How do you define “spirituality”?

I think spirituality is the way that we treat things beyond the physical object. It is created by our human natural and we use it to define other people’s personal value. Everyone has different spirituality, which cannot be influenced by others’ spirituality and environment around her or him. There are so many ways people can express their spirituality, art is one of them.It is hard to get spirituality but also it is hard to change it.

Does spirituality differ from religion?

Yes, I think spirituality is different from religion. Even though, both of them are related to personal value or something like non-physical value. We still can easily tell them by many ways.  Religion is what you believe in someone else and one you believe in can give you help and support you. However, spirituality is what you believe in yourself. I think spirituality is higher level than religion, because people can have a specific religion, but they may do not know their spirituality very well.

How do you define “creativity”?

Creativity is a process to recognize or generate ideas that maybe useful in solving problems or communicating with others.  Creativity is transient in nature and is constantly evolving. I think creativity is a mix of ideas of one’s own experience and based on the motivation from previous activities. There are some reasons that people are motivated to be creative: Creativity is need for novel situation, solving problems and well connected with each other’s. In order to be creative, we should view things in a new way or from a different perspective.  It is just like a novel product of personal values, experience and knowledge. I think everyone has the capability to become creative, because we all have different background and the unique background will become the source of the motivation of creativity. What is the source of creativity?

 What is the source of creativity?

I think the source of creativity can be from intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. For the intrinsic motivation, I think personal experience plays a major role, which included what we have thought about, met with, saw and observed. We can observe novel ideas by appreciating it from the life experience given us. For the extrinsic motivation, it comes from the external world that we live in and the influence from the people or environment surround us. For instance, the religion belief around us may have a deep influence on our mind. The surrounding traditional belief may become the motivation of our creativity and make us create novel thoughts about our surroundings, which can be called the process of creativity.

In presentation, “The Art: 21”, I found Ann Hamilton’s descriptions of art making is very interesting.  She can create an art by using “everything”.  The first artist she made is when she was a student and it is a man’s suits. That suits look like very similar with current fashion style. That is why I think her spirituality may influences current artists a lot. Also, some of her arts are sample but impressive, such as using slice of paper to make a book and the words on that paper twine together, which looks very beautiful.  When she remove ink by a finger, I am not quite understand what she is doing at first, but keep looking at the ink and the her finger, I think I know something. Her arts are more spirituality. What I mean is her arts are trying to impress people by the feeling of making arts. Like the ink, she removed ink slowly and the processes of disappearing each word are remembered in our mind and impress us.  I like the bubbles art. They remake the bubbles like a wall and the shadow of the bubblies on the wall is beautiful.  These shadows never are the same. It just likes our souls that do not have fixed appearance but can be influenced by others. The most interesting art is that she puts the camera in her mouth and takes pictures by opening her mouth. All of her pictures have a “mouth” shape. It is interesting to look at other people from mouth, seems like these pictures are took by our soul from our mouth.

Shahzia Sikander’s art is more like pop art that most people can understand what her art means easily. She made her art more seriously; every picture and every line have its meaning.  I think she may have religion, because all of her pictures have similar styles and most of pictures talk about woman. Also, she likes use lines to express her ideas. However, because of religion, she may have less creativity that is different with Ann Hamilton’s spirituality. Compare both of them; I think I like Ann better, because her art has life and soul.  Even though, people need more time to understand what kind of that art is, but after people understand how she makes her art, her art would be more impressive than Shahzia’s art.

Diegetic sound:

The video talks about two men enter into a elevator and they must say something so that the elevator can work. They try to make noise but they can not say anything. The elevator starts to fall down.  I choose this scene because when they try to make a noise in front of microphone, the only noise they can make is wheeze. Hopeless voice express from his wheeze. Also the wheeze did contribute to the aesthetic of horror for the video, because the hopeless voice make them nervous, also it makes every audience nervous and bring everyone into that scene, like people in that elevator cannot call for help and desperation.

Non-diegetic sound

In this scene, the girl is looking out of the window. Suddenly, one of the vampire appears in the front of her window. The sound changes at this time. The sound makes it more scared. Also, because of that sound, the scene becomes tension. The music make audience tension that is the contribution the scene make to the aesthetic of horror for the video. I really like this kind of sound because this kind of sound can really help you to enjoy the show. This sound helps people to stay  in the picture that the author want people to stay.

Mise en scene

The scene start at 18:24, girls walk down the middle of a street in the town and look around that all of people in the town loss voice. This scene contain all of elements that mise en scene should have, production design, sour, lighting, actors’ performance, framing and diegetic sound. Everyone on that street looks hopeless and the director tries to maximize the tension and desperation by using this scene, The background music and the actors’ performance show that they are in the deeply desperation. This example contribution to the aesthetic of horror for the video. Because this scene looks like a real town and everyone is normal person, so audiences are easily involved into this scene and make audiences feel tension and horror.

Objectives

• Evaluate personal values and paradigms around body decoration and physical beauty.
• Analyze values and belief systems of physical appearance across cultures, sub-cultures and generations.
• Investigate how physical appearance affects definitions of identity and belonging.

Original Post

I will divide my life into three different periods. The first one is before I went to school. At that time, I had lots of beautiful clothes but none of those clothes were chosen by me. My parents bought all the things for me. They helped to decided what I should wear and how to wear those clothes. I have no choices. At that time, I believe my parents were god. They wound not make any mistakes. All I had to do is to be a machine, followed to rules my parents gave it to me and finish it. The second one is when I was in middle school. At that time, I started to have my own opinions about different things. Although during the school day we had to wear the uniform, I started to get some clothes by myself. I tried to break the rules. Not wearing the uniform and not wearing the shoes that I had to wear. At that time, I like some bright colors like pink, red, green or some other colors like that. I was taught to look presentable no matter where I went. Whether that was a quick stop to a grocery store, to the library, or to downtown, I always parted my hair to the side and wore clean, freshly ironed clothes. I started to care about the brand about the clothes. I cared about the price and who endorsement for the clothes. That was a really ridiculous time. Then last period was when I made the decision to go abroad to study. At that time, I was preparing for the TOFL and SAT test. At that time, I did not have enough time to care about whether clothe is fashion or not. My dressing style changed a lot. The sports pans took place the jeans, I wore sweatshirt instead of t-shirt. The only thing I cared about the clothes was whether it is comfortable. During these three periods, my personal value changes a lot. At first, parents were god; I did not have any opinion about anything. Then I started to say no, I tried to show I am the special one, I am the chosen one. I cared a lot about others opinion. Those bright colors are one of the ways that tells others I am different from you. Then my style became simple and comfortable.

In my family, my parents have two different thinking about the clothes. My father believes people wear clothes because we need to do like that. He is a person who really don’t care about what others talking about. He does not care about what the shirt looks like and what the style is the shirt. If the shirt is not very comfortable, no matter how handsome he looks like, he will not wear it. He only wears the clothes that he feels comfortable. This shows the personal values of my father, he is confidence, perseverance but stubborn person. However, my mom does not agree with my father’s idea. She always says if you are not beautiful you need to wear some beautiful clothes so that you will look more beautiful. She cares a lot about what she wears. She always tries a lot of clothes before she finally decided what she is going to wear. This shows my mom does not like to make a decision, she more likely to let others telling her what she needs to do.

My father influences me a lot of what I dress today. “Simple”, “comfortable” are the main ideas of what I am wearing today. I think the way I dress today reflects the type of person that I want to be in the future. I am math major and I want to be an actuary in the future. So when I analysis something I care about what it the basic part of the question and what is the way to solve the basic part. I do not like to communicate with the people who are hypocritical. Because of this, most of my friends around me are also this kind of style. They do not care a lot about fashion; they prefer the simple and the comfortable clothes.  We express our belief in building relationships by often dressing similar, on purpose or on accident, and also documenting our appearances with each other.

In conclusion, I think my personal beliefs and values are easily changed by environment and your community will be the person who is similar with you. When you want make a new friend, watching their dressing is a good way to know them first. If someone is wearing clothes that are old and dirty, they will be perceived as ignorant or unconcerned about their personal well-being. From people’s dress you can know their values and make a decision if he or she is the friend you want.

Reflection

Different people have different personal value and the wearing style will show different personal value. The piercings and tattoos are also some ways to show the personal value. When I was in China, tattoos often a kind of sing of bad person. But after reading the Sanders’s article I find out that the tattoos is not what I think but a way to show their personal value.

When I think the difference between the American and Chinese is about the culture. In China, we were taught to be conservative but in American, children are more likely to show themselves.

Future

In the future, I would like to try different kinds of wearing style and find out which style can more likely to show the personal value of myself. However, we cannot easily judge people from their style.

Sanders, C. R. (1989). Introduction: Body Alteration, Artistic Production, and the Social World of Tattooing. In Customizing the Body (Chap. 1). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Objectives

• Explore the notion of food as an artform
• Consider cultural differences in the production and consumption food.

Original Post

“Do not play with your food” is an admonishment we have heard from many generations. But base on what we read last week, Dissanayake says, art is something that is natural, such as “language, sex, sociability, aggression, or any of the other characteristics of human nature” (Dissanayake p.4).  Art  is a form of communication that is embedded into every human being on this planet, and just like all the other forms of communication, it varies greatly from one to another. Food is also a form of art that can communicate within the culture. From preparation, to the final food presentation on the table, it is an artistic process that involves different opinions from different people of various cultures. Food is an essential to everyday human life, therefore, it can be a way to express oneself’s uniqueness depending on one’s likes and dislikes about food. People communicate to each other about good and bad food, and express difference of opinions about it.

When you first go to a restaurant and want to order something to eat, what will you order?  In this sense, people will pay great attention to the aesthetics of the food displayed on the menu. That’s why people spend so much money on enhancing pictures as well as doing advertisements of food. When a dish arrivals on the table, the chef will want to make sure that is looks amazing. This is almost like an artist displaying a sculpture or a painting to the audience. Food is art which is made by the chefs and chefs want other people to look at it. Just like what Telfer says ” if something is a work of art, then its maker or exhibitor intended it to be looked at or listened to with intensity, for its own sake”(Telfer P.12).

Reflection

These pictures shows that food can be known as art, chefs use the food to express their feeling and made the food as art.

Before this assignment, I do not believe food is art. In my opinion food is something you have to eat otherwise you will be hungry. However, after reading the assignment I knew that food is a kind of art. This assignment helps me figure out why food is art. The process of making food is an approach to communicate chef’s emotion to the customer. Just like Telfer said “if something is a work of art, then its maker or exhibitor intended it to be looked at or listened to with intensity, for its own sake” P12.

Art is a form that people can communicate with others. So is food. In my article, the chefs want to use the food they made to communicate with their customer. Chefs use the food to express their feeling and they hope their customer will also enjoy the food.

Future

In the future I want to go to different places and eat different kind of food. Also when I am eating the food I want to know the meaning that the chefs want to express and what the chefs feel when they are making the food.

Objectives

• Consider the origins of art
• Explore a brief history of Western Art

Original Post

Ellen Dissanayake discusses the nature of which art is supposed to bring out in people. She talks about the idea of disinterest when viewing an art piece, in which “viewers could appreciate any art even if the cultures were far removed from their own” (p.18). This idea took art to a new level, since paintings were admire without it being a reflection of one’s own nature to be appreciated. Instead the reasoning the piece was supposed to original mean lost some of its importance, and instead asks the viewer to invoke ideas that may or may not conflict. This was a struggle for critics that wanted a way to measure whether a piece was good or bad based on what it meant. Thus they believe that to truly appreciate art, you had to treat it almost like a religion, in which if the viewer must be educated about the subject before making any judgments.  But art isn’t something that can be forced by other to understand, and not even the creator dictates how you might interpret their piece, that is something that can only be relied on by the viewer’s themselves, and through their own experience and knowledge in life, they can make their own analysis of the work in front of them. As Dissanayake says, art is something that is natural, such as “language, sex, sociability, aggression, or any of the other characteristics of human nature” (p.4). It is form of communication that is embedded into every human being on this planet, and just like all the other forms of communication, it varies greatly from one to another. Art is made to ask questions that cannot be easily spoken with words. Art is a question that takes many forms of understanding, with just as many answers waiting to be spoken by people of many different knowledge.

Reflection

My father owns an art gallery so I am really interesting about this artifact. What is art? This always be a question confused me. When I was young I always went to my father’s gallery to play and believe only the traditional Chinese art was known as art. However, after reading what Dissanayake writes, I find out all the human natural are art such as language, sex, sociability, aggression, or any of the other characteristic of human natural.

There is no specific way to say whether it is art or not. However, we can use our natural to express if it is art. After reading this article, I found many kinds of art, It is form of communication that is embedded into every human being on this planet, and just like all the other forms of communication, it varies greatly from one to another.

Future

In the future, I will find out more things which can be known as art. It is a really amazing thing to find out the art in our daily life. I hope I can learn more knowledge about art that help me understand arts very well.

Unit Objective 

• know one’s own value system
• understand the value form of different people

Original Post

This article is talking about the personal value which is written by Lewis. H. I strongly agree with some of the ideas in his article. “There is a good deal of evidence that human beings are not primarily driven by genetically determined instincts but are rather free to make their own choices.” (Lewis H P7) All the people have their own critical thinking and different people will make different decisions when they meet the same problem. That is the biggest difference between human and robot. Robot always follow the rules that human give to them. They will not do anything special or make any mistake. Somehow, some people love this kind of live. They want to live like a robot instead of a human. They do not have their own opinion when they face the problems. Just like a machine, keep doing the same thing as the other machines. They tell themselves the only important thing is not to make mistake. They believe when people start to make decision, their will be some mistakes in it. Because of this, the only way to avoid the mistakes is not to make decision. Just follow the words from the other people.

However, this kind of live is very boring. When I was young, my parents told me that bungee is not very exciting thing to do. It is very boring because there is no point for you to jump from a such high place and feel exciting. I always believe in it until my sister took me to a place to bungee. At first I was nervous about it but after I tried once I just love it. It is a such amazing thing, I love that feeling. When you jump from those high place, you do not need to think anything about your life, your study or anything else. There was nothing in my mind but a ward, exciting.  That is the personal value, everyone have different opinion about different thing. That why human are human not robot.

Reflection

I have been asked about my values before, but I have never really considered thinking it out thoroughly. This human value assignment let me know what I am going to keep in the future and also realized what is important in my life. In China, many people like to ask you what personal value is or what kind of person you think you are. Just like I mention before, I do not really think about it. Each time when someone asks me that question, I always prepare an answer for them but that is not the answer after thinking who I am. However, after read this article, I took my time to sit down and think about this question. What is personal value? It seems like a very easy question, but I spent a lot of time on it. Then I figure out the goal of my values. I can use them to know myself, to control myself. I figure out that my family plays a very important role in my personal value.

You will never find new parents in your life and your parents will always care about your life. So I understand that for keeping a better family, I have to consider their feeling and what they think. It is a difficult thing to understand your own value system and what you believe. There are so many thing will affect you, friends, family, society etc. I think this artifact plays is very important thing to your life because you need to sit down and think about your life. You need to know yourself and really think about it. The answer is not given to others but you; you need to find it out.

Future

In my future, I believe that I will grow up and keep thinking about what is my personal values and what should I add to my personal value. I will find the goal of my life and figure out who I am.

I will divide my life into three different periods. The first one is before I went to school. At that time, I had lots of beautiful clothes but none of those clothes were chosen by me. My parents bought all the things for me. They helped to decided what I should wear and how to wear those clothes. I have no choices. At that time, I believe my parents were god. They wound not make any mistakes. All I had to do is to be a machine, followed to rules my parents gave it to me and finish it. The second one is when I was in middle school. At that time, I started to have my own opinions about different things. Although during the school day we had to wear the uniform, I started to get some clothes by myself. I tried to break the rules. Not wearing the uniform and not wearing the shoes that I had to wear. At that time, I like some bright colors like pink, red, green or some other colors like that. I was taught to look presentable no matter where I went. Whether that was a quick stop to a grocery store, to the library, or to downtown, I always parted my hair to the side and wore clean, freshly ironed clothes. I started to care about the brand about the clothes. I cared about the price and who endorsement for the clothes. That was a really ridiculous time. Then last period was when I made the decision to go abroad to study. At that time, I was preparing for the TOFL and SAT test. At that time, I did not have enough time to care about whether clothe is fashion or not. My dressing style changed a lot. The sports pans took place the jeans, I wore sweatshirt instead of t-shirt. The only thing I cared about the clothes was whether it is comfortable. During these three periods, my personal value changes a lot. At first, parents were god; I did not have any opinion about anything. Then I started to say no, I tried to show I am the special one, I am the chosen one. I cared a lot about others opinion. Those bright colors are one of the ways that tells others I am different from you. Then my style became simple and comfortable.

In my family, my parents have two different thinking about the clothes. My father believes people wear clothes because we need to do like that. He is a person who really don’t care about what others talking about. He does not care about what the shirt looks like and what the style is the shirt. If the shirt is not very comfortable, no matter how handsome he looks like, he will not wear it. He only wears the clothes that he feels comfortable. This shows the personal values of my father, he is confidence, perseverance but stubborn person. However, my mom does not agree with my father’s idea. She always says if you are not beautiful you need to wear some beautiful clothes so that you will look more beautiful. She cares a lot about what she wears. She always tries a lot of clothes before she finally decided what she is going to wear. This shows my mom does not like to make a decision, she more likely to let others telling her what she needs to do.

My father influences me a lot of what I dress today. “Simple”, “comfortable” are the main ideas of what I am wearing today. I think the way I dress today reflects the type of person that I want to be in the future. I am math major and I want to be an actuary in the future. So when I analysis something I care about what it the basic part of the question and what is the way to solve the basic part. I do not like to communicate with the people who are hypocritical. Because of this, most of my friends around me are also this kind of style. They do not care a lot about fashion; they prefer the simple and the comfortable clothes.  We express our belief in building relationships by often dressing similar, on purpose or on accident, and also documenting our appearances with each other.

In conclusion, I think my personal beliefs and values are easily changed by environment and your community will be the person who is similar with you. When you want make a new friend, watching their dressing is a good way to know them first. If someone is wearing clothes that are old and dirty, they will be perceived as ignorant or unconcerned about their personal well-being. From people’s dress you can know their values and make a decision if he or she is the friend you want.

The first person I see is a white middle-age lady. She has a white short hair and wears blue jeans; white t-shirt and a yellow jacket cover her t-shirt. She is not very tall and she is also very fat. She is trying to get to the other side of the street when she is talking on the phone. I believe that she is very happy because she laughs out loudly. But she cannot move very quickly because she is so fat. I believe she is an office lady and she does not need to go to a lot of place. She spends most of her time in her office. After working, she spends all her time at home and eats a lot of fast food. She does not care a lot about her weight so she never tries to do some exercise to lose weight.  The values and beliefs I think by watching her dress is unhealthy but optimistic.

The second person I see is an Asian young guy who wears a black jacket and black jeans. He pierces his ears and comes out from his BMW X6 with his girlfriend. When he cross the street he suddenly finds out that he still has something in his car so he comes back to the car and gets his nike bag and a basketball shoes. Before he gets out from his car, he looks at the mirror and check if he is well dressed. Based on what he wears, I think he is a very fashion person. He spends a lot of time on his clothes and shoes. He will care a lot about others ideas. Furthermore, he has rich parents because what he drives is a very nice car and he is also a careless person. He needs someone else to remind him something in case he forgets it. From the thing he takes out from his car, I think he likes to play basketball and spend a lot time on it. I think he is very careless person and he is not very confident.

The last person I see is a strong black guy. He wears a yellow nike t-shirt and has only has the letter “O” on his t-shirt, blue sweat plants and carrying a yellow bag. He is typing on his phone and seems that there is some bad news to him because he does not look very happy.  He has a white earphone and he is listening to music. The music is very loud so I can hear it when he passes around me. I think he is very confidence and want everyone to pay attention on him. By the way he wears; I believe he is a very healthy person. It is not a very warm day but he still only wears a t-shirt and blue plants. He usually goes to the student recreation center to do some exercise to make sure he has a very healthy body. I think this person is very confidence and perseverance.