1. Sound is a big part of our life. Name a time when you turned everything off such as the tv, radio, computer etc. and actually listened to what else is around you. Did you notice a big difference?

I've been going fishing every year up in the North Woods for a long time, just sitting out in the middle of the lake, listening to the sounds of nature. It's quite interesting, and when you leave all your electronics elsewhere it's a completely different experience.

2. Have you ever wondered how sound is made? What do u think are the different steps or processes put into making particular sounds in a movie, a song or television show?

Actually, I took an ECE course where we started making our own sounds via electrical signals. That was really cool. But, other than that, I think I'm fairly fail at making sounds or figuring out music, I have no ear for music nor do I particularly

3. Have you ever put captioning on when watching a movie or television? Do you find yourself watching the words more or listening to people talk? Why do you think this happens?

I actually do enjoy captioning movies and sometimes catching the difference between what is said and what is written. I tend to read the words more than actually watch the screen, and do think that's kind of a problem because I tend to miss all the nuances of everything that was visual on the TV and all that jazz. But overall... it makes for some lines that you couldn't understand before to be much better and clearer.

2/24

So, sound. What is it? I personally tend to usually have sound on in everything that I do, but recently my laptops speakers had an issue. What would you do if you had no sound with your daily computing activities?

Music is a daily part of almost everyone's life. Are you one of those people that likes to listen to music during your walk to class, and ignoring everyone around you? If not, how do you feel about these people?

Several other people have already questioned this, but I am also curious, how many times do you not watch a movie in a foreign language simply because of subtitles, and preferring to hear what is said than read it?

Finally... yeah... apparently I fail at finding podcasts. Anyone?

What the people were thinking when they took these pictures.

Will: "What I do when I wake up, where I go, and the crazy things I see with my family, if I were a baby."

Terri: "My trip to a local eatery, Buffalo Wild Wings, and how they actually let me take pictures without forcing me to stop, oh, and all the booze that I really wanted to drink, but I didn't because I had to continue to take pictures and at least be somewhat sober to know what I was doing, also, I probably work here."

Sean: "No pictures up."

Sara: "Missed Class. Whoops."

Sam: "My day in the lovely city that is champaign. Also, I enjoy bikes. A lot. Especially my bike. But I don't like doing things that involve riding bikes and taking pictures at the same time. I do, however play lacrosse when it's cold out and spend a lot of time in empty buildings. This is my journey of things I like."

Ryan: "I'm a narcissistic dick."

Roberto: "Ooh, the quad on a cold, rainy day. And then my apartment at night and me removing my shoes and getting ready to relax. My stairs are crooked for some reason, and I totally just want to use my laptop and go to bed, but I have to do other things, like get ready for said sleep. eventually, by 11:30, I can sleep. What a long, arduous day."

Rahul: “My friend totally woke up, brushed his teeth, and ran to class cause he was late. He likes to sleep and read the newspaper, but he doesn’t like to pay attention,. For some reason he sleeps a lot and likes to use his cellular telephone. I swear, he sleeps so much that he needs coffee but it doesn’t really help him, because now he has a mess to deal with and is broke. What a shame, maybe he should just kick some ass and do his normal routine, or sleep some more, I think that’s what should happen.”

Octavio: “Problems with pictures! But… I fixed them. Look at me, the thinker, when I start to eat apples, my pictures get all funky. Then I stop eating, and decide I want some Doritos and for some reason I just can’t stop eating things. Now I want some peanut butter, but… That’s just want I want. I don’t know if I’ll actually eat them.”

Mark: “Damn, whats with all this snow? I have to walk through it? Look what I’ve done to the precious snow! IVE MADE TRACKS! And now I’m just going to take pictures of them. I bet they melt soon. But wait, someones made tire tracks? WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES THAT? Gosh, might as well go drinking to get rid of this depression. And then make some snow angels.”

Liz: “Hrm… It’s a dude, staring at a girl. And then we see their necks, and they look at us. Look at the eyes! AND HOW THEY LOVE EACH OTHER! Oh man, We keep noticing different features of people, and then full bodies, but mostly just different features. I can’t really understand why I’m so attracted to looking at different people in these ways, but I think it’s super neat.”

Grace: “I wake up at a fake time, in the morning. Then I do some healthy stuff and work out. I like myself some water. And some powerade, but I really like to work out. And be healthy. So I’m showing you all the healthy stuff I do and the aftermath of said healthystuff. You should be more like me and kick some ass, like seabass.”

Erin: “I’m totally a homeless dude. And then there are dangerous things that go on. I’m showing you all the bad things that hapopen and the aftermaths of them, in the world, nothing is good. Even you’ll get towed. Don’t do anything, you’ll get scolded, it’s bad stuff. Look at that, we’ve got guns in computer labs and people just getting messed up and perishing. WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD?

David: “Look! Babies and stuff during the day, it’s really crapy driving conditions but I think I should drive and take cool pictures anyway. And now there are fires, for some reason and floods. I don’t know whats really going on with the world, these days, but I sure as hell can that everything is a disaster!”

Bill: "Girl wandering around a park, seeing the way that nature has lead things to be, but, it starts out with man made objects and eventually transfers to nature. And then goes back to man-made stuff. Eventually cries and wanders down a long, dusky road to an old train. Basically just a girl wandering around, and it's pretty cool. Mostly straightened paths, and getting home, it's time to put on a coat."

Dan K.: "The earth, is far away, but drawings, now those are close to home. And in between them we have city shots. CITY SHOTS! The cartoon drawings are probably commenting on the picture above or below them, but I can't really tell yet... working on it. Nope, because the baby is sleeping and then there is a sandwich and there are now no longer city pictures. Maybe it's an abstract story about love, the universe, and everything. CUPID! TWICE!"

Dan B.: "Red red red everywhere, red red red, lots of crazy stuff is going on that I don't understand, it seems like it's possibly the lighting set for a stage or something like that? Musical? I'm not entirely... yep, definitely a stage with musical instruments. Interesting lighting and stuff to begin, I just have no idea about most of these things."

Cynthia: "It's a birthday and family celebration, going through the past to celebrate your 20th birthday and the things that you got to do on it. How cute. Looks like you traveled somewhere and had lots of meals with family. Some family does not look at all terribly happy, but that dog looks like he wants someone to pet him. Looks like a game of some type and then you went to hooters and there were puppiies and then it was the end."

Adam: "Dooooo dooo! Monkey workout day! Playing video games, doing pullups, doing pushups doin' crazy stuff and now totally making some delicious delicious pizza. Now gonna watch some cartoons, and to top it off, I'ma get sloshed and then jump off a building. But wait! my buddy the bear has saved me and now we are eating a lot of food and having hot chocolate and being loved. And eating ice cream and kit kats."

Sean: "It's drinking time! Lets do some drinking. Le's do a lot of drinking, actually, with friends. And play beer pong. And have an apartment at the same place as me. JOES STAMP! But for some reason I went to 88 instead. And got pictures with some girls that I know and don't like at all. BLACK OUT"

Sara: "Time to go ahead and read this magazine. And then this other one. Next to a computer, but I don't really want to read the magazine, just want to look at the ridiculous advertisements inside of it. Why don't we look at all these magazines ads?"

Masha: "In the union, courtyard cafe, people are studying, gonna go take pictures of this dude and his studies, and see what he's like. He's kinda cool.

Photo Journal... Kind of?

Well let's just say that I had quite a difficult time attempting to come up with something to do for this. I think Champaign is an incredibly bland city and there isn't much to see here, so I wanted to go ahead and use photos from my last summer. Unfortunately, I realized I took no photos, my friend Adam had taken all of them, as he's somewhat of a professional photographer and I figured he could take better pictures. So that choice was out. Then I thought "well how about my daily routine, going from my apartment to class?" Again, Champaign being a bland city gave me stop. That, and I just am not awake enough in the morning, nor do I really want to be taking a bunch of random photos of places while people are walking by. So that was another strike out. Then, as I was surfing facebook, I thought I struck gold. I noticed that in several of my pictures, I was wearing the same, white with black stripes button down shirt. I figured I could make it a ‘journey of the shirt’ and take pictures from each place that that shirt had been and put them up in a cool “Well that shirts been all over the world” sort of thing. But, unfortunately as I continued to look through my pictures, it dawned on me that not only do I not take a lot of pictures, but I didn’t wear that shirt in more than 10. Damn. So then things started to get more difficult, with me attempting to come up with various things that I could do, not wanting to do anything that would actually come from Champaign limited me. Unfortunately, I ended up going with pictures that at one point had been used as profile pictures, and the majority of them had been taken right here in my very favorite city. Now, the pictures don’t exactly tell a story, but they do show the 4 year journey that I’ve had since Freshman year. Not that it’s been a particularly long or hard journey, but a journey never the less. I found it interesting the different styling of clothes and hair that I’ve gone through in the last four years, and I wonder where I’ll end up in another four. Will I have extremely short hair? Long hair, yet again? Will I continue to buy clothes from stores like Express and wear only those? Or will I have evolved into something more sophisticated, wearing only suits? Or, is it possible that I will have become bored with looking this damn good (kidding) and just start bumming around in hoodies and sweaters, or some incredibly over-sized t-shirts? Only time will tell, and I think that adding to this in a few years will be an incredibly interesting thing to do and then subsequently view.

Q Answers

1. Berger states, "The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe." What does he mean by this and give one example.

I think that he means we all have our own different perceptions based on what our own experiences have been. For instance, I see this keyboard that I am typing on right now incredibly terrible and way too loud, but that's because I'm used to my quiet, easy to type on, keyboard. However, the guy sitting next to me was telling me how much he enjoyed these keyboards, because he has one and is used to it.

2. Berger also says "Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually became evident that an image could outlast what it represented;" Think of one photograph or picture that you see everyday and explain why you think it was taken in the first place, what you see now and lastly what other might see.

I can't really think of a picture I see everyday, but if there was a picture to talk about, I guess I would talk about one that was created of what London would look like after the end of the world. I see it as something incredibly cool, as it was my background for some time after I got back from there, and everyone that looked at it, at first glance, couldn't tell what it was at first and eventually found it morbid. I found it to be much more than that, and I think it was just showing that even after everything is gone, those monuments would still stand.

3. Think of an image that has been recreated and has lost it's value or uniqueness.

I think the Apple logo, having gone from rainbow colored to just one solid color, has lost it's uniqueness. It has become like anything else, a quick brand reminder.

Questions

I don't know about you, but I find McCloud to kind of be pretentious. That might be because I read it last year for English 300 and we all agreed that he was pretentious. With that said, however, do you think that the pictures are more important than the words in most places? If there were pictures as well as words, would you continue to read or would you look at the pictures and ignore the words?

Do you ignore things that are around you, or do you actually take notice of everything that is around you? That is to say, when you walk around campus, do you actively look at all the signs that are up and their pictures, or do you only get your eyes caught by things that are glossy and force you to look at them?

What about when you go to McDonald's and you look at the menu, with pictures of delicious looking meals, only to get something that doesn't look delectable at all, it looks like it was put together by a blind guy?

Q and A Feb. 10th

Sorry about my lack of posts, have been trying to get caught up with everything and it's a pain. Here's a word of advice, don't get sick! But in all seriousness, I should be caught up soon.

Sara had quite a few questions, and my responses are as follows:

Wow, that's a plethora of questions. Let's just answer a few, shall we? In response to taller books being children's books, no I do not find it ironic. Why, you ask? Because children's books generally have large pictures and because of that, they need to be bigger. I know, i know, you said because of the size of our hands... Yeah I don't really think that has anything to do with it.

News Sites using bold colors and flashy graphics is their attempt at attracting more visitors. I think that news sites, while they mostly try to be serious, without anything to grab someones attention, they will unlikely click on many links and read the articles, thus the site loses out on revenue from ads.

Personally I don't expect texts to be visually appealing, I expect them to have words, and have a font that is easy to read. I find when pictures are present that I tend to ignore what is being said and just look at the pictures and their captions, basically trying to absorb all my information from that as opposed to reading the entirety of the page. With that said, however, I do tend to read the page if that sort of thing is very interesting to me.

Stencil Project

In a world where people are getting closer, sometimes they get too close. As is the myth of Icarus and his father's wax wings, when people get too close, they happen to burn and fall. This is a commentary on people getting too close to something that they desire, they don’t see the consequences that are going to befall them. People these days don’t listen to their closest friends about things that they definitely should. For instance, when a guy is getting too close to a girl, he is blinded to anything that could potentially be wrong with said person. Anyway, I basically thought that Icarus was a good choice as his folly is a good lesson for people to learn and to keep in mind when they are trying something new or getting close to other people. I usually wouldn’t think this would be a social problem, but these days there have been far too many people that I know that have gotten hurt from becoming too close with someone too quickly and can’t tell what exactly is going on with anything or anyone, and their friends are lost in it.

I came up with the idea when I was just sitting around thinking about how I’ve been trying to help friends out who have been having problems with significant others, that turn to shit right quick, and I feel bad trying to help, etc. So this is a cautionary piece saying “Don’t get too close, you’ll fall and perish.”

I chose the blue paper because it seemed like a more uplifting, sky themed color. I would have gone with yellow for the sun, but I thought that maybe making everything white would be a little more like they are clouds, and I think that is what people are feeling like when they are getting too close, they feel like they are on cloud 9 and nothing could hurt them. So the cloud-esque theme was definitely something I was going for, I just wasn’t sure how I could make the pieces stand out more bubbly, more cloudy. I sprayed it three different times and the one that I’ve posted is what I liked the best, I just did different prints from different angles and distances, and this one looks the best. The other ones are just… ridiculous.

Unfortunately if I were to have this somewhere, like on a shirt or on a wall or something, I don’t think anyone would really understand it. I mean, yeah, they would probably get the Icarus theme, but I’m not sure if people would understand that it’s a commentary on how people do get far too close. If I were far more artistic, I think I would be able to make a sun look kind of like a person, so it would signify that Icarus is not only getting too close to the sun, but he’s also getting far too close to a person and being blinded.