Here are all the reading homeworks from different assignments on one page.
In the first chapter of Susan Sontag's, "On Photography", she discusses her ideas about photography itself as well as how it can be, and has been used as a way to capture and represent our reality in different ways. Sontag descibes photography as a method of capturing life moments and appreciates that they can be looked back upon and remebered for as long as the image may be preseved. She also shares a couple of interpretations about what the act of taking a photo could mean such as photography being a form of creating evidence, a method of changing the scale of the world, and a form of violating whatever is being taken a photo of (someone or something). I found her ideas about photography to be quite interesting and they made me realize that I don't particularly spend a lot of time thinking about photography itself, despite taking photos almost every single day. The last mentioned interpretation in one of Sontags lines which stood to me the most and was when she said,
"Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy‐machines whose use is addictive. However, despite the extravagances of ordinary language and advertising, they are not lethal. In the hyperbole that markets cars like guns, there is at least this much truth: except in wartime, cars kill more people than guns do. The camera/gun does not kill, so the ominous metaphor seems to be all bluff ! like a man's fantasy of having a gun, knife, or tool between his legs. Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder! a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time".Whenever I take a photo, it is meaningful to me as it represents the exact moment that I was in a certain area, at a certain time. The statue of liberty for example is something that has been photographed by thousands and maybe even millions of people already, but at some point in my life when I personally saw the Statue of liberty, I still took a photo of it anyways. I agree with Sontags claim here that the uses of cameras are addictive. There are cameras on almost every gadget that I use each day, from my phone, ipad, and my laptop. At the start, it was once unconventional for deivces like an ipad or laptop to have camera installed onto them, but overtime, the enjoyment for taking photos has grown throughout our society. I guess oyu could say that every time a photograph is taken of lady Liberty, "she" is violated by the abuse of our cameras. To one person, the statue of liberty might be seen as a cool tourist attraction, or to others, a great artwork and gift from france to the united states. From each persons perspective, a photo object is captured in a different way and carries a different meaning to them. I also agree with Sontags claim that the camera/gun does not kill, but I do think that the act of taking a photo can be dangerous in some cases. For example, if someone is taking photos of a stranger without their consent, that could be considered a form of violation. Overall, I think that photography is a powerful tool that can be used to capture and represent our reality in different ways, but it is important to be mindful of how we use it and the potential implications it may have on others.
In my own life use photography and image making as a way to capture the things around, as well as the moments that I find to be meaningful. Taking a photo for example, allows me to capture one specific moment in time, and turn it into a longlife memory that I can look back on and even share with others. Photography allows me to express my perspective on different situations in a way that words sometimes cannot and gives me the opportunity to reflect more on the life I've experienced so far. Without photography, many of the well captured and documented moments in history would have been lost to time and having the chance to take photos myself, of whatever I choose, is a privelage that I will never take for granted.
My favorite things to incoorporate in image making are items and people who I find impressionable in my life. I love illustrating people from my point of view and drawing others is my way of showing them how they make me feel. If I'm not directly drawing somebody, I still enjoy drawing for them whether it be something that they request, or things that I know they would like to see. Still life, landscape, and flowers are also my favorite things to draw because they represent the vibrancy of mundane life. At this very moment, I could come up with a multitude of different ways to combine images and text notions in order to represent our world. If I were to create a piece of artwork that did this, I would photograph meaningful events such as protests occur around my area such as outside of my school, advertisements that indirectly reveal the political climate of today, and casual images of what life right now is like. Scrolling on the internet will reveal to you so many meaningful images that speak beyond words and could be understood by anyone who sees them even without text. Despite this, certain text accompaniying the images I create could help to further explain the context of the images and give the viewer a deeper understanding of what is being represented. Overall, I believe that photography and image making are powerful things that can be used to express complex ideas and emotions. Text notions serve a great purpose in furthering the viewer's understanding of their meanings.
This article was a good explanation about what is currently going on, online, right now, in regards to Ai usage. Although it was written almost a year ago from the time I am writing this, the prevalence of Ai videos, photos, and other miscellaneous contents have only grown even more over time. In my opinion, there is variably no good reason why Ai should exist in the ways that it has been being used today. As a product, there is no general problem with Ai as it could be, and is already has being used in little ways, for a long time. After all, the autocorrected words that appear as I write and make spelling mistakes in this response are a convenient feature that has been brought about by the creation of Ai and machine learning. What upsets me so much is the use of Ai art and those Ai programs that advertise themselves as a method of cheating and getting ahead. To begin with the latter, Ai is already showing its negative effects on young people especially as they rely too heavily on Ai for simple things such as homework assignments. As a college student myself it is tempting to gravitate towards Ai tools when things get hard but without facing hardship, I know that it will get increasingly harder to navigate solving problems in my future when Ai is inaccessible to me. As an artist, watching Ai steal from an amalgamation of incredible works and then “create” a new imagine is fascinating, but disappointing. I firmly believe that Ai “creation” is far from true creation as it is nothing but a regurgitation of previous, uncredited works. Watching my parents, as well as other elder people get sucked into the likeness of Ai videos and sharing them about on platforms like WhatsApp is something from the reading that I can relate to. It’s worrying how so many people are beginning to lose sight of what is real or fake, and begin to show signs of being too trusting of what is said online! Outdoors at places like restaurants and local shopping places, Ai art is present as people turn to the cheapest form of labor possible. I find it disgusting that institutions who are so desiring to be perceived as “good” or worth visiting have the nerve to display logos generated by Artificial intelligence instead of creating a real logo themselves that could so much better display their business’ personality. One good thing that I do find about Ai however is how hyper aware I’ve become about my internet consumption lately. Ai has made me less interested in checking some social media apps at times and the times in between my social media usage I have been reflecting about how I spend my time each day and how I want to spend that time in the future. I’ve come to appreciate reading real primary documents, exploring the real world more often, and getting away from the cyberspace a little more as things strange “intelligence” brings chaos onto our online world.
In Sierra Leone, pregnant women face difficulties during their search for healthcare provisions. The scarcity of healthcare institutions in certain areas and the journey they would have to take in order to get to one are directly related to why 1 in 10 pregnant women in Sierra Leone face death in childbirth. The graphic novel follows the stories of Memunatu, Heela, Kadiatu, and Tetteh, sharing their birth experiences, as well as how access to health centers impacted the outcome of their lives, as well as those lives of their children.
At her birth, Memunatu delivered at home with the help of her village herbalist and her grandmother nearby. To her demise, her baby died in her stomach after she was in labor for two days straight. Her herbalist promised that she knew how to deliver children, but was seriously uneducated. Eventually, she found the opportunity to drive to a hospital in Freetown that diagnosed her with a fistula. She was able to have a successful surgery and later gave birth to a child.
For Heela, she was only a school girl when she was raped and became pregnant. Fortunately for her, she was able to give birth safely at a hospital although the journey wasn’t simple. She faced a lot of strain on her mental well being as she navigated pregnancy alone, after her rapist abandoned her, and as she had to give up on her dreams of becoming a nurse in order to stay at home with her child.
Kadiatu had many children but they all but one, Abdul, died before the age of five. Only two made it to four years old, while the others lasted a year, a few weeks, and two more didn’t even make it alive out of her womb. The village healers couldn’t come up with a great reason for her misfortune and Kadiatu made the brave decision to visit a hospital during the Ebola crisis. She spent almost 4 months there and had to have 3 surgeries but her baby was born safely. After she returned home, she soon found that Abdul was sick but after taking him to the hospital he was cured and became healthy again.
Uniquely, when Tetteh was only 3 months pregnant, she was put into a correctional facility. Her story is extremely tragic. She killed her husband in self defense after facing relentless abuse before, during, and after her first pregnancy. During her second pregnancy, he also abused her, potentially destroying the health of the baby in her stomach, and ultimately leading her to attacking him with a knife. When it was time for her to give birth, Tetteh had the opportunity to go to a hospital and fortunately her child was healthy. He lived with her at the prison for two years until he was taken away to be cared for.
Nuclear warfare is an underimaged issue. The nuclear bombs that countries are developing in case of war are highly dangerous and more powerful than any other bomb that has been deployed in the history of the earth. They have the power of over 10,000 tons of TNT, create an outstanding bright light that can blind anyone who is near it, and raise temperatures in the deployment zone to over one million degrees. At the start of the War between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian leader Putin had threatened a nuclear war, however many people highly doubted that he would actually use one of Russia's nuclear weapons against them. As countries over the years are expanding the amount of nuclear weapons which they possess, the idea that obtaining nuclear weapons prevents nuclear warfare is being reinforced rather than the perception that the obtainance of them may instead actually be what leads to warfare.
If Russia actually committed nuclear war against Ukraine, tens of thousands of people would die. For those not killed by the implosion or radiation, they will be left wounded and sick, unable to reach care due to roads and transit lines being destroyed, as well as electricity being shorted out. Insects that are less vulnerable to radioactivity will begin to take over the dead bodies that remain and infect the living. Black rain will fall as depositions from the explosion contaminate the water. Over time, the wounded develop more severe illness and those who may seem healthy, feel under the weather due to radiation. Pregnant women would give birth to children with defects, and food sources would diminish, being impacted for years.
Countries like Taiwan and Korea are at risk on top of Ukraine for being met with nuclear warfare. The thirst for power and land by many powerful nations could be the force which causes many people to lose their lives. Nuclear warfare will never really affect just one nation. The intensity of nuclear weapons enables radiation to travel large distances. The loss of one nation in the economy may also negatively impact a series of international economic affairs.