Author: Adam Chou

The piece, ecstasy of influence is a fascinating take on how cultural references tend to continuously redefine our understanding of Art. The idea of Cryptomeria, suggested by . the essay, is an interesting take on what we might call a “translation of culture”. When we think about the way that we interact with references and subtle appropriations, we don’t think about its origins, but rather the way that we think and feel from our interaction with said references. The author, Jonathan Lethem, attempts to combine this with the whole of art, where the subtle ways that influence art can also be representative of how technology functions. The author describes this conglomerate as a kind of Jazz, where information is outsourced and manipulated, copied and redistributed. Interestingly enough, he draws upon principles of the phenomenological aspect of art (i.e. Martin Heidegger), and how objects enter our lives and establish themselves as ever-present. What’s interesting about this abstract concept is how perception and previous knowledge (as described by Walter Benjamin’s work) helps to shape present artwork. This explains the way that media presents itself, and the important role that prior knowledge plays in understanding art, and the many forms that they come in from. I think of this concept in how culture can act as an industry, where new techniques are often appropriated by those learning and trying to make “better” art. They provide themselves with the practice to replicate ‘a template’ of sorts, to mechanically reproduce artwork. This is mainly an application of Adorno & Horkheimer’s “the culture industry” and Walter Benjamin’s “In the age of mechanical reproduction to that of the artist. Both pieces end up criticizing the role of business in media but forget the methods to which art and media are often produced by creatives. The process itself can be seen as its own kind of mechanized production, to which point art is seen as meaningless. So the question then becomes, why is it actually meaningful? Perhaps it is the fact that prior knowledge’s role in the question can create some sort of association with what we distinguish as ‘normal’ and the weird – art – that provides some sense of abnormal (escapism) to the observer.
The Author does make an interesting point, however, to bring up the idea of intellectual property with art, in how in such a mess, it seems hard to point out what should and should not be criticized for appropriation.
However, I believe the point he is trying to make refuses such a notion. Art, in his opinion, is something to be given, something to contribute – as labeled by a description of what is known as the ‘gift economy’. Such a notion is interesting to think about when he describes Don Swanson’s idea of “undiscovered public knowledge” in reference to previously written literature. Perhaps, someone has already solved the world’s problems.

The idea makes me think about how hope plays a factor in solving world issues. It is an emotion respondent to our own attributes. The author makes an intriguing, and I think necessary, point with his essay.
But I think it’s a thought I’d rather leave someone else to explore right now – I have school to worry about.

In her Ted talk, Christine Sun Kim makes an argument for people to learn ASL. She does this by trying to appeal, in some sense, to the common methods that people use to express themselves – music. As she portrays, music is a language, and so is ASL. Both are beautiful, but one is more universally understood than the other. By understanding sound as a currency of society, and the necessity of a visual component for language, she tries to show ASL as a simple and expressive language that anyone can pick up. But to a similar extent, the same argument can be made for ASL as a medium to expressing oneself, but also the way that humans interact is what is defined as social currency. So, by applying the same argument, people should just learn other languages because it’s natural for people to do so; this is in part due to the nature of music.

But this also doesn’t make sense because although she shows herself as an advocate for learning languages, she asks the audience to learn ASL as an example. So, the question becomes: what language should I learn to create a conducive environment for the rest of the world? Her answer is ASL. But my answer could be English because I’m American. Such is the dilemma that is posted. It is simply not a great answer to say that people should learn languages because it’s easy. It is, in fact, not easy to learn languages because of the way individuals learn languages. For me, Language can only be learned through practice. This is made easy when one is raised with the language or introduced to a competitive environment where they have to use the language. Many people do not have access to these due to a variety of reasons.

In such a case, nice dream, and I’m sure many people are sympathetic, but it can only be a dream. Also, consider the language barrier between different languages. How does one teach a language without knowledge of another’s language? That’s a very difficult communications problem to solve because it requires at least one party to have a complete command of the language. Also, consider, the number of human languages there are. Is it even possible for everyone to be bilingual? Languages die out too, along with native tribes who have knowledge. This is generally because of the nature of wage gaps, as well as the way that expansion works. Competition tends to squash over that which cannot survive, which is how Darwin’s theory of Evolution proclaims life to be. I can’t really say that I like it, but it is how the way is. So, although it is nice to think that many different types of social currency exist, it is not probable to assume that we will be able to give all social currency (language/expression) fair time to express itself. We all have our own preferences.

And so, I have to agree to disagree with her because I’m lazy and I don’t want to learn ASL.

Link:
https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ycc525/TroubleOnPlanetVeggie/Index.html

Description:

The Project follows the story of our Protagonist Tomato (Man/Woman/It) in their pursuit to leave Planet Veggie, which is to be blown up. The artistic style was to be similar to a page-turning comic; Audio, Visuals, and a variety of buttons were used to stimulate various emotional reactions. 

Individual Process – Issues:

I was responsible for initially drafting the idea, and Selina kinda just went along with it since it made sense. I was responsible for the art direction mostly, where I drew the images and Selina colored them in. This was fair distribution since I had a better sense of the story. In terms of the coding aspect, we often had difficulty accomplishing some tasks due to unforeseen errors and random things happening to us.

An example would be this line of code: 

I was unable, for a day, to figure out why the code  “function click( ) { ” was not working for the page I was working on. I spent 4 hours trying to figure out what went wrong, as I basically used similar code from another page. The solution that made it run was to add the line “console.log(“click”) -> which selina changed to “lowOpacity”). Without it, the code didnt work. So that was an upsetting issue.

Another issue that didnt make any sense was in a .html file, where the button was not making the function click() work at all. The solution that one of the fellows helped me with was to make the button into a div, renamed it “btn” and then had it run this line of code in javascript -> 

I believe the project was satisfactory, although I wish I had more time to work on the audio components. It would have been nice to make my own music for this, but I have no idea how I would have approached it digitally. In future projects, I would like to explore 8-bit music and using the sounds usually heard by a computer to generate those without the use of external software.

An additional thing I would have liked to have would be to have more complicated code. The additional plan was to have a choice selection screen and have a regular .html panel afterwards, and then segway into one of the segments chosen. However, we had no idea how to approach this since it would mean storing a variable and implementing it on another page. This was something that wasn’t learned in class and an idea that we had midway during the segment. So in that respects, the code could still be worked on in order to better mimic the original storyline laid out for it.

However, I feel like it was a fun project that made the most out of the time-frame and has minimal flaws in comparison to our original plans. 

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ac6596/Ex1_GuessColor/

The weirdest thing happened with my code while I was working on the project. After correcting my various typo errors, the function still could not run itself. However, I was told that a good way to prevent errors with script files was to input the <script></script> line at the end of the <body></body> section, as helps with code processing. This allowed me to run my file after the errors that I encountered.

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ac6596/Cat_Thing/

Reflection:

I first started out with a single HTML file sheet, and was having trouble figuring out how to connect each of the functions together with so much content on one page. However, after I separated the two languages onto different style sheets, I found that I had an easier time managing and editing both codes. In the future, I will probably keep such a system going. 

Overall, this was a simple and fun exercise. I can’t wait to start using these skills in the interactive comic!