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).