Final Wrap-up

First, hope everything goes well. 

Second, reading, my term experience, and summary

In the reading, Jurgenson summarizes his previous statements and points out the relativity between the still and moving, photographs and videos. He said "social media been made to capture the essence, the 'truth of ourselves', to be a document, a record, and such, to stimulate life within boxes, categories, cells in a database, to make an object of subjectivity. "(pg. 111)  I agreed that the "truth" and subjectivity in social media is implied and hidden. You need to have a clear mind or you will lost in the digital world. 

I like he using "cyber" space and "virtual" worlds to generalize the characteristic of social media environment, they underline the fictitious effect hidden behind the photos and videos. This makes me reflect on my understanding of art. I am more a consumer than a producer in social media. I watch photos and videos people put in twitter, ins, YouTube, and Bilibili. Most of my views are "elegant", "highly mental", "fantastic", and "surreal". That is what social media showing us. 

However, I take intermediate sculpture course this term. I experienced the other side of art making. Notice you that back side doesn't mean the bad. For example, when doing iron cutting, bending, and welding, I felt like a construction worker more than an artist. Image yourself holding an iron cutter waring safety glasses. The terrible noise just makes you want to run away. Your cloth gets dirty by the flying iron dust. You worry about getting cut or burned.  Who is "elegant"? More example, when doing molding by 3D print, plaster and plastics, I learned new technology and I felt the process is same to assembly line. Image you get get stick by the chemicals, mistake the print core, and then, the whole mold fails.  Who is "highly mental"? There are so many examples I could make. I think you have already got what I mean. The art is not all "fantastic", "surreal" as it shown on social media. The reality is more objective but unreasonable than in the digital world. 

Here is my objective but unreasonable sculpture making process. In the video, you can see the strong and beautiful wind blew my materials far away. In reality, my materials flied away more than 10 times, and I went far to pick them back. It was kind of annoying.  https://youtu.be/lFhZvrgwuAc 

You probably think I'm not clever making sculptures in wind. Actually, the wind is the important element for my sculpture. I named it "singing kite" because the foam blocks on the strings is like kite and they knock against making good sound in wind. https://youtube.com/shorts/67xUN3g2gZU?feature=share

The sculpture in photographing: 

The photograph mutes the sounds. Everything is silence and stopped. I feel it missing a lot compare to the video.

Relate to the reading,  Jurgenson's thoughts make sense "as I argued previously, a social photo, is one made less than a formally artistic object or documentary record or more primarily as a means communicating experience, then in many cases, a video might work even better", and "unlike photos, videos have a definite ending. They can finish even before you decide to scroll away" (pg.116).

In conclusion, I have a great time this Spring, reading The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media. Jurgenson is thought for. Also, thank you for sharing blogs and watching mine.