Alexis's Site

My revision strategies sheet is pretty full, and this is so helpful! In the past when I would complete the first draft of a paper, the only revision strategy that I had to turn my rough draft into a final draft is hand my paper to a friend. My friend would then read it and basically skimming, only look for any spelling errors. With all of the revision strategies I learned at UNE, I now feel so much more comfortable and confident when passing a final draft of a paper in. Strategies like in depth peer reviewing, reading my paper out loud to myself, glossing, and so much more, all help me incredibly in writing the best paper that I can write. I may not have another english class at UNE, but I am sure that I will have many classes that will have me writing reports on specific subjects, and with all of these writing skills that I have obtained over the semester, future assignments will be a breeze! (she wrote hopefully). I never would have imagined not stressing when getting a writing assignment. In the beginning of the course, the first assignment scared me, like all writing assignments do, but as I learned more writing and revision strategies throughout the course I felt more and more at ease with each writing assignment given.

Revision strategy:

When I go back and revise my paper, my goal is to end up with of course an A paper, but shoot for at least a B. When I read my paper in the end I want to be completely satisfied and know that I put my best efforts in it. My goal is to have done all that I could to better my essay before passing it in.

To accomplish this goal, I am going to ready myself and dive right into the paper. I am going to read through Armstrong’s essay and really get a refreshed understanding of what he is trying to say, and well as watch The Book of Life’s video again, also reading the transcript to it to know it better. With these ideas fresh in my mind as well as Taylor’s Let’s Talk About Art project I will begin to revise my paper and read through sections my peers as well as myself thought need to be worked on, keeping in mind the supporters of my arguments, helping me make sure that what I am writing about makes sense. Also making sure if what I am writing about has the best evidence it can have behind it.  I feel like finding the right media to fit in just right with parts of my essay will be my challenge. I really want everything to be just right with the entire paper. As an over-thinker, this may be the challenge. I think another challenge of mine will be  making sure that when I am arguing, make sure that I am sticking to my thesis the whole paper.

My resources that I will use to help me make sure that my paper is the best that it can be before I pass it in  and help me with challenges that I may not be able to overcome on my own will be to share my essay with my professor as soon as I can, giving plenty of time to get it back and make changes. I will also look at my last paper and see what I did well on and what I did not to so well on to help guide me to write a good paper and look out for mistakes I may commonly make. I will also reread my peers comments on my paper and keep their critiques in mind as I revise my paper. And for help with the media factor, I will look up more examples online of essays that have media to see what worked for them to potentially inspire me on what to do.

Part 1- Potential Plan/ Brainstorm for Multimedia Essay

With my final essay, I am thinking about not only including photos but also videos to help get my points and arguments across to the reading when they are having a look at my essay. Last class we looked at examples from Wired.com and other websites that had multimedia written essays. Those essays were very inspiring. I think that I will take the idea of beauty being expressing ones self in their own way, maybe with make up, or tattoos, or find other ways people express themselves through themselves/ the way that they look, and incorporate it into video examples that help the reader to understand what it is that they are reading about. Some sources I may use may be make up commercials for example. When I plan to cite those on my works cited page, I will go to websites on the internet that help do it for me, but I will also use my Little Seagull and They Say I Say, books to make sure I’m Citing the right sources in the correct form that they are supposed to be in.

Part 2- Outline For Peer Review

In my third prompt I plan to first write about what I see as beauty and why it is beautiful to me. Then I will connect that to art in saying that they are both ways to express yourself. I will connect the two ideas together also saying that we need both of them or maybe how they can both make us happy in life. I will give naysayer arguments that will only help make my points stronger because I will have points for them too. And I will conclude by basically summing up all that I wrote and connect it to my main idea/thesis of the paper. Throughout the paper I will use the space mode of communication combined with my videos and photos that I will pick to help the reader connect and understand my ideas.

Along with videos and photos that I find to go with/ back up my arguments in my essay I will be using:

What is Art For?” by The School of Life

“La Bella Vita” by John Armstrong

Taylor William’s “Let’s Talk about Art” project

Potential videos:

(photo)

Exploring Armstrong’s statement, “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience.”.

After reading “La bella vita” I think that Armstrong is trying to say in the quote above that, when putting art up against a background of social media or how/where it fits in with our culture/society and making judgments on it that way is going about it all wrong. Seeing and judging art this way you’re missing the point of the piece. Art is made for a more personal experience, and I strongly agree with this, this is how I interpret most every piece of art I observe. Society is far too judgmental, far too concerned what everyone else’s opinions are before they make their own. With art, be it your own or someone else’s piece, your allowed and endless rage of connections to make with it. This helps it feel important to you. These potential strong and powerful, deep feelings you can obtain when admiring a piece of art can be every kind of amazing and beautiful, this is what I believe Armstrong was implying to be the “true potential experience”. Like Armstrong says literally right in the beginning of his essay, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”. This is the point! It is not about what everyone else thinks this time, art is your connection with it and that’s it! That opinion or idea of art is one held all around the world, it should be more embraced instead of just read and unconsciously agreed with.

REFLECTION ON PEER’S PRESENTATION:

I personally enjoyed Taylor’s presentation about tattoos being art. I can really appreciate that because my family loves tattoos, and a connection to my presentation, she talked about how tattoos can carry a powerful meaning. My Dad and my brother both have tattoos dedicated to my sister, who we lost, so I know exactly where Taylor is coming from.  It made me think more about tattoos and all of the different meanings that they could have. I could judge someone’s tattoo and it could have a whole different meaning. It’s that person expressing themselves in a unique way, it truly is art. It almost inspires me to follow behind my brother and my Dad to go get one. Taylor explained very well how tattoos are art through her essay and her photos she made it very clear and easy to connect and understand her ideas. I also really enjoyed Nicki and Carla’s presentation about the piano being art. I could totally understand what they were trying to say. Straight connection to me, music! I enjoyed the self connections that they made with the piano and how it brought them closer together as friends having it in common being one of their favorite songs. Through their essay they clearly explained the connection it had with art and they made it all the more easier to enjoy with the audio that they sampled. Music is indeed art, it is beautiful.

SCREENSHOTS OF EXERCISE 2- Screenshots of my Prompt 2

QUESTIONS

*Do you see patterns?- I found that I do see patterns, I tend to repeat myself a lot, But I can see where automatically I try not to use the same exact wording that I used before when I was talking about the same ideas.

*Do you rely on certain devices more than others?-I feel like the most two common devices that I use in my writing, especially in this piece is, again the repetitive one, and the use of “however”. I always want to use some from of “but” when I am trying to either combine my sentences together or when I am transitioning.

*Are there passages that are hard to follow?- Right off the bat I would say no because I am over confident in my writing…that is until I read it out loud to myself. I find myself going back and trying to read things but they don’t make any sense. Or, like this time, when I was reading out loud to myself I noticed, “wow I feel like I just said that”. This helped me, I made notes of when that would happen and now I can go back and re-word those sentences better so that they don’t so they don’t sound so redundant. That “repetitive but not repetitive” tool I feel will really help me iron out the wrinkles in my paragraphs that I feel overlap each other and sound the same. With rearranging the sentences, I can keep the concept of the same ideas but still read them as different.

PART 1: I feel that  Jonah Lehrer’s main argument is that art can be used to demonstrate and or help solve things in a scientific world.

-I feel like this guy is right. This is not only because I strongly feel that art can be brought in to any and every situation to help in most any way, but also because Lehrer makes some great point. I love especially when he talks about Bohr’s ideas and that the form of science was always going to be different, it depends on how you look at it. Just like a cube! A cube is part of geometry’s greatest hits, its used all the time in all kinds of art! I feel like he also backs it up when saying that in science, we think we know something, but there always turns out to be something more to look at, a different way to see something, to discover more. Bringing it back to the cube idea, it’s gonna look different at different angles, you’re going to find something new about it, it’s angles, or the way the light hits in in certain positions when you look at it in various ways.

PART 2:

• Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – It is the principle that, the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time, even in theory.
• “The bridging principle” –  the difference between a mixture’s components and its classifications. It is used to classify untested mixtures.
• Reductionism- The practice of analyzing and describing a “bigger picture” complex phenomenon with smaller phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level
• Synapse- A connection between two nerve cells, that has about a minute wide gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter.
• Epiphenomenon- A second reaction that arises from but does not causally influence a process, in particular.
• Holistic perspective- A perspective where many different variables are taken into define and create a picture of the culture as a whole.
• Metaphor- It is a figure of speech, like a sentence explaining another sentence in a way that the reader can relate to better to help them understand the idea of the original sentence.  

PART 3: 

I chose  Alexander Calder as my artist. The role he/his art plays in this essay is proof that at different angles, art doesn’t look the same, there is more to see. From different view points his piece, the Black Peacock, separate pieces on the mobile look like static spots of various sizes, but when you view of from different directions you see that actually each one “stimulates only the category of the cell that is selectively responsive to the direction in which the spot is moving.” It helps in supporting the essays idea that, art and science is different at different views, you never know everything and there is always more to see and know.

I chose Niels Bohr as my scientist. The role he/his ideas plays in this essay are very strong. In my opinion it’s like the back bone idea! Bohr, as mentioned previously, had the idea about electrons saying that the form that they to take depended on how one was to look at them. This is very easily comparable to the cube idea in saying that when you take different angles in looking at it, you’re going to get different results. And the fact that he and long been fascinated by cubist paintings anyway further helps in proving Lehrer’s point even more! They were talking about extremely similar if not the same ideas, connecting the cubist paintings idea to the idea that science can be viewed at different angles and can bee seen as different things.

1. The Immediate Context: “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” was first published on the online news and blog website, World-Post, which was launched during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of the year 2014. The Author, Yo-Yo Ma, is a very talented artist in the musical department. He has won many awards, proving that he really knows what he is doing. When you really know what you’re doing, you’re usually passionate about it, you understand it, Yo-Yo Ma knows art. No wonder he wrote this essay. He has valid points through experience he can throw in there to prove his ideas.
2. The Imposed Context: I believe that the imposed context is due to art. In my personal reading experience I noticed myself making many connections what my last essay that I wrote about art. Ii could make many of the same arguments. I believe that the purpose for reading this text was to further expand my beliefs on art and what role does it have to play in the world and in education, not just in a suffering world. I noticed when I was annotating I almost wanted to go back and look at my copy of  Southan’s essay to make some connections. I am getting this over all idea in my head, this voice saying, “Art matters damn it!”.
3. The Internal Context: I believe that the rhetorical situation, again, is art. That art truly is more than what the eye can see, like I made valid points to in my recent written essay, art is powerful.  The scope, or subject matter of the essay, to me, is like the last sentence question at the end of Ma’s bio page, “Does art have a role to play in the world? In education?” Like, “yeah, Ma, you can play music? So what?” But Ma’s got all these awards up his sleeve, his knowledge, he knows what music can do for people, what it can do to them, what you can learn. Ma knows art and about the important role that it plays. Making connections to art with empathy, which also plays an important role in the world, using this argument to support how important art is!
4. Three Unfamiliar Words of References to the Gloss: Bolster: “Noun. Anything resembling this in form or in use as support.”- Dictionary.com I think it is used in the text to connect supporting similar ideas together.  Bandwidth: “Noun. Mental capacity; intelligence.”- Dictionary.com In the text i think it is meaning that we as humans only have a small idea and or knowledge about the idea of conditions, because it is used in the sentence, “within a very narrow bandwidth of conditions”. Lemmings: “Noun. A small, short tailed, thickset rodent related to voles, found in Arctic tundra. A person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, especially a headlong rush to destruction.” – Google Dictionary. In the text I think it’s making a connection to the animal meaning and the myth that they have to run off he edge off cliffs because in the text it is used in the sentence, “the middle will go over the edge like lemmings”.
5. Reflection: I always enjoy annotating and glossing the text because they both help me understand better what I am reading about. With annotating, I can look back at the margin notes I have written and recall ideas that I had about the reading, helping me understand it better and remember what I had read about. Glossing helps me understand better what I read my understanding new words that I didn’t know before when I was reading, helping me better understand the context of he sentences. Overall I am not great at remember what I have read afterwards, so I can really appreciate having these skills to help me become a stronger reader.

PART 1

Quote one:

 While Southan is a writer, one who really enjoys art, the EA’s want almost nothing to do with it. “Artists. Meanwhile, paint beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”(437).

Revision:

 While Southan is a writer, one who really enjoys art, the EA’s want almost nothing to do with it. They disagree with his opinions on art when they say “Artists. Meanwhile, paint beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”(437).

Quote two:

Later in Southan’s essay he explains how a member of the EA wanted art. “I would really love to have some artists. We really need visual designers. It would be great to have people think about Effective Altruism could be promoted through art.”(437).

Revision:

Later in Southan’s essay he points out how a member of the EA actually wanted art. According to Southan, the EA member stated, “I would really love to have some artists. We really need visual designers. It would be great to have people think about Effective Altruism could be promoted through art.”(437).

PART TWO

This is an eye opener. Kaphar talks about “the impact that art can have”(10:38).

Alteration:

This is an eye opener. Kaphar talks about the impact that art can have multiple times during his Ted Talk. At one point he starts to explain the importance of the historical art he’s standing up for.  “The impact on these kinds of paintings on people most vulnerable in society, seeing these kinds of depictions of themselves all the time.” (10:38).

Reflection:

I am so happy to have done this! I feel much better about these quotes now and how they fit in the paragraphs that they are in! It strongly encourages me to go back and revise the rest of my quotes. I felt before that these quotes were a little awkward where they sat, so I am happy to have done this, hopefully it’s done correctly.

First Paragraph Revision:

Original:

With art having this power of bringing people together, just think of the power of what it can do. It could really be an eye opener to people. All of these people together have the great ability to make a change. Two is always better than one like one thousand is better than one hundred. Imagine all of the hands, brains, and voices working together, all sharing the same ideas and goals, the force and impact that they have on what they feel could be truly incredible. Titus Kaphar, a self taught artist,had something special brought to his attention what he brought his children to an art museum one day. His son opened his eyes, he brought to his attention the racism in the art that they were viewing. They were viewing a historical structure of Theodore Roosevelt riding a horse while children not of his race walk on the ground beside the horse. Kaphar went on to want to change this, to stop it, and to make people see his idea. Kaphar brought people together through his art, making them realize what a part of our history is. This brings people together sharing the idea of racism and how real is was in our history, and even so today. His art brings attention to the colored people in it that didn’t have it previously. This is an eye opener. Kaphar talks about “the impact that art can have”(10:38 Ted Talk). This is what I am trying to say. Racism being so greatly noticed back then and now, this art helps people come together and notice these ideas and facts, and help put a greater note on the world that says it needs to stop. Looking back, in the same way, the EA’s being brought together, potentially by art, or even not with art, you can clearly see that people forming together can do amazing things like start a movement or spread an awareness.

Altered:

With art having this power of bringing people together, just think of the power of what it can do. It could really be an eye opener to people. All of these people together have the great ability to make a change. Two is always better than one like one thousand is better than one hundred. Imagine all of the hands, brains, and voices working together, all sharing the same ideas and goals, the force and impact that they have on what they feel could be truly incredible. That is power. Titus Kaphar, a self taught artist, had something special brought to his attention what he brought his children to an art museum one day. As a result, his son opened his eyes, he brought to his attention the racism in the art that they were viewing. They were viewing a historical structure of Theodore Roosevelt riding a horse while children not of his race walk on the ground beside the horse. Kaphar went on to want to change this, to stop it, and to make people see his idea. Kaphar brought people together through his art, making them realize what a part of our history is. This brings people together sharing the idea of racism and how real is was in our history, and even so today. His art brings attention to the colored people in it that didn’t have it previously. This is a powerful eye opener. Kaphar talks about “the impact that art can have”(10:38 Ted Talk). This is what I am trying to say. Racism being so greatly noticed back then and now, this art helps people come together and notice these ideas and facts, and help put a greater note on the world that says it needs to stop. Looking back, in the same way, the EA’s being brought together, potentially by art, or even not with art, you can clearly see that people forming together can do amazing things like start a movement or spread an awareness.

-I used Parallel Structures and Transitions to help me when I was tweaking this paragraph that I had already written previously.  While reading W-4c out of “The Little Seagull”, I noticed that these two things could help me in this paragraph. With parallel structuring, I like that it potentially gives the reader a better understanding of how important art is. By continue to read how it relates to being powerful, maybe subconsciously the reader will get it in their mind that, yes, art is indeed powerful. With the Transition structuring help, I feel like even just that little bit helps the paragraph run a little smoother and also help tell the story in order of what happened to help with my evidence and supporting my claim.

Second Paragraph Revision:

Original:

While art can help us see ideas that are overall good and help us make a change, it can also help us see the truth. Art says a lot about our history and who we are today. As mentioned before about Kaphar, he noticed what history takes place in art through time. He sees that it is wrong, wrong that we put people of color in the back. We put people of color before everything else. “There are more written about dogs in our history than there is about this character.”(9:10 Ted Talk). That is sickening, but it is true. Art is powerful in this way as well, and history does not lie. Art is valuable in the is way in the sense that it reminds us of who we were, who we are, and they we need to fix it. Art helps us change by showing us our history. Kaphar talks about when he was in school, in his art class his professor wanted to skip the chapter about black history in art, she didn’t want to give it the time of day. After Kaphar did all he could, “We’re going to skip this chapter today.”(5:39 Ted Talk) We are the same as were were. Not entirely of course, but the idea that colored people matter less still lies around. Art reminds us of our history, this is valuable, we need this because sometimes some of us form ignorant opinions, that shouldn’t be at all. We need to be reminded of our history, to remember to not be like we were before, and art helps with that.

While art can help us see ideas that are overall good and help us make a change, it can also help us see the truth. Art says a lot about our history and who we are today. As mentioned before about Kaphar, he noticed what history takes place in art through time. He sees that it is wrong, wrong that we put people of color in the back. We put people of color before everything else. “There are more written about dogs in our history than there is about this character.”(9:10 Ted Talk).  Art is powerful in this way as well, and history does not lie. Art is valuable in the is way in the sense that it reminds us of who we were, who we are, and they we need to fix it. Art helps us change by showing us our history. Kaphar talks about when he was in school, in his art class his professor wanted to skip the chapter about black history in art, she didn’t want to give it the time of day. After Kaphar did all he could, “We’re going to skip this chapter today.”(5:39 Ted Talk) We are the same as were were. Where is the change?  Art reminds us of our history, this is valuable, we need this because sometimes some of us form ignorant opinions, that shouldn’t be at all. We need to be reminded of our history, to remember to not be like we were before, and art helps with that.

-I used Sticking to the Main Point and Parallel Structures when I was revising this paragraph. After reading about the Sticking to the Main Point passage in “The Little Seagull” I thought that it could apply with at least one paragraph I wrote. I found it to be this paragraph where I strayed off from the main point of the paragraph a few times, after reading from “The Little Seagull” It made it easier for me to determined which sentences I needed and which ones I could get rid of, like sentences I used to connect my own opinions. I don’t need those. They were, to me, opinions that only I would understand if I was reading it, because I am the one who wrote it. I also used Parallel Structures again for this paragraph as well. I really like the idea of it, and that it can potentially help the reader understand your views better with spreading and important part of the point your making in that paragraph across the entire paragraph.

————————————————————–

– This Process has infected my writing over all because when I write another paper I will not only feel like I have “The Little Seagull” to look bag on for help, but also as I continue to use these tips and ideas, I will remember them and hopefully they will become natural to me as I write. Making me a better writer. It will help me grow and hopefully help me branch out from my usual five-paragraph-essay way of writing that has been programmed in my brain since fifth grade.