Fluxus

Fluxus was extremely interesting to me because when I think of art I think of paintings, sculptures, music, dance, things like that. Fluxus was something completely different and it almost makes me wonder how it can be art. Fluxus art is annoying and irritating to the human eye and leaves a person fatigued. How can something that does that be called art? I thought art is supposed to be calming, something you can look at and interpret. Fluxus seems like the complete opposite. Besides that, I am open to seeing and learning new things. I do think this is a new innovative way to call something art.

Fan Fiction

While reading the theories on lost, the first thing I thought of was, "Wow, I do the same thing with the show I watch weekly." It is crazy how one can get so "obsessed" with a show. With our culture today, it's not just with shows. It's everything! People are constantly checking to see what new fashions are out, what certain celebs, what people thought of a good movie or a certain book, or even sports. People feed off of these theories as if the characters are real (Lost theories). I thought this was a creative way to incorporate another form of literature into our class. It is something everyone can relate to, because there is at least one thing in everyone's lives that they are intrigued, obsessed or interested in.

Lost

I have never watched an episode of Lost before, so having this as an assignment gave me a reason to! I have friends that are overly obsessed with this show, so it was nice to see what the hype was all about. Because of never seeing it before, it was nice to see it in that perspective. I didn't know the history in each of the characters, so I was able to focus on just those particular episodes. It was also very interesting to see how both the episodes coincided with each other. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't while watching each episode. I don't know if that is because I have not see previous episodes or if that's what the director was going for. Was he trying to make the suspense come from what was real or what wasn't?

The Activist and Calvino

After finishing the second half of "The Activist" I was still left just as confused and lost as I was in the first part of the book. My questions were not answered what-so-ever, which made me upset. I was left with no closure and overall, it was one of worst books I've read. I was very unsatisfied. However, I did think that Calvino made a good point in his writing about how some people may be too shy to really tell how they feel and reading gives them this chance to speak out. I thought that correlated a lot with "The Activist" and what was going on in the minds of the characters.

The Activist

After reading the first part of "The Activist" I was really confused and had no idea what was going on. However, it kept me intrigued because I wanted to end my confusion. They way it was written was a lot different like the other passages we have read. Throughout the reading, I noticed that Gladman changed the way she used text. I thought it was interesting to see how there are many forms of text one can use. I would like to know the reason behind to why she uses all these different forms. Is it to keep the reader interested? Or is it because she wanted to experiment herself. It made me more interested to see how it will end.

Perec and Matthews

After reading Matthews excerpt, it gave me a much better understanding of the Oulipo and how it really must have been to write an entire book without a certain letter. In the last class I had to do an exercise where I had to write what I did in the morning without using the vowel "e". I couldn't even get past the first sentence without be stuck. It makes it that much harder to believe that Perec did a whole book with this type of structure. Reading the book, I found myself getting more distracted because I wanted to prove him wrong and find an "e". Because of that, I lost track of what I was reading, and I felt like I lost the plot and what the whole basis of the book was about. It made me curious and wanting to know if Perec had an idea that this was going to happen with his readers.

A Void & Lipograms

The reading of "The Void" was not one of my favorites. It was so difficult to comprehend Perec's writing without the use of the letter "e." My first initial thought was, why would one want to do such a task? I'm sure many others have thought this same thing. Maybe it was because he wanted to see himself succeed in such a large and challenging task. Using lipograms in poems is more realistic, because poems are known more for their creative and challenging ways. Taking out the letter "e" made it seems like everything was more wordy. Like Perec had to find ways to go around what he really wanted to say because there was an "e" in the word or sentence. I give him a great deal of credit for doing a task like this.