Slot Seam

This Tuesday we read Connected, or What it Means to Live in the Network Society by Steven Shaviro. The reading discusses sampling and if it is considered plagiarism when used in music, but in a different way. We need to first understand what sampling is before trying to make an opinion about plagiarism in music.

Sampling is taking many different things and putting them together. For example, in writing when one writes a research paper or papers in general, one samples other people’s ideas. When you write a paper you combine other texts and ideas to find new meaning behind it. You can also put a direct quote in the paper as long as you site it, which is authorship. Authorship is if you take anything from anyone, you need to credit the original. So, in a paper if you put a “quote” in and you don’t site it, then it is considered plagiarism. A certain amount of what you write has to come from you. Blogs are another example of sampling. In a blog you have links to websites to give examples. You are pulling material from another context to better understand your idea.

In music people take multiple songs and combine them to make their own song. This could be considered plagiarism if the artist did not get the right to use the other artists’ songs. I am starting to understand that if you take something, sample it, but didn’t change the meaning of it and didn’t site the original author then it is stealing, plagiarism. However, if something new comes out of the sampling then maybe it isn’t plagiarism because you formed your own idea about it. Jetter, from the reading, says that “bit by bit every writer has constructed the world inside his head from previously existing texts by others.” So actually any idea that someone constructs is actually in some way taken from someone else, everything we do is plagiarized or stolen in some way.

Bias Binding

This week we read “The Coolhunt” by Malcolm Galdwell from The New Yorker. I found the article very interesting because it mainly discussed finding the “cool” in fashion. I actually don’t agree with the “coolhunt” and don’t find the act of coolhunting to be a great role in society’s fashion. It’s hard to believe that people get paid to be “coolhunters.” My definition of “coolhunting” is people going around and trying to find the one different person that’s wearing the one different thing and then they call it cool and make it a trend. I guess I don’t see the point of “coolhunting” because I think that designers should make their own cool and not take it from someone else.

What I have been taught in all of my design classes is when inventing something take inspiration not from fashion but from other things. For example, in one of my classes we had to make an inspiration board, but the images could not be about fashion (we couldn’t put images from fashion magazines on our boards.) We were forced to look outside of the box, my topic was architecture in Italy. I have actually made some new intriguing things that could be considered cool and I didn’t get my inspiration from something that someone was wearing.

Malcolm Galdwell says that “you can’t convince the late majority that Hush Puppies are cool, because the late majority makes its coolness decisions on the basis of what the early majority is doing, and you can’t convince the early majority, because the early majority is looking at the early adopters, and you can’t convince the early adopters, because they take their cues from the innovators.” I think that the innovators should be the designers themselves. The designers shouldn’t take “cues” from people on the street because the designers are getting paid to be the innovators. I think that as long as a designer is original and creates their own “cool” then these designers can go with the trend of fashion, but make the trend their own.

I also had a discussion with my mom about this topic because she is in the fashion industry. What I started to understand is that designers can use the “coolhunters” to gather information but it shouldn’t be the only source that they use. Designers need to go out on their own and find their own inspiration but the “coolhunter” findings are useful because then one will be able to know what will sell and what won’t.

Stay Stitching

The public place that I chose was Starbucks. What I noticed as being cool were ugg boots (or any kind of winteresk boot), studying at starbucks, dressing comfy and drinking hot coffee with a straw. Everyone dresses the same so I guess what everyone is wearing (boots, long jacket, sweatpants/leggings) is more of a fad “cool.” I think that people might think it’s cool to where this clothing because everyone is wearing it, but I think it has become more of a fad because everyone is wearing it. I also think that dressing comfy for class is a fad and dressing up for class is “cool” because everyone dresses comfy for class.

I think that studying at a coffee shop is “cool,” it’s a place to study that’s “cooler” than the library. People get more excited when they study at a coffee shop than when they study at the library. I think this happens because a coffee shop is a more interesting place to study and you also see more interesting people than when one is at the library. You see people other than students so I think this makes the coffee shop more intriguing. When you find something “cool” it is “cool” because you are intrigued by it.

Almost everyone was drinking their coffee with a straw. People do this because their teeth are whitened and when you get your teeth whitened you are not supposed to drink coffee or any other colored beverages. People drink coffee any way but do so with a straw so they don’t stain their teeth. However, I saw a warning at a coffee shop once about how drinking coffee with a straw makes you more susceptible to burning your mouth, so you are actually not supposed to drink hot liquids with a straw. In a way this could be considered “cool” because it is something that you are not supposed to do, it is dangerous, but since everyone does it I don’t considered it cool.

To sum up, I think cool is more defined as something that not a lot of people do that people find interesting and then once the “cool” thing becomes “public” it is a trend/fad. It was difficult to find “cool” things because I went to a place where everyone was a little similar and the place was on campus. If I went off campus, away from college students I think that I would find more “cool” things because it would be a more eclectic group of people.

Overlock Stitch

On Thursday we read Six Degrees, Ch. 6 Epidemics and Failures by Duncan Watts. The chapter explains that by understanding how epidemics like Ebola or HIV spreads we will be able to understand how computer viruses spread. First we must look at the spread of epidemics and then the spread of computer viruses.

Ebola has mainly stayed in small remote cities while HIV has spread all over the world. The reason for this is that Ebola “exhibits all the subtlety of a train wreck, revealing its true nature in a matter of days and killing shortly thereafter.” Once the victims exhibit the symptoms of the virus they become overwhelmingly ill that they are not able to move, making themselves quarantined without purposefully isolating them, so the virus has no way of spreading to new hosts. HIV on the other hand kills their victims slowly and doesn’t show signs of infection right away, so the victim is able to pass the virus on before realizing that they are infected. A good way to compare Ebola and HIV is to look at their efficiency. “The more contagious a virus is, and the longer it can keep the host in an infectious state, the more efficient it is at searching. Ebola, therefore, is more efficient than HIV in that it is significantly more infectious (HIV-infected patients don’t vomit blood in the emergency room), but is less efficient in that it kills so quickly.”

Computer viruses, “in terms of efficiency,” are more “contagious” than human viruses. “The function of computers is to execute instructions as efficiently as possible, regardless of where the instructions came from. So they are considerably more vulnerable to malicious bits of code than are people.” Since computers do not need to replicate a virus to the tee, they can take parts of the virus to pass it on; the virus is more capable of reproducing and infecting computers worldwide, which makes computer viruses more efficient. Computer viruses are more infectious than human viruses and continue to spread. Also, computers don’t have immune systems. Usually viruses (human) can be fought off but since computers don’t have immune systems they can not be fought off unless there is an antibody made for the virus.

Mad Libs Creature

Right now I am working on my newest project for my Structural Enrichment II class. We first had to create a mad libs for a creature that we are making. My mad libs is a follows:
Who am I?
Some would say that I have very gargantuan (size) fangs (features). I think that they only think that because my movements are clumsy (movement). The outside texture of my body hairy (texture) which leads some creatures to believe that I am stressed (personality), maybe it’s true. People think I taste like chicken because of my fuscia (color) skin but I am more of a creamy (taste) consistency. I have 6 (number) fangs (features) and ¾ of a claw (feature).

The assignment is: The above mad libs is giving you hints to your creature’s looks and personality. It is your job to breath life into this creature. I want you to create a creature with lots of personality. It could be a stuffed animal or a hand puppet. It is important that you capture all of the creatures traits listed above. Please feel free to add any attributes to your creature that you think are important. As always think about rich interesting textures and color combinations. This project has wonderful possibilities for working with movement and I encourage you to do so. Keep in mind that this is a three-dimensional work so all sides need to be finished and contribute to the success of the piece. This is a fantastic project to make your own embellishments!! Have fun.

Right now I am still trying to decide if I should make a puppet or a stuffed animal. My professor wants me to make a puppet to emphasize the fangs but I am having trouble figuring out how to actually construct a puppet. For some reason my mind doesn’t understand the construction of puppets. When I am finished with the project I’ll try to post a picture of it on my blog. We will also receive 15 extra credit points if we make our creature into a food to share with the class (the class consists of 7 students).

Double Top-Stitched

On Thursday we discussed The Moment of Complexity, Ch. 1: From Grid to Network by Mark C. Taylor. Taylor is trying to explain how society has gone from a grid format to a network format. He also explains the difference between chaos and complexity. To understand the change from grid to network we first need to understand chaos and complexity and then how these two concepts work in grids and networks.

Chaos is things blown up into unrecognizable forms. It is the butterfly effect of small changes producing effects not specific to their cause, it is chaotic. Complexity is self-organizing because it has more order than chaos. An example would be the formation of an ant hill. There are ants running around, pursuing their own path and direction, and then as they start to make connections with each other they come together. Eventually, together, they start to make the ant hill and a community. They are self-organized because through the connections they made with each other they were able to come together and achieve the same goal, make a home.

Furthermore, grids are like walls where networks are like webs. An example would be the “transition from the Cold War system to network culture.” The Cold war system was established to simplify “complex relations and situations in terms of a grid with clear and precise oppositions.” With this system the grid, with its structure, provided security. However, “grids offer no protection from spreading the web; as the webs grow, walls collapse and begin to change.” So as society changes and becomes more of a network culture the grid formats collapse, as this change accelerates, it brings “everything to the edge of chaos. This is the moment of complexity.” The moment of complexity is understood as “the shift from a world structured by grids to a world organized like networks.” It is the moment where “self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of relation.” To me this means that without the “moment of complexity” society can’t change from grid formats to network formats.

Rolled Hem

On Tuesday we discussed Understanding Media, Ch. 1: The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan. I had a difficult time understanding this reading because of McLuhan’s complexity in his thought process. However, through our class discussion I started to understand McLuhan’s argument. He states that “medium is the message.” To fully understand this statement we have to understand what he means by medium and what he means by message.

To begin with, if you think about a movie, what part of a movie do you think is the medium and what part the message? The medium would be the act of seeing the movie or becoming engaged in the movie. It could also be the film making process. I interpret it as everything that goes into making the movie, the speech, the acting, the special effects, etc. The message would then be what happens in the movie, the actual script. Another example to further understand medium and message is blogs. The medium of blogs is everything that blogs can do: upload pictures, u-tubes, writing in html, being able to write on a blog, etc. So the content, what you write in your blog is then the message.

I think that McLuhan’s statement “the medium is the message” is validated with the examples I have listed above. Using the blog example, without the ability to write on a blog, upload pictures, etc, we wouldn’t be able to get our message across, the content. The message of a blog is what we write and without this ability, the medium, we can’t write our “message.” So, the medium is the message because without the medium we can’t have a message.

However, there is one example that he talks about that doesn’t have a message, the electric light. “The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message.” To explain this he goes on to say that “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print and print is the content of the telegraph.” What he means is that the medium enables other things to happen so that is its content. You could argue, though, that the content of the electric light is what it is being used for like night baseball or surgery, however he says that “it could be argued that these activities are in some way the ‘content’ of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that ‘the medium is the message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” I’m not convinced that the electric light has no message because everything can have a medium but not everything can have a message because the medium “shapes” the message. If the medium chooses not to “shape” a message, like the electric light, then there is no message.