Three very different readings for this post and for class.
- Anti-homeless spikes (Andreou)
- Dada Manifesto (Tzara)
- How Computers Change the Way we Think (Turkle)
Here’s what to do.
1. Pick a quote from Andreou, quote it, and then explain how that quote relates to the whole of the article. Then, check out the pictures found here, some of them taken in New York. Next, be alert to your surroundings as you travel back forth from all your activities during the day. Take a picture of an example of defensive or hostile architecture as described in the article. Your are more likely to find them near businesses, schools, and government buildings. Post the picture in your blog post. Explain exactly where you found the picture (get the cross streets, the borough, etc.) Feel free, if you like, to map it and take screenshot of the map and include it as well. End this section of the post with some of your own thoughts concerning this situation.
2. I know, the Tzara piece is weird. It’s supposed to be. It’s contradictory, it’s nonlogical, etc. Notice that he says he hates “common sense” (he also hates logic). If you read the manifesto through the lens of what we’ve been doing in class, it’s easy to see that he’s saying that common sense is a result of the ways that we’ve been corporatized. That Johnny can’t dissent because Johnny doesn’t have the ability to think outside the world that has been created around him. He also talks a lot about art and destruction. Destruction can be very important. For this section of the post, take something Tzara says and try to apply it to a specific thing in the world that is hostile to life, something that should be destroyed (the contents of your picture, perhaps?). But the way to think about this is through art, not through direct confrontation, violence, or bombs. But through art. In what way can an artwork be made to destroy or call for a destruction of something in the world that is hostile to life? Give it a shot. You don’t have to nail it on the head. Go ahead, be experimental.
3. Turkle. Pretty easy reading here. Pick something and tell us what her point is and what your opinion about that point is. If you can connect it somehow, to Andreou and Tzara, I’ll give you a (quantified) bonus for sure.
Remember, Response 7 is due Wed. as well.
