School is coming to an end, so this is where the most stress of work is evolving. This weekend I pulled two all nighters and thought nothing of it. I was speaking with a friend about it and he called me insane with all my work. At this point I'm running two days with no sleep and I understood it as that I am in sane with all the work I do. For some reason it got me thinking what the difference was.

The definition of insane is to have the characteristic of mental derangement.

The definition of sane is mentally healthy.

I was really interested with these words, then it got me thinking "wow I need some sleep" and that the state of being in sane means that you are healthy but to be insane is a characteristic of being in an unhealthy state. This was just something that I thought about during this weekend and another good way to procrastinate during crunch time.

When I think of the video of the American soldiers shooting the journalists, I am on the fence swaying back and forth with it, I know its not the 'right' thing to do, but I feel like America has been doing that for years and years. Something is telling me to leave it be and its just another day gone by. America was so war strong and very patriotic, but when this video is released and shows what is actually going on, people don't like what they see. This can be related to truth and beaty versus happiness theme we were talking about in class, where we are 'easy living' , living happy but when people realize what is actually going on most America are not happy.

Man vs. Second Life

I came across this video about second life , pretty entertaining and gives a sense of how second life actually was for me.

One thing that never clicked in my brain was that the Western and Renaissance painters would use sex to sell, as we use it in advertising today. The Female Gaze, still used today, was something that painters gave the audience the choice of what will happen next. It is seen in many posters for films and advertisements. The Male Gaze is also apparent now on that is aimed primarily to the women but also to the heterosexual men. For example, they would use it in cosmetic ads. The 'Gaze' is intended to excite admiration in the audience to which they would begin to be drawn into the gaze. The face would be a side profile but the eyes are staring out towards the audience to stir some curiosity and wonder. For me, I'm excited to see how the 'Gaze' would be used next.

As I was constructing my presentation for class, I came across how Vito Acconci would observe people and follow them throughout the day. "Following Piece" is one of Acconci's early work. The idea was to pick a person who would walk by and follow the person until he or she would hit a private place where Vito could not enter. He did this performance everyday for a month and would send each 'pursuit' to a member of the art community. I feel like Vito did the following piece as a way of crossing the line of how society keeps to themselves and where it is uncomfortable, but in a public space. The art piece could have been made on how people would occupy the public space given to the everyday person, and he took it far enough as to step into the persons step and almost disappear.

This week in class, we spoke about how fiction becomes reality and where the two can begin to mix in someone's life. One thing that stuck into my mind was when "Technology is desire" and from what i understood, it means whatever you want can be created with the technology we have today. I remember one article that Stanford is researching the virtual reality world to alter human beings and their interactions. The studies went as far as changing America's obesity epidemic or even the police line ups. Boston University is also using this technology as a way of therapy, in helping people through fears they face in reality.

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

In class, this week, we spoke about Dadaism and Surrealism. I found both of these really nice styles of art and one artist in specific, Duchamp, where he would take everyday objects and take them out of the normal. One example of his work was a toilet, where he isolates the toilet and the speculators were to think about the object differently. What I wasn't too sure of was what makes a piece of art work an actual art piece. He would isolate an everyday object or put together two opposites, like a stool and a unicycle. For my personal opinion, an artist captures something appealing or paints an essence. Maybe its that he sees something in a toilet that we don't.

In the Manifesto Of Futurism, by F.T. Marinetti, there is a sentence which reads "...But we want no part of it, the past, we the young and the strong Futurists! ". The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than hypocritically enjoying the modern world’s comforts while loudly denouncing the forces that made them possible. For someone to do something like that could never happen I believe. To forget the past is to forget how the world was brought together, where you stand now and how you were brought into this world. In his manifesto, the eighth number states " Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible? " I believe to break the ' mysterious doors of the impossible' we need to first learn from the past and take what we know and improved on that. If we forget the past all we are doing is starting over.

During class the topic Guys with Dolls was discussed, then the question" why don't you see women with dolls". The final conclusion was that women need real affection. Breaking it down,I feel most guys with dolls are afraid of commitment and don't want to commit to affection. They are satisfied with one way affection their whole life, so much that the guy in a documentary said he wants to be buried with his dolls.

During the discussion, in class, we talked about how if we had the decision to live forever or to had a average life and die, which would you choose. I began to wonder if there would be more cemeteries than residential neighborhoods in the future.

I remember seeing a quote " the main threat of natural environment is our built environment" and thought that it related to the class. The natural environment being the pure art of the world, our nature, and the built environment being the technology we are building on.