Besides being an art theorist, graphic and installation artist and sculptor, Joseph Beuys was a Fluxus, Happening and performance artist that was born on 1921 in Krefeld, Germany, and died of a heart attack(because of an illness) on 1986 in Düsseldorf. He focused on aspects of anthroposophy, humanism and social philosophy, integrating the concept of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk or "total and ideal work of art". It is an art that stoves to utilize and incorporate all the existing art forms. By "social sculpture", he meant the idea to the idea that art had the potential to change society or the environment. Many say that he shaped society and politics; in addition, he is considered to be one of the most influential performance artists in mid 1900's. He applied shamanism in his lifestyle as well as in his projects. He believed that humanity was slowly elimination emotions, what he describes as a major source of energy, imagination and creativity in each person, since society was shifting its view to rationality. He expressed his audience that they had to maintain their own "spiritual" side in order to incorporate emotions and feeling to the contribution of mankind. His works concentrate on four topics or concepts: traditional art (installations, sculpturing, painting and drawing), social and political actions, contributions to the theory of art and academic teaching and performance. He was first involved in Fluxus, but then decided that he's points of views and beliefs were too different.
One of his most famous performances (the first one) was "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" presented in 1965, which he could be seen form the gallery glass windows. His face was covered with honey and gold leaf, and he had an iron slab attached to his boot, as he cradled a dead hare. He mumbled things and explained the drawing of the wall to the dead animal. Everything had a symbol. For example, talking to a dead hare meant that there are people in society that have less intuition than a dead animal, while honey, which was related to bees, represented the perfect society of warmth and compassion. In addition, the iron slab represented the principle of connection and strength with the earth. Examples of performances as this one are "EURASIA", "Scottish Symphony" and "Celtic" Another project he was known for was "I Like America and America Likes Me", which he spent eight hours for three days locked in his room with a wild coyote.
Giving up journalism in the 1990's and concentrating on art in Germany, Sheryl Oring is a performance artist well known by her project called "I wish to say". She currently works as a teaching assistant and graduate assistant in the University of California at San Diego.Integrating old and new forms and styles of media and analyzing the opinion of the public and its diverseness in her works, she focuses her art in the questioning of technology and its importance and function in society today. She relies on other people's contribution to her projects, which are interactive and can be in form of videos, photos, books, performances and others based on the internet. Having once focused on journalism, she achieves her artworks by using tools like the camera, interviews, typewriters, archives and pens. Her main points of view have been three: the purpose of free expression in society, the role of artists in inspiring and racing in the audience and the future of the book in an all-digital era. She explains that her art is "about telling stories" and that communication is an art form. She expresses that her works usually begin with a question or idea, where she develops it with investigation and exploration. She focuses mainly on projects that are interactive with and require a complete process, especially related to the First Amendment or the history of the people.
Right now, Oring is working on a project she started on 2004 called "I wish to Say", in which she dresses herself as a secretary from the 1960's, sets up a public office (with manual typewriter form that time) and asks people on the street, "If I were the president of the United States, what would you wish to say to me?" The people interested in her question can dedicate postcards for the president, which Orning could display or they are sent to the White House. She explains once that, while being in Germany, many Europeans commented that all Americans think alike. This inspired her to start this project in order to prove the wide range of diversity that exists between Americans. She videotapes and takes photos of the performance in order to include them on her shows or present them in exhibitions. In addition, she uses the work obtained for commercial and art books and will be stored digitally on a website so that everyone can share their opinions and views. She enjoys listening to people and having a normal conversation with them. She believes that this is because she was a journalist at first, working as a newspaper writer and editor.
Besides working on the "I Wish to Say" project, she is also working on others, like "Creative Fix" and "Death by Facebook". Many of her projects have been presented on numerous locations, like at the McCormick Freedom Museum in Chicago, Bryant Park at The New York Public Library, San Diego Museum of Art, Conflux Festival in New York and others. In addition, she has received various scholarships thanks to her work, like the Creative Capital Foundation grant and the Puffin Foundation grant.
In terms of what relation there is between Sheryl Oring's "I wish to Say" project with what Bobby Baker does is that they both send packages to very important and powerful people. Maybe Baker was inspired by Oring to send packages of toothpaste pillows to the Queen, or vice versa. In other words, they have the same concept of sending something meaningful (or not) to these kind of people.
Dreamachines "Writing is fifty years behind painting." - Brion Gypsin
Born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, Brion Gypsin was known as a writer, sound poet, painter and performance artist in the 20th century. He discovered the cut-up method and technique, a new approach to creating art, which was also used by the famous William Burroughs. This method involves cutting text and then arranging it to create new one. He was cutting through some newspapers when he discovered that the different slices created new and different texts and meanings. With the help of the engineer Ian Sommerville, Gypsin created the Dreamachine, a moving device made as art that has to be truly appreciated by seeing with with eyes closed, which caused complete mental relaxation and a hallucinatory state. It was officially presented in 1962. However, he was most known in paintings and drawings, focusing on calligraphic art influenced by Arabic Script and Japanese "grass" script. He attempted to integrate painting and writing to generate a new system of mark-making. Gypsin also created poems known as permutation poems, which involved the repetition of a phrase but rearranging in a different order every time it is pronounced. Many of the permutation were created by an early computer program that Ian Sommerville possessed.
This is one of his most known permutations:
I AM THAT I AM
AM I THAT I AMI THAT AM I AMTHAT I AM I AMAM THAT I I AMTHAT AM I I AMI AM I THAT AMAM I I THAT AMI I AM THAT AMI I AM THAT AMAM I I THAT AMI AM I THAT AMI THAT I AM AMTHAT I I AM AMI I THAT AM AMI I THAT AM AMTHAT I I AM AMI THAT I AM AMAM THAT I I AMTHAT AM I I AMAM I THAT I AMI AM THAT I AM.
American politician Joseph Raymond McCarthy was the Republican U. S. Senator from 1947 to 1957(death) of the state of Wisconsin. He was greatly known for his ideas they there were many Soviet and Communist spies and supporters in the United States federal government. During his era, many people were falsely punished, attacked, accused and imprisoned because they were believed to be Communist or supporters. Others lost their employment and their careers were ended. McCarthy used these reasons to accuse and and attack numerous political members and parties inside and outside the U.S. government. Due to his lack of proof about his claims, he was censored by the U. S. Senate. He died in 1957 due to hepatitis, which is believed to be caused by his alcoholism.
After he died, an investigation was commenced. It was proven that some people inside the U.S. political department were indeed supporting and helping Soviet purposes and efforts. In the end, many politicians, investigators and historians made McCarthy the object of criticism and ridicule.
Many people use the term "McCarthyism" began to be used to refer to highly anti-communist groups, associations and parties. It is now defined as the act of accusing because of disloyalty, treason and/or subversion without any kind of proof or evidence. It describes unsubstantiated claims as well as attacks by a demography supported to other political parties and groups.
I am not sure if this is the McCarthy I was supposed to blog about (only wrote the last name). If it is someone else, I will change it as quickly as possible!
Operating from 1919 to 1933, Staatliches Bauhaus was a German design school well known for the types of designs they focused on, taught and publicized. It was the most influential modernist art school in the 1900's. It was formed due to the trend of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Better known as Bauhau, which means "school of building", this department combined the aspect of crafts and architecture with the fine arts. Even thought the founder, Walter Gropius, was an architect, the school did not have an architecture program in its first years. However, it was created to produce complete art, where all the elements of art (like architecture) would be integrated together. Bauhaus was operated in three parts in Germany: first in Weimar, then in Dessau and lastly in Berlin. There were also three directors during those three periods: Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. Unfortunately, this school was shut down do the tension of Nazi influence and regimen. It was founded to create unity between architecture, art and technology (all arts). They taught fine art and design education. They also did not teach any history of art, since they believed that art itself had to be created using the fist principles and not the previous ones (precedent). Even though they were not exactly a group (they were a school), there were many known Bauhaus artists: Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Bill and more.
The style created in Bauhaus was very important in art history because it greatly influenced posterior development and growth of architecture, typography, are and graphic, interior and industrial design. In addition, it contributed on Modernist Architecture and modern design. It also influenced art in other countries, like Europe, the United States and Canada, due to the exile of many artists and creators by the Nazi government. One of the most important impacts that Bauhaus formed was in the department of modern furniture design, like the Cantilever chair and the Wassily chair. Also, the great Steve Jobs was inspired by the Bauhaus style and integrated their concept in his inventions. This movement greatly inspired, developed and contributed to the growth of the arts, crafts and technology, integrating them all together to form the "complete or total art."
Bauhaus' own curriculum
Armchair by Marcel Breuer
Tea infuser and strainer by Marianne Brandt
MR armchair by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Slate Sink by Maxim
By Walter Gropius
Good night!
Sincerely,
Michelle
If you are interested to know more about Bauhaus, take a look in these sites!
The most recent assignment for Art and Technology class was to use a pre-existing grid and reproduce and image using any material that could represent the units of the image. After having a hard time finding a pre-existing grid and getting a little help from my mother (who sent me the materials I needed for the units) I created my own grid art. It is a 64 x 79 grid and I utilized more that a 1,000 push-pins. I used a yoga matt that I bought in the Bookstore as my grid and color push-pins as my units. It may not be visible at first, but the yoga matt is composed of very small squares. In order for the pins to take up a whole unit, I decided to make four of those squares (2x2) into a single unit. So it can be easier to identify, I used a red marker to highlight the units composed of the four squares. As for pins, I remembered that my house in Puerto Rico is near an Office Max and asked my mother to send me a good amount of them. There are five colors: green, blue, magenta, purple and white. There are also square ones in black and white (present form my mom). After I created my own virtual grid using excel, I used it as a reference to create the real thing. The image I used was one of a peacock I found in Google Images. IT DOESN'T BELONG TO ME. The real creator has all the credit.
Being a powerful and significant protesting art movement generated by the avant-garde (people or works that are different, experimental and innovative in art, music and politics, Dadaism began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the early 1900's due to the fist World War. Some of the founders of this movement were Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taüber and others in the Cabaret Voltaire. It emerged from the horror and reality of WWI, using poetry, literature, visual arts, theatre, graphic design, art theory and art manifestoes to spread anti-war politics and movements. In addition, Dadaism was also against Bourgeoisie (the wealthy and rich middle class - capital). Dada praised nonsense, spontaneousness, irrationality and intuition and hated reason and logic. It is the founder of abstract ad complex works of art, sound poems as well as the glimpse of performance art, pop art and, most importantly, Surrealism.
There were many techniques developed and used in Dadaism:
Collage - It involved creating art by cutting pieces of different types of papers (maps, newspapers, wrappers, etc) and gluing them in different ways and orders to create an aspect of life.
Photomontage - Instead of using paint and paintbrushes to express their art, creativity and message, Dadaists used scissors and glue, utilizing real photographs or copies that appeared in newspapers and others. It involved the same concept as in a collage.
Assemblage- It is the three-dimensional version of collages, meaning the integration of everyday things in art projects to produce meaningful or meaningless messages and purposes. By nailing, screwing, pasting or sticking, they joined this object together to create the art they desired.
Readymades - Started by Marcel Buchamp, in which manufactured objects are modified by tilting, joining, moving, repositioning and more to create a piece of art.
In the Dadaism movement, there were text written by many Dadaists called Dada Manifestoes. The two best known were two; one of them written by Hugo Balla in 1916 and the other by Tristan Tzara in 1918. These two are two most important texts related to Dadaism, especially the one by Tzara.
This is Tzara's Dada Manifesto:
The magic of a word - DADA - which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance.
To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3,
work yourself up and sharpen your wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one's A.B.C. is only natural - and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it's evidence of a naive don't-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity - novelty - we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant in order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there's nothing I want, and yet I'm saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase - too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). *
I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won't explain myself because I hate common sense.
DADA - this is a word that throws up ideas so that they can be shot down; every bourgeois is a little playwright, who invents different subjects and who, instead of situating suitable characters on the level of his own intelligence, like chrysalises on chairs, tries to find causes or objects (according to whichever psychoanalytic method he practices) to give weight to his plot, a talking and self-defining story. *
Every spectator is a plotter, if he tries to explain a word (to know!) From his padded refuge of serpentine complications, he allows his instincts to be manipulated. Whence the sorrows of conjugal life.
To be plain: The amusement of redbellies in the mills of empty skulls.
image of a hand pointing to the right DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING
If we consider it futile, and if we don't waste our time over a word that doesn't mean anything... The first thought that comes to these minds is of a bacteriological order: at least to discover its etymological, historical or psychological meaning. We read in the papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA. A cube, and a mother, in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse, a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA. Some learned journalists see it as an art for babies, other Jesuscallingthelittlechildrenuntohim saints see it as a return to an unemotional and noisy primitivism - noise and monotonous. A sensitivity cannot be built on the basis of a word; every sort of construction converges into a boring sort of perfection, a stagnant idea of a golden swamp, a relative human product. A work of art shouldn't be beauty per se, because it is dead; neither gay nor sad, neither light nor dark; it is to rejoice or maltreat individualities to serve them up the cakes of sainted haloes or the sweat of a meandering chase through the atmosphere. A work of art is never beautiful, by decree, objectively, for everyone. Criticism is, therefore, useless; it only exists subjectively, for every individual, and without the slightest general characteristic. Do people imagine they have found the psychic basis common to all humanity? The attempt of Jesus, and the Bible, conceal, under their ample, benevolent wings: shit, animals and days. How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man? The principle: "Love thy neighbour" is hypocrisy. "Know thyself" is utopian, but more acceptable because it includes malice. No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity. I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines stewn with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms. Stalactites: look everywhere for them, in creches magnified by pain, eyes as white as angels' hares. Thus DADA was born* , out of a need for independence, out of mistrust for the community. People who join us keep their freedom. We don't accept any theories. We've had enough of the cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Do we make art in order to earn money and keep the dear bourgeoisie happy? Rhymes have the smack of money, and inflexion slides along the line of the stomach in profile. Every group of artists has ended up at this bank, straddling various comets. Leaving the door open to the possibility of wallowing in comfort and food.
Here we are dropping our anchor in fertile ground.
Here we really know what we are talking about, because we have experienced the trembling and the awakening. Drunk with energy, we are revenants thrusting the trident into heedless flesh. We are streams of curses in the tropical abundance of vertiginous
a line image of a squiggle consisting of overlapping curves and zigazags
vegetation, resin and rain is our sweat, we bleed and burn with thirst, our blood is strength.
Cubism was born out of a simple manner of looking at objects: Cezanne painted a cup twenty centimetres lower than his eyes, the cubists look at it from above, others complicate it appearance by cutting a vertical section through it and soberly placing it to one side (I'm not forgetting the creators, nor the seminal reasons of unformed matter that they rendered definitive). * The futurist sees the same cup in movement, a succession of objects side by side, mischievously embellished by a few guide-lines. This doesn't stop the canvas being either a good or a bad painting destined to form an investment for intellectual capital. The new painter creates a world whose elements are also its means, a sober, definitive, irrefutable work. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, rocks, or locomotive structures capable of being spun in all directions by the limpid wind of the momentary sensation. * Every pictorial or plastic work is unnecessary , even if it is a monster which terrifies servile minds, and not a sickly-sweet object to adorn the refectories of animals in human garb, those illustrations of the sad fable of humanity. - A painting is the art of making two lines, which have been geometrically observed to be parallel, meet on a canvas, before our eyes, in the reality of a world that has been transposed according to new conditions and possibilities. This world is neither specified nor defined in the work, it belongs, in its innumerable variations, to the spectator. For its creator it has neither case nor theory. Order = disorder; ego = non-ego; affirmation - negation: the supreme radiations of an absolute art. Absolute in the purity of its cosmic and regulated chaos, eternal in that globule that is a second which has no duration, no breath, no light and no control. * I appreciate an old work for its novelty. It is only contrast that links us to the past. * Writers who like to moralise and discuss or ameliorate psychological bases have, apart from a secret wish to win, a ridiculous knowledge of life, which they may have classified, parcelled out, canalised; they are determined to see its categories dance when they beat time. Their readers laugh derisively, but carry on: what's the use?
There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author's real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, or because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. On the one hand there is a world tottering in its flight, linked to the resounding tinkle of the infernal gamut; on the other hand, there are: the new men. Uncouth, galloping, riding astride on hiccups. And there is a mutilated world and literary medicasters in desperate need of amelioration.
I assure you: there is no beginning, and we are not afraid; we aren't sentimental. We are like a raging wind that rips up the clothes of clouds and prayers, we are preparing the great spectacle of disaster, conflagration and decomposition. Preparing to put an end to mourning, and to replace tears by sirens spreading from one continent to another. Clarions of intense joy, bereft of that poisonous sadness. * DADA is the mark of abstraction; publicity and business are also poetic elements.
I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven's hand into hell, hell's eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual.
A philosophical questions: from which angle to start looking at life, god, ideas, or anything else. Everything we look at is false. I don't think the relative result is any more important than the choice of patisserie or cherries for dessert. The way people have of looking hurriedly at things from the opposite point of view, so as to impose their opinions indirectly, is called dialectic, in other words, heads I win and tails you lose, dressed up to look scholarly.
If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books in order, finally, to say that even so everyone has danced according to his own personal boomboom, and that he's right about his boomboom: the satisfaction of unhealthy curiosity; private bell-ringing for inexplicable needs; bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions on to life; the authority of the mystical baton formulated as the grand finale of a phantom orchestra with mute bows, lubricated by philtres with a basis of animal ammonia. With the blue monocle of an angel they have dug out its interior for twenty sous worth of unanimous gratitude. * If all of them are right, and if all pills are only Pink, let's try for once not to be right. * People think they can explain rationally, by means of thought, what they write. But it's very relative. Thought is a fine thing for philosophy, but it's relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it deadens man's anti-real inclinations and systematises the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. Dialectics is an amusing machine that leads us (in banal fashion) to the opinions which we would have held in any case. Do people really think that, by the meticulous subtlety of logic, they have demonstrated the truth and established the accuracy of their opinions? Even if logic were confined by the senses it would still be an organic disease. To this element, philosophers like to add: The power of observation. But this magnificent quality of the mind is precisely the proof of its impotence. People observe, they look at things from one or several points of view, they choose them from amongst the millions that exist. Experience too is the result of chance and of individual abilities. * Science revolts me when it becomes a speculative system and loses its utilitarian character - which is so useless - but is at least individual. I hate slimy objectivity, and harmony, the science that considers that everything is always in order. Carry on, children, humanity ... Science says that we are nature's servants: everything is in order, make both love and war. Carry on, children, humanity, nice kind bourgeois and virgin journalists... * I am against systems; the most acceptable system is that of have none on no principle. * To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own pettiness to the point of filling the little vase of oneself with oneself, even the courage to fight for and against thought, all this can suddenly infernally propel us into the mystery of daily bread and the lilies of the economic field.
DADAIST SPONTANEITY
What I call the I-don't-give-a-damn attitude of life is when everyone minds his own business, at the same time as he knows how to respect other individualities, and even how to stand up for himself, the two-step becoming a national anthem, a junk shop, the wireless (the wire-less telephone) transmitting Bach fugues, illuminated advertisements for placards for brothels, the organ broadcasting carnations for God, all this at the same time, and in real terms, replacing photography and unilateral catechism.
Active simplicity.
The incapacity to distinguish between degrees of light: licking the twilight and floating in the huge mouth filled with honey and excrement. Measured against the scale of Eternity, every action is vain - (if we allow thought to have an adventure whose result would be infinitely grotesque - an important factor in the awareness of human incapacity). But if life is a bad joke, with neither goal nor initial accouchement, and because we believe we ought, like clean chrysanthemums, to make the best of a bad bargain, we have declared that the only basis of understanding is: art. It hasn't the importance that we, old hands at the spiritual, have been lavishing on it for centuries. Art does nobody any harm, and those who are capable of taking an interest in it will not only receive caresses, but also a marvellous chance to people the country of their conversation. Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment I enjoy mixing this monster in oil paints: a paper tube imitating the metal that you press and automatically squeeze out hatred, cowardice and villainy. The artist, or the poet, rejoices in the venom of this mass condensed into one shopwalker of this trade, he is glad to be insulted, it proves his immutability. The author or the artist praised by the papers observes that his work has been understood: a miserable lining to a collaborating with the heat of an animal incubating the baser instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh multiplying itself with the aid of typographical microbes.
We have done violence to the snivelling tendencies in our natures. Every infiltration of this sort is macerated diarrhoea. To encourage this sort of art is to digest it. What we need are strong straightforward, precise works which will be forever misunderstood. Logic is a complication. Logic is always false. It draws the superficial threads of concepts and words towards illusory conclusions and centres. Its chains kill, an enormous myriapod that asphyxiates independence. If it were married to logic, art would be living in incest, engulfing, swallowing its own tail, which still belongs to its body, fornicating in itself, and temperament would become a nightmare tarred and feathered with protestantism, a monument, a mass of heavy, greyish intestines.
But suppleness, enthusiasm and even the joy of injustice, that little truth that we practise as innocents and that makes us beautiful: we are cunning, and our fingers are malleable and glide like the
line image of loops with a few "x"s along their length
branches of that insidious and almost liquid plant; this injustice is the indication of our soul, say the cynics. This is also a point of view; but all flowers aren't saints, luckily, and what is divine in us is the awakening of anti-human action. What we are talking about here is a paper flower for the buttonhole of gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, our white, lithe or fleshy girl cousins. They make a profit out of what we have selected. The contradiction and unity of opposing poles at the same time may be true. IF we are absolutely determined to utter this platitude, the appendix of alibidinous, evil-smelling morality. Morals have an atrophying effect, like every other pestilential product of the intelligence. Being governed by morals and logic has made it impossible for us to be anything other than impassive towards policemen - the cause of slavery - putrid rats with whom the bourgeois are fed up to the teeth, and who have infected the only corridors of clear and clean glass that remained open to artists.
Every man must shout: there is great destructive, negative work to be done. To sweep, to clean. The cleanliness of the individual materialises after we've gone through folly, the aggressive, complete folly of a world left in the hands of bandits who have demolished and destroyed the centuries. With neither aim nor plan, without organisation: uncontrollable folly, decomposition. Those who are strong in word or in strength will survive, because they are quick to defend themselves; the agility of their limbs and feelings flames on their faceted flanks.
Morals have given rise to charity and pity, two dumplings that have grown like elephants, planets, which people call good. There is nothing good about them. Goodness is lucid, clear and resolute, and ruthless towards compromise and politics. Morality infuses chocolate into every man's veins. This task is not ordained by a supernatural force, but by a trust of ideas-merchants and academic monopolists. Sentimentality: seeing a group of bored and quarrelling men, they invented the calendar and wisdom as a remedy. By sticking labels on to things, the battle of the philosophers we let loose (money-grubbing, mean and meticulous weights and measures) and one understood once again that pity is a feeling, like diarrhoea in relation to disgust, that undermines health, the filthy carrion job of jeopardising the sun. I proclaim the opposition of all the cosmic faculties to that blennorrhoea of a putrid sun that issues from the factories of philosophical thought, the fight to the death, with all the resources of
DADAIST DISGUST
Every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada; DADA; acquaintance with all the means hitherto rejected by the sexual prudishness of easy compromise and good manners: DADA; abolition of logic, dance of those who are incapable of creation: DADA; every hierarchy and social equation established for values by our valets: DADA; every object, all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition and the precise shock of parallel lines, are means for the battle of: DADA; the abolition of memory: DADA; the abolition of archaeology: DADA the abolition of prophets: DADA; the abolition of the future: DADA; the absolute and indiscutable belief in every god that is an immediate product of spontaneity: DADA; the elegant and unprejudiced leap from on harmony to another sphere; the trajectory of a word, a cry, thrown into the air like an acoustic disc; to respect all individualities in their folly of the moment, whether serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, decided or enthusiastic; to strip one's church of every useless and unwieldy accessory; to spew out like a luminous cascade any offensive or loving thought, or to cherish it - with the lively satisfaction that it's all precisely the same thing - with the same intensity in the bush, which is free of insects for the blue-blooded, and gilded with the bodies of archangels, with one's soul. Liberty: DADA DADA DADA; - the roar of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE.
***
Very interesting and powerful, don't you think? I absolutely loved how he "defined" and explained the word "dada", it's meaning and effect. One of the most impacting parts of this Dada Manifesto is the last paragraph, where Tzara defines Dada as disgust an continued to present examples. In addition, I found very powerful the part in which he describes dada as liberty and life. It actually made me understand something about the whole concept of Dadaism, since I struggled to comprehend the meaning and purpose of it.
^ I found this and thought that it was very interesting. Film by Hans Ritcher. ^
A debate that started many years ago and that continues to be present today is the questioning if violent video games promote and encourage youth aggression, more specifically, bullying. Many researches had been made, yet it is not clear nor accurate if there is a relation between violent games and the acts of bullying. These games had been blamed to cause and promote violent actions and behaviors in people (shootings, bullying and others), mentioning that they expose gamers to violence, stimulate and reward them and ultimately make them believe that violence is the best way to solve problems. However, other studies concluded that video game maturity and violence were related and connected with bullying and cyber-bullying. They explain that the over exposure of children to these gore games can lead to aggression, since they prevent the development and growth of empathy and compassion for others. According to investigators in Simmons College (published in 2011), kids between the ages of 7 and 15 who tend to play a lot of violent video games have the view and belief that some form of violence is good and acceptable in society. They also mention that most of the existing violent video games do not show any perspective of the victim's situation, taking away the chance to develop sympathy for the other people. Parents also have their own opinions. A research in 2001 reports that violent video games are supposedly the second cause of aggressive behavior.
On the other hand, the ones who defend these destructive video games affirm that just because their children play video games does not mean that they will likely be violent, emphasizing on the fact that many who play those games do not show any sign of aggressive behavior. Many others support this by explaining that the gamers were able to recognize and divide the world of video games and real life, especially in the aspect of violence and gore. A study made by psychology, psychiatry and child development doctors say that most of the aggression in young people are the result of a person's trait aggression and stress level and that video games are not entirely responsible for the violent actions. They support that no concrete relation has been found between the two. On the contrary, they explain that violent video games reduce aggression, since they serve as a punching bag, a substitution and way to let out anger and frustration without harming others. They also say that the only relation present is that naturally aggressive kids are attracted to violent games.
There had been many tragedies that have occurred, which were linked, with or without proof, to violent video games. The first one was a shooting in West Paducah in 1997, where a 15 year old student killed three students and injured five. It is said that he played violent video games, since the location and spots he shot his victims were accurately in the head or the upper chest. However, there hasn't been any real proof. Another one took place in Jonesboro School in 1998. Two boys, (eleven and thirteen years old) killed four people and wounded ten. These were linked to video games, and this time they had proof. Both kids were constant violent video gamers, and they shot their victims from the woods next to the school. Two other shootings occurred, one in Columbine School and in Virginia Tech. However, it is proven that these shooters were not exposed to violent video games, especially the second one.
This controversy is still debated today and has not found the real answer yet. Many support that video games are related to bullying, while others are against it. There are researches that support both, giving more doubt about the credibility and accuracy of these studies. This conflict will stay present for many years to come. It all depends on what parents and guardians decide to do for their children that will make a difference or not.
Good night!
Sincerely,
Michelle
For more information from the sources I used, check out these links:
One interesting question: Why is Apple Inc. named Apple? There are many stories and rumors about the answer to this question. Some people say that Steve Jobs allowed his work companions a full day to come up with a good name for his company. If not, he would name his computer company A for Apple. Many different names were suggested, but none of them satisfied the young inventor. They say that the next day he officially used Apple as the official name of his company. However, others say that he chose that name because it was not complicated, geeky or computer-like. Other people say that Steve Jobs was on a fruit diet and, since he did not like the names presented by his team workers, chose Apple as the best option. These are just guesses, but part of them are pretty accurate.
The real reason was, as Steve Job himself mentioned in his biography made by Walter Isaacson, that he had been working on apple orchards in Oregon. He began a frutarian diet and thought that the simple name was "fun, spirited, and not intimidating." However, this created a battle with the Beatles company, that used the name "Apple" on their own records. After being taken to court in London, Steve Jobs paid 26.5 million dollars to the Beatles company. Many say that there were still tension between the two corporations.
Just out of curiosity, I checked the history of the Apple Inc. logo and found these pictures. Here we can see how the logo changed as time went by:
This is Apple Inc.'s original logo, which show Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Replced almost immediately .
From 1976 to 1998 - erroneously referred as a tribute to Alan Turing, the bite symbolizing his method of suicide.
While I was looking for ideas in terms of images I could create as a design for my grid art, I found this fascinating picture. It is a grid art of Steve Jobs... using APPLES! It is so amazing! So, yeah, I wanted to share it with all of you.
Being an American author, futurist and inventor, Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil has written several books about futurism, artificial intelligence, health, transhumanism (the use of technology to enhance human abilities and eliminate aging) and technological singularity(acquiring super-inteligence through technology). In addition, he focuses on optical character recognition, speech recognition, text-to-speechsynthesis technology and futurology. He is most known because of his strong interest and actions regarding futurism and transhumanism, which include his concentration of technologies for life-extension, forecast of future technologies and his passion for the concept of technological singularity. However, he has received many critiques and reclamations from many scientist and people. Derived from Moore's Law, Kurzweil has focused on the concept of increasing rate innovation of technology is happening exponentially and not linearly. He explains that since growth of science and technology have computer founding as one of their bases, improvements in computer studies will result in the later advances to other sciences and studies, like biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Also, Kurzweil has made many predictions on his books about future technologies, with specific dates. One example in that in 2050, improvements in medicine and healthcare will enable humans to extend their life span while maintaining a good life quality using nanobots (extremely molecular-small robots). He shares that he believes that nanotechnology will be able to find the solution to serious global difficulties, like hunger, poverty, disease and weather risks. Kurzweil also predicted the use of wireless computer systems, the growth of content in the internet, that many documents and information would be stored only in computers and more. He predicts that computer intelligence will definitely surpass human intelligence by all means and concepts. According to Kurzweil, 102 out of 108 predictions he made were correct by the end of 2009. In other words, most of his predictions were accurate and correct.
