What Does My Term Paper Mean?
For my term paper on the readings in class I decided to focus on the elements of surveillance. I wanted to put an ephasis on how important it is to consider what is going on in the background of things as narratives themselves. When we don't mean to capture something on film or audio, we still capture it. I think it is worth taking a look or listen to what we have candidly collected. I created a combination of pictures where I zoomed in and croped only the people and things going on in the background. For my sound i simply recorded background noise in my house. It is interesting what you can find when no one thinks you are listening or watching. I also see how this element of surveillance can tie in with elements of terrorism we touched on briefly in class. Backgound stories provide the innocent, unsuspect victim aspect of the situation. The rest is explained in the paper, but this is a little guide.

ROCKY!

I thought I would post some questions that have to do with my final project and in my opinion, with the theme of the class. Feel free to comment.

How does the element of boundries at the art museum relate to what we have done in class? Do you think it is an interesting element to think about, that most people visit the steps but not the actual inside? While doing the exercise were you an insider or an outsider? Did you feel a sense of immitation?

Put Something Here...Mobile

In relation to the penny I left in Rittenhouse, I mailed a card to Karey's mom. Inside the "Thinking of You" greeting, I put a penny and explained the project. The penny from the park now was sent to Karey's mom in Baltimore, MD.

In Addition to The Jacket Thing...

I would also make a wheel chair that had the same components as the jacket. The heating and cooling elements, the alarm, the storage area. Only if it were combined with the idea of a wheel chair, the person would be able to move around.

Wearing My House

In order to help homeless people make the best of their living situation...Which I suppose in most cases is, out on the street, I would create what I like to call a house you can wear. The house would be shaped like a jacket, only the hood would serve as a hood and a pop-out tent structure with bendable poles to create more of a habitat to shelter the homeless person from the elements. The jacket would come complete with a heating in cooling system based on the fabric the jacket is made of, pockets complete with an alarm system on them so that no one could take things of high value to them, and most importantly, a pillow is attatched in the front so that they can lay down and sleep....We're just brainstorming here, remember.

Karey loved to pick up pennies. You know how you would when you were a little kid, walking down the street? "See a penny pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck." We all did it, with the hopes that good luck would find us and our moms would let us stay up until 10:00 instead of 9:30. For most of us we stopped doing this around 7th grade when we became way to cool to stop and give a penny the time of day, but not Karey, Karey picked up pennies until she was 20 years old. Karey was my bestfriend. We went to highschool and two years of college together. While we were in college at Temple together, one of our favorite things to do was to sit on the benches in Rittenhouse Square. Karey loved the dogs that would often pass through and I loved to people watch. We would have lunch, sit out in the sun on nice days, and catch up on important gossip in our lives. Karey was killed in a car accident this past April. Because of this I have spent a lot of time during these past six months reflecting on time spent with Karey. When I thought about it, some of my favorite times with her were spent doing absolutely nothing important together sitting on the benches in Rittenhouse Square. I knew I wanted to leave something there, something that symbolized Karey. Walking to the square I saw a penny on the ground. I thought of nothing better to leave on the bench.

A Week In My Life...On A T-Shirt.

An Interesting Realization

I found it really interesting to watch the videos in class about our assigned "people." It was interseting how Hana made the point that all of us went out looking for an "idea" of who we needed to film instead of appreciating the real version. There was evident tension in each film when we didn't find the "ideal chinamen" or the "25 yr old African American woman" or the oh so difficult to find, "latino, femail cop." This exercise might be interesting to do, before we created the character and story for them. I found this exercise really cool to actually do however because it was such a ralization of geography meaning people on a landscape, like Ms. Sanders was saying. Watching people in their work place or natural habitat was such a visual example of "the stories told on the landscape."