Readings for June 22nd
The Crisis of the Real by Andy Grundberg
Appearance and Reality by Bertrand Russell (1912)
Andy Grundberg
http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/books/book400.html
Bertrand Russell
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/
More to come.
“Appearance and Reality” stuck out the most to me. I have recently been interested in the idea of an object actually being there, or the rest of the object (the part that we can’t see) is actually there or even existing. Which is why “No two can see if from exactly the same point of view” caught my attention. The distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ reminds me of the ‘grey area’ that we have talked about before. The distinction between what’s in our minds and what we’re actually looking at. “We come to think we actually see the real shapes.” Guessing is fun but will we really know what we can’t see, if we can’t see it? Just like the elementary school activity, you can always explain something to people but what they see in their head or what they think you’re talking about is always different.
ReplyDelete“The ‘real’ shape is what interests us as practical men.” This can be said about any topic. People are so set on what’s “real” or whats fact. Just as “the senses seem not to give us the truth about the table itself, but only about the appearance of the table,” you can describe a person but now actually know anything about them. “Thus...the real table...is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing.” This keeps bringing me back to how this can be the same with people. You can’t just know a person by how they’re described, you need to see for yourself and do your own research.
"Appearance and Reality"
ReplyDelete“In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe. In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them”
This sentence intrigued me to no end. It made me think about the daily decisions that we make and what we may think and what it actually could be. How our brain works to think on a scale of collective thoughts that push us to being about a new experience or decision. We only know it by this way because as it is said it is natural to think that way. We are indeed thought to use the most present experience that we know and learn from that. There was also the description of the table which I thought was interesting that there would be such a mundane example that would make a lot of sense in the fact that though the table looks brown and shiny that shine is different if someone else is on a different side of the table so it will not look the same when you both look at the table at the same time. Though strange is the fact that in a class I was talking I remember a talk about a marker and if that is it actually there. We are told that our brains are programmed to see that and state that it is a marker but is it really? I see that it is a marker but how can I be sure? There is also the color which in case for example sake is blue. How do I know it is blue? Can I tell that this is the color that I am actually looking at? Reading this made me think about about what is really there and what isn’t and frankly made me really consider how things should be seen.
Appearance and Reality
ReplyDeleteAlthough interesting to ponder the infinite perspectives one can have and how this changes how an object is perceived, but in the end it left me with more questions then answers. If precise communication is entirely open to interpretation doesn’t precision become less useful as it becomes more precise? If this is true then being precise totally negates the point of being precise? Russell also introduces the idea of knowledge being the force that skews apparent shape and real shape, but because we have data we know what the shape is. Is data not knowledge?
The Crisis Of The Real
• Postmodernism is NOT modernism.
• Postmodernism is NOT genius.
• Postmodernism is NOT original.
• Postmodernism is NOT precise.
• Postmodernism is Postmodernism
What defines real? What defines our work? Do we exist in vacuum? Do our work exist in a vacuum? These are questions that arose in the reading, in my mind or were answered in the readings. Bishop Berkeley “There is no such thing as matter at all, and that the world consists of nothing but minds and their ideas.” Great concept in thinking that the world is nothing but what our mind creates. Reminds me a little bit of the Matrix, but hey that is just because I watch way to many movies that it can be considered healthy. I mean I have see Major Blockbuster this summer except for Thor. This could lead me into another difficult question like ‘What defines real’. What or who defines healthy? What or who defines normal? As a photographer we sometime slip into the void of doing work exactly the way we should. Taking a photo using the rules of thirds. Bull Shit. Take the photo you want to take.
ReplyDelete“This inability to have ‘a pure, unblemished meaning or experience at all’ is I would submit, exactly the premise of the art we call postmodernist” Something will influence us. Whether it is the choice of curated images that the curator decided needed to go together. The advertisements we see while hanging out in the inter tubes, painting text messages on peoples walls, randomly poking people, or whispering to the world as the way a bird would communicate to each other your underlying need to have New Hong Kong Chinese food and that your placed an order 3 seconds ago. Something will always influence what we are seeing.
Michael Karigianis
ReplyDeleteGrundberg
Photography is undergoing changes that other major art forms such as painting experienced. Painting evolved evolved because of and in spite of photography. Now photography is evolving because of itself and in spite of itself as well as because of video, television and digital media. The single image will still be the single image despite television or video or anything the internet can give us. What causes us to look at a single image vs a video clip or something on television? I think it is because we want a moment preserved. We still want that moment only now the subject of such moments represent a persons mood and provoke the viewers emotion, thus the subject becomes representative of a representation.
Russell
I love logic. I was glad to read it but as some of my fellow students said it left me with more questions than answers. That's fine. I think all of life is reducible to a logic problem just as Russell explains that math is. There is something inherently logic problemable about photography as well. What photographs represent and what they are for example....I'm sure there is a problem there. I just can't put it into a logical equation.