Banksy Mischief

quite simply: Our next project

But this definitely isn't just some simple project. This is definitely more. It's soooo cool. It's actually fun and very interesting. 
What's this project exactly? It's Banksy Mischief. We've been working on this for a while now. We were to make street art on our campus.

What is the main attribute of street art? Well, it tells a story or has a message behind it. It's real. Well, that's how all of the street art I've seen seems to be. It makes sense though. If you were to make an illegal work of art in public, it should be for a reason. If you're risking your being, it should be a real reason that actually matters. It should be news that the public needs to know. Banksy is obviously the best and most notable example (you can check out the post here: ). I originally was fueled to be as extreme about things as he was, but this is a school project and there are rules on campus.

Let's look at the artwork:

Jay - z : A real rapper

I think that Jay-Z is pretty legit. I wasn't so sure in the beginning, but I think that now. I guess it's because I read his book. Jay-Z's Decoded is a sort of autobiography about his own life. It addresses some very interesting things concerning the realness of his rapping.

This book was written very well. I mean, it's great. I didn't know that what Jay-Z rapped about was so real. I think that I'll be listening to his lyrics a lot more now. Maybe rap in general. Some of these lyrics are really genuine. 

Science behind Rhythm

DJ spooky

That's a weird name, in my opinion. But still there's something behind it (I'm learning that there's something behind just about everything). Anyways, this spooky guy wrote a book, Rhythm Science, where he explains how art is made "from the flow of patterns in sound and culture". 

This is the notable thing: Technology is the medium behind this book. Technology. It explains how technology is being used create music. And not just music, but a new form of rhythm. He says that technology brings the artists consciousness and the outside world together. I think this is very notable because technology is so prevalent today. Technology's really changing everything. I mean DJ spooky's really just talking about how technology is changing music. I looked at more than just that though. I mean I realized that it's not just the music, but a change in society. This just gives us more evidence to prove the technology is so influential to us. 

It's just that it seems it is the root cause of all the change that out generation sees. Or rather it explains all of the change that our era has been seeing. What else will change?

Living Walls

Street art is too cool

We were to read an article in this very interesting newspaper called Creative Loafing. It's actually very cool. I actually learned about this news source a week ago after using Google's new app called "Field Trip". It's so awesome! You learn about all of the places near you. Creative Loafing tells you about interesting, creative places. The app uses it as a source really. 

Anyways, we read an article in it called Living Walls. It was very interesting (READ ARTICLE HERE (Living Walls Article) ). This event, which occurs annually was hosted in Atlanta last year. I disappointed that I did not know of it when it happened because it really does seem cool. The theme was female artists. All of these female artists came and drew street art all around Atlanta. The purpose was to make the city more beautiful. It added a dynamic, artistic presence that the city could really use. I suppose it made the city look more cultured. I can see how this could have a positive effect on all the citizens there. 

Tika was an artist that really caught my attention. Her art is very different. Look at this:

It's very cool. and soooooo different. Do check out the article and look at the other artists. 

Banksy is awesome

ONTO STREET ART

Probably the most favorite thing we've done in our english class so far. We discussed street art and it's realness. We ended by watching the movie Exit through the Gift Shop. It was very very good. Anyways, it raises a lot of interesting questions.

First of all, you've got to see this guy Banksy. 

What do I believe in?

I believe in us

Well that's the name of the essay that I wrote. This essay was written for a contest that pretty much our entire class was going for. The guidelines are right here: 
http://www.thisibelieve.gatech.edu
I suppose that this essay has a primary purpose of getting someone to explain something interesting and different that they believe in. You have to support your claims with interesting ideas and personal examples from you life. There seems to be a lot of freedom on how you discuss. For example, if you really believe in love, you would have to explain love and how it effects us all. Is it something really important? This is a very interesting essay. And because of it's length requirement, it must be short and to the point. Like I said, my essay is on "I believe in Us". 

Before I discuss it too much, here is the essay as I turned it in below:

A New Definition of Authenticity

YOU CAN SEE PEOPLE IN VIDEOS 

It makes authenticity so much more trivial. Good actors can convince people that they are a certain type of people. I guess that actors are genuine aces at being fake. Shields talks about a new definition of realness and genuineness. He says that there is a difference between wearing masks and being different people. I suppose the masks are a fake you, where you act as you are not. A different you would be something that is genuinely you and not a fake you. 

Actors in this case would wear masks. Someone who is very flexible would be a truly genuine person. We could use an example of a theoretical CIA agent.

This theoretical CIA agent could be the most genuine. He is a serious agent when working, but a family man at home. He is not being fake, but flexible. 

Scripted Authenticity

Why look at the authenticity of something that is scripted?

Well, if we see the project that we just completed, we see that it's bullshit. I mean frankly, is it really authentic? Does it appear authentic? The video itself looks sooooo scripted it's not even funny (well it's a little bit funny). For example, it's obvious that we're reading off of a piece of paper. 

In the original recording that we did before making the video (that was a component of the project), I felt like our script seemed quite authentic. That's why there were so many stutters and pauses. The revised script was a result of the errors from the extremely authentic, original audio recording. I think that after that point, the only way to be authentic would be to be a really good actor, able to stutter and pause appearing authentic. It's hard to be so real. I suppose that's why we leave it up to the pros.They know how to be fake as hell. Props.

Videography and Data

You can see people in videos 

It makes authenticity so much more trivial. Good actors can convince people that they are a certain type of people. I guess that real talk project helped us realize that struggles of making things authentic. I know our's isn't. At all.

Anyways, we took this script and video recorded it, in essence finishing our real talk project. 

I don't really know what to think of this. Well honestly, I do. Bleh.
My work is usually better then this but it's ok. This is teamwork. 

Authenticity defined

We don't know what it means

But this guy tried to explain it. Charles Guignon wrote a book called On Being Authentic. This book is really about why authenticity is what it is. Why is it the ultimate goal in the lives of so many people? Is it about finding one's self, or something greater? Heck, I don't know.

But this guy seems to make me think. He references many different people, like Socrates and Augustine, and discusses. I suppose he doesn't really make solid claims, but it's something. After going deeper into it, he talks about how authenticity is more for us. We are social creatures and we must accept that. 

"...being authentic is not about what is owed to me but how I depend on others."

Bullshit

Bah, Humbug. We curse so much in class.

We had to read this paper called "On Bullshit", by Harry Frankfurt. This guy says that there is "so much bullshit" in the world nowadays. I definitely agree... 

A lot of things are bullshit. I mean, in school and even college so many kids clearly bullshit their way through many situations. I'd say it's more in English Class because it's hard to bullshit math and engineering. But then again, we can't be sure wether it is bullshit or not... I mean, is this bullshit? 

Anyways, this guy also says that humbug and bullshit are very similar in meaning. 

It's not that I've heard the word a lot but I guess he's right. A lot of bad things happened to Scrooge, and when bad things happen to us we think of it as bullshit. 

I feel like this post is a little bit of bullshit. Frankfurt is right: Bullshit is everywhere.

This Game of 'Real Talk'...

We've started our project next project... 

The basis behind this project is to make a script of some sort of conversation and make it sound authentic. It's kind of funny because it's fake. But I mean I guess it does help make us understand the whole concept of realness. In phase one, we were just to do a voice recording. We've done this part (my partner and I) and now we're about to get to the next couple of phases. 

Here's an excerpt: 

W: I guess, but- it- is- also- so convenient.
Q: But it’s crippling us in the long run. Technology gives us too many opportunities, and we don’t know what to do with them. We try to do all- we can’t- we tried to do everything, but we can’t finish one thing as good as if we ha- didn’t have the distractions

W: I suppose. Ha, It’s obvious when we do homework- Facebook is a hell of a distraction. Nowadays people block Facebook when studying.

Q: Th- I mean, that’s a good start, but really, it’s not enough really. It seems that  every- everyone has self-inflicted ADD now.

In essence, this is how it happened... We made a script, recorded and then added a lot of edits to make an accurate transcription.  The conversation is fake, but the transcription is real... Kind of confusing, but it makes sense.

Seriously though, this next phase will be fun. It's a video project.

Rhetoric Behind Fun

Video Games are good

This article that I've just read is actually very very good! I really like it a lot. Ian Bogost (A GEORGIA TECH KID) wrote this article called The Rhetoric of Video Games. This guy actually analyzes many video games. He comes up with the conclusion that we learn a lot from vide games. One example that I really liked was the one about the games Bully. Like he says, critics think that the games is a "celebration of schoolyard harassment", when there is actually much more to it. This shows the insanely true and ever-present social politics of high school. It's really a problem I suppose. It's like South Park (and Shakespeare I suppose) the way it's so satirical. 

These negativities are there and true. It shows that there is more to this video game. Obviously there are better examples where you actually learn things that can help you. In all of the SimCity games, you control a city. But you really learn how to manage money and manage something of a large business. The goal of the game is to make profit and expand, just as any business would. There's more to the video game. There's more to all of these video games. 

A Change in TV Shows

We compared tv shows in class

The two shows in question were Friday Night Lights and Glee. I think everyone knows the show Glee. It's become a cultural and social norm to discuss it and love it, really. But still, there are plenty of people that don't like it. I for one, don't really care for it. Friday Night Lights on the other hand is a very serious high school drama show that stopped airing a while back. Nobody really knows why, because people did watch it. 

Glee is happy. FNL is drama. Glee is superficial (like society nowadays truthfully). FNL is so real. Glee won. I suppose because of the happiness. The question was raised of which show I would rather watch. Honestly, neither. I'm okay with my South Park and Spongebob. 

Is Convincing Deception?

does it have to be deception?

I mean, really, no one can tell if people are genuine. Or companies... Or anything really. I mean, I was at this company presentation because I wanted to learn about the company. Essentially, they were making the presentation to try and convince students to apply for a job there. 

They started the presentation very colorfully, showing employees having a lot of fun. And then of course they moved onto some business stuff. 

I mean, were they being honest about the fun? Is it really fun to work there? I think so. But it did seem pretty intense. They have company parties and something like a field day. But really, because they are trying to make us like them we can't be sure. 

It's not a lie. It's not deception.

It's just selectively showing positives. It's not fake though. It is real. It's just that we see a different part of it. That's just like the sentence that I said earlier about me going to the presentation to learn. I was interested but I also was there for free food. I didn't lie though.

What do we think of Realness?

we have yet to touch a lot on realness

But still, we made a presentation about what we think about realness. It's so interesting to me that we've already got an assignment like this. I suppose that our thoughts on realness are real. It's not that realness has any concrete definition. Realness already is something that society has defined, and because we are society, we will always define it. 

Anyways, here's a link to our presentation. It's very interesting (at least I thought so). 

http://prezi.com/wvs0vvbcsk_i/what-is-real/?kw=view-wvs0vvbcsk_i&rc=ref-17156225

It's better presented then just seen, because we all did a lot of explaining. But I still hope that this will be enough to get the points across that we are trying to show. 

The Medium is the Message

WE READ AN INTERESTING EXCERPT FOR CLASS

Marshall McLuhan wrote a very interesting work about how the medium that a work is written in substantially effects how it is perceived. This really makes sense to me, because I, right in front of me see how different mediums are good for different things. Honestly, the most interesting thing about McLuhan's work was that it was written a long time ago. Mediums now are a little different, especially with the internet. Even though, his main concepts still hold true. 

What he says is that a video of news has more of an effect to the people. A video about that same violence could be watched over a family dinner. It's not saying a story about crime, but showing that the public is able to bear with these crimes. They are able to live with them. This got me thinking about how mediums have different effects to people. A news story printed about deaths could be regarded as "sad" or "disappointing", but a video about the same thing, actually seeing some parts of the story (not the violence, maybe evidence of it) may have a far greater effect. This could be true even if the script was exactly the same. 

It's pretty crazy. All of these things he says are really true. It's far more then the effect of video games on violence.

Due Dates

SO MANY DISTRACTIONS...

The anniversary of the September 11th attacks was yesterday. People can remember it happening so clearly. The memories feel so real. But honestly, it was a while ago. No one reminded me of the day. It's in the past now.

Kind of like Pearl Harbor. But its still a pride-filled day where people get all emotional and patriotic. 

Anyways, our presentation went pretty well. I think that I could talk about realness for over an hour; we were stressed on time with only 10 minutes to present. I look forward to upcoming video projects.

On a personal note, I need to keep better track of my assignments. I missed a due date earlier this week and forgot to do 
something else.
I guess school right now isn't feeling very real. I guess I expected more people, or more intense classes. I don't feel that involved at this point. College is fun, but I feel like it should be more.

What is Realness? - Project 1

So what is realness? 

Well to me its what is real. I guess it's really hard to answer this question. After a some decent brainstorming, I realized that reality is what we believe to be real. This is regardless of what kind of realness: being belief, perception, or the state of being. Well what are these things anyways?

• Belief: Like religion and things along those lines. Superstition and things like "soul mates". There is no hard evidence but there are people that believe it, and therefore it is real to them. This is the basis to every single thing involving what is real.

• Perception: This is really just how we see different things. It is not a matter of  how something really is, but how we perceive it that determines if we believe it is real. 

• State of being: Who, what, where, are we? What do we think about ourselves and do we believe that we are real?

This project though... Ultimately it is a collection of us students brainstorming about realness. Excruciatingly vague, we have the most freedom in what we are doing. For the presentation of this project, we are supposed to use www.prezi.com. Prezi's are arranged like a brainstorming map, so its easy to arrange our vague ideas into this. The presentation aspect allows us to really connect our ideas and make more sense out of them not only for us, but also for everyone else. 
We worked a decent amount of this and made it well. I'm confident that we will be able to impress our professor with this. In essence, the presentation is based on the three bullet points with a good amount of analyzation and other things also. It's good.