During spring semester of the 2014/2015 academic year, I took the honors seminar, "How Art Makes the World". In this course we discussed different philosophies of evaluating and defining art. The travel component to New York City allowed me to see first-hand how different ways of thought and thought processes can be implemented into the final product of art.
One of the reoccurring topics/questions of the course was, "what is art?" Is it a biological behavior, or is it something much more complex? We took the time to read about how different viewpoints understand art and the art world, many of which can also be used as philosophies towards life in general. This course was a refreshing change from my science courses where I am expected to take a text's information as is; this seminar made me question information, to challenge what was put in front of me. This class gave me more questions than answers, but I think that's what was so beneficial about it.
Now that this course is over, I will take away a new way to look at art (whatever that may be). I will take away a new process in which to evaluate what I am exposed to. There are several levels to looking at or reading something, of which I have better knowledge of now and have taken into account countless times since taking the course. It’s difficult to articulate every way that this course has helped to shape me and how I interact with the world around me, but it has definitely had a significant and lasting effect.
One of the reoccurring topics/questions of the course was, "what is art?" Is it a biological behavior, or is it something much more complex? We took the time to read about how different viewpoints understand art and the art world, many of which can also be used as philosophies towards life in general. This course was a refreshing change from my science courses where I am expected to take a text's information as is; this seminar made me question information, to challenge what was put in front of me. This class gave me more questions than answers, but I think that's what was so beneficial about it.
Now that this course is over, I will take away a new way to look at art (whatever that may be). I will take away a new process in which to evaluate what I am exposed to. There are several levels to looking at or reading something, of which I have better knowledge of now and have taken into account countless times since taking the course. It’s difficult to articulate every way that this course has helped to shape me and how I interact with the world around me, but it has definitely had a significant and lasting effect.
Our class constructed a book that serves as a compilation of our final products (which encompass the ideas/theories that we covered during the course). I chose for my artifact to be my final project (or, more accurately, a picture of it). It is a less conventional concept map of the ideas discussed in seminar. Rather than a traditional concept map with the vocabulary of the class connected to each other on paper with lines, I chose a different path. This project incorporates ideas of Kant’s thought categories, homology, imitation, social class/ “the right people”, paradigms, “gaze”, and obviously is open to interpretation of many others; these ideas are only the major ones that I had in mind while constructing the piece.