Squirrels& Sparrows

The article being responded is “Writing about Art” by Sylvan Barnett which was assigned for the Back to Basics: Grammar, style, and how to paint with words lecture material. In this reading Barnett tries to speak of three main aspects when writing about art that need to be considered. For one the writer needs to consider the audience, and how their writing should form for that audience so that they may understand what is being presented. The writer should also consider the interpretation and context of the art within the community, where interpretation is often a product of the context and evidence should back up what is being said about the art. The third understanding Barnett speaks of is that when writing about art and reading about art, one must think critically. Overall this reading introduces a very informative way to approach writing about art while delivering it in a pleasurable read. It is interesting to note that the author followed through what they were preaching in how they were teaching. I thought that the reading was helpful and not as difficult to read as other post secondary articles which was refreshing. The article helped to complement what we learned in class about the different kinds of writing especially when covering the interpretive versus the critical forms.

The title of this article reflected is “The Age of Autobiography” by Will Manley, and it was assigned in relation to the Shifting Mediascapes: The blogosphere and social media lecture. His main argument consisted of how social networking is diluting the once highly regarded autobiography and that people should only write interesting blogs or be interesting people to successfully transcend the autobiography to this new era of communication. Manley demonstrates how everyone is getting involved with this new form of communication and because everyone and anyone can do it, that is where the value of the autobiography is heavily decreased, its as if something once sacred has been stripped of its importance and your left with this shell of what it once was. He also went on about how Julie Powells situation is a demonstration of his argument of good and bad autobiographers. Throughout the article he had a very satirical tone and it was highly personalized with his opinions and almost hatred to the phenomenon of social networking. I am tied with agreeing and disagreeing  with his argument as some social medias I don’t consider to deliver a autobiographical sense. Even blogging, people don’t just use it as a tool to deliver their life story but rather as a form of a show, documentation of their thoughts or simply a virtual picture book that is transformed in this online phenomenon. This article was interesting to relate to the lecture in how people who run fashion blogs are becoming famous in a way and are becoming part of this hierarchy in their community. Naturally those who worked hard in a more traditional way view them negatively but this is in fact the new age, so they must embrace it to survive.

There is this website called Last.fm which I have recently been told about and am so glad I looked into. Its a kind of radio station that offers so much more then just something to listen to, its a one stop site for everything you need to know about music, YOUR music. Once you make a profile and join, this website opens a world of information to you but in order to do so it performs this action called “scrobbleing” where it basicly takes notice of the tracks you listen to in almost any media player and by doing so creates a custom profile of musical potential for you to listen to! Heres a video on it, and the page that describes it, to hopefully explain a little further-

http://www.last.fm/group/Does+It+Scrobble

Anyway, it can continuously scrobble everytime you listen to a track, further realizing which artists you prefer more, etc. At this point you can listen to differnt “stations” they have for you with the information they received and a whole bundle of other things.

For instance:

1. A “recommendations” station which will play tracks from artists they think you might like based on what you listen to

2. A “My Radio” station which is basicly a random playlist of artists and tracks you prefer over others.

3. They show you a bunch of information about the artist/album of the track your currently listening to, so they act like a encyclopedia of music.

4. They keep you up to date with latest album releases of your favorite artists, and show you events and shows coming up that you would most likely be interested in.

5. Free downloads of full quality full length tracks from various artists your interested in, which can be a big help when there is a less renown artist that obviously you couldn’t find on a torrent site.

Basically this website totally helps you discover emerging artists and at the same time helps those same artists become more renown, its a win-win situation. Its such a revolutionary way to deliver music media to the public and with more people knowing what kind of music is out there it will therefore further shape our culture and identity.

So get scrobbling and reap the benefits of emerging artists!