What Is It Exercise

I think the point of this exercise was to teach us that sometimes randomness can be a very creative tool. Just like bullshit is sometimes good, randomness is the same. Making something completely random means that you have no control over the outcome. When you take that aspect away from it there is no way you can mess it up, being a human after all. And if you can't mess it up, the final product can't be bad. Why do you think abstract art works so well, its mostly random. This is of course not always the case. But if you can do something randomly other much better ideas can spawn from that. I find if I'm in a creative block randomness can often inspire something great.

 I think the stuff that was in class was just a collection of complete randomness. It was like someone had collected the most random pictures, notes, ads and artwork they could find and threw them together in a package. Not only were the items selected at random the items themselves were completely random. After all, right before Beth showed it to us, we did an exercise on randomness. The items must of had something to do with randomness.

oct 25 reaction

My reaction to class on monday was mixed. I left very confused about the next assignment but the discussion made me do some thinking. So far my portfolio has just been class projects and a few random personal project endeavors. I've just thrown the project in my portfolio just how it was when I submitted it in class. I haven't done anything to make them better. But monday got me thinking that if I really want to have a polished portfolio I need to keep working on these projects. Every one of them still needs work and everything can always be improved. I plan on working on these when I have free time.

I really enjoyed everyones projects. Even the bullshit ones, because bullshit is enjoyable sometimes.

You Call It Blog

For this project we went and bought lunch for a homeless man named Anthony. He was sitting just off the Circle downtown next to a Jimmy Johns and a Qdoba. We asked him if he wanted lunch and he just acted really surprised and said yes. We asked him if he wanted anything from either of those two restaurants. I guess he had never been to either of them cause he had no idea what they served. That was a bit We ended up buying him a burrito and then talked to him for a bit.
This was an extremely touching experience. It made me think about all the stupid things I care so much about when its not really even worth worrying about. It made me much more thankful for the life I have. Anthony's face looked kinda dull and sad when we walked up to him at first. When we left I definitely noticed he was smiling and there was much more joy in his expression. After we left we decided to do this every week for Anthony if we can find him or for some one else that needs it.

10-11-10 Class Response

I was very impressed to see that everyone in the class respects others views completely. Nothing got out of hand even though there was many different beliefs. From my own experience, that never happens in conversations about religion. Personally I don't really believe anything at this point in my life and I am completely content with that. I guess I do believe that there is a god that created life. It just hasn't ever been tangible in my life. So I really have no reason to believe I should serve a god. That still brings in the question of what happens when we die. But honestly I don't worry about it that much. I'm totally content with where I'm at right now.

Importance

Sometimes you really have no idea whats important to you until you've lost it. At this point in my life the thing that sits above everything else is relationships. Up until the summer after I graduated high school I really didn't see this. It was only after I screwed up a friendship or didn't see someone for a long time that made me realize how important they really were. I've realized making an effort to spend time with people or loving them when they need it the most is one of the few things that will bring you true joy. I believe we were created to live with each other and not alone. As soon as I started neglecting that, I didn't function right. We as people need each other to survive. We feed off of others ideas and actions. There are many things that I care about like school, music, earning money but a friendship will always take priority in my life.

10/4/2010 class response

Today was the best class so far this semester. As to why I'm really not sure. I'm completely drawing blanks. I think the mixture of serious and light conversation really made the time worthwhile. Part of me is really looking forward to next weeks class because I really want to hear what people have to say. The other part doesn't even want to go because its hard for me to share what I really believe sometimes. Often times when I share those type of things I feel very stereotyped. Like "oh, he's one of those". I guess its another fear that I have. I would rather be liked by people.

Fear Experiment

Fear comes from the unknown. For this project I wanted to experiment with having people not know something. My plan was to bring in a balloon and stand up front and pop it. But I was the only one who knew when it was going to be popped. This type of thing makes me very nervous cause I think the loud pop will make me jump and since I can't anticipate the pop it makes me afraid of it. I hypothesized that it would make people nervous. Unfortunately, someone else in the class had a similar idea to mine and what I was going to do actually got discussed after she did her experiment. That is, not knowing when the next pop was going to be. Basically I just ended up randomly popping mine balloon amidst all the chaos that was going on and it made a few people jump a bit. I don't think being startled like that really counts as fear. Maybe if you were afraid of being startled that would be a fear but being startled itself is not a fear in my opinion. I think if I had done the experiment the way I planned I could have succeeded in making people fearful. If I were to do the experiment I would have had people blindfolded and then performed the experiment. That would have blocked the sense of sight making people know even less about what was going to happen.
The experiment that had the most impact for me was the mouse one. I think I've only seen a real mouse once or twice in my whole life. So I've definitely never held one. When I first saw it I was somewhat afraid of it cause it was small and fast. It made me even more nervous when I heard it was gonna get passed around. After holding the mouse it really wasn't as bad as I thought. It was kinda cool to actually conquer a fear.