Space, Geography, built environment

I really like the Post Modern style of architecture. I especially like Teddy Cruz design for housing in Tijuana (figure 8.17) I like the fact that the architecture is functional and appropriate for the space, but that a lot of it is purely artistic and does not necessarily make sense, compared to modernism.

I particularly liked the closing statement of this section: "Global capitalism produces subjects who exist farther from the centers of economic wealth and technological advancement than ever before due to globalization's production of an ever wider economic divide yet who are nevertheless global, and is is their appropriative fashioning of the materials at hand to make do and find a place that shows us the tensions of the modern, the postmodern, the postindustrial, and the global at once".

Image flows

Globalization is a tricky topic. There can be a lot of good done and also a great amount of evil can be spread through corporate domination of the local markets. According to page 405 of POL, the poor in all economies are paying the highest price in the process of globalization. Just like here in America, under the globalized market, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The economic gap continues to escalate.

Then you have global corporations like The Body Shop, who emphasizes education and awareness of other cultures. The Body Shop supports women and underprivileged workers in the third world to manufacture there products. They have become successful, according to page 403 of POL, by "trading on it's image of sensitivity to local politics and environmental concerns". We need more forward thinking corporations like The Body Shop.

The Global Gaze

The author states, on page 390, that "understanding how images circulate and what role they play in a global information economy is crucial to understanding practices of looking in the twenty-first century". I must admit that after reading this chapter, I am no closer to an understanding of this concept. It's a lot of information to take in and it is all rather contradictory, in my opinion.

Satellite technology has done amazing things for us. It allows me to find my way around, using my phone (otherwise, I might be lost perpetually). It allows for the global dissemination of art and culture. It can be used to protect our country. It can be used to unite the world into a global community. It can also be used by terrorists to plot against us. It can be used by our government to spy on us. It allows us to spread global propaganda. It allows the enemy to spread global propaganda. 

On page 400 it says that "the national and the global are in constant, fluid tension, with national interests using global media to shape international opinion and with global forces struggling to work within the continued laws and rituals of the nation-state". I think this pretty much sums it up... I don't know. I can't call it.

Consumerism

This reading is about the rat race. We all take part in it, to some degree. We all have to have the latest iPhone, laptop, car, clothes, etc. I know that I am guilty of it, though perhaps not as guilty as some. I have always despised the rat race and what it stands for. And yet still... I have to have the newest phone and laptop myself, with the latest programs. I tell myself that I need it for my education and work, but I know that I fall victim to consumerism.

On page 274, Cohen notes that when the policy shifted in the 1950's from social policy, to consumerism that it resulted in social inequality along racial lines, less voter participation, and an increase in social and political segmentation. This is exactly why I have always despised the rat race.

Strange to think that my job, as a graphic designer will be to support consumerism... looking for ways to make people want what they don't necessarily need. I'm going to try and not think too deeply about that one.

I use a lot of modern technology and am therefore exposed to a good deal of mass media. I don't go out of my way to seek out media. I don't watch tv. I don't listen to the radio and I don't really even watch the news. Non the less, I am saturated by it at every turn, I cannot deny that.

If I am going to watch the news, I prefer The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report. I believe that we get more truth from a parody that causes us to re-analyse the news that has been presented to the masses and question their motives and perspectives... although, I'm sure the shows I mentioned have there own agendas. I agree with the author, when he states on page 231 that "the boundaries between news and fiction and between entertainment and information are increasingly blurred".

I agree with the author that mass media can be used as a tool of mass propaganda or mass persuasion... it is up to us, however to buy into what they are selling. It is also up to us, quite literally, to buy, or not to buy what they are selling. We are the masses. Are we going to be dominated and controlled by the media? it is up to us as individuals.Although it may not be as easy, the individual and the like minded can use mass media to disseminate their own point of view, fostering a diversity of self expression, as well.

As an aspiring photographer, I found the writings in this chapter about photography to be particularly intriguing. The concept of the "noeme" of photography is an interesting point of view. As stated on page 193 of the text. The term noeme comes from the word phenomenology, a study "devoted to the study of embodied sensory experience, which is regarded as the root of being and knowledge". A major difference between the photograph and the painting is that the photograph guaranties the presence of the camera and film with the subject. The painting guarantees no co presence with the subject.

One of the great things about the ability to reproduce images is that people can appreciate art that they probably never would have seen, otherwise. I don't think that the reproduction in any way detracts from the value of the original artwork, but it still gives the every day common man a chance to appreciate art in its reproduced form. Many artists have made an art form of reproduction itself.

I find it interesting and more than a little ironic that where we currently stand, on the issue of intellectual property, comes from a long line of Piracy. It states right in the opening paragraph that "Every important sector of "big media" today-film, records, radio, and cable TV born of a kind of piracy so defined." In fact, our founding fathers were pirates in many ways. The particular form of piracy that relates to this topic is that the U.S. refused to honor foreign patents, for the first 100 years of its being. This is stated on page 63.

I have pirated a lot of music and never really thought about the moral implications of it... until now. Just like the book says, I think that certain forms of piracy are OK... even beneficial to the owner of the intellectual property. For instance, if someone samples a friends mp3, before deciding to purchase it. If they had not sampled it, they may not have purchased it. 

There is no question that the type of piracy that I have been involved with is wrong and detrimental to the artist. People should not simply take what they want, without the owners permission, or some sort of payment. I guess that's the bottom line.