If I had to choose one image to depict what my childhood was like, it would be this one. That is me dancing with the little boy in the image, and to the right of me is my dad, and all around me are cousins, uncles and family friends; it takes place in Dominican Republic in my grandma’s house. Although I was born in Atlanta, GA, I grew up most of my childhood in the DR because my dad is Dominican. Therefore, the DR is home to me, and although I am not a big believer in borders or nationalities, if I had to put it into those terms, I would consider myself more Dominican than American because it was the first culture I lived in, and most of the happiest memories of my childhood, and my life were there. Dominican culture as an entirety is very happy, and exuberant– it’s seen through its people, the music, the food, the sports, the art– everything. And that, all of that, is captured in this photograph, where we were dancing and eating and celebrating life for no reason at all more than just being happy to be alive and being with the people we love. I still try to carry these values from my culture into my everyday life, especially since it is so easy to get sucked into the stress that comes from living in a westernized country. I often stare at this photograph, and others of my childhood in the DR, and I wish I could jump back into that moment and live through it all over again. It makes me wonder how different my life would have been if I stayed in the DR instead of moving to the states, who would I be? Would I still have ended up here?
week 3 class commentary
January 24, 2018 at 10:29 am
The representation of “something”–AKA “A”– for example, in this lecture the “something” was an “apple”, is actually focusing on the concept of this “apple” in all its extremities, and the representation– therefore the “B” is the concentrated abstraction or depiction of one side/phase/aspect of the “apple” concept. What “B” is, depends entirely on the individual experiences of the artist– how they’ve experienced this concept throughout their life, or how they’ve observed this concept being experienced in the environment or society the artist finds themselves in.
Is “A” real or imagined? In my opinion, it is never one or the other, it is somewhere in between. The “real” behind “A” must be traced back to nature or the natural in order for it to be “real” although “reality” is also a manifestation of our mind, and how it controls our perception of the world around us– but that could be another conversation entirely on its own. The imagined aspect of “A” is anything we have created around this “natural” thing. The “nature/natural” component must be rooted from/a product of the planet/land we live on, that which we can never truly control, that which we can only observe and learn, as it is a force of life in and of itself–existent before us and will continue to exist after us.
I believe in order to reach a deep and intricate emotional reaction from an audience as an artist, the artist must be fully comfortable and aware of the fact that nothing around us is “real” as we visually perceive it, the world is not at all how we think it is, yet in order to create something that can reach the audience one must find a balance– to be able to use the tools we have within our perceived “reality” and also be able to reach beyond this perception, reach beyond these limits, go beyond just the things our eyes tell our brain we are seeing, and create a new language to be able to communicate the extremities of our feelings. This is why I believe abstraction is so effective in doing this.
reply to comment: hw 4
January 29, 2018 at 1:11 am
hey mikayla,
I agree with your interest in referring to photographers as translators, I think I would take it a little further and also argue that artists as a whole are translators to society, as we serve to reflect and express our observations of the world. I also agree with your statement about how its a little over dramatic of the article to claim that inscribing oneself into the image-making process is the only way to truly participate in life- while I believe that it is merely impossible for anyone who lives in a city to avoid being accidentally included in someone else’s photo or video, I don’t think it is crucial to truly immerse oneself into this process. I would actually argue that those who immerse themselves too deeply into the photo-taking process ironically miss out on some aspects of life that truly let you feel the essence of being alive. Of course I believe in the power of images, but I also believe there is a fine balance.
#4 hw: what is an image today?
January 29, 2018 at 9:35 pm
The extended analysis given to still and moving photography in the article was interesting as it shed light on the extensive role this medium plays in all aspects of our society– within arts and outside of it as well.
“The image-making process is always and necessarily the ‘making of meaning’. The process continually melds past, present and future, cognition and emotion.”
This was one of my favorite quotes from the passage as I have and still truly believe this of photography, film, and other mediums among the visual arts. However, as I mentioned in a comment previously, I think there is a fine line we need to recognize as artists in regards to the significance we allow these artistic tools/mediums to have over our lives. It is difficult to create a work that holds significance other than pure aesthetics if we are not in touch with ourselves, our experiences, or our observations of the world that surrounds us. That being said, we need to be able to communicate through these mediums for our own artistic purposes but also be able to step back and truly live our own lives, create new experiences, and explore- as this enables our work to have more depth.
As reflecting upon my own image-sharing sites, most of the images shared were of information (as another way to spread news) or people sharing a [very posed and engineered] glimpse of an outing in their social life. Their existence is within the bubble of social expectations and personal ego-centric gain, but also becomes part of the physical world as it affects the “image” we may create of ourselves therefore influencing possible opportunities, or the people who become part of our life. There were a lot of other images that were people sharing glimpses of their life in a very raw, unfiltered manner, sharing real emotions, random thoughts etc in their “captions” instead or the traditional. In my opinion, this is a more balanced way of using these image-sharing mediums (in this category of one’s “personal” life) and i relate most to this “style” as well as, but this is just my opinion for me personally, and these things vary with everyone depending on one’s personality.
hw #4: what is an image today?
January 29, 2018 at 9:36 pm
The extended analysis given to still and moving photography in the article was interesting as it shed light on the extensive role this medium plays in all aspects of our society– within arts and outside of it as well.
“The image-making process is always and necessarily the ‘making of meaning’. The process continually melds past, present and future, cognition and emotion.”
This was one of my favorite quotes from the passage as I have and still truly believe this of photography, film, and other mediums among the visual arts. However, as I mentioned in a comment previously, I think there is a fine line we need to recognize as artists in regards to the significance we allow these artistic tools/mediums to have over our lives. It is difficult to create a work that holds significance other than pure aesthetics if we are not in touch with ourselves, our experiences, or our observations of the world that surrounds us. That being said, we need to be able to communicate through these mediums for our own artistic purposes but also be able to step back and truly live our own lives, create new experiences, and explore- as this enables our work to have more depth.
As reflecting upon my own image-sharing sites, most of the images shared were of information (as another way to spread news) or people sharing a [very posed and engineered] glimpse of an outing in their social life. Their existence is within the bubble of social expectations and personal ego-centric gain, but also becomes part of the physical world as it affects the “image” we may create of ourselves therefore influencing possible opportunities, or the people who become part of our life. There were a lot of other images that were people sharing glimpses of their life in a very raw, unfiltered manner, sharing real emotions, random thoughts etc in their “captions” instead or the traditional. In my opinion, this is a more balanced way of using these image-sharing mediums (in this category of one’s “personal” life) and i relate most to this “style” as well as, but this is just my opinion for me personally, and these things vary with everyone depending on one’s personality.
reply to kangkang: hw #5
February 7, 2018 at 10:32 am
I love the movement that the transparency effect in the photo incites- I see much of what I feel from this song here, warmth, coldness, nostalgia, a memory… very well done
charcoal drawing on burnt paper. this photo isn’t very good but its the best I could do at the time, the image is slightly on hold as I began to burn the edges but had some technical difficulties with my lighter so did not finish that portion.
I chose charcoal for this because I find it to be an earthy medium, delicate but bold as it’s grainy, fluid, but strong in its mark as well- all feelings that are invoked by the tones in this song. I drew a flower being born, blooming, but as soon as it blooms it begins to die… this is a metaphor I can associate with many aspects of relationships within oneself and others, platonic or not, and also something I see being applied to life overall- as we strive to reach “happiness” or a state of optimum pleasure in our lives, but the concept of being “happy” is not true, as once we think we finally reached “that”, it could slip away so easily, or our lives begin to come to an end. “happiness” (for lack of a better word) can be found in all moments (small or big) of life and our determination to get a hold of it sort of defeats the purpose of “that” (happiness, optimum pleasure, peace etc.) I think this is the nature of being human because even if one is aware of this {dilemma} one can easily fall back into this state of mind- and that’s comical for me in a sad sense, its nostalgic, it’s so very human.
I was not able to upload mine to hive either, so I uploaded it on a google doc and provided the link below.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z8XsbFfMQgRaPpm5wA7QHpHBoRXbqPKpwt7lgl7dOrY/edit?usp=sharing
If I had to choose one image to depict what my childhood was like, it would be this one. That is me dancing with the little boy in the image, and to the right of me is my dad, and all around me are cousins, uncles and family friends; it takes place in Dominican Republic in my grandma’s house. Although I was born in Atlanta, GA, I grew up most of my childhood in the DR because my dad is Dominican. Therefore, the DR is home to me, and although I am not a big believer in borders or nationalities, if I had to put it into those terms, I would consider myself more Dominican than American because it was the first culture I lived in, and most of the happiest memories of my childhood, and my life were there. Dominican culture as an entirety is very happy, and exuberant– it’s seen through its people, the music, the food, the sports, the art– everything. And that, all of that, is captured in this photograph, where we were dancing and eating and celebrating life for no reason at all more than just being happy to be alive and being with the people we love. I still try to carry these values from my culture into my everyday life, especially since it is so easy to get sucked into the stress that comes from living in a westernized country. I often stare at this photograph, and others of my childhood in the DR, and I wish I could jump back into that moment and live through it all over again. It makes me wonder how different my life would have been if I stayed in the DR instead of moving to the states, who would I be? Would I still have ended up here?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gExXKgAnXRaQSlU2Ud6qUZxEnaJe394R8XxnsRlaJfE/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jtiPZj9Xg_yCycmTVGjnkH3z3nnX6IlNG2iBoEyE7Ss/edit?usp=sharing
The representation of “something”–AKA “A”– for example, in this lecture the “something” was an “apple”, is actually focusing on the concept of this “apple” in all its extremities, and the representation– therefore the “B” is the concentrated abstraction or depiction of one side/phase/aspect of the “apple” concept. What “B” is, depends entirely on the individual experiences of the artist– how they’ve experienced this concept throughout their life, or how they’ve observed this concept being experienced in the environment or society the artist finds themselves in.
Is “A” real or imagined? In my opinion, it is never one or the other, it is somewhere in between. The “real” behind “A” must be traced back to nature or the natural in order for it to be “real” although “reality” is also a manifestation of our mind, and how it controls our perception of the world around us– but that could be another conversation entirely on its own. The imagined aspect of “A” is anything we have created around this “natural” thing. The “nature/natural” component must be rooted from/a product of the planet/land we live on, that which we can never truly control, that which we can only observe and learn, as it is a force of life in and of itself–existent before us and will continue to exist after us.
I believe in order to reach a deep and intricate emotional reaction from an audience as an artist, the artist must be fully comfortable and aware of the fact that nothing around us is “real” as we visually perceive it, the world is not at all how we think it is, yet in order to create something that can reach the audience one must find a balance– to be able to use the tools we have within our perceived “reality” and also be able to reach beyond this perception, reach beyond these limits, go beyond just the things our eyes tell our brain we are seeing, and create a new language to be able to communicate the extremities of our feelings. This is why I believe abstraction is so effective in doing this.
hey mikayla,
I agree with your interest in referring to photographers as translators, I think I would take it a little further and also argue that artists as a whole are translators to society, as we serve to reflect and express our observations of the world. I also agree with your statement about how its a little over dramatic of the article to claim that inscribing oneself into the image-making process is the only way to truly participate in life- while I believe that it is merely impossible for anyone who lives in a city to avoid being accidentally included in someone else’s photo or video, I don’t think it is crucial to truly immerse oneself into this process. I would actually argue that those who immerse themselves too deeply into the photo-taking process ironically miss out on some aspects of life that truly let you feel the essence of being alive. Of course I believe in the power of images, but I also believe there is a fine balance.
The extended analysis given to still and moving photography in the article was interesting as it shed light on the extensive role this medium plays in all aspects of our society– within arts and outside of it as well.
“The image-making process is always and necessarily the ‘making of meaning’. The process continually melds past, present and future, cognition and emotion.”
This was one of my favorite quotes from the passage as I have and still truly believe this of photography, film, and other mediums among the visual arts. However, as I mentioned in a comment previously, I think there is a fine line we need to recognize as artists in regards to the significance we allow these artistic tools/mediums to have over our lives. It is difficult to create a work that holds significance other than pure aesthetics if we are not in touch with ourselves, our experiences, or our observations of the world that surrounds us. That being said, we need to be able to communicate through these mediums for our own artistic purposes but also be able to step back and truly live our own lives, create new experiences, and explore- as this enables our work to have more depth.
As reflecting upon my own image-sharing sites, most of the images shared were of information (as another way to spread news) or people sharing a [very posed and engineered] glimpse of an outing in their social life. Their existence is within the bubble of social expectations and personal ego-centric gain, but also becomes part of the physical world as it affects the “image” we may create of ourselves therefore influencing possible opportunities, or the people who become part of our life. There were a lot of other images that were people sharing glimpses of their life in a very raw, unfiltered manner, sharing real emotions, random thoughts etc in their “captions” instead or the traditional. In my opinion, this is a more balanced way of using these image-sharing mediums (in this category of one’s “personal” life) and i relate most to this “style” as well as, but this is just my opinion for me personally, and these things vary with everyone depending on one’s personality.
The extended analysis given to still and moving photography in the article was interesting as it shed light on the extensive role this medium plays in all aspects of our society– within arts and outside of it as well.
“The image-making process is always and necessarily the ‘making of meaning’. The process continually melds past, present and future, cognition and emotion.”
This was one of my favorite quotes from the passage as I have and still truly believe this of photography, film, and other mediums among the visual arts. However, as I mentioned in a comment previously, I think there is a fine line we need to recognize as artists in regards to the significance we allow these artistic tools/mediums to have over our lives. It is difficult to create a work that holds significance other than pure aesthetics if we are not in touch with ourselves, our experiences, or our observations of the world that surrounds us. That being said, we need to be able to communicate through these mediums for our own artistic purposes but also be able to step back and truly live our own lives, create new experiences, and explore- as this enables our work to have more depth.
As reflecting upon my own image-sharing sites, most of the images shared were of information (as another way to spread news) or people sharing a [very posed and engineered] glimpse of an outing in their social life. Their existence is within the bubble of social expectations and personal ego-centric gain, but also becomes part of the physical world as it affects the “image” we may create of ourselves therefore influencing possible opportunities, or the people who become part of our life. There were a lot of other images that were people sharing glimpses of their life in a very raw, unfiltered manner, sharing real emotions, random thoughts etc in their “captions” instead or the traditional. In my opinion, this is a more balanced way of using these image-sharing mediums (in this category of one’s “personal” life) and i relate most to this “style” as well as, but this is just my opinion for me personally, and these things vary with everyone depending on one’s personality.
I love the movement that the transparency effect in the photo incites- I see much of what I feel from this song here, warmth, coldness, nostalgia, a memory… very well done
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rzzo1Kh6JCjhmaZ6QA4HT3oQ3LCBFRnibgRP_aI6IV8/edit?usp=sharing
charcoal drawing on burnt paper. this photo isn’t very good but its the best I could do at the time, the image is slightly on hold as I began to burn the edges but had some technical difficulties with my lighter so did not finish that portion.
I chose charcoal for this because I find it to be an earthy medium, delicate but bold as it’s grainy, fluid, but strong in its mark as well- all feelings that are invoked by the tones in this song. I drew a flower being born, blooming, but as soon as it blooms it begins to die… this is a metaphor I can associate with many aspects of relationships within oneself and others, platonic or not, and also something I see being applied to life overall- as we strive to reach “happiness” or a state of optimum pleasure in our lives, but the concept of being “happy” is not true, as once we think we finally reached “that”, it could slip away so easily, or our lives begin to come to an end. “happiness” (for lack of a better word) can be found in all moments (small or big) of life and our determination to get a hold of it sort of defeats the purpose of “that” (happiness, optimum pleasure, peace etc.) I think this is the nature of being human because even if one is aware of this {dilemma} one can easily fall back into this state of mind- and that’s comical for me in a sad sense, its nostalgic, it’s so very human.
http://newhive.com/stephaniebueno/has-anyone-seen-my-phone