Tarot in YouTube Comedy Week

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=htGiwfph-z8&feature=inp-em-cw3-15&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhtGiwfph-z8%26feature%3Dinp-em-cw3-15

Natural History of the Senses Post Script

Diane Ackerman's treatment of the subject of the language (and lack thereof) that surrounds "A Natural History of the Senses" was enjoyable to read. I particularly appreciated how she picked out how we must rely on similies to ever describe smell. She gives the example "In The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests, novelist Paul West writes that “blood smells like dust.” An arresting metaphor, one that relies on indirection, as metaphors of smell almost always do." (8) She even describes one scent through the imagery of taste, "I can taste something thick and amber, like butterscotch, on the back of my tongue. It has a thin vinyl covering to it and a fizzy muskiness seems to be coming up all around it in a halo. It smells deeply luscious." (53) Wine connoisseurs, like my parents, use an established language amongst their community, saying that a wine tastes "oaky" or "heavy" or "strong", language that could just as easily be used to describe a tree or a burly man. Oftentimes to understand how important vision is, someone might ask you to describe what a color looks like. We can either find examples of things that are also that color, blue sky, green grass, red apple, or we can use the scientific wavelengths, but neither have gotten a blind person any closer to understanding the color. Describing a musical to a truly deaf person would be just as difficult, though many in the deaf community particularly enjoy music as they feel rather than hear the vibrations. To someone paralyzed or numb, what does soft skin or a scratchy beard feel like if you have nothing to compare it to? Knowing that our understanding of the world around us falls apart without an established memory to create an analogy, the questions it raises are numerous. Does racism stem from our evolutionary past of distinguishing light=good, nutrition, dark=unknown? Perhaps that is why the vampire culture is so fascinating to us, particularly now in an age after banning segregation (though racism pervades), because vampires up-end our traditional dichotomy of light and dark, (they sleep during the day and their flesh is burned by sunlight). There was so much more fascinating material to Ackerman's book (her obsession with relating the senses back to sex, though mainly excluding anything other than heteronormative sexual acts). I am really fascinated by the treatment of relating the senses to the brain waves as we still grasp to understand its relationship. An ongoing tool I have been using is the Mindflex Hack which captures data from brainwaves using an electroencephalography sensor. While my projects so far have dealt with meditation and chakras, I would be interested to conduct more research on brainwaves and the senses by introducing new smells, or new textures or something in that vein.

Prezi

As I mentioned in my email, my first attempt at this experiment perhaps relied too heavily on the Tarot reading; I was forcing the square pegs in the round hole and, as you could have guessed, no aura emerged. I went back to my notes from last class and recalled this visual I got of a new search interface; instead of searching based on tags provided by users uploading the content, wouldn't it be cool if the metadata saved from each image captured via ubiquitous technologies (ie. Smartphones) could identify the location at which you took the image? Then, via an uploading photograph sharing site like Flickr, you could identify other photographs taken by other people in the near vicinity. This could have positive or negative effects on Tourism, but as Ulmer stated, we want to share with people what they need to know about Alachua County. It's one thing to read about Gainesville, (literacy, institution of school, True/False), and quite another to see the images (electracy, institution of internet, Pleasure, Pain).

As I was re-collecting for my second attempt, taking one step back from the heavy reliance on the Tarot, I finally noticed what so many of my images had in common: visual texts or signs. Oftentimes, the signs were left as messages for people of the future to read. This is a way our consciousness can time travel: I scribble a note on a bathroom wall, or an old wooden classroom desk, or I create a meme to be sent out through the institution of the internet, and someone I will never meet will read what I left behind. "Warning," "No Trespassing," "You poisoned Xanadu, you ass!" "Life is a box and we are all going to die," "Keep calm and call Batman," and "Life is a mystery worth the terror and uncertainty." Some of the messages refer to our embodied pleasure/pain scale, but others tap into our untouchable "feeling" of limit. I did not add any captions to the images because the literacy relics ie. warning signs, graffitied desk and graffitied bus, have been subsumed into the imagery in my electrate experiment. The only bits of text are nods to the books we read throughout the semester in the Related Searches field and final words from my tutor William Blake on embodiment, pleasure and vices. I set the tone with the background music, the score to Psycho (my film to be represented). Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome.

http://prezi.com/qulmf2mzghtj/konsult-machine/

Prezi Trial 1

http://prezi.com/lqq38nmazbo1/pine-tar/

Tarot Reading from Tutor

My newest Tarot Reading William Blake Tarot reading for me
As Dhanashree said, super uncanny how familiar and appropriate it seemed.

Blind Spot: Scotoma

As I mentioned in my email to the class, I did a project sophomore year on the existence of blind spots where the optic nerve exits the retina. The reason we don't see our huge blind spots is because of our binocular vision. I've always enjoyed optical illusions and tricks and I think this one is particularly cool. Ackerman's interesting look into the senses and especially exploring how our embodiment is flawed, (synesthesia, anosmia, etc.) is particularly apt to this experiment. As Reynolds points out of Smithson's work on p. 160,  “All of these visual convergences depend on memory to fill in these perceptual gaps or blind spots, a holding in the mind of the image of an object as it appeared from a previous position, either in the air or on the ground, while experiencing the same object from a new or different position.” (160) Binocular vision is especially interesting in our study of ubimage, where cameras act as our singular vision tools, in ways both more advanced and more primitive than our own eyes. We often can take a picture and be disappointed that it cannot capture everything that our eyes can see. But a camera has no blind spot. It will reveal everything. Reynolds goes on to say, "Smithson was fond of creating ‘enantiomorphic situations’ to reveal the blind spots embedded within a number of descriptive models of perception...[which] disrupt facile relationships between thought and perception, and ... open up gaps in or reveal limitations to mental and perceptual experiences of time and space.” (196). Blind spot is such a strong metaphor that we can adapt for our purposes because being or becoming blind is terrifying for someone with sight. After all, according to Ackerman, "Seventy percent of the body's sense receptors cluster in the eyes."


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

Abandoned houses, polluted streams, the atoxiclypse is coming

These are more photos taken with my phone on my walk to class. I think their mood is evocative of the atoxiclypse. I believe these will fit in well with the aura of the Tarot as Tarot cards are not meant to tell the future but to show possibilities and encourage action.

Connecting to Spiritual Aspects in 3 Easy Steps

If you would like a free online reading of your tarot, please visit http://www.trustedtarot.com/free-reading/
This online interface allows you to pick 10 cards and it reveals different aspects about you.

Apparently I am Justice.
The Querant (you)
This card reveals your negative feelings, and provides additional information about how you feel in your present environment.
Justice is a very good card to find in your spread if you have acted with kindness and fairness towards other and, especially, if you have been a victim. It is a significant indicator of a positive resolution, although how and what sort will depend on your own experiences. If you have been unfair, abusive, or otherwise shady and immoral in your dealings, though, pay heed. For the unjust, this card is, at best, a dire warning to change your ways before retribution falls upon you, and, at worst, a simple statement that it is already too late. In neutral cases, it may simply be telling you to seek out balance in your life. In this position, the card reveals: You may be too inclined to judge others by appearance. Learn to look beneath.

Things We Learned From New Jersey and Elsewhere

This a .mov of a combination of Scott's and my PowerPoint Presentations.

Scott, Shannon, and I found a lot of helpful instructions from Ann Reynolds' "Robert Smithson: From New Jersey and Elsewhere" in the form of the Analogy part of the CATTt. The overarching theme was "Subvert expectations by changing perception of reality." What is great about Reynolds' book on Robert Smithson is that rather than covering his biggest works, it covers the archives which have quite a bit of his process documented. Smithson took copious notes, was constantly churning ideas for art projects that were never realized, and marked up everything he could get his hands on: magazines, travel pamphlets, etc. Some notes I would like to share:

“Cubism’s ultimate goal is the same: ‘to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas.’” (34) As Analogy, how can we use Cubism’s tactics to reveal ambiguity of danger of Cabot Koppers? I guess the idea of ubiquitous imaging where the image looks like it’s straight from a phone camera, unaltered in any way, might enforce the reading of the photograph. Maybe we need to include GPS/Time Stamp Information of our Photographs. Focal Length, Exposure Time, F number all saved data. Perhaps we need to find a way to invent way for people to locate their experiences. You are 1.2 miles from where this photograph was taken, etc. Relate to EPS as well. Mood input when taking image. Existential Positioning System, all must be in hindsight. Looking back at this image that you took, how do you perceive you were existing at that time?

“According to [Clement] Greenberg, the illusionistic depiction of space, figures, or narratives was one of the primary concerns of pre-modern artists, whereas modernist artists, following cubism’s lead, rejected illusionism for varying degrees of abstraction or ‘anti-illusionism.’” (37). Discusses audiences’ discomfort with modern art, because it requires a new visual language that we don’t understand. Analogy- make sure the viewer is not uncomfortable unless it’s intentional. Subject matter should make people uncomfortable, but not shut down and ignore it. We want it to leave a long-lasting impression and perhaps a sense of creating change.

  “Greenberg implies that kitsch offers effortless ‘unreflective enjoyment’ and that mass spectators seek such passive relaxation, the opposite of work, or more specifically in this case, ‘cultural work’ at the end of a long work day or work week.” (38) Analogy- we must consider “that mass spectators seek such passive relaxation”. How do artists look at leisure, travel, etc as antithetical to work, or is art something you should also have to work at? I think we need to find some way to make people care about CK Site. Thinking about I _______ Local Campaign. How can we do a I Care Local. Simplistic, poster like, requires community involvement. http://www.facebook.com/localiam

“Perception is shaped by education and by the establishment and elaboration of expectations, yet the assumed limits of perception itself set the parameters of these expectations and determine everything that follows. And the conventions used to define these limits are, at times, seen as coterminous with perception itself.” (42). We have to remember our local Gainesville Audience has a vast array of education levels. What cultures are ubiquitous? Internet, Cell Phone pictures, and Television. We must follow the tropes standardized in order to achieve a more universal perception. 


http://division-vision.blogspot.com/ - Current UF undergraduate work

http://www.alachuacounty.us/Depts/EPD/Pollution/Pages/CabotKoppersSuperfund.aspx  -Superfund Location

“I decided to use the Pine Barrens site as a piece of paper and draw a crystalline structure over the landmass rather than on a 20 x 30 sheet of paper. In this way I was applying my conceptual thinking directly to the disruption of the site over an area of several miles. So you might say that my non-site was a three dimensional map of the site.” (157) How can Smithson’s practice influence ours? We could take aerial map and write or draw on it through technology.

 

Colonialism, Spices, and 4chan

As I was taking notes in class, a lot of exercises popped into my head so I typed them into my notes and will try to do as many as possible. First and foremost, we discussed that the internet is the institution of electracy, as the school was for literacy and the church was for orality. Religion was the group that made decisions in the first period, science for the second, and I believe that the internet group decision makers is going to be some kind of 4chan or Reddit community. How can we appeal to the electrate generation? Memes. Why? Merriam Webster Dictionary defines meme as "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." We need to reach the community. We need to infotain them. If electracy is all about pleasure/pain, why should the electrate generation care about what's right or wrong (polluting is wrong and we're responsible for it), or what's true or false (the City of Gainesville water will be poisoned in a matter of years and make the area unlivable due to the Cabot Koppers Superfund site). We're not here to school people or preach to people. We have to reach them through the institution of the internet and use infotainment. A humorous meme could provide the pleasure and the public responsibility epiphany if done properly. Moreover, what do we want to do about it? Why do we want people to know about Cabot Koppers site? Do we want them to donate to the well-being project? Perhaps we need to organize a civics flashmob and initiate the invitation online.

Pine Tar Poison

When I went home for spring break my dad got us tickets to see life-size re-creations of the pinta and the Nina. The boats go on tour and are mostly run by volunteers. The volunteers educate the visitors who come on board of how the boats were reconstructed in South America and give the history of the original boats. When you're on board with about fifty others and they tell you the hundreds of people that were actually on board the ship in historic times, you get a really good sense of how cramped and how little personal space was afforded to any of them. Most interesting was this little treasure on the second boat:

Part One Project

My final image results in three stages: the whimsical images I took, the images of books that I took, and the images of nature that I took. These are three genres of subjects that I am drawn to photograph and all represent different times of my life in Gainesville.

Lights

Like Jake, I also am fascinated by capturing images of lights. One of my tours throughout campus at night produced these haunting/inviting images. Can you spot where on campus these are?

Multiplicity of Smells

I was interested in what Ulmer said in our last meeting that orality is aural, literacy is visual, and electracy is haptic. As I was going back to my ArKive of Smells in Gainesville, I stumbled across the book I made for that class. I took it upon myself for my project to snap a picture as soon as I smelled something new. My olfactory bulbs fatigued throughout the day, so the images were frontloaded from the day where I smelled something new every minute and by the end, once every few hours. As I go back and read my short descriptions next to the photos, much like Wenders' approach, I can recall some of the smells very clearly, (ones that I encountered not just on that day but for two years), and ones that I cannot "smicture" (that is to say picture the smell, recall it, remember it). 

www.esneeden.com/photobooksmellsfinale.pdf

Krispy Kreme

In order to photo local, I had to go back and remember what drew me in the first place: I came to Gainesville to be a photography major and work with Jerry Uelsmann. He had retired even before I got here in 2008 but I still thought I loved Black and White Photography. My graduate instructor told me to go out into Gainesville and really notice what affected me. The Hot Now Sign of course. Krispy Kreme was a reminder of family road trips to North Carolina (we have no Krispy Kreme in SW Florida). The smell, the touch, the taste of Hot Now Krispy Kreme doughnuts is part of my Proustian madeline. I suppose this might seem sad or silly, but the Krispy Kreme doughnut for me is a time machine: it takes me back to simpler times when I didn't pay bills or worry about driving. I was content to be in the backseat and consume. Krispy Kreme itself is a time machine; not much has changed since the company started decades ago. The images above that I took in 2009 could just as easily be from much longer ago.

Visit to Michael's Arts and Crafts Store

These are the results of l'objet trouvé becoming commercialized and commodified and mass produced. The aura of what makes the found object special is ruined by the proliferation of identical factory made replicas.

Baldwin Library Visit

Smile

Scary Showers

 

As I was finishing my last blog post, I inadvertently unearthed another horrible memory that I often repress. Why must terrible things happen in the shower? (A close friend of mine has had several scary epileptic seizures from hot showers which have knocked her unconscious and required hospitalization.) One time when I was a pre-teen, about 11 or 12, my family and my brother's friend went on a short trip to a hotel nearby for my dad's work. Most of the details are foggy; I recall my brother's friend vomiting in the car ride from being car sick, and I remember us getting to the hotel. I don't remember what it looked like, what it smelled like, anything. All that I remember is that the next morning I went to take a shower and the hotel lighting and the hot shower affected me so much that as I stumbled out of the shower, my eyes could not focus, and then suddenly I couldn't see. I couldn't see anything and I knew my eyes were open and I started shouting for help and my mom came and I yelled that I was blind and she started screaming for my dad in a panic. It was incredibly terrifying to have known exactly what it was like to see and then believe that in a flash I would be blind forever. I remembered that it wasn't black as I would have expected being blind to be like, but rather a pinkish grey of nothingness. As my parents started making plans to go to the nearest hospital and they led me out of the bathroom, my vision came to. I could not have been more relieved. Perhaps that is subconsciously why I am so drawn to visual arts. Because I know that I am privileged to still have my sight and to still be able to experience the miracle of light and color. This seems like an incredible revelation to me. I hope I can use this newly reacquired positioning of my life to tell a compelling narrative and create an enticing Allegory of Prudence.

What Are You Afraid Of?

What started off as an innocent trip to the library to try and simultaneously keep up with French class, study for the GRE Subject Test in Literature, and read Derrida's Psyche: Inventions de l'autre became a terrifying view into the abyss. The pictures I took reflect me. As I stood in the section specifically looking for B2430 .D483 P781 1998, I had this haunting feelings as I looked around. There were so so many books on or by Derrida that I could never hope to read them all. Good God! Deleuze was above him. Horrified, transfixed I moved to my right and who was there to taunt me but Foucault! Mon Dieu! Not to mention Lacan staring there pointing out my holes, my inadequacies. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre scoffed at me. All I knew was their names! Their names! Like a parrot, I felt hopelessly inadequate only able to recognize and repeat their names yet here was all this information that I could take, but I couldn't. I can't just call the section my own and forbid anyone from taking those rows of shelves. It was like a new Moment, quite like the one I had already identified as my moment from High School with my first C in Calculus. It was a feeling of shame and embarrassment and hopelessness, yet this seemed much worse. Certainly I could give up Math, and move onto something I enjoyed. But here is a part of English, something I should know. I tore myself away with only Derrida, Barthes, my Norton Anthology, and Robert Wick's Modern French Philosophy, which already completely filled out my backpack and took to the elevator. So wrapped up in the French, when I got on the elevator, I asked to go to floor one, the floor above the one I was on, assuming that there was a ground level as there is in France. The girl just stared at me and said, you were just on level 1. I said excuse me I'm sorry level 2. Why did there have to be so many people in that damn elevator? As we got to floor 2 and they were trying to get up to floor 6 I murmured my apologies with my backpack and rushed to the self-checkout, terrified to have to talk to any librarians: I felt like I was dropping my IQ every second, I didn't want witnesses. As I left the library, I calmed down, felt more accomplished and got over it. But I expect this Moment to be one of my recurring living nightmares, the same overwhelming feeling as the sublime or claustrophobia or becoming deaf.