Artist Statement - Final Project

My final project, entitled "Whiteboard Bear" was inspired by the stop motion animations I have always enjoyed watching on youtube. In all of the classes I have taken in college, I have always found that cartoons and animation are my favorite and I always have the most fun making these types of projects. When I began this project I ran into many struggles. At first I tried to do the drawing and the filming on my own but soon discovered this was nearly impossible. My little point and shoot camera kept turning off and losing the spot I had zoomed in on on the white board. Once my friend started helping me take the pictures I began to have a lot of fun with it. Originally, I wanted the movie to revolve around improvisational doodles, so once I was finished I had about 400 photos with fishtanks, flowers, snowmen, and other random designs. When I put the pictures on my computer I realized these themes had nothing to do with each other and I liked the drawings with the bear best. This bear has popped up in a lot of my work and I would like to think of him as my signature character, so i felt that this was most appropriate. The editing was enjoyable and frustrating at times, and took much longer than I expected, as editing always does. I had to teach myself how to use imovie, because I chose to do the editing at home rather than at school. It took me about two hours to figure out how to turn the "ken burns" effect off (when the photos automatically zoom in and out once they are presented on the screen) and this almost made me give up on the entire project. But, alas, I figured it out and I am pretty happy with the final project. Although it is short I now know how much time and effort goes into even the most simple hand drawn animations and my appreciation for this medium has grown. I really liked this project and hope to do something like this again soon.

final project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoWbnPR2GFQ

The Yes Men and A Hacker Manifesto

The Yes Men video kept my attention from start to finish, which is hard to do as my attention span does not usually last long with any type of film. The two men were both clever and entertaining and their practices blew my mind. For those who have not seen the film, the Yes Men "hack" their way into ridiculous situations to prove how easy it is to fool big corporations or large organizations. In the first example, the Yes Men explained how they came into a position where they owned the domain name gatt.org(? i think..) which is extrememly similar to the actual World Trade Organization website. Long story short these men were able to actually attend a conference in Europe and speak for the WTO when they have absolutely no legitamate affiliation with the WTO. Their presentation was completely absurd and they were able to fool everyone in the room. They even said in the documentary that they were very surprised and dissapointed that the people were brainwashed enough to buy their act and not have any questions or comments when it was over. I think that the Yes Men's goal is to prove to the world how numb society is and how people do not check up on things as much as they should. It was especially surprising to me that these two individuals got away with this once, but then again as WTO members at a different convention where they proceded to  announce that the WTO was shutting down for reconstruction. Wouldn't one think that someone would recognize them or put up a high security look out for them to make sure they did not show up again impersonating actual WTO officials? The media used to complete these missions include their faux website, along wtih power point presentations. Their false identities are backed up by fake name cards, probably created by a graphic designer. All of these supplements are made possible by technology. The yesmen support the idea of the artist as genious because these men are so advanced as artists/performers/hackers they didnt even need to necessarily know a whole lot about the WTO to make this possible. They were able to hack their way in, and much like digital artists/artists/computer geeks/hackers today, knowledge of technology can take people a very long way and give them power similar to a conventional genious. To relate this to the hactivism article, I would say that the Yes Men were hackers and not producers because they took something that existed, changed it, and made it their own, while fooling everyone along the way. The vector population would probably be the internet as a whole, and those who are supposed to patrol and monitor these organizations, and hte Yes Men were able to hack their way through any obstacles the vectors may have set in the way.

Visiting Artist: Isaac Julien

I think it would have been a much different experience viewing this piece the way it was supposed to be shown, on nine hanging screens. With the singular screen it seemed like I was missing out on the experience that I was supposed to be receiving from this piece of art. I thought the story line of this piece was kind of boring and I had trouble paying attention however I found the cinematography beautiful. One thing I agreed with was when a girl at the end asked why he chose to show clips of the production process within the film, because for me it made the piece not flow together. I would have liked to see this only as the film and not with the weird beginning and end with the man writing on the glass and then the cleaners wiping it off. It just seemed like too much was going on. With more background on the ancient Chinese culture I feel like I may have understood what was going on a little bit better. Or if there had been some subtitles in english at the bottom at the beginning to help us going on. I know Mr. Julien tried to explain it at the beginning but I still found myself lost for most of the film. All I could focus on was how beautiful the scenery was which did help keep my attention. After discussing this show with Trevor from class we both agreed that it was strange no credit was given to anyone else who made the film.

I really like the concept of having the film on all of the different screens, and while I watched the various screens within the singular screen I tried to imagine what it would be like to see it the way it was supposed to me. This was a revolutionary idea and I wonder if other artists will follow in Julien's footsteps. The idea of movement between cultures old and new goes along nicely with the movement of the various clips on the various screens. I also thought it was interesting how Julien showed us before the movie how he used the green screen to create the illusion of people flying. I would have liked to learn more about this and then maybe watched clips of the film rather than the entire thing.

Rythm Science by Paul D Miller

It is interesting how Miller starts off by saying "Once you get in the flow of things, you're always haunted by the way things could have turned out". This is extremely applicable to my life, because I am always thinking back upon events and imagining how my life would be different if things had gone differently. This opens up the idea that we "remix" just about everything in our daily lives. When reassessing my actions, I suppose I am remixing all the different ways the scenario could have played out. Spooky defines rythm science as "a catalogue of undecided moments at the edge of my thinking process". You never know what is going to happen next or how things are going to play out to effect other things.

Spooky suggests that we may think we are entirely dependent on technology now, but in the future people won't consider technology as something they rely on, they will simply know it as their everyday life. Already technology has remixed itself into our everyday way of living, through computers, cell phones, internet, music, art, etc. Every aspect of life can have a technological side. Spooky says DJing allows you take the best of whats out there and mix it together to create something new and fantastic, but it seems as though in this day and age we can remix all kinds of things and make them work for us. For example I am remixing right now by taking Spooky's thoughts and my own thoughts to create a new theory on remixing. He says "rhythm science makes possible a music of permutation that tries to convey a sense of how conceptual art, contemporary technology, and timeless idealism might function together today". This covers just about everything I am learning in all my studies here at CU, and describes how the different areas of my education often flow in and out of one another. As an art student we are constantly discussing concepts and how we can "remix" a theme into a piece of artwork, and in this class we talk about how art and technology interact.

"DJ's have so many cultural products as material they are more willing to create psychological collage space". I love that he uses the term collage here, for remixing anything technically makes it one big collage. I think that the idea of mixing old and new comes to play here, for the book mentions how remixing can help one relive a personal experience. A certain song is coming to mind, where Ray Charles' "Georgia" lyrics start off slow and sweet, and then a beat drops and contemporary rapper Ludacris jumps in with the drop of the beat. This combination of sounds and culture creates a brand new sound and songs like this have taken over the music scene of my generation.

I am currently taking history of Jazz and I was surprised when Spooky referenced how in Jazz they use a call and response method. I never thought about this as the fundamentals of remixing but I guess even in the oldest forms of Jazz this could be considered a way of remixing because just like Ray Charles and Ludacris, two people yelling back and forth creates a new idea.

I think sampling and remixing in the music world is a really unique way to keep the music realm moving forward because after centuries of making music one could say there is nothing left to create, when using the conventional ways of making music because everything has already been done. With sampling and remixing there are endless possibilities of what could be combined to make something new. This could apply to art works as well, because in modern times it is very hard to come up with something original because so many things have already been done, but if you remix art there are so many new possibilities.

The idea of a DJ is interesting because they have the ability of staying ambiguous, much like users online have the ability to stay ambiguous. Because DJs often do not use their own voices, they can anonymously create music and send it into the world without being seen if this is what they choose. The DJ Deadmau5 stays ambiguous by always performing with a giant mouse head so no one can see his face. Although his face has been seen and is not completely kept a secret, generally when we think of this artist and his music, we think of the mouse head, and not of the actual human face that lies beneath. This goes back to the idea of creating something new, or becoming a new character that has never been done before. This makes the artist appear more creative and more memorable which are two themes which are also desirable when making music or art.

blog for 3/1

Ryan Trecartin seemed like a pretty cool guy from reading his interviews and reading about him, however my opinion drastically changed when watching his videos alone at the library where I felt extremely uncomfortable, and then even more so when watching it in the class room with everyone. We discussed at the end of class how some of us are simply not going to like it/allow ourselves to understand it. I was trying to decide if I was allowing myself to understand it or not, but I think I am very much on the fence because I want to understand it and I think I sort of understand but I can't help but hate it. I've learned enough about contemporary art, especially performance video art, that I more often than not dislike it but I also understand that the artist is intentionally trying to offend me by being bizarre, so in this respect I can applaud him for being successful, but if a piece makes you hate it so much that you want to turn it off is this a good thing? I don't think it is a good thing, but here I am rambling on about this video for an entire huge paragraph which says something I suppose, seeing as I am putting a lot of thought into how I feel about it.

As far as the net art for this blog assignment, I really enjoyed the triptych piece. It seems to me that a piece like this could be considered similar to Trecartin's since it moves and makes sounds and has lots of contrasting colors and ideas, but I like the way this piece flows much more (of course there is no dialouge or acting which makes it different). I especially like how the soundtrack seems to fit accordingly to each of the videos, even though they all move at their own pace and are unrelated. I also find it effective how the pieces seem to flow into each other, for example the silloutte of the man with all of the animated colors flows nicely into the screensaver-esque colorful animation below it. Art like this makes more sense to me because it is pleasing to the eye. Because I liked what I saw at the top, I was encouraged to scroll down and view the entire thing. It is interesting how it is titled "Triptych" because only one section of the piece features three works side by side, but I think that this title means that all of the pieces within the whole thing work together and speak to one another.

Ryan Trecartin

James Franco Interview:

I thought this interview was really cool because I expected it to be about James Franco but it was actually about Ryan Trecartin who I have never heard of and learned a lot about. He seems to have some really interesting insights about film. When he said his favorite parts were when the actors stopped reading of the script and entered "real time" and said things like "I need to be drunk". The concept of real time is interesting, for in this real time people act how they are supposed to and act like themselves, but in front of a camera real time seems to go away and the actors can do whatever they want. I also liked how he said the era of reality tv stars have formed a new type of person who is less embarassed and therefore more free and "human". I have always sort of looked down on reality tv stars for humiliating themselves but Trecartin makes a good point, these people are confident and comfortable with themselves so it doesn't matter.

In the NY Times Article, I love Trecartin's enthusiasm for people born in the 90's (I was born in 1989 but close enough). Usually our generation is put down for being so internet savvy and addicted to our computers but Trecartin is applauding us and is excited for us to understand the work he produces because of this skill that we all mostly have. 

This "Wayne's World" video was very bizarre, I understand now what James Franco was talking about in the interview now and how the characters were known to make people feel icky. They are weird characters but obviously the artist was trying to get a reaction out of the audience and he was successful. The dialogues seem simplistic, like those on a child's tv show. The other video was hard to get through because of the squeaky voices and fast movements of the camera. After reading the interviews about Trecartin it definitely helps put things in context, like in "K-Corea" the characters are definitely not reading perfectly off a script because there are some studders, which helps make it creepier. To be honest the characters kind of scared me even though I know they aren't like that in real life.

Riverthe.net is very strange and I felt uncomfortable opening while writing this in the library. Trecartin definitely is doing something new and different, and he can easily make me feel nervous which I think is what he wants. However it will take some getting used to before I fully understand it.

Hans Hoogerbrugge

Hans Hoogerbrugge, the fabulous Dutch digital artist, is gracing the net with his unique style. Originally producing paintings and cartoons, Hoogerbrugge discovered the internet in 1996 and began channeling much of his work in an online setting. 

Some of Hoogerbrugge’s most exciting online works lay within his videos.

In the mid 90's, Hoogerbrugge produced his "Modern Living Neurotica" series, 

 which very well may be his best known work. In each episode, Hoogerbrugge himself plays the main character, as he likes to refer to it as an "ongoing self portrait". The flat, black and white character bares a striking resemblance to the artist, and this character amongst others like it seems to pop up in all of Hoogerbrugge’s work. The earlier episodes of “Neurotica” consist of animated gifs, but eventually evolved into macromedia flash which allowed the viewer to interact with the piece. This was his first use of interactivity on the internet with his artwork and shows how Hoogerbrugge's art changed as technology became easier to work with. When clicking a thumbnail to the left, a short interactive video plays displaying themes of neuroticism. Simple and to the point, these videos leave the viewer satisfied and looking to see what will happen when clicking upon the next one. Hoogerbrugge’s early works with the animated gifs are not as exciting as the interactive flash video which start about half way through.

“Hotel”, another interactive flash based video series, differs from Neruotica because the viewer actually navigates through a storyline with different chapters. In this series, a crazy doctor conducts various experiments on volunteers, and the viewer is able to witness what happens to the patients as the doctor does various things to them. When clicking on different characters within the room, the viewer starts to feel mad as well from all of the awful sounds and strange dialogues and movements. Again, the familiar black and white themes with minimal movement and dialogue become the norm. It is easy to distinguish Hoogerbrugge’s trademark style after navigating through his website for only several minutes.

“Nails” features the same sort of characters featured in all of the other videos, where a self-portrait-esque character does various small tricks as the viewer chooses thumbnails from up above. On Hoogerbrugge’s personal website, “Nails” is described as: “a continuation of Hoogerbrugges Neurotica Series in his exploration of human emotion. The lack of visual backgrounds and borders of the NAILS animations however gives these works an even stronger feeling of an a internal struggle rather then an actual fysical battle.” 

Alongside of these videos, Hoogerbrugge has a seperate website, prostress, which

Hoogerbrugge calls “a daily comic about life” in which he discusses things he does or thinks about. Hoogerbrugge calls it prostress because people have so much going on in their lives it’s hard to focus. Each day he posts three interactive images with text, usually regarding pop culture or “fucking around with celebrities”. In an interview Hoogerbrugge commented on how “creativity is not a thing you think about, it’s something that happens”. He goes on to say that he has to come up with an idea every day for this website, and sometimes his ideas are bad ones. This shows that Hoogerbrugge is refreshingly human.

Hoogerbruge combines many disciplines within his work. He finds minimal differences between online animation or illustration because they all involve the same creative processes. He also does not believe that disciplines should be brought in with prejudgemnets of what they should do.

“I stopped making plans but I really would like to become really rich” says Hoogerbrugge in the interview, which tells us he is a very straight forward man who says what he thinks. This idea is very much reflected within his artwork. In an internet blog from basement.org, a viewer suggests that “what’s great about Hans’ work is that it doesn’t serve any other end other than to entertain you. It’s not navigation. It’s not informational. It’s a mildly interactive form of art that is both stylish and engaging”. Another blogger comments that “his art can be macabre, confusing, and yet always amusing”.

In the same interview, Hoogerbrugge mentioned that he never saw himself working for a band like the Pet Shop Boys, but they contacted him and he ended up directing their video “Love etc”. This video is awesome because it features Hoogerbrugge's usual characters yet the video still has roots to the original band. The characters and designs are set to a fun, bouncy beat in which his designs make perfect imagery. It is also a nice change to see more colors being intermixed with Hoogerbrugge's usual black and white. This tells us that Hoogerbrugge can take on the challenge of a full length music video, so who knows what he will do next. A blogger on globalsoul2soul commented on this video saying “Hoogerbrugge is humorous, innovative and refreshing”

Hoogerbrugge is an inspiring net artist whose work is exceptional and made possible because it is in fact on the internet. Work like this would not be the same held in a gallery. It's greatness can be shared by all because of it's availability via internet which makes it more fun for everyone. 

Spirit Surfing

I think that this article has a really interesting perspective on how people view the internet. The website stumbleupon comes to mind, because it is a website that is all about the art of the journey. On stumbleupon, the website shuffles different websites according to the viewer's personal preference and each site brings you to new sites. Usually when I do this it will give me a website, but then I will go off onto my own unknown journey by clicking things within the site which then bring me to new places.  While searching for the boon, the wake forms around us and creates a complely new path. Rather than searching for a book directly on amazon.com, maybe if you search the title in google and see where the results lead you, you may end up finding out details about things you never even intended on learning or searching for. Similar to hypertext narratives or other means of interactivity regarding netart, each viewer is going to have their own unique and individual experience when web surfing. This can be applicable to simply visiting various website or utilizing websites like facebook. On facebook, when looking at a friend’s profile, other friends are all over their wall, and from each wall you can click on other people’s walls, which will infinitely continue bringing you to different people’s walls, and everyone’s path on this site is different. Although the internet has become a thing to make life fast and easy, taking the time to navigate through this vast realm is an art within itself. While the infoBRATS take the easy way to navigate through the internet, the infoMONKS are discovering amazing things because the internet holds so many different amazing elements but it takes a little investigating to find them.

Even in this assignment, after reading the article I searched around on the links provided on the assignment website, I ended up back at google which surpringly is decorated like a submarine with animated windows inside and it's the best google has ever looked and I got there entirely by accident because I hit back too many times.  

Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders, and Future Artists

The concept of "artists of the future may not know that they are artists" is a very interesting one. It seems as though a common thought in topics related to this class is that there is no contemporary working definition of what qualifies as art. In this digital day and age, there are so many new ways to be creative, that many people can find a way to be artsy.

Future Artist Scenario X reminds me a bit of myself, because though I do not spend 99.9% of my waking hours glued to my computer, I do spend probably around 50% (weird!). There is always an email to check or a facebook notification to check, or assignments such as this one to do. Everyone is on their computers all the time, and the more time we spend on them, the more savvy we become and thus more likely to become creative.

In Future Artist Scenario Y, it says he received no formal artist training, but he studied computer science. Therefore he may possibly be able to create computer games or make designs on programs like photoshop. Without knowing anything about art, it is very possible to do either of those things.  Long ago, artists, especially painters, had serious training and were viewed almost like celebrities. Now, not to say people are necessarily less talented than they once were, but there are so many different ways to create art its almost as if any one can do it.

One of the most popular art forms (I would argue that it is an art form, maybe it isn't)  in Boulder lives within all of the students in this town who consider themselves djs, who create sounds "remixing" and mashing up other songs and noises. This is a good example of being able to create art with no art training, but with advanced computer knowledge and access to technology.

net art

I found this article a little challenging because it is a list and I’m having a hard time undenrstanding it, but I think the point overall is that using the internet/technology to create art opens up so many new doors. Creating art for the web allows artists to get their work out there so that anybody and everybody can see it, which is so different that people coming to see work in a gallery. The article says you can basically make any type of art with any theme and put it anywhere you want which kind of reminds me of when we discussed the concept of “ubiquitous”.

In “adaweb” I found the opening piece (title?) to be very similar to the hypertext narrative. Each page had one image and one blurb and the linear path made it easy to navigate from page to page. I think that back in the day creating something like this would be the ultimate modern creation because it is a piece of work that also incorporates technical skills that people were just starting to understand.

In “Digital Studies: Being in cyberspace, I found myself clicking on about 5 links that no longer worked, which shows how old fashioned they must have been. One that did work for me was “Shifting” my Tina Laporta, but then only the home page worked. This is actually pretty frustrating because I can’t seem to find anything that is working to analyze for this blog. In Beyond Interface I found a piece called “Light on the Net” which seemed cool because I was told I could turn the light on and off, however this no longer works either. I would think though, that when this did work it would have been an early example of interactivity which brings a whole new meaning to net art. Unlike analog art, when a piece has interactivity the viewer can actually use what they are given to manipulate a piece, and this gives the viewer power, which people generally like.

In the “Introduction to Net Art” I think the most applicable aspect of the list is the word temporality because as I just explained many of these works were only temporary in the long run because the no longer work in the present.

The piece “cyber babes” is interesting because it has an image that looks like an early version of a photo-shop program in which two photographs are combined to create a new, provocative image. These “cyber babes” seem to consist of both male and female elements, and perhaps they started on the web because the artist thought there was no where else for them to go since it was a completely new way of creating art.

CU Faculty Show

The CU faculty show on opening night was an exciting experience, mostly because of all the energy in the room from the proud artists and all of their supporters. I wasn't sure what to expect but I was extremely impressed by most of the pieces. My favorite had to be the throne with the wings, which I had the pleasure of sitting in. Unfortunately I don't recall the artist's name but they created a phenomenal project. I especially liked it because the tag said something along the lines of "everyone deserves to feel regal at some point or another" which made me happy. The show was cool because it had so many different mediums on display. I was lucky enough to see two of my teachers work on display, Mark Amerika and Sally Elliot, which was great because I don't always get to see my art teacher's artwork.

Digital Narratives

These digital narratives were all extremely different in concept and in execution. Jackson's "My Body" laid out a combination of drawings and text, which told bits and pieces of a story that lacked an overall narrative. It seemed impossible to read every excerpt because once a link was clicked, the links I didn't click were lost behind. Eventually I would recognize a viewed page because the links appeared purple from clicking. I would call this a remix hyper text narrative, because it had home-drawings along with original thought, which was set up in a hyper-text narrative format. "Six Sex Scenes" was more of a coming of age digital journal, in which anonymous confession after confession is on display for the viewer. Like Jackson's, it was hard to get a sense of thoroughly navigating through the whole thing as the pages seemed to grow exponentially.   Laporta's "Distance" was very different from the first two, as a clear path was present from start to finish. Only one link per page made it easy to read all of the information in the correct order. I would also consider this a hypertext narrative with a diary undertone since the narrator was confessing how they felt about online chatting and how humans are “artifacts in motion becoming pixels on the screen”. I liked this one because I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. The Redridinghood was just bizarre if you ask me, I didn’t understand the story line but I did like the level of interactivity. Certain scenes had roll over images which gave different options for chosing your own path. Also you could let Red sleep or wake her up and have her carry on. Options like this give the viewer the power to control the fate of the narrative. The redridinghood narrative was a remix of a traditional fairy tale but I’m not really sure what the final goal was supposed to be and I didn’t find it very effective.

It is easy to blur the lines between autobiography and fiction because we do not know these authors, even though we are given a name they still feel anonymous. It is unclear if the author is talking about their own thoughts or feelings or if they are using someone else’s. It is easy to say whatever you want on the internet because you are hiding behind a computer and no one can judge you to your face. Jackson’s article was more G-rated which may or may not cause the viewer to believe it was truthful, whereas the Six Sex Scenes was more risqué and left more room for fabrication. In the end we will never know what’s true and what is fiction, but does it matter?

The link strategies mostly stressed me out because I didn’t feel like I was getting the whole story, but perhaps some of the authors wanted the viewers to chose their own paths so each individual had an individual experience taking in the information. The Distance narrative was the only one with a clear path, which I personally liked, and the last one’s lack of path left me unsatisfied.

The only other digital narratives I’ve seen are the ones we made in Digital Art 2, and most of them had a pretty clear path from the beginning to the start. If there were several paths it was simple to go back and see the different outcomes, which seems like a personal choice of the author.

Jackson’s narrative didn’t seem like fantasy, but it did have an element of imagination and it seemed to ramble on, sort of like a little kid would in his/her mind. I thought Laporta’s narrative did not have a clear distinction of whether it was supposed to be her or not but obviously she has had some experience with online chatting or she would not write about it. Whether it was about her or about a made-up character, she still seemed to be portraying some anger or sadness about the whole situation. I don’t think it matters because the ending message is clear (humans are becoming artifacts….). I think Little Red Ridinghood is a story everyone knows so it is a safe parallel to use in a narrative, however even though I know the story of redridinghood I could not understand the modern story.

I don’t think these narratives need to necessarily fall into a literature or visual/performing arts category. They are their own new category and cannot fall into either or because they all have elements of both literature and art.

** for some reason when I copy and paste from Word it creates weird spaces within the text, sorry if this is distracting 

Benjamin and Busch articles

Benjamin's essay, “The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, stresses how art goes through a change when it is reproduced. On page 3, Benjamin suggests that “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”. This is interesting to consider, because an analog piece of art held in a museum is going to have a much greater affect on it’s audience than if it was mass produced online and found on google images with very little effort. Benjamin brings up the concept of aura, and explains how an artwork’s aura is removed once it is mechanically reproduced. He gives the example of viewing a landscape and feeling the shadow of a tree. If that moment was reproduced the aura would no longer be present and thus the experience would not be as special. Benjamin goes on to say that the authenticity of a work of art is based in ritual, the original process of art involved creating a unique piece. Now that everything is replicated each piece becomes less traditional and less authentic. In photography a copy of a print and the original look almost identical, and therefore the authentic image loses importance.

            In film, the actor and the audience have a completely different relationship than the audience would have with an actor on stage. On stage the actor can interact with the audience and feed off of their energy provided by their physical presence, where as a film actor only has a relationship with camera. All viewers will witness the exact presentation when watching the film, whereas watching a live play, every audience would enjoy a different, authentic acting experience. When watching a film the viewer may have difficulty grasp the intensity of each scene because things are changing so quickly, which differs from an analog piece of art. “The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is is already changed (Benjamin, 13).

            Published ten years later, Busch’s essay “As We May Think” suggests how humans may embrace technology over the years. While Benjamin compares old technology to new, Busch goes on to predict what may happen in the future. On page 2, Busch gives an example of how a normal man may go throughout his day and which technologies he may encounter: “As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination”. This quote is interesting because in today’s time all people are completely addicted to technology, possibly moreso than Busch could have predicted.

            When Busch describes a time where a memex could be used to store all of our information, it is funny because in 2011 we have so much advanced technology to help us store our music, photographs, documents, etc on our computers. “A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory” (Busch, 4). Today these ideas are so common we don’t even stop to realize how conveneient they are. It is also interesting how he predicts that there will be technological resources for finding out information such as the tides for each day. Now, using the internet, we can find out anything at the push of a button usually for free. If we want to check the weather online, we can have a ten day forecast in front of us in 15 seconds.

            Busch and Benjamin were very intelligent to predict so long ago how the future would be. I think that these articles are important for our class because it is helpful to know how people thought about technology throughout the years. Knowing how technology evolved will help us understand how it became what it is today and can help suggest where it may go in the future.