Describe in your own words the style of Dutch 17th and 18th Century still life painting. How does this painting style create a metaphor for mortality? Be specific and use as evidence things you can observe in the Rachel Ruysch painting Fruit and Insects, 1711 or the Jan van Huysum painting, Vase with Flowers, c. 1718-20.

Why and how does Hector Rene Membreno-Canales use the style of Dutch still life painting and the idea of Vanitas in his series Hegemony or Survival? Do you think the use of this style and the implied Vanitas metaphor for mortality is effective or heavy-handed? Please state clear reasons for your answer.

In this excerpt from Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire, he reveals the mystery of the food chain and how it’s being administrated. Things that consumers usually take for granted such as buying potatoes and planting them appear to be much more complicated under federal regulation. He also expresses the concern about potato plants, under Environmental Protection Administration, are considered as pesticides. It brings our attention to the safety of the food we eat everyday.

The dramatic changes in agricultural production and productivity not only have an impact on us- the consumers, but also cause harms to the American farmers’ health and financial stability. As a solution for those issues, the agricultural biotechnology companies such as NewLeaft propose a new generation of plants with engineered genes that can act as pesticides against insects and diseases. That revolution can create a totally new notion of  so-called Information age of Agricultural in which a company has the right to own and take control over the plants’ gene information. If that happens, what will the price be ?

In the ” Make It brilliant” campaign, lighting acts as a central metaphor to convey the Pantone’s reputation of color fidelity. By the use of lighting technology and design, the team came up with a powerful creative solution of a tri-panel composite scene in which each section represents each of Pantone’s distinct products.

The message of standing out and making creativity bolder is thoroughly and strikingly rendered with the result of colorful and seamless light effects in which the eyes and brain work together to transform the world into a stunning and sensational environment. Since lighting is the core concept of the campaign, the challenge is to make sure the final colors of light captured on the images match the Pantone’s color palette. In order to achieve the desired final results, the creative team needed to find the unique colors to start with and went through a lot of different setting experiments until the camera captured the exact Pantone’s palette. The team did a great job not only with color experiment but also with manipulating the physic shadow which is different across the panels, establishing an overall dynamic composition as well as translating the core message in the best way possible.

Michael Pollan article truly reminds me of when the industrial revolution came about and everyone believed that production was more important than the quality of the food . The fact that he mentions potatoes to be considered pesticides with the environmental protection administration  makes believe that ideal farmers were lead to belive that they could no longer be in total control of their farms. Also that the ideal situation would be to industrialize and monopolize the potato industry.

one of the concepts I would like to use hierarchy scale to show how home grown potatoes have gradually changed from massive potatoes  to the pesticide infested tiny potatoes advertise today .

Michael Pollan’s excerpt describes the battle in the food industry between free market opinion, versus a governed one. In this passage he explains how regulations on growing common food items such as the potato came with extensive rules and regulations making it hard for, anyone to freely grow produce.He states that “the potatoes I would dig come September would be mine to sell or eat, but their genes would remain the intellectual property of Monsanto”. With such nonsensical barriers such as these more and more larger companies, are now experiencing nearly the same hardships as organic farmers. It will only be a matter of time before such barriers comes to our front doors, grocery stores, and gardens.

This short piece by Michael Pollan relates potatoes to a software as a metaphor, in a way that we can change and “upgrade” the potatoes that fights off the pest without adding harmful chemicals to it.

One option would be connecting a usb cord to a potato while being connected to a computer. Another could possibly be a small disk into a potato or stick a logo onto a potato. Possibly a disk-shaped potato or a computer mouse-shaped potato.

this article is about how a farmers life is like. especially in the planting of potatoe, It goes into the process of planting the crop and the sprouting of it, leading to its harvest so people may consume it. It goes on about some genetic experiment they wish to implement on the crops, so the plants themselves can protect themselves from bugs.

This article talks about farmers and how they plant. Before GMOs farmers would have to use a lot of pesticides and chemicals to make sure bugs do not destroy the crops. Genetic engineering promises to replace expensive and toxic chemicals they use to use on crops. For example they got a gene from the soil that kills potato beetles and put it directly in the potato. With this new technology, agriculture has entered the digital age. – John Alicea

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What i think he is trying to do is take a time crop and a process all farmers are used to and make it more effective using less chemicals buy genetically mutating the plant. But he seems to trying and make a natural thing to a big corporate money maker. especially when he starts comparing it to windows he looks at his gene as a product to see instead of as a actual plant. my photo set up idea would probably be a bunch of test tubes and beakers hooked up to a potato or someone with a lab coat and mask cutting into a potato.  – Randall

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