to finish my first group presentation in college is really a wonderful journey for me.

The most difficult thing for our group-November at the beginning of the task was the content of our Prezi. At the first meeting, we chose a traditional way of brainstorming that was to divide the reality into several categories such as the assignment sheet mention—science, philosophy, culture and art. It was a safe way but lacking of innovation. Excitedly, I received an e-mail from Yao next day morning. He said that we may show our own interests and life in the presentation.

At our second meeting, we started over in a totally different way. Not just an academic mode of thinking, the divergent thinking promoted our task significantly. At this time, instead of confining our focus on reality, we only wrote key words related to our own interests and life. One reason of talking about our own interests is our main audiences of our presentation are our classmates. In another word, they are our peers, so they may be able to find their interests in our Prezi.

Then the next problem appeared: how to connect these stuffs with reality? The approach and the structure actually reflect the strengths of our presentation. We found out the overlapped contents in our brainstorming-map and then classified them into three divisions that were life, sports and pop-culture. In addition, all three categories could be related to real & material which should be the starting point of our presentation.  Because we would do the presentation as a group, we must use some method to enhance its integrity. To achieve this goal, we agreed to make the ending-points of all parts of our presentation to Ideal & Abstract. And stuffs we plugged in our Prezi are all purposed to connect the binary ‘real & material’ and ‘ideal & abstract’ logically.

However, our Prezi did not fully take advantage of the pro of this presentation tool. If we have more time, we may use ‘rotation’, ‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’ to create proper tension in our Prezi. Compared to other group’s work, the claims of our Prezi could be also improved by inserting some quotations. 

Quincy’s Prezi included three categories—physical reality, abstract reality and human culture. They used a more academic approach in their presentation. Their presentation started with introduction of  forms of reality and then spread out the discussion.

Unlike our group, Quincy used a lot of quotations to illustrate their ideas. This is good, however lack of attractions. If they could include more pictures, videos and their own stories in their Prezi, the presentation would be more interesting and alluring. Furthermore, the decorative typeface for the word ‘perception’ and ‘imperialism’ is hard to read. According to WOVENText, this should be used for informal, personal documents.

Their Prezi created wonderful visual effect to viewers by using lots of ‘rotation’, ‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’. Nevertheless, the persuasive force of the presentation itself is not strong enough. Firstly, the Prezi does not have a clear structure. They introduced that there are three forms of reality at the beginning of the presentation. At the first two parts of the Prezi, they talked about two forms of reality—physical and abstract. So the audience would assume the next part is the third form of reality—ineffable. However, they started to talk about human culture. The consistence of the presentation was broken. Secondly, there are a lot of same ideas however classified into different categories in the Prezi. ‘Science’ exists in both the categories of ‘physical reality’ and ‘human culture’; ‘religion’ exists in the categories of ‘intangible reality’ and ‘human culture’. So what category should these things be classified to exactly? Moreover, Quincy divided the ‘physical reality’ into two categories that is ‘tangible reality’ and ‘intangible reality’. But the stuffs in ‘intangible reality’ are almost the same as those in ‘abstract reality’.  

What is a claim?

Statement
*Assertion
With concrete language

Question is not a claim, even might be related.
Facts are not the same as claims.
Opinions also not the same as claims.
Idea is not a claim. However, a claim can be an idea.

Real, Reality

http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html

The substance of a dream is not Real, since it was such as it was, merely in that a dreamer so dreamed it; but the fact of the dream is Real, if it was dreamed.

Several times,when I had a nightmare, I told myself that THIS IS JUST A DREAM in my dream. But sometimes, when I awoke form the sleep, I cannot distinguish what is dream and what is reality jusi like the case in the movie INCEPTION.  

That which any true proposition asserts is real, in the sense of being as it is regardless of what you or I may think about it.

Does it mean that the reality is the absolute truth?

Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may represent it to be.

A dream has a real existence as a mental phenomenon, if somebody has really dreamt it; that he dreamt so and so, does not depend on what anybody thinks was dreamt, but is completely independent of all opinion on the subject.

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it.


All human thought and opinion contains an arbitrary, accidental element, dependent on the limitations in circumstances, power, and bent of the individual; an element of error, in short. But human opinion universally tends in the long run to a definite form, which is the truth.

During the process of thinking, people will correct their mistakes gradually.

No matter; it remains that there is a definite opinion to which the mind of man is, on the whole and in the long run, tending. On many questions the final agreement is already reached, on all it will be reached if time enough is given.

Everything, therefore, which will be though to exist in the final opinion is real, and nothing else.