Sunday, October 7, 2012

Before you read:
This add is for David Beckham's colone, perfume, I like the add visually with the logo and the bottles of product, but I dislike the add because it is focused on the sex appeal and chemistry between Beckham and the girl.  Is this really necessary to sell the product? I would say no.

Summary:
Wysocki starts her article with a page from the new yorker, with two advertisements and a column of texts your eyes immediately go to the advertisement on the right.  Wysocki talks about the reason your eyes go to the right and why this add make her angry.  the light color and the shape of the women make you look at that advertisement.  It makes her angry because the women is seen as a sexual form instead of a women. She writes about visual communication, and how ads should be laid out to appeal to the appropriate audience and to transfer your meaning you want to portray to the audience.

Synthesis:
Wysocki's article " The Sticky Embrace or Beauty" can be related to Berger because his article is about how women are perceived media. He talked about the way women are posed in pictures, it relates because the peek advertisement is posed in such a way that you only see the women in one way (a sexual way). This can also relate to McCloud the mask. Lastly Wysocki, relates to discorse community, if you knew what the advertisement was about then you may not be as offended as this autor is. It could also relate to Baron because he talks about how using the computer as a literacy can lead to fraud in photoshop his example was of the photo with abe lincoln and Marilyn Monroe. Wysocki talks about the use of visual appeal and how you can photoshop thing to be more appealing.

Response
Quotation
I picked this quote because it seemed like an obvious one to pick, it is the bases for Wysocki argument. and I also think it holds a lot of truth. I always see art, photographs that appeal to me either visually or textually but never both.

 " I think this ad is a lovely piece but it angers me"

this made me think of our project number 2, because it is a visual project I thought these would be good design principles to consider.


 "Four "design principles" contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity, for visual arrangement."

Form is important for visual adds, the structure of the add can portray different meanings. and give different values or focuses. 

"Form is itself always a set of structuring principles, with different forms growing out of and reproducing different but specific values"


I think this is saying that  everyone judges beauty, and once beauty has been judged then the object or person that is being judged takes about a new character. 

"A judgement of beauty for Kant, then , is a disinterested and universal judgment that finds universal form of some particular object or person."


AE 1: I think art is an interpretation because different types of art appeal to different people. personally I would be more interested in photography than in sculptures and someone else may love sculptures. Also art is full of emotion, some emotions may touch people in different ways because of their past , or what is going on in their life at the time they are viewing the art.

Thoughts: I thought this article was interesting. thinking about art in different ways. and learning how things appeal visually, I thought the design stuff and about visual appeal will come in use for our projects! I thought Wysocki had some good points about why things appeal to our eyes, such as the lightness in the ad . and how we like to look at round circular things rather than sharp pointy things. Overall I liked this article.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Baron:

Before you Read: The main technology I use for writing is my computer. If im doing a research paper I would use the internet, online books or documents. I would also type my paper on the computer. I would consider a printer technology because it takes my word document and puts it on the paper.  My Grandma remembers using a type writer at her house, it types and prints at the same time, but it doesn't operate on its own and it doesn't help with the research.

Summary: Baron talks about technology, He talks a lot about the pencil being a form of earliest technology.  He moves from the pencil to telegraph, telephone to type writer, and the computer.  In all forms of technology he discusses the criticisms these technologes were faced with.

Synthesis:From Pencils to Pixels, could be synthesized with Brandt sponsorship article. Brandt talks about sponsor ship for literacy. and in Baron's article you can connect the people that invents the pencil in their family factory as a literacy sponsorship. As well as the advancing technologies.  I think this article could also connect to McCloud, because when we watched the video in class he showed the interactive comic where you decided what the stories looked like. This is due to the advancement of the computer and is improving the development of literacy.

QD: the Unabomber was someone afraid of using writings new technologies. He thought that computers were going to hurt human connections with one another. He opposes those you push new technology.

Thoughts: I thought this article was a lot about reality, and how technologies are always being re-developed. I also thought it was interesting because I had never thought of writing as a technology, or a pencil as a technology, I had always just thought of phones and computers but that is closely related to the time we live in.


 This is already true, more and more today we see our text books becoming available online, and with technologies such as kindles and Ipad books can be downloaded digitally for any purpose.  
"Futurologist write books predicting that computers will replace books"

Again we have already seen the technology of the computer take off in means of communication. Not only can you use word processing software. There are the social networking sites we all use, email, Blogging, etc .
 "I will be the first to praise computers,to acknowledge the importance of the computer in the last fifteen years of my own career as a writer, and to predict that in the future the computer will be put to communication uses we cannot now even begin to imagine, something quite beyond the word processing."
 I thought this was interesting because we think of writing as the most natural way of communicating ideas or ways of passing down stories through generations or a way to remember your grocery shopping list for the up coming weekend.  Writing is something we take for granted and it is hard to believe that people actually opposed the idea of writing.
 "Just like the telegraph and the computer, writing itself was once an innovation strongly resisted by traditionalists because it was unnatural and untrustworthy."
 This quote I thought was funny. I thought it was funny because people thought the telephone could replace these things.  The telephone did however replace the need to be face to face with a person you want to communicate with all the time and a quicker way to communicate than letters. Can you imagine having school lecture over the telephone.
 "Futurologist predicted that the telephone would replace the school or library as a transmitter of knowledge and information, that medical therapy(including hypnosis ) could be delivered and criminals punished over the phone through the use of electrical impulses." 
 Today we take advantage of the fact we can write with a nice wooden pencil or even a mechanical one, that we can communicate via letters and phone conversations and even email is become more out dated because texting, social networking is newer and more "fun"
 "As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what's new."













Personal Narrative:


I can still remember the first book I read aloud by myself. It was Green Eggs and Ham, my mom even took a picture of me after I read it.  Literacy was a large part of growing up since starting school teachers began reading aloud to the class, and having the class follow along with our own copies of the book. I can remember using an audio recording of books while traveling in the car to places as well. My sponsors  for literacy would me my teachers. They helped to develop my reading skills and pushed me to practice reading and writing.  In elementary school we would have silent reading time, where we could read a book of our choice, this was always a fun time of the day.  When we came to a word we did not know we were to look it up in the dictionary and write in in our journal to share with the class later. This was a way for us to learn different vocabulary words.  My other sponsor for literacy would be my parents, and grandparents, when I was little my parents would read stories to me before bed letting me see the pictures.  I have become a literacy sponsor for my younger cousins, when I babysat them before they could read I would read aloud to them, and now as they are older they read the books to me.  When Hunger Games came out my cousin in 4th grade read the book at the same time during spring break in florida, and so we would have conversations about the best parts at dinner.
I did go through a time when reading didn't appeal to me and I went a long period with out reading anything for fun.  Junior year in high school I found genre of book that really appealed to me, and it really got me back into reading books for fun. Last year my english class read 6 books in class and they were all really good most of them I couldn't put down until I had finished them. On the side I still enjoyed reading books for fun and would go to the library every other week for new books.  My english teacher was an avid reader, and new I was too so she would suggest books for me to read. I also started keeping a book list because often times I would read a book I liked and want to remember what it was, and I also like knowing how many books I have read in a year.  Since coming to OU I haven't had the chance to just read a book, but I just waiting and ready for the right chance to read a good book.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie:


Before you read: I remember the first book I ever read by myself aloud was Green Eggs and Ham by: Dr. Seuss.  Other texts and events central to my learning to read would be in preschool, kindergarden and up we were given reading exercises. I can remember having small reading circles with the teacher and two or three other class mates and we would go though basic reading books. Also vocabulary was a major impact on learning to read. In grade school we would always have a list of vocab words to learn.

Summary: Malcolm X is about his time spent in prison, it is about his determination to learn to read and write, He checked books out continuously. he started with reading the dictionary he taught himself the dictionary. Alexie was about being discriminated in school because of his race. he to was determined to read and write. he carried a comic book with him which helped him learn to read by using the pictures.

Synthesis: Malcolm X and Alexie can relate to each other because they are both about the process of learning to read and write and how the were discriminated. They can also relate to McCloud because they thought of the way they saw themselves as one way but it would be different of how other people saw them. Also McCloud uses comics and Alexie uses comics.
Disclaimer: I had never heard of Malcolm X before this.


Response
Quotation

I can't imagine being Malcolms age, and not being able read words, reading is such a huge part in my everyday life.


"But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well been in Chinese."

When I read this I wrote wow next to it in my book because this is completely unbelievable. It is completely inspiring to read about how Malcolm X taught him self to read, and it all started by copying the dictionary.  This shows his motivation and dedication to his education. 


 "Finally the dictionary's A section had filled a whole tablet- and I went on into the B's That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary." 

This quote shows the power of reading has over people and Malcolm in particular. To say that he felt more imprisoned when he wasn't in prison, and truly free while behind bars. He felt free because he had a new world. I think this could be true for anyone. Maybe not in a prison situation but life in general can get tough and books can provide and escape from reality into a fictional story.

 "My reading books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up    to then, I never had been so truly free in my life."

I related to this quote because when I was younger and had a bed time I would like staying up late reading my chapter books with a little flashlight under the covers and my mom would always walk by so I would quickly hide the light and book and fake sleep, when I heard she was gone I would pull it back out to continue reading until I fell asleep.

"At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the foor area of that light glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes -until the guard approached again."

This quote is so true. College is full of so many distracting things, school work, friends, activities that there is never time to just sit down and read for enjoyment. 


 "I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions."

When I was little I would carry around books, not to read because I could read them, just to carry around because I liked to carry them. 
Sherman Alexie
 "I can remember picking up my father's books before I could read. The words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood , with sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph."


I think it is really sad that Indian children were expected to be stupid. All children should be taught with the same expectations. Learning only makes society stronger, shutting out certain races only hurts society.


 "We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs. "


Thoughts: I thought that both of these essays were eye opening. I couldn't believe that Malcolm X taught himself how to read by reading the dictionary. I think it is inspiring to think that he could do that. Alexie also was inspiring because he learned to read from a comic, and went through school being discriminated against but he turned out to be educated and now helps kids where he grew up learn to read as he once wished he could.  
Bell Hooks:

Before you read: An autobiography is someone writing about their own life story, or about things that have happened in their own life.  I think important parts of an autobiography would be: obstacles in life that you have over come, your favorite memories, and anything else you want the reader to know.

Summary: Bell Hooks, Writing Autobiography, is about her struggle to write her autobiography. Hooks discribes the challenges she faced when wanting to write.  First she didn't want to be the one to write about her families secrets, and she didn't like the idea of writing her story as a fictional story because then there was a disconnect from her personally.  She found that an autobiography has its limits, because it is from a limited perspective of the person writing the autobiography. Someone else at the exact same event may have a completely different account of what happend. In the end she found that writing her story allowed her to feel reconnected with her past but in a more secure way. Her audience in this article is someone that struggles with writing about personal experiences, or finding themselves inspired to write.

Synthesis: I would first connect Hooks to Allen, and the idea of the inspired writer. It seems like Hooks is struggling internally to be inspired to write her autobiography. I would also connect this to Dias, because Dias talks about his struggles to write when he sits down to write, but how he never stops trying, Hooks does the same thing and is rewarded in the end. Lastly I would compare hooks to Malcolm x because he talks about being free learning to read, just as hooks discribes being free when she finally writes her autobiography.


Response
Quotation

I picked this because it was an attention getter that really made me want to keep reading the article.

 "To me, telling the story of my growing-up years was intimately connected with the longing to kill the self i was without really having to die."

I think everyone has thing in their past or present life that they would like to write about just to get it off of their chest, but when it comes time to write they are blocked because what ever it is they want to write about they are afraid to say it. This the the struggle that Hooks is going through and she discribes that in this quote.

 "Yet I could not begin even though I had begun to confront some of the reasons I was blocked, as I am blocked just now in writing this piece because I am afraid to express in writing the experience that served as a catalyst for that block to move."

I liked this thought because when you read an autobiography, you get so carried away by what one person is telling as their personal story that you sometimes forget there are multiple versions of the same story.

 "This fact was a constant reminder of the limitations of autobiography, of the extent to which autobiography is a very personal storytelling, a unique recounting of events not so much as they have happend but as we remember and invent them." 

I had a similar experience, completely different subject as hooks but I kept a journal for a few months writing down events. and now when I read it as a story , the events don't look like single events but the read as a story that is continuously playing. 

 "It had not occurred to me that bring one's past, one's memories together in a complete narrative would allow one to view them from a different perspective, not as singular isolated events but as part of a continuum."

As Hooks states remembering was part of a cycle of reunion, I think writing and remembering events that were maybe painful in life are always a way to heal and feel better about yourself or as Hooks says feel whole again.

 "Remembering was part of a cycle of reunion, a joining of fragments, "the bits and pieces of my heart" that the narrative made whole again."


AE5: I think I would but myself in the discourse community of a suburb, growing up in the perfect town, going to a giant high school, growing up with large leaps in technology, adapting to change, and living in a time where acceptance of individuals for who they are is a major part of life.

Thoughts:  This article was by far one of the most engaging for me. I thought I read more as a story than an article. I too have many things I would like to write about as a way of expressing or freeing my mind of things, but when sitting down to write about  these things nothing ever comes to mind. I put up walls as Hooks does because I don't want to see the words written.