Nielson-Visual Studies Book Final Copy

There’s a saying that says it’s about journey, not the destination. I believe this saying is all about endurance. To endure the path to victory is in itself a victory. David Blaine talks about his journey to holding his breath for 17 minutes while underwater and his story shows that it’s not just about achieving a goal but knowing how to endure the many small failures that come with it.
Endurance is a necessity to get through life. Whether it’s to make it to the end of high school or college, or enduring being unemployed, it’s a skill that is required over and over again throughout our lifetimes. Endurance, to me, is about mental strength. Whatever life throws our way will require a response. Endurance is a response. A person will endure the challenge and get through it or they will back away and give up.
Giving up or to stop caring might be considered easier than enduring, but every path in life will eventually have a bump in it and to continue moving forward endurance is required. David Blaine talked about his failures in his TED talk. He talked about failing to hold his breath past 6 minutes on national television and how he trying to find different ways to get around actually having to hold his breath.
David Blaine tried to do the stunt the “easy” way. He tried to take the challenge and the work out of it but after hitting several dead-ends, he finally accepted that he would have to actually do the work and practice holding his breath. This began a whole new set of challenges for him to endure through. He practiced and utilized different tools to help him and he eventually did it. He endured through hard work and pain and suffering to achieve his goal. David Blaine did one of the hardest things to do and that is enduring through hardship and challenges.
The lesson to be learned here is that even though it’s hard, enduring though challenges will make the victory even sweeter. I believe the true measure of a person is how they react to a hard situation. Some will give up and run away, but the ones that fight through to the end and never give up, are the strongest people.

Time, as we know it, is probably one of the most complex ideas for the human mind to process and conceive. We try to visualize and make sense out of an idea that has no real form. We have given time a form so that our brains can comprehend the idea of time. As a visual person, I picture units of time in certain orders and shapes that would be hard to explain without drawing a picture. But the basic structure of time has come down to the past, present, and future.
David McDermott, the Dublin artist, tries to live as if the present never happened. Personally, I do not think any of us live in the present. Everyone is either remembering the good old times of the past or they are looking to the future for better times to come. Whether it’s through trendy vintage clothing or trying to be ahead of the curve on the latest music, clothes, or technology, there is rarely a person found, if found at all, who is happy with what they have and not occupying their thoughts on the past or future.
David also believed that every moment lasted forever and that all moments are “existing” all at once. If time is not actually moving forward then why do we display it as if it was? What confuses me is that if time is not technically moving forward then why do we get older as “time” goes on? Do we not really get older, but our consciousness is moving from one version of ourselves to another?
This idea that there are parallel universes of ourselves also confuses me. Some people claim that this version of time gives us at least a small semblance of choice. But does it really? How do know that we are destined to make the choice that took us to that specific universe? Which decisions does the “universe picking” start with? Does this start with our first decision or does it begin at birth with the decisions our parents make for us? Or maybe this is just another theory that someone has come up with to try to comprehend how time works.
Time is one subject that makes my brain hurt. I do not pretend to understand it and I highly doubt I ever will actually understand it. It’s a subject that piques the curiosity of many people. Not only does it confound the everyday person, but scientists, such as Albert Einstein, seem to take it as a personal challenge to find the truth about time.

2014-11-23Channing Nielson Book

Our life experiences determine how we view, interpret, and relate to new experiences. This is why a piece of art does not make everyone feel the same emotions or why a song speaks to some and not others. Our life experiences also determine how we express ourselves and how we choose to do so.
In the Radiolab podcast Straight Outta Chevy Chase, one topic of discussion is the meaning of “true hip-hop” and who decides what true hip-hop is and why they feel that way. In the podcast, Andrew Marantz introduces us to Peter Rosenberg, a middle-class, Jewish, white guy from a Maryland suburb, who becomes a hip-hop DJ on a hip-hop radio station. Rosenberg’s main job at the radio station is to discover underground talent and find the next big artist. In 2012, Rosenberg, a fan of Nicki Minaj early on in her career, was not impressed with her song Starships and deemed that it was not “real” hip-hop. He expressed this openly at a music festival he was covering for the radio station. Nicki Minaj was performing at this festival and once she heard what he said, refused to perform because of it. This incident at the music festival started a yearlong feud between Minaj and Rosenberg. Eventually the radio station sat the two down for an interview, and they hashed everything out.
In this mediated interview, Nicki stated that she did not think that this white guy she had never heard of before had any right to criticize black rappers and work as a DJ on a black radio station. She had grown up with that radio station and was familiar with all the DJs who had worked there for a long time. When this new DJ on the station started criticizing her, she felt that he did not have the resume to warrant the right to criticize her. She also expressed that many men had told her throughout her life that she would never make it or amount to anything. She saw Rosenberg as just another man telling her that she wouldn’t make it.
Now, when I think about this story, I wonder, did he have any right to criticize her song? I don’t wonder this because he is white but because it’s not his song. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but why would he feel that he had the right to say that her song was not real hip-hop? Rosenberg had been told that he didn’t fit in as a hip-hop DJ and that he could never be a hip-hop DJ even though he was knowledgeable about the industry and had a passion for it. He had to fight for his passion, so why did he feel that he could just bash someone else’s? He didn’t know what that song meant to her or how it made her feel, just as she didn’t understand that he had any right to be a DJ on a black radio station.
Another point brought up by NPR’s Frannie Kelley was that when a song is referred to as “real hip-hop,” that is code for masculine and aggressive and not feminine. And when a song is referred to as “for the ladies,” it implies that women would not be able to understand or relate to the content of any other songs. Rosenberg may not have even been aware of the undertones of what he was saying, but Frannie Kelley’s thoughts on the subject are uncannily accurate. Rosenberg did seem to favor the old-school, male-dominated hip-hop sound, and the second Nicki Minaj deviated from that platform, he openly criticized and questioned her ability as a hip-hop artist and declared that her song “Starships” was not real hip-hop.
Personally, I do not think Rosenberg had any right to judge Nicki Minaj’s song as not real hip-hop. Does anyone have the right to decide what is real and what is not? Now Nicki Minaj is not my favorite artist and “Starships” is not my favorite song, but I don’t believe that I have the right to tell her something she created is not real. I can express how her music makes me feel and what I associate with it, but that is as far as I will go.

Memory is a large part of our life. It’s how we survive in reality. Memory is also one of our most cherished possessions. It seems that most people fear losing their memories more than losing anything else. Memento demonstrates the chaos associated with memory loss and the possible downward spiral we could take if put in the same position as the main character, Leonard.

Memento is told through two intertwined story lines. One story line is shown in black and white and is told in chronological order. The second story line is a series of color sequences shown in reverse order. The two story lines eventually converge at the end of the film. I believe the director did this to display how memories can be distorted. I also believe the director used the two intertwined storylines to demonstrate the main character’s life spiraling out of control.

Memories are complicated things. On one hand, they are cherished, and we would be lost without them. But on the other hand, sometimes our brains block certain memories as a part of self-preservation. We instinctually protect ourselves from memories that we feel we cannot face. This protection does not always last very long though. The truth tends to leak out in small ways through dreams or even just as memories that we cannot control.

Memory is the very heart of this film. Memento is largely about memory and the ways in which it affects and defines identity. We define ourselves through our memories and our life experiences. Our life experiences determine how we react to new experiences and situations. Even though our memory tends to be unreliable, it still holds a crucial role in our experience of the world.

Memory defines us and because of that we cherish it. We use it to remember the successes of the past but also to forget the mistakes of today. Memory is what helps us determine how we experience the world we live in, and due to its unpredictable inaccuracy, we do not always know how we will experience the world. If we lose our memory, we lose ourselves.

Power and ignorance are a dangerous combination. In the movie, Schindler’s List, this disgusting combination and the resulting horror are apparent. Oskar Schindler, a wealthy businessman, saw the devastation the Nazis were causing and had to pretend to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause in order to save the lives of over 1,200 Jews.

Control, another form of power, has a way of tempting a person and perverting them into something unrecognizable. Control can create a monster with the desire to consume anyone and anything in its path. Power is the only reason or explanation for what Hitler was able to do to the Jews. The human devastation he caused is impressive in a sickening way. To think that the world let this one man and his followers inflict that kind of destruction is unthinkable.

To display this kind of suffering and destruction, Spielberg chose to film the entire movie in black and white except for a couple of elements. I believe the reason he chose to do this was because he felt that black and white filming was the best way to convey the rawness of the emotion in this story. Personally, I believe that color can artificially inflate a viewer’s emotions. With black and white, the actions and events that are taking place on the screen are what dictate the emotions that viewers experience during the film.

One element that Spielberg chose to do in color was the coat of a little Jewish girl who was only three or four years old. The little girl and her red coat represented the innocence of the Jews. Oskar Schindler saw this girl twice and recognized her by her red coat. The first time he saw her was during the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. The second time he saw her was when her body was being carted away with the other dead bodies in a concentration camp.

The convergence of the hunger for power, the exertion of control and the tolerance of ignorance created the perfect storm in the case of the Nazis. The amount of human suffering they caused has been unparalleled in history. Hopefully, with any luck, this will remain the case forever.

Throughout the ages, the art world has been constantly changing. As the art world changes, we as artists attempt to keep up. To keep up with the changing art world, artists and viewers must constantly have an open mind and be open to new ideas. This is probably one of the most difficult challenges to face as an artist and as a viewer of art.

Art has come a long way from supposedly primitive cave drawings to beautiful paintings and sculptures to installations that make us think in new ways. I believe the point of McLuhan’s “Medium is the Massage” is to demonstrate that media influences how the message is perceived. When I listened to “The Medium is the Message,” the audio version impacted me in unexpected ways. Usually when I listen to music or the radio, I can divide my attention and do other things as I am listening. This audio file consumed my entire focus, however. I was no longer able to hear anyone or anything else. I believe this was due to the nature of the record. It was jumbled which made it difficult to tell what was going on. Therefore, it required my entire focus to be able to maintain focus.

I had a much easier time reading the book “The Medium is the Message.” It was printed in a font that was easily readable and had pictures to reinforce its ideas. I am a very visual person. Being very visual makes looking at pictures and words a much easier means of comprehending a message than listening to someone say words.

McLuhan believed that the medium influences how the message is perceived. In these two forms, he demonstrates this belief and to an extent, it works. The recording has more of an impact and seems more tangible. While the visual version makes the message easier to understand, it also makes less of an impact on me, personally. So the media seem to make a difference.

McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” is a hard concept to grasp. It requires thinking about objects around you differently than you have before. The medium influences how the message is perceived. Maybe I should have turned this paper into a recording and it would have made more of an impact.

This video was very enlightening to me. I do not know much about the Berlin Wall, and now I know slightly more. What intrigues me about the situation that led to the wall is that the Germans thought they could keep the east and west apart. They may have been successful in separating the east from the west for a short period of time, but one thing they did not account for is the ingenuity of humans.

It amazes me that when humans are presented with an obstacle or told they cannot do something, their first instinct is to find a way around the obstacle or prove that they can do what they want. Where does this quality stem from? Are we spoiled children who want what we want? Or are we good children who want everyone to be able to play equally so we find a way to make that happen? I think the reason people found a way around the wall was because they had family on the other side. It seems like most of what we are driven to do in life is driven by our family and our need to provide for and prolong the life of our family.

Now if family drove the need to get around the wall, maybe it also drove the need to put the wall up. Everyone was leaving the east to be with their families in the west. The west also offered better job opportunities. Did the government think that if they blocked the way in and out of the east with a giant wall for 30 years that people would forget about their families and be content to stay where they were told? If anything, this obstacle would make them want to see their families in the west even more.

Instead of dividing the east and the west, why could they not come together and help each other? I guess controlling a fractured city seemed easier than controlling an entire city. Control seems to be another component of human nature that presents itself to me as a double-edged sword. On one hand control can be useful in maintaining structure and order, but it can also be oppressive. I wonder if we can ever truly have control. No one has maintained control for as long as they would have liked People seem to always find a way to take control back from tyrants, so maybe control is something we can only ever achieve in our own minds.

I hope one day that we will stop building walls to keep people in or out and stop trying to control humanity. To think that we could control people like that is foolish. In the end human nature will win out. The obstacle will be overcome, and we will be reunited as one.