What are the details of our daily existence? What systems dominate our lives? What meanings can we make of our situation?

This social studies/humanities course will steal from various disciplines - including anthropology, critical theory, cultural studies, economics, futurology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology - to help us make sense of our situation.

A major goal of the course will be to focus your attention on your own life. Together we will investigate major systems that create and rule our lives including capitalism, school, family, popular culture, and the US government. And we will figure out how to interpret our lives, and these systems, and the collision of our lives and these systems.

We will detour into the future and the past but our journey will be primarily contemporary.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

HW 13 - Feed B

Feed B: Feed is a great example of Revelatory Art (for a book about that sort of thing, consider this possibility). What moves does Tobin make that you think are worth considering (even if not using) in your own art about digitalization (which will be final project 2 for this unit, final project 1 will be a long essay)?

Some more specific questions to help you think through the artistic decisions he made - What about his use of allegory? Of a familiar plot? Of tragedy? Of the special and self-aware (becoming yet more self-aware) narrator? Of emphasizing the problems but not offering a solution? Of maintaining chronological order? Does he speak to a mainstream adult audience or is this young adult fiction? Was the book successful, and by what criteria? What about him making this as a linear-text novel rather than as a hyperlinked website or a film?

I'm asking you to consider Feed as a work of art - from within the mind of the maker especially - to help you get prepared to make your own artistic choices on a related topic.

Bert Brecht supposedly said that, "Art is not a Mirror with which to reflect the World. It is a Hammer with which to shape it." Can a mirror be a hammer? What is Feed? Why? Would you want your art to be a hammer or a mirror?

(suggested length 3 paragraphs) - Should be posted by Tuesday, Oct 20 at 8:30am.

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1 comment:

  1. Y.L.October 17, 2009 at 2:30 PM

    Hi Andy,

    Thanks for the comments :). I appreciate that you took the time to write them and hearing your thoughts on it.

    Where we are now is right and wrong, and while not perfect, its what we have. Someday that will change. Arguably there are alot of parellels to the feed culture and ours, I can't deny that after all it was based on America's culture, and alot of teenagers today do use slang and its alot about self acheivement and getting what you want. But I think the extent or level of it is different because in Feed, that's their whole world. In their culture, the schools teach the kids how to use it and they can never "unplug" not even in their dreams. Right now we can still be separate from our technology and there are other things that are important to us, that we care about. There are other things we're learning about and experiencing. So there are other things that comprise our world. It kind of feels like for them, that's what its all about and other things are in the background. That's kind of what I meant but I'm not sure if I'm clear.

    I just read the Rituals for Lover Earth and I liked the article. I agree that when we perform a ritual out of nostalgia like reenacting a historical "ritual" it doesn't feel real to us from where we are now. The rituals we have now do. Its interesting to see how everything is connected in these subtle ways, how we're all creating a new story and the reasons for the rituals are just as important as the rituals because they give the rituals the meaning that they have. Its nice to see that we're try to reconnect with the Earth again instead of just taking from it and that everything is interconnected and not as separate as we try to make it to be.

    Thanks for the article it helped show another perspective and it puts things in an interesting context.

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