Break it down and Write it – Analytical Writing

Analytical Writing has been a bit of a struggle for me. Although I do enjoy breaking down a topic and discussing it or debating it. I think breaking it down into the form of an essay takes the fun out of it for me personally. I can see where it can benefit you to learn more about analytical writing and practice it in the way it would benefit you to practice critical thinking. Both are important skills we should all have. These skills allow us to be informed and give us the tools to express our opinion in a more formal way.
Which for me is hard. I don’t have those unbiased analytical qualities that goes into writing a analysis. I follow my emotions and have my biases. I can take myself out and look at things in a unbiased light, but I will always have my opinion.

I enjoyed the blog posts the most out of my Analytical writing class, and reading the book Kindred. Giving me creative freedom is both great and a bit of a bummer in school. I can be very indecisive and I am not afraid to make drastic changes if need be. If that’s completely rewriting a paper I had finished because I didn’t like a specific paragraph or if it’s completely changing a subject because I begin to regret it. Giving me specifics allows me to really focus and work hard which is why the blog posts were great.

After learning more about analytical writing and seeing what it can do for you I would like to take this and practice it in way that I will enjoy it. For example going into writing reviews for games or even looking into game writing. Both are type of analytical writing, although game writing might stray a little more towards creative writing. Which would be very helpful for me and my field.

A day at Frye

Walking through the rooms at the Frye Art museum is nice. The museum isn’t a massive multi story building with hundreds of hundreds of pieces of art. It’s a small free museum, with a humble collection of beautiful pieces and exhibits that change often enough to keep you coming.

This little journey to the museum I got to see police being barraged with bloody coffee cups, a wolfs pelt transforming into a wolf and a piece of wood that may have had a woman’s gentiles carved into it. One of the exhibitions had the sounds of rushing and dripping water in a soothing setting that had colored lights pulse in and out after a set amount of time. Another room that was themed around native american modern art had more of an aggressive emotion throughout the art. From the wolf crawling from the pelt, the man who was filmed running who seems to chase after you and the arrows cascading out from the exhibition into the main lobby of the building.

Every room you step into had its own individual emotion and theme, a adventure through art, emotion and expression.

http://fryemuseum.org/

Kindred – Review

If you have kindred in your hands right now and you are looking at the cover you might not be very interesting, unless you enjoy reading biographies or stories of slavery set in the year 1815 deep in the south of the united states. That’s the feeling I get from the cover of this book but if you are anything like me and enjoy books more along the lines of fiction, scifi or fantasy you’ll be happily surprised.

This is the story of a young black woman who lives in modern days and is wisked away through time and space to save her ancestor from dangerous circumstances. A modern woman being sent to a time that could be considered cruel and cold, but not just a modern woman a black modern woman who is not only sent back through time and space but ends up on a plantation in Maryland in the mid 1800’s. Not only does Edana, or “Dana”, our main character have to struggle with living in a different time but she will have to struggle with the prejudice of the times.
An Dana does struggle, she feels the pain and shame her ancestors before her felt; furthermore, she watches her ancestors struggle and live in misery. It’s almost a sick joke that Dana is being sent back in time to save a man she learns to hate, love and feel pitty for. It makes you ask yourself “What would I do in that situation?” Would you be able to bear the pain and shame Dana is forced to?
All in all I was skeptical coming into this book, but as I got through the first chapter my curiosity grew. This mysterious and unique time traveling, the painful and intense decisions Dana has to make to save herself. I have to admit there were many curve balls I didn’t see coming that kept me turning page after page making Kindred an easy read. The book is in a way a social commentary mixed in with sci fi elements that makes it appealing and unique.

Forced through time, a Sad story.

If I were in a similar situation to Dana, I think what would “call” me would be some sort of broken romance leading to depression. I have always been a bit of a romantic and have had a lot of experience with comforting broken hearts and disastrous relationships. I have seen depression take hold of people, seen them at dark depths of despair and stood by their side during their crisis. I am a firm believer that everyone should have someone to stand by them, even if it’s simply a shoulder to cry on or a presence to listen to their story.
If I were to be forced through time I could see myself appearing to save someone from themselves.
We go through a lot, sometimes talking and being comforted isn’t enough but having someone to give you the right push can be a tremendous amount of help.

To prepare myself for time travel, assuming I don’t know if I am being sent to the future or present I would like to have a sharp tool of some sort like a knife, I would want some dried fruit or some other food that wouldn’t spoil quick but is easy to carry around.

Kindred, a Book out of place

I can relate with Octavia Bulter in some way’s I feel like. I like to live in a fantasy world, a world that bends the rules of reality and imagination rules. Octavia seems to have a back for this in her novels. She takes us away to far away planets, different universes and we meet tyrannical insects, vampires and immortal beings. Butler takes u on a adventure far from reality and then she gives us Kindred.
Butler doesn’t go to a far away place or to a surreal magical world in Kindred, no, she takes us to the past. Not just the past, a very dark and depressing time in the United States history. We go back to the 1800’s, before Civil Rights, in a dark cruel time of slavory without aliens, vampires or godlike beings. Nope, but what we do get is time travel, all hope is not lost.
We follow a african american woman, who lives in modern days, that travels back in time by being summoned by one of her ancestors. Her ancestor who lives on a plantation in the south.
Why this change in genre?
With Butler’s past collect of sci-fi books Kindred becomes less of an entertaining suspenseful novel and more of a serious look into our past. Butler takes a woman who we can all relate to, a average nothing special person, and forces them into the past. I think we can take a lot from this, there was a time that such acts of cruelty were simply the norm. Abuse both verbal and physical along with other forms of discrimination based on the color of your skin was a very normal and common thing at one time. I think Kindred takes us there to experience this in a very personal way.

Beastly Tales

Most, if not all, fairy tales and urban legends end with a moral or a lesson at the end. A solution for us if we find ourselves in similar situations. Obviously we won’t have wolves in our grandmothers clothing inviting us to bed to devour us, but fairy tales aren’t as literal as that.
Let’s look at a popular fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, the story of a beautiful woman falling in love with a grotesque creature.
The story, as most versions of the tale goes, begins with a father going out and buying gifts for his three daughters. Two of which are selfish woman who want gold and jewelry and third, Beauty, who asks for a flower.
Which is a great introduction to the story, with very little information you know that the father is a single dad. Two of the three daughters are spoiled rotten, presumably the eldest daughters. Which gives information about their personality.

The father, who in most stories forgets until the last moment, finds a rose for his daughter in a strangers garden. Picking the most beautiful one the father is confronted upon the Beast. A monstrous grotesque creature who gives the father a option to die or to sacrifice a child to the beast. (Sacrifice may be harsh, but a form of offering to the Beast.)
This is fun, it gives us rising action and introduces the struggle in this story for us. Which is also a common struggle in stories, a fragile maiden in the clutches of a monster.

The Beauty meets the Beast and begins to fall in love with the beast, slowly. The Beast proposes to Beauty, who in all versions is hesitant to accept. The Beast with a broken heart dies, Beauty distraught from loosing this creature she has fallen in love with saves the Beast by proclaiming her love. Releasing the Beast of his burden transforming him into the Prince he is.
This is a interesting climax, after Beauty accepts her love for such a hideous creature she finds that there is more to the surface than meets the eye. A kind hearted prince lies behind the grotesque shell.

The moral of the story, don’t judge a book by it’s cover? Love is blind?
You tell me.

sources
https://archive.org/details/BeautyAndTheBeast_201303
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0425c.html#jacobs
Beauty and the Beast (1991) WaltDisneyPictures

Classic Movie Classic Sterotypes

There are just some movies you need to see, those movies that anybody can relate to and that gets people thinking. Those movies that are relative years down the road and speak to it’s original viewers children.
One of those movies, at least for me, is The Breakfast Club. For those who haven’t seen it, the movies about five students who have detention over the weekend and are forced to stay in a room an entire day. The students come from various backgrounds and belong in different cliques, who bicker and argue all day long until through their differences they begin to find similarities.
For me this is a Cult Classic because it’s one of those movies that is relative even though the movie was released in 1985, the movies almost twenty years old and there are still lessons we can all get from this movie. Such lessons like; as our differences are what makes us who we are or that even if we come from different backgrounds we can get along and share things in common. The movie will hold nostalgia for years and years to come, I believe that I will continue to show this movie to any children I have and the friends I have as I hope my children and friends will continue to share this movie.

Concepts of Spaces

While continuing to read Convergences we read about these two concepts “mental space” and “cyberspace.” While cyberspace has been a somewhat common term for a while now, at least in my experience, I think this concept of mental space is a bit new.
Let’s rehash Cyberspace before we get into this new concept. So cyberspace is this, in my opinion amazing, vast world that exists through out computers and in the colossal being that is the internet. Cyberspace is this world that is populated by avatars, blogs, news, fictions, art, information, so many things but most importantly information. This cyberspace that exists in the form of information allows us to communicate conveniently, with this convenient form of communication we are able to gather information about so many topics. Cyberspace is a wave of information and a new way of communication. The book uses examples of Cyberspace in the form of a 3d world Second Life, which is a video game that the user creates a avatar and explores a world generated by other users. A world that is generated by you, your own creations. A world that is birthed through your imagination. Cyberspace allows us to break barriers we have in our real space.
Now this concept of Mental space is our capacity for imagination, our experiences that give us this sense of creativity. The chapter in Convergences that goes over this concept uses experiences from games, like we spoke of in Cyberspace.

I think these two concepts are very interesting and they feed off each other, Cyberspace provides an immense library of information to give knowledge and birth to creativity while we do that we are expanding our Mental Space which gives birth to forms of art and expression which we can then share through this Cyberspace which can cause inspiration and growth for others mental space.

These concepts of Cyberspace and Mental space allow us to get away from reality and explore a world that is foreign to us, a world of mystery and adventure we couldn’t have before.

Convergences

In Rober Atwans Convergences, Atwan defines this word Convergence as “coming together at a single point from different directions.” Atwan then goes on to help us, the reader, understand convergence even more. Antwan does this by explaining to us three concepts that he asks us to take into account with every piece of text we see. Text not necessarily being letters words or phrases, but text meaning different forms of visual communication such as; advertisements, movies, books, magazines and newspapers. The three concepts that Antwan brings to our attention are message, method and medium.

The idea of message is the meaning of the text, “the what” and the symbolism behind the content. Using an example from Antwans book, Convergences, a photo of a man kneeling down before a woman who is sliding a ring onto her finger is a message. Message of what? It could be a message of proposal, marriage, happiness and many other ideas that we associate with this idea of love and matrimony. The content in this situation of a man and woman having no text, but the message is clear if you look deeper into the image. The deeper into the image you look the more meaning you may be able to find, a message isn’t always as simple as what you see at first glance.

Message being the meaning of the text, method is the actions taken to create the message. The method is the behind the scenes footage of a movie, the steps of creation. Another example from Convergences is of a lawn that has “Stacy will you marry me?” and two hearts below that. The message is a proposal to Stacy; the method was to mow the field in a way that the message is clear enough to be read from a plane flying overhead. Here is a good example of context being important to understanding the message, without the books explanation of what went into this image we could have made many assumptions. The method could have been that the field was carefully seeded to grow around the message, without having context for the content you are reading the method and message can be construed differently.

The medium is the finished product that the viewer is receiving the message on, wither you are flying over a field and looking out the window at the message, or seeing the same message on a photo. The message is the same but the medium is different, experiencing the message at first hand and experiencing the message off hand in the form of a photo or video are two different mediums.

So lets take a look at a piece of text together.

Some vague background on this photo, these are are group of people protesting the mining of oil.
Message: Oil causes death and quite possibly even the death of nations.
Method: Group of people covered in oil laying down pretending to be dead.
Medium: Photograph.

The way we interpret things can vary, maybe your message is different, if you didn’t have that very brief background I gave you would your message have been different?

Hello World

I am Tyler Garcia, I am studying art and game design. Some of my favorite forms of art are sculpting and painting, whether that is digital or traditional the things you can create with these mediums are amazing.