Blog 7

In the article “Art Which Can’t Be Art”, written by Allan Kaprow, the writer wonders if things in daily life consider as art, such as brushing teeth. I think this really depend on the person doing it. As Kaprow said, ordinary life performed as art/not art can change the everyday with metaphoric power, if you treat your ordinary life as an art, your life might seems totally different from what you had view before. But if you don’t treat ordinary life as an art, it will just be your daily life, no more beauty and surprise.

The only thing I concern about is when we treat everything in our ordinary life as an art, we might try to think hard to make it better, and this may bring us stressful. In my opinion, I think we don’t need to think too hard on it because sometimes art requires inspiration. No matter how hard we try to think, if there are no ideas, we couldn’t do anything to help. The only think we could do is observed, listen and feel them. These are the only way to help doing better.

The article “The Desert” written by Lawrence Weschler describes the beauty of nature. In the article, Weschler sometimes went to the desert and found it was so amazing. Although he thinks the view is so beautiful, but he never try to capture the view with his camera, paint it on a piece of paper or even invite someone to take a look at this. He thinks that those methods don’t show the real beauty of nature at the moment of time. And I think this is true because no one can have the exact same feeling and the nature is changing every moment. The feeling at this moment might be so different to the feeling next moment. So I think the best way to experience the beauty of nature is to feel what you feel in this moment.

It may sounds strange why not taking a picture when we saw something we like or found interesting, but the answer is picture only show the view of the situation. There is no emotion included in it. But if we keep the picture in our mind, we could always remember what we feel, also the environment around. And I think this is much more better than only taking a picture of it.


In the article “Geroge Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”, written by Joel Lovell, it talks about a plane accident George Saunders had experienced and he was almost dead. But in the next few days after the accident, he had experience the most beautiful world. It is because he almost lost his life in the accident, he had learned to take life as a treasure. This had made him view the world in a totally different way. Even in the book he wrote afterwards he use a similar topic as his accident, person dying and lives. I believed he was trying to let more people know the importance of taking everything as a treasure.

I think the writer had made a very good point on his topic. Some people might think everything they have or experience is a must and they deserve them. But actually they are not. Things would not belong to you forever. Nowadays, we can always read news saying teenagers taking drugs, smoking and lose their life. This is a very good example to show that we have to take everything seriously, think before you do it.

Blog 6 Cardiff and Miller

From the article “Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller and the Power of Sound”, written by John Wray, we know that some artists had been working so hard on one piece of art work and some people like it very much while there were still some people might still not be able to accept it. In the article, Cardiff and Bures worked so hard on “The Forty-Part Motet” and some people think it was so great and had listened to the entirety more than 30 times a day. But some people, for example their co-workers, can’t take the piece because they think it’s too much.

This article shows that artworks have their own type of audience. People who like flowers may found a picture of garden beautiful but others might not. Good or bad of the art is depend on the point of view of the one who is reading or listening to it. If the one who is looking at the art already had a negative view on the theme the art was showing, it will be extremely hard for him or her to like the art. So I think if we had create an artwork which people does not like it, the reason may not be your artwork is bad but just your audience couldn’t understand how beautiful it was.

MP2-Way to the Classroom

When I came to the campus in the morning, I used to take the shuttle. It was freezing outside and everywhere is wet because of the snow. On the first day of this class, I checked the schedule of the class, get out of my apartment and take the shuttle to the campus. When I got off the shuttle, I walked to the Ohio Stadium. But then I was confused, it was because the schedule states the classroom was in the stadium. But I couldn’t find the entrance at all. Fortunately, I asked someone passed by and he directed me to the entrance of the stadium. While I was on the way, I like listening to music and look around. I usually pay attention to the vehicles passed by and what kind of vehicles they were driving. Because of this, I always miss out people walk by. I remember once a friend of mine walked by but I couldn’t notice him until he call my name.

I think words are different to a universal map because map could only show direction or the place you want to go. But it could never show what the person is experiencing. But a map could definitely show a better direction than writing could explain. I think both methods did a great job on explaining my way to the class room in different ways.

MP2

This "map" shows my way to the classroom from my apartment, the red line shows the route and the size of the picture display how much attention I paid on them. Those traffic signs shows how was the traffic on that day. Last but not least, I pick a time tunnel for my background because I want to show that it really takes a long time for me to come to my classroom from where I live...

Blog 5

The article written by Nick Hornby is about an artist created a picture of Jesus made up with small pictures of nipples and what happened after people had seen this picture. From this article, I had learned that art isn’t only about how it is shown but also the way how it is created. Sometimes a beautiful art wasn’t created by good material but materials which make people feel sick or make people think it is disgusting. But we have to understand why the artist had chosen this material. There must be a reason for him/ her to do it. In this article, the artist was planning to watch the reaction of people after they see the picture, that’s the reason she choose pictures of nipples to be the material for her art.

From this article, I had understood artist required not only creative but also need to be brave. Because you have to show people your work and they may like it or dislike it. If you are afraid people don’t like your creation, and you keep your work with you, your art had lost its meaning. Because if you keep your art with you forever, it won’t be known by other people and it will never been called as an art. So artist have to be brave enough to show their art works and accept how people think the art was.