Arguing With Images

First off, here's the album I created, the slideshow button is right above the first picture.

And now for my reflection...

When I began the “Arguing With Images” assignment, I was a little unsure of how to proceed. After watching “Ways of Seeing,” I had the idea that most arguments could be established using pictures; in fact, my very first idea was to create an argument about the use of the Chief Illiniwek symbol, and the struggles that the University has gone through on that account. However, once I started considering the limitations of text, along with sound, I realized right away that that idea was going to be nearly impossible. Every image I could think of, besides the Chief himself, had some kind of textual reference to provide context.

Keeping this in mind, I decided to try to come up with iconic images in my everyday life, and I immediately thought of my truck. Very little text would show up in a picture of my truck, and the image of a pick-up has numerous possible angles to examine. Considering that I had had my truck towed before, and also gotten a parking ticket recently, I decided that maybe retracing that story would be interesting. After all, a towed vehicle is a relatively common occurrence, and I thought it would be interesting to follow the route taken by a towed car.

Before I started taking those pictures, though, I ended up driving around for a while, trying to think of places to take these pictures that would provide some sort of subtext, as I was unhappy with “just” following a towed vehicle (and, inspired by class discussion, I thought I would provide a reason for it happening). However, I found myself examining the rampant construction and concrete growth of Champaign, and decided to take pictures of that instead, thinking it might lead to some cool ideas. In the end, I took pictures all along First Street, all the way outside of town, and realized that the most interesting part was the urban sprawl. I immediately shifted my focus to that.

Driving back and forth several times, I took pictures of the parking lots, low-level concrete buildings, and heavy construction of the town. The further I got away from Green Street, however, the more I noticed that that construction had a different take—new buildings were going up where none had stood before, instead of replacing old ones. Land was being leased and sold. Farmland was giving way—abruptly—to apartment complexes. My goal, after taking the initial pictures of construction in Champaign, became to document the expansive urban sprawl of the area.

Keeping McCloud's assertions in mind, that people relate to images they can see themselves in, I purposefully took most of the pictures from the driver's seat of my truck. No longer was the pick-up itself a point of interest (not everyone has been towed, after all), but the driver's seat became a way of pulling a viewer into my pictures. Every image that could safely be taken from that setting was, and I believe that it will give a sense to the viewer of actually driving along and seeing the “urbanization” of the area for themselves.

Though I went through a few changes in my plans, I feel like the images and “argument” I ended up making grew from a more natural understanding of imagery itself. Rather than simply forcing a half-baked idea into images, I followed the images as they led to a particular idea, and tried to represent that through my slideshow.

This Is Amazing

So I saw this little short film, which is apparently being made into a movie, and was absolutely impressed as hell. Really cool, especially considering not a single word is spoken the whole time.

Response to Aaron

Aaron's second question is concerned with the face in the mirror. In some ways, I have to think that a large part of recognizing that face is the repetition we go through, but I think a great deal of how we look at ourselves is part of why we have only a vague image of ourselves in our minds. We look in the mirror and spot the obvious things--facial hair, piercings, birthmarks, whatever--and then we spot the flaws--scars, asymmetrical features, etc--and those are what we think of. That's how we recognize ourselves, without examining the whole of our faces; we identify the primary flaws, and immediately check off our failure to match what we think of as a good looking person, etc.

Questions

1. The pictures in the "Ways of Seeing" video were interesting, but I'm curious as to why they were chosen. What do you think connects those images?

2. Notably, the debate over which is the "real" Virgin on the Rocks painting is mentioned. If you were told that a work of art you'd always admired and thought was real was actually a copy, what would that change for you?

3. In the comic, there's a particular moment when the author addresses us and asks if we'd have been as interested if the narrating character looked more real. What's your take on that?

Response to Susmita

The first of Susmita's questions today is about whether pictures are a form of writing. Well, I have to break this down two ways, because I think that they can be, but they usually aren't. For example, hieroglyphs were used to create Egyptian writing, so obviously pictures can take on that role. The only problem with that example is that hieroglyphs are established as a particular form of writing--i.e. certain pictures mean specific things, allowing someone to read their meaning without (too much) ambiguity. But, at the same time, simple things like facial expressions or pictures of recognizable images (such as places) can evoke specific feelings or ideas. On the other hand, a picture is rather ambiguous, and meaning isn't specific--there's no specified signified (that sounds weird, I know). So, long story short, I would have to say that pictures CAN be a method of writing, but need some kind of system to establish them as such.

Random Stuff

First of all, I saw some more chalk art on the quad today. Second, my buddies at the White Horse decided to adopt a random rat that wandered into the beer garden and which was so docile as to almost have to be a pet. I still feel like I'm going to get the plague.

Discussion

1. Wysocki says that "without having to study it--you know whether a webpage has been designed to sell you something or present you with news." I guess my question about this is whether you think it is applicable to everyday life? Isn't most information presented as news trying to sell you something, and how do these two things interchange?

2. How do you think that text size affects you on a day-to-day basis in your reading? If you're confronted with changing font sizes, does that heighten your interest in certain things?

3. In your opinion, how does color play a role in your reading? Would you rather read something in colored or plain black text? When you see something in a color other than black, what does that tell you about the text you're reading?

Stencil Art Rationale

Well, I’m not really the typical U of I college student in my political tendencies, since I lean generally Libertarian. I really dislike the amount of control the government has on our lives, and the way that we support a lot of really invasive governmental policies (and yes, I do realize this is ubiquitous in both major parties). So one of the problems that I have, in particular, is this idea that we as a country are all united, together and hoping for change, or whatever. I’m not a big Obama fan, for a myriad of reasons, and the hype that went through with his election this past year has really worried me in a lot of ways, because I feel like people made their choices based on what was cool, acceptable, or seemed like it was the right thing, without really knowing why. Most of the people that I talked to in the Fall that supported Obama couldn’t tell me why, except that “Bush was bad.” So I felt like, as a country—and especially as the youth that is increasingly dominating the world in pretty much every way—we were sort of chained into our ideals. The problem, to me, was that we were all united for Hope and Change, but we were sort of chained together in a negative way because we all wanted to fight against the bad policies of the last president, without considering what was going on then.

As such, I decided that I wanted to ridicule this idea of unity. I knew that I was going to include the word “united” with a question mark, because that was exactly how most of our campus felt after the election, but I don’t really feel like we should have. So I just wanted to criticize that whole empty rhetorical message. The image, though, was a little tougher to figure out. Originally, I kinda wanted to go with a riff on the Obama Hope posters, but it seemed too pointed, and I don’t really have anything against him, per se. So I decided to take the raised fist image, which is used so often to mean personal partisan revolt that it’s become a parody of itself; just think about all the bands, from Rage Against the Machine to Disturbed, who have used it to show their rebellious tendencies and so forth as a sort of (pseudo-) political message. So I took that image, thought about how I was upset with the unity we were displaying as a country (relying on image and what was “acceptable” in political terms), and put my imagery of the chains onto it. I thought it just made sense, because of the idea that we were supposedly fighting against everything bad—the political uprising part of the fist—but we were only doing it because we were told to—thus the chains. The fist is such an obvious metaphor that I thought putting them in chains would get right to the heart of what I was interested in.

Complete Stencil Art Image

Here is the complete image of what I wanted to graffiti. And may still, at some point.

Stencil Project

So here are the basic parts of my stencil project. These are the simple stencil cut-outs I used to spray-paint with. The first is the chain design, the second is the fist image, and the last is of the letters I used.

Safety First

I've provided this clip simply to justify the address of my blog. And because it's funny.

Something Cool on the Quad

Saw this in chalk on the quad today, and just thought it was cool.

Response to Rasheena

One of Rasheena's questions today is about the use of mood within the language we are presented on a regular basis. If the kind of language we were shown was more positive, a reinforcement of what is good/encouraged behavior as opposed to restrictions against us, what kind of effect would we see? Personally, I don't think it would be effective at all. Who would follow a speed limit when it was presented as "We'd appreciate it if you'd keep your speed at a reasonable level" on the side of the highway? I just don't see positive reinforcement helping large groups of people--it's too arbitrary and just seems like a bad idea, for this reason:

Questions

1. What do you think you would put out there as a message in graffiti?

2. When this type of writing is employed, do you think it positively or negatively affects the environment it's found in?

3. If all governmental signs, (Stop, speed, etc.) were more of an art form, how do you think this would impact our day-to-day lives?

Breaking News: Graffiti in Champaign!

So it turns out that, despite violent gang wars that tear the Twin Cities of East-Central Illinois apart, graffiti isn't particularly ubiquitous around here. I did find a couple little bits that I found interesting though.

On your left, you'll notice a blurry image. That's my the camera on my phone, which explains it. The design was on the wall of a parking garage of one of the apartment buildings on 3rd Street, and is partly hard to analyze because it has been covered with some kind of paint-remover in the none-too-distant past. In person, it's a little easier to tell that it's a sort of shield design, with the lettes "L" and "J" forming the left and rights sides, respectively. My guess would be that it's a sort of personal logo: Initials and a particular design, meant to signify a certain person.

This one on the right is kinda hard to see. It's situated above a shop in downtown Champaign, and I ate shit falling off of the roof trying to get closer, so this is the best I could do. I'm pretty sure it says "AGN" in black and white. The building it's above is right between two streets, so I think the position above it was chosen to provide easy viewing. My guess is that the letters are either initials, or else quite possibly some sort of territorial marker/gang sign, but that could be a little bit of bias on my part.

Respone

As an answer to question two of Raquel's, I think you have to look at some of the stuff that's being done even just today. Forums like TV are critically acclaimed these days as being thoroughly thought-provoking and legitimate, when it was basically derided only a few years back as brain-mush. Even--especially--video games have made the same transition; there's games out now that are so complex, gorgeously designed, and incandescently creative that they're clearly a form of art.

Virtual reality is very like the video game. You're immersed fully into an alternate world, by use of technology. There'll probably be a period of adjustment, since it'll initially be used only by the people with money to exploit the VR system for entertainment and such, but eventually people will become familiar with it and create art.

I guess, in the end, the answer comes down to this: no media is truly all art, but there's always art in every media. Including what will happen with VR if and when we develop it fully.

Question

So my question is about the ideas of media within the introduction. What makes us so convinced that this expansion of information and sharing is a good thing? They talk about "like TV only better," but is that necessarily a good thing? It seems like our society is collapsing on itself in the entertainment industry anyways, so how is an exponential expansion of it necessarily good?

In the Beginning, I Said "Let There Be Blog," and It Was Good...

If you’re wasting enough company/class time to actually look at this shameless self-gratification of bloggery, then you’re probably the poor, socially maladjusted type who would like to know all about me. Luckily, I’m just the type of egocentric, delusional blog-writer who is more than happy to share my life, interests, and stories, thus establishing the perfect give-and-take relationship between us (that is, you unwashed insipid masses give me constant and loyal adulation, while I take the time to subject you to my narcissistic self-interested posts).

I am Nick Franz, a student at the University of Illinois. Currently, I am an English Education major; this, however, is ultimately probably not going to be what I do, seeing as I have little patience, a low tolerance for anyone not myself, absolutely no regard for the well-being of society as we know it, and a complete lack of social responsibility. As such, I will take the time out of my busy schedule of not giving a damn about the students I am supposed to be helping to provide you with links I find interesting and/or useful, inasmuch as they provide schadenfreude, or show you how pointless life really is. Quite possibly, you’ll realize that I’ve provided links that are both. Adore me for it.