UHP399 Gardens & Machines

After viewing part of this film in class, I decided to complete this class by watching the rest of the movie and writing my final blog entry on it.

Princess Mononoke is extremely different from most of the topics we studied in class this semester. Namely, it has its origins from Japan. As such, the movie has much more gore and violence that one would typically expect from an animated film. But for anyone who has actually watched the movie, it is clear that the story and content is by no means strictly aimed at children.

The movie starts in a peaceful town with the main character Prince Ashitaka. The action starts immediately when a boar monster attacks and Ashitaka saves the village, but becomes cursed in the process. The rest of the film is spent describing his adventures through the forest and world in order to find the source of his curse and hopefully disarm it before he dies.

It turns out that the reason the boar became a monster was because it was shot by an iron bullet. Ashitaka soon finds the village of iron town, where the leader, Lady Eboshi, is mass producing iron guns used to fight both humans and animals alike. These iron guns were the cause of the boar monster. After some investigation, Ashitaka reasons that the spirit of the forest, along with the animals of the forest, are being threatened by the guns of iron town. Soon, it become apparent that Lady Eboshi and a group of other bandits want to kill the spirit of the forest and take its head. Surprisingly, they were successful in chopping off the spirit’s head and this results in a fast spreading “black death” that kills anyone that it touches. The forest, along with iron town, is completely destroyed and the villagers all fled for their lives. Ashitaka comes to the rescue by returning the spirit’s head, but the day light has already started to shine and the spirit cannot live in its “normal” form in the light. As soon as it gets its head back, it dies to the sunlight. However, upon its death, the forest starts to grow again, the grass turns green and everyone who just witnessed the disaster makes amends to start a new life and a peaceful relationship with nature.

It should be brutally clear to most adult audiences that Miyazaki wanted to stress the importance of man’s connection and dependence upon nature. Furthermore, man cannot hope to live peacefully by fighting, overcoming, or destroying nature. All of these ideas are obviously present in Princess Mononoke through the boar monster, the forest spirit, Ashitaki’s curse, and Princess Mononoke herself. The other main idea of Miyazaki’s film is the embrace of technology (in this case by iron town) and how it affects the mentality of humans. Although Lady Eboshi wanted to destroy the forest animals and spirit, she actually did not have evil intentions. She merely wanted iron town to be a safer, richer, and better place to live. However, she and her followers were blinded by the advancement of technology, thinking that iron and guns could replace the natural things in this world. After she successfully shoots off the forest spirit’s head, she realizes that nature is something much more powerful than she had thought or imagined.

Some viewers may describe Lady Eboshi and iron town to be stupid or self absorbed people that deserve what they got. But really, the people in the movie are not much different than us. Everyday, I come home and take technology for granted. Thinking that a faster computer or a thinner laptop will make my life easier, better, and more efficient. Some of this is true, but much of it ignores the exact things that iron town ignored in Princess Mononoke.

I won’t leave any questions to think about this time as there are no more class discussion left, but I will say that this movie has certainly made me think about a lot of the things I do in my daily life. But then again, so as many of the things in this class. Lastly, I’d like to say that I enjoyed this semester in Gardens and hopefully will see you guys around sometime on campus.

The American Lawn is an attempt by Georges Teyssot to describe the suburbanization of America through the development of the American lawn. In this article, Teyssot goes in depth about the history, origins, and evolution of lawns. In doing this, he mentions several important ideas. First is the aspect of the lawn as a public or private entity. If a lawn is public, then it should be in a state that is acceptable by society. Some believe that this requires the lawn to be kept under reasonable human supervision through mowing, trimming, and etc; others however, support the idea of leaving nature as it is, stating that nature should not be tailored to satisfy humans. The second big idea that Teyssot brings up is the aspect of human beauty and lawn beauty. The correlation between keeping a lawn “perfect” and keeping a perfect body is “an ideal difficult to attain.” It is indeed true that keeping a nice lawn requires much of the same effort needed to keep a good body. Good nutrition, exercise, and diet are all necessary to achieve the perfect body. Similarly, the lawn requires good fertilizing, weeding, mowing, and trimming; but then again, how many people have a perfect body or a perfect lawn?

The next main idea that Teyssot develops are the terms industrial complex and environmental harmony. Essentially, industrial complex means following the mainstream (aka. upkeeping your lawn) and environmental harmony means letting things go back to the way they use to be (aka. leaving your lawn alone). Following the thought of well kept lawns, Teyssot moves to reason why people do it. Some do it due to social expectations (industrial complex) and peer pressure. Others do it because they feel the lawn is an extension of their home’s interior. In fact, I would not be surprised to find a high correlation between well kept houses and well kept lawns. The final important point in Teyssot’s article dealt with the use and/or necessity of fences in American lawns. The fence currently serves as a divider between properties as well as a barrier for privacy. In some cases, it might even be used as an aesthetic decoration for our lawns. Regardless of the reason, Teyssot presents many views and arguments on use of fences and whether they should/shouldn’t be used and whether they are/aren’t needed.

The American Lawn was certainly an interesting article that takes a look at American suburbanization in a new way. I found that I was able to relate personally to many of the aspects described by Teyssot and can also understand the other viewpoints that he presents. Part of me completely agrees that well kept lawns are part of the social culture, helped by peer pressure. There is also undeniable evidence that those with clean and decorative interiors tend to have “better” lawns. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those who do have nice lawns are out of touch with nature. In fact, the accepted definition of a lawn does not state that it is part of nature… In many people’s minds, it is simply an extension of our homes.

Questions:

1. Should lawns be considered as part of our homes or part of nature?

2. How many people actually keep their lawns in tip top shape?

3. Why do we have lawns in the first place?

In  A Rough Guide to Climate Change, Robert Henson gives a brief yet fairly complete summary of the history of climate change and the various opinions/reactions that people have about climate change. He mentions the great concern with climate change in the 1970s and 80s, which died out before entering the 90s. But it seems that the root of the problem has surface again and we are finding it harder than ever to ignore. Henson also describes several views of those who don’t believe in global warming, but it is reasonable to assume from his tone that he himself is a firm believer.

The Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Kolbert takes a much more hard stance on global warming and embraces that global warming is happening and will lead to a catastrophe should it stay unsolved. Kolbert shows her argument on why global warming comes from human activities. She states that she doesn’t want to make the issue too simplistic while much of the hardcore science is left out.

Chapters two and three were full of anecdotal evidence as well as some history of global warming. She mentions first hand experiences in Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic to support her observations. Much of her views are verry personal and thus easy to relate to. Also included are some interviews with politicians who are aware and actively working on the problem in climate change. In terms of historical content, Kolbert cites Arrhenius and Keeling and enlighten us with the fact that we have been aware of global warming since the 1850s. While this wasn’t a complete shock, it is almost amuzing that people just decided to ignore this aspect of science for so long.

Chapters seven and eight were focused on how we can push to solve global warming through a variety of sources, mainly public or government policy. One such solution is by Rober Socolow, who invented a series of wedges that can prevent billions of tons of CO2 in the next 50 years for each wedge implemented correctly. A lot of attention is also focused on how society views the problem of global warming. Kolbert states that we go about our “business as usual” as if nothing is being threatened. She is obviously appalled by our ability to sit there and live life as normal while waiting for a solution to magically appear.

From other responses I’ve read so far, many people seem to have throughly enjoyed these articles while gaining quite a bit of new knowledge on climate change. I feel the same way. However, I feel much less personal connection to this topic than some. To me, global warming is a purely scientific field of study. Whether or not global warming is a huge problem or one that we can brush off should be made on scientific evidence alone. It does not matter whether we have hypothesized it for 10 years or 150 years. The fact remains that one must show strong scientific support to back up these claims. This is not to say that I don’t believe in global warming, but rather that I honestly didn’t get much out of these articles that would help me make more informed decisions in the topic of global warming. Perhaps it was not the author’s goal to provide this type of information, but since both of these authors were clearly believers in global warming, it’s only natural to assume that they wrote this stuff to convince others on certain issues. In this regard, they did not succeed with me.

Questions:

1. Is global warming REALLY a problem? No this is not rhetorical. If so, please provide a scientific argument.

2. Why do some people still not believe in the global warming phenomenon?

3. Is global warming caused by humanities actions?

The “Hard Rain” gallery exhibition of works by Mary Hambleton may be some of the most “normal” pieces of artwork that we’ve studied in this class so far. Perhaps this is due to the more tradition style of “art form” used by Hambleton, or even the relatively appealing designs and shaps in her works. Whatever the reason, it seemed that most, if not everyone in the class to at least appreciate the works in one way or another.

It is clear from the introduction by Tiffany Bell that Hambleton focused on art using abstractions of color, shape, idea, and more particularly, her cancer. Understanding the background of Hambleton played a big role in understanding her art. Hard Rain was an exhibit of her late works, and it was very clear how these late works differed from some of the early works mentioned in the article by Bell.

Several things struck me as memorable in this gallery. First was the liberal use of PET scans in many of the works that were probably very reflecive in nature. As Asheley mentioned in her response, these works carry a feeling of life and death, which many viewers may not be so quick to embrace. The thought of the possiblity of one’s own demise is often enough to turn one away from such works. The second piece that stood out was Enough. This work was drastically different asthetically compared to everything else in the gallery. The idea was clear: she has had enough. While at the gallery, Breanna mentioned to me that it was an extremely depression piece. I agree. But I think such a piece really helps to complete the gallery by showing the frustrated side of Hambleton during her late years.

Lastly, I would like to bring up Waiting for a Miracle and Hard Rain as two of my favorite pieces. Waiting for a Miracle strongly connected the essence of life, death, time, and how they change. The blocks above the “timeline” emphasize some ideas of life that Hambleton was probably thinking about at the time. I feel that Hard Rain is a perfect example of how Hambleton endows her work with the “spritual or mythical content” that Bell mentions. It has a hint of what I believe is in some of her early works while possesing other features similar to her late works. A very thoughtful piece.

This exhibit obviously relates the both nature and technology in many ways with the PET scans, cancer, and etc. But this is perhaps also the most subtle form of nature/art/technology that we have studied so far and was both enjoyalbe and refreshing.

GFP Animals

In the introductory chapter of Signs of Life, author Eduardo Kac examines the themes that relate/separate biotechnology, art, and society. Throughout this discussion, he mentions several important points. First is the issue of social acceptance in biotechnology. The nature of this scientific field is obviously controversial in many aspects of morality and ideology. He seems to conclude that society controls the thought process of individuals and, as a result, what we consider acceptable, unacceptable, normal, or weird is somewhat arbitrary as opposed to fact based.

Next, Kac inspects the relationships between biotechnology/art and art/society by asking questions such as: “What differentiates the ugly/weird from the bold/beautiful?” He spends some time looking into the societal views on this subject and eventually relates it a step further to include art inspired from biotechnology. For example, can a genetically engineered human who is physically perfect a beautiful piece of art or a monster? Using these relationships as a basis, he finally gets into the core of his work: transgenic art.

Transgenic art is defined as art based on the genetic engineering of one or more biological specimens in order to form a new life. Kac states that transgenic art is the culmination of his artistic experience and chapter 10 highlights his work in this field. As a few other people have mentioned, a major part of bio art might be the “creation of experience” more than anything else. It is obvious that Kac has had significant experience and exposure to bio art with projects such as Genesis, GFP bunny, the Eight Day, and Move 36. The rest of the chapter is spent explaining these projects in depth.

An overwhelming majority of people who blogged before me found Genesis to be the most interesting of his mentioned projects. I found that the opposite was true. Just to set the table straight beforehand, I have nothing against the Bible, what it teaches, or any religion(s) it is associated with. The truth is that I simply found the Genesis “artwork” to be stupid, un-insightful, and a big waste of time. The author claims that the work’s ability to change a sentence is a symbolic gesture to how we seek and accept new meanings in life. This whole concept seems rather farfetched for a simple experiment involving an English sentence, a line of morse code, and a slight change in bacteria DNA. It’s obvious that if you encode something into DNA and force a biological change in the DNA, the resulting English sentence will also change. How does this imply we don’t accept meaning in its original form? How are we seeking for a new meaning?

The GFP bunny did, however, legitimately catch my interest. It immediately raised many thoughts such as “I wonder if it looks really cool.” “Is this a scientific experiment or art?” “Where will we draw the line between respectable art, monstrous creature, and use/abuse of technology for aesthetic purposes?” I’m sure that some if not all of these questions are the type of thinking that Kac wanted to draw out of his audience. It makes for a much better showpiece than the bacteria too!

Questions:

1. Should bio art be held to the same moral standards as other aspects of biotechnology?

2. What is the difference between bio “art” and using biology/technology to enhance something/someone aesthetically or physically?

3. What is so cool about Genesis???!!! (No really, I’m serious.)

This was a screenshot of the Teri Rueb workshop on Friday:

In the first reading “Can we define Technology?” Edwin Nye discusses various meanings behind the word technology in order to determine what technology is or should be. He first relates technology to tools using several examples with chipmunks, beavers, and humans. With these examples, he crafts an argument stating that “humanity fashioned itself with tools.” Furthermore, he believes that the central purpose of technology is not to provide necessities, such as food and water, but to be used for social evolution. This becomes his main support for why animals are atechnical: “they are content with the simple act of living.” In other words, invention leads to necessity, not the other way around.

Nye continues to discuss some of the history behind the word “technology” and eventually dwells on the topic of technology, art, and science. He questions the relationship between technology and science and mentions that technology should be viewed more like art than science. Technology is made first, analyzed later, like a painting or sculpture. Science is the process that we use to refine technology. He finishes describing the history of technology and concludes by leaving us to think about whether technology is deterministic and if so, should we accept it?

Nye’s second chapter directly builds on the conclusion of the first: technology determinism. He first gives examples of how people talk everyday about technology as if it were deterministic. The statement “the Internet was inevitable” is one such case. More interestingly, he rationalizes that not all technology is deterministic. To support his claim, he mentions the Japanese and their rejection of guns as well as the Amash and their resistance to telephones. The overall tone of this chapter indicates that most people believe technology to be deterministic in some form or another; it is also clear from the author’s voice that Nye not only believes the opposite, but also thinks we should prevent deterministic technology. This feeling is reinforced by the last sentence of the chapter: “As the following two chapters will show… deterministic concepts of technology seem misguided…”

In both chapters of Nye’s book, there is a feeling that people, in general, do not understand what technology really is. His main points usually come in the form of an example of everyday thinking followed by his “correct” thinking. He certainly makes some good points such as some technologies are developed before they are studied scientifically. His mention of the Wright Brothers made perfect sense to me and strongly reinforced his position. However, he seems to be firmly behind the idea that technology drives evolution, not the other way around. While this could be true in some or even many situations, there are obviously conditions where technology was developed due to social changes. I find it funny that he used nuclear weapons as an example to support his claims when it was clear that we developed nuclear weapons as a defense against global threats.

Questions to think/not think about:

- How does deterministic technology relate to a deterministic world in general?

- Are we satisfied with a “simple” way of living? If not, why?

- Do we use technology to evolve or do we improve technology as we evolve?

In “Ideas of Nature,” Raymond Williams attempts to analyze the relationship between man, nature, and their history. He implies that man’s view of nature has changed over time and is dependent on human progress. First he explores the idea of a “singular, abstracted and personified nature” and how it conflicted with a competitor: the monotheistic God. He claims that the history behind this idea was immense and led to the arrival of a compromise in the western world: that “God is the first absolute, but Nature is his minister and deputy.” Williams continues to describe nature’s evolution as an “absolute monarch,” which dominated the majority European thought.

Next, Williams looks at the evolution of man and its effects on how nature is perceived. At some point, distinct generalizations of man in nature arose. Hobbes identified man to be in poor standing with nature while Locke thought the relationship to be full of “peace, goodwill, and mutual assistance.” More importantly, as man evolved, the relationship with nature also evolved. Nature became a resource as opposed to a monarch and the history of man became separate from the history of nature. Williams concludes with his belief that this separation will remain as long as man continues to alienate nature through resource exploitation.

In contrast to Williams, Marx’s “The Machine in the Garden” describes the effects of nature on man, particularly through literature. The main idea here is the tendency for people to want to return to nature. He explains that many writers want to feel close to nature by escaping the urban way of life. He further mentions that many believe this wanting of nature to be an obstacle in our advancement both socially and technologically. But just as this idea starts to settle in, Marx brings out a handful of other examples showing that many writers are in fact integrated into nature and feel that such lifestyles are being invaded by the modern world. This leads us to believe that regardless of how man tries to separate themselves from nature, we will always be drawn towards it.

Both readings clearly try to convey the relationship between man and nature, but while Williams is focused on the effects of man on nature, Marx is interested in the effects of nature on man. Williams looks at the history of the relationship in order to determine how it started and evolved over time. He uses fancy terms in his analysis to describe a relatively simple concept: the more humans progressed, the less they respected nature. In all honesty, such a conclusion is relatively trivial and Williams himself made little to no contribution to the topic. Instead, he brushed up on the theories of other philosophers and filled a chapter of text to tell us something that could have been accomplished in one page. Additionally, his identification of the problem and its corresponding proposed solution is no more enlightening; he fails to mention some of the most important questions of man and nature.

Marx’s writing immediately reminded me of “The Grizzly Man” and Timothy Treadwell’s attempt to become “closer to nature” through the wildlife in nature. Treadwell’s intentions seemed very similar to that of the writers described by Marx and are a good support to Marx’s arguments. However, the analysis also lacks any real insights as to why people are drawn to nature, why people take actions to be closer to nature, and etc. Overall, both readings seemed light on logical reasoning and full of rather unexciting details and jargon.

3 Questions to think about:

1. Why do humans WANT to progress?

2. Are humans suppose to be “part of nature” like other animals? If so, why were we “given” the intelligence to advance so much further than the “rest of nature?”

3. Is it too late for humans to be completely integrated in nature?

In Cynthia Freeland’s But Is it Art?, chapter 6 is titled “Cognition, creation, comprehension”, which in three words summarizes the main ideas in this section. She discusses the various factors of intent, environment, creator, viewer, and etc that influences the interpretation, and ultimately the enjoyment, of artwork. Two schools of thoughts are introduced in attempt to classify these factors: “Expressive Theory” and “Cognitive Theory.” Freeland continues to describe that art communicates with the observer. Expressive theory captures the essence of how art relates to the viewer through feelings and emotions while cognitive theory focuses on the knowledge that art brings to the viewer. To demonstrate, Freeland elaborates using the Triptych of 1973, by Francis Bacon. This piece is supposedly the perfect example of both theories because it contains “emotions” like laughing and “complex thoughts” like language. This leads her to conclude that both theories are valid and in fact accurate in many artworks; but in the end, interpretations are to help “enable us to see and respond to the work better,” not to “tell us what to think.”

In many ways, Freeland’s thoughts and comments on art interpretation are in line with my rather limited ideas and actually reinforces what I have come to believe in art interpretation. Simply put, art interpretation is an art in itself. We study art and interpret art in order to better understand art, to better enjoy art, and to feel closer to what the artist felt. But because art is created in so many ways, under so many different circumstances, and by so many different people, interpreting art has become an incredibly complex task. With the evolution of new art forms, this is more true now than it has ever been, and will continue to grow more complex in the future. This is best seen by example. Search Amazon.com for recordings of Beethoven’s Symphony #5 and you’ll find over 50 different results. Every recording represents a unique interpretation of this great symphony by that particular conductor and orchestra. Some can be similar, but you’ll find that no two are alike let alone identical. Even more amazing is that even two recordings of the same conductor with the same orchestra can sound drastically different. Since conductors and musicians interpret music, and we call them artists, then we can rightfully conclude that interpreting art is an art.

Chapter 7 shifts gears into a different aspect of art: original vs. reproduction. This is obviously a bigger issue for certain arts than others, but Freeland mentions a few things in particular. First is the “aura” of some artworks that is lost in the many reproductions, causing them to lose the “magic” of the original. She continues to describe that reproductions are more personal and seem less prestigious because they are easy to obtain. This brings up her second topic of art for the masses (democratic art). Here, she discusses the internet, technology, and photography, and how they’ve changed the way many people look at or think about art. Why travel half way around the world to see the Mona Lisa when you can pull it up on your internet browser? Is what we see in reproductions actually close to the real thing? This question leads us to Freeland’s third point of hyperrealism. The main example here is Disneyland, where everything down to the white picket fences create the image of a perfect American town. Here, people can relax and completely immerse themselves into a man-made illusion that perhaps surpasses any real American town today.

What I found most interesting about Freeland’s discussion was the difference between real and hyperreal. Is there always a difference? In some instances, the real version is quite different from the hyperreal, but that certainly isn’t always the case. Once again, my analysis relates to my musical experience. I can say with certainty that live musical performances are in many ways both similar and different from a recording. Recordings are made in the studio with many days of rehearsal, practice, and fine tuning. Any minor mistakes, errors, and excess sounds have been filtered out to ensure that the music is a perfect as possible. Some say that such recordings make certain artists sound much better than in live performance. In such cases, we’d probably say that the recording is hyperreal because it exceeds the quality of a live performance. However, there are times where the recording cannot fully capture the wonderful tone, texture, and beauty of a live performance. Recording techniques have improved greatly in the last century, but even so, one can easily differentiate between a high end speakers system and a real orchestra. Even if such as recording is technically perfect, perhaps more perfect than the live counterpart, can it really be called hyperreal?

3 questions to think (or not think) about:

1. How has art interpretation changed throughout time?

2. How does hyperreal art affect our view of the world?

3. Has democratic art lessened the gap between lower, middle, and upper parts of society?