I sit in a coffee shop in downtown area and watched people for an hour. I am surprised by how many unique individuals I encountered during this one hour people watched and I found many interesting people.

 

One of the people is a tall, white woman with short hair. I guess she is around 25-30 years old. She appeared to be very serious looking and she wore a pair of glasses. She is around 5’10 tall and she is very skinny. She wore a marmot brand dark blue puffy jacket and a pair of black jeans. She had a mountain bike with her and she was wearing professional triathlon shoes. According to my observations about her physical appearance, I think that she is very active, healthy and fond of sport events. She looks very refreshed and energetic. According to an estimation of her apparels and her bike, I think she must be a middle class young professional, although I am unsure of her specific occupation. Moreover, I think that she is the type of people that don’t usually show their emotions through facial expressions and she seems very cool regardless.

 

Another person is a black male with drop waist, baggy camo pants and half of his underwear exposed. He appears to be around 18-22 years old, very skinny, wearing baseball snap-on that says’ punk’ and a black tank top. As he was walking, he was smoking weed and his postures were very strange. I guess his drop waist pants made him unable to walk in a more natural way. He also threw random glances and stares at people passing by and I think that he probably didn’t have anything to be busy with. To be honest, I don’t really have a good impression of this guy and I thought that his smoking of weed was really inconsiderate to people around him because of the smell and everything. He appeared to be somewhat ‘ghettoish’ and reminded me of the group of teenagers that robbed me on a bus last summer. I think that his health condition is okay but not great because he smokes weed.

 

The third person I find interesting is an Asian American girl dressed in crop tops, high waist shorty shorts, a pair of black high heels and was wearing a floral hairband. She also had very heavy make-ups on and her blue eye shadows seem very exaggerating. She appeared to be very happy and was walking super fast even with those high heels. She looked tanned and toned, so I think she is really healthy and happy. I guess that she is a college peer around 18-25 and I feel that she is very typical Asian American and very different from my female friends who are from Asian. My Asian female friends are generally more reserved and dress in a more conservative way. I am not too sure about her economic status but I guess she is a wise shopper because her apparels seem very trendy and fashionable. She looked like she is a very sociable person.

 

I think that my values come from my family: my parents love outdoor activities, and hence I am familiar with the lifestyles of people who seem out-doorsy. I also seemed a bit racist because of my bad experience of being robbed on the bus. I am very aware of the difference between Asian Americans and Asians so I think that is a good thing that I have culture consciousness.

When reading about Tefler’s essay on Food as art, I become more curious about the understanding of food as art conceptually and how food art could be viewed and felt in public spheres. I have selected the article named “Art, Food and public space: some reflections” by a scholar named Roberta Smith. I selected this article because it discusses food as a product of public art and I think this perspective is very interesting.

 

In the discussion of food as public art, Smith pointed out that the challenge with all forms of art is to make arts at home in public spaces. For example, art needs to be a combination of formal and experiential and emotional terms in order to inspire the viewers. Smith talked about eating at fast food places without enjoying the public space and said that “American’s relation to food is similar to their relation to public space. They tend to consume it mindlessly without a sense of ritual or pleasure. They don’t as a habit take time to enjoy it or experience it, which is why this country has such a widespread problem with obesity. They don’t see it on a regular basis as an occasion for togetherness. They don’t see it as a thing in itself.” (Smith, page 2). I think that this analogy is very interesting to the extent that it connects the choices of food to a bigger problem concerning the future of art in a society. The reflections Roberta Smith made are that people in American society today are unable to enjoy art because their choices of fast foods disables them to taste the pleasures in food and this habit has spread to the viewing of art in public spaces. I think that her connection of food and the general perception of art among the general publics in contemporary America is very profound and I could definitely relate to her conclusions with my daily observations in everyday life.

 

In Tefler’s article, she mentioned that the thinking of food as art is very important because “art is an important part of our lives. In our society, art manifests itself in at least three ways” (page 23, E.Tefler) and that those three ways include education and other socio-economic aspects. Tefler also mentioned about the art of food is a minor art because although food could not be an equivalent of other forms of art such as performance art, food still could manifests meanings and help people to realize the aesthetic importance in life. Similarly, Smith pointed out that the consuming of food should be ritual-like and should not just be a process of consuming, I think that the difference between Smith’s standpoint and Tefler’s is that Smith view food as a representative, symbolic reflection of people’s attitudes towards art and the reluctance of embracing art into life while Tefler is more compromising towards people’s view of art and food. Tefler could understand why people fail to get pleasures from food and refuse to admit that food is a form of art while Smith holds a more solid and uncompromising attitudes and thinks that people nowadays have completely lost their ability to appreciate food as art.

 

I personally agree with both Tefler and Smith. However, I think that Smith might be a bit vague about the connection between public space and the general appreciation of art with the fast food industry that she much disliked. I consider fast food industry as a challenge for traditional culinary arts because it allows less time and possibility for people to actually perceive food as of artistic values instead of just a necessity in life. I sometimes think that I would be much happier if I have the time to enjoy a meal with a peaceful mind instead of just grabbing some sandwiches for school everyday. It is hard to take the time and the mid to appreciate art if our lives don’t really allow us to have those leisure times.

 

Interestingly, Tefler also mentioned about how people could be very regretful to eat the food if the food is very artistic looking. I think it is very true because sometimes when I go to a French restaurant and listen to the waiter telling me about the menu and the beautiful layouts of the plates, I wish that there is an eternal moment that could make food into something that is more permanent and make food art something everlasting. I guess that the thing about food art is that you need to fully live in the moment and put your whole mind into it when you are enjoying food.

 

Reference: Smith, R. (2004). ART, Food and public space. NER, 167-169.

Is Food Art? Discussion

 

In the article ‘art for life’s sake’, the author Ellen mentioned that art is “includes all human societies and accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects” (page 1), moreover, art is also an interpretation and helps people to better understand our “social institutions, language” ( page 5). Art, apart from its emphasis on aesthetic values and its universal value as critical for human’s survival, should be seen as a broad category of behaviors and matters. Normally, we understand art in a relatively narrow way: we think of art as something aesthetically inspiring or metaphorical, in forms such as canvas, paper and human invented mediums. However, food should be considered as art not only because food also contains aesthetic values, but that food is a medium that carries the history and culture of human beings. We should not put limitations on what could be called as art or not simply basing on the visual effects of stuff.

 

In Elizabeth Tefler’s article, she mentioned about the aesthetic in tastes in food and she made a strong point about how ‘form is not necessarily required for beauty” (page 23). I in particular like her quote on Visser about how “A meal is an artistic social construct, ordering the food stuffs which comprise it into a complex dramatic whole, as a play organizes actions and words into component parts such as acts, scenes, speeches, dialogues, entrances and exists….” In my culture, the appreciation of food is carried along the history. Although Chinese food is recognized as one of the most popular food everywhere in the world now, food in the Chinese history is far more than the aesthetics and culinary techniques. We went through traumatic historical events about starvation as a nation, and through those traumatic experiences we learn to cook creatively and eat in sophisticated ways; and those historical memories are engraved in the history of food and culinary art. What could carry history better than food? Food is for like’s sake and is art.

 

What is art for discussion

 

When I ask myself the question “what is art for”, the first idea that comes to my mind is that art is for people’s spiritual developments. To me, art is something that inspires people and motivates people from all time to become better human beings. I remember myself being motivated by artworks and start to think about philosophical questions when standing in front of artworks. In my mind, I thought the answer to ‘what is art for’ must be profound and philosophical.

 

However, Ellen’s answer to this question is simple, straightforward, and amazingly insightful: Art is for life’s sake. She first mentioned that art must “be viewed as an inherent universal or biological trait of the human species” and a natural process. She outlined the development of art including how in medieval times art started within the service of religion and later becomes an ideology. She mentioned that there is the phenomenon of a ‘disinterested attitude that is separate from one’s own personal interest in the object, its utility, or its social or religious ramifications’ (page 17) and how the appreciation of art has become an emphasis on art for being art’s sake. In the discussion of what is art, Ellen explicitly disagreed with the idea of art being an inaccessible high culture and argues that art is essentially for like’s sake. She mentioned that art’s “heritage of specialization and self-proclaimed irrelevance permits it to be dismissed by school and governmental budget makers as a ‘frill’ and that art is more than necessary. I think that art is not only a behavior of making, but also an experiential realm that could not be substituted. Art is not only for life’s sake, but also for the sake of promoting virtues and deeper understandings of the world among people. Art is a public sphere that should be treated seriously.

Today, I wake up at 12 pm because I pulled an alnighter to do my homework on Saturday. I then went to the school Cafeteria to have lunch and then I went to a mixer for international students to socialize with friends. In the afternoon, I came home and read a new fiction in Chinese language and I went back to study after dinner till now. I found out that most of my activities are academic centered and I really love to study, so I say that wisdom is an essential part in my life. My activities also focused on the developing of friendship. However, values such as integrity could not be directly seen through daily activities: it is more like a standard for the individual.

I think that from my family, I inherited the idea that knowledge is very, very important. For example, both of my parents are teachers and they used to require me to study at least 5 hours per day and read many many books. I enjoy reading and learning and I think learning is a lifelong thing. I think that health is really important and only putting academics in the first place is not a valid idea, so I am starting to exercise two times per week now. I think that knowledge, although important for personal development, is not everything. For me, I want to develop more on my leadership skills so that is what I am going to work on and I think that I am kind of nerdy, so it is not very easy for me to take leadership development as something that could be quickly learned and practiced.

In the article, the author defined the term values as a recent notion that are seen in everyday life and the author argued that without values human behavior would be chaotic and destructive. The author also said that many value systems are based on the short-cut of authority and others are based on deductive logic.

 

The author’s example about how Christianity is often associated with authority and at the same times it is associated with emotional and intuitive drives as well. I think that most value systems are no merely short-cuts of authority; instead, I think that values are more genetically programmed and I would like to share an example in which the notion of values are being challenged by people.

 

Last semester, I took a class in legal theories and we discussed about a scenario about marriage in between relatives. In my country, some people would marry their extended family members a long time ago and after the government has banned this practice, the marriage between relatives has become a social taboo. You might argue that the government’s authority is acting as a direction of values in this case, but when asked about the question whether marriage between relatives are acceptable, my peers from other cultural backgrounds where the government does not forbid such as practice also answered no. Even after telling them that such marriage is proven not to have negative biological outcomes in reproduction, most people still consider such practice shameful or guilty. I think that in this case, the value about marriage is genetically driven instead of being directed by authority. Values such as respecting the elderly and love the youth are likely genetic trends as well as compared to manifestations of power system.

 

However, I do agree that the term value is very hard to define and we should always keep an open mind on the discourse of values.

http://http://iheartcats.com/5-unnecessary-risks-cat-owners-need-to-stop-taking/?utm_source=Homer+The+Blind+Cat&utm_medium=Facebook+Post&utm_campaign=Homer+The+Blind+Cat

This is a blog on how cat owners should take some issues into consideration such as giving cats permanent identifiers. After reading this article, I feel quite satisfied because it is good that people are start to treat pets with respect to their nature and no longer as an entertainment for human. At the same time, I think that sometimes people might be paying attention to pets too much and forget that there are plenty of human that needs love too.