Writing 2

Maps were a way for people to take control of the geography around them, some may see them as a weakness, but others depend on them to take them to every destination. I believe that their creation was important and very vital to how we live in this world. I love D’ignazio’s writing, because he recalls maps as being used in a powerful sense. These traditional types of maps and location documentation serve governments, corporations, and everyday civilians. I think that we as artists tend to put our own personal twist and humor into something as simple as directions. We see maps as instructions, and most artists don’t enjoy being told exactly what to do step by step, so we break those barriers and show our art within the space of them. I think taking back the power of these types of items is such an interesting way to use what is called cartography as a form of creativity. His writing used mapping as a way of activism and art. My favorite reference of the series is No Dead air by Michael Bull, it's a writing that I feel like all of us as students can relate to, and act on everyday of our lives. It’s such a good piece on how we use audio in every sense of our lives and don’t even realize it, our phones can drown out all the noise we hear, and honestly can negatively affect us. If we stop interacting with the world around us, we’ll stop interacting with each other completely. This can cause avoidance to social interactions as a whole, all aspects of our lives will be private. In a positive aspect, audio is an amazing way to get out of a stressful environment, calm yourself, or just escape. I believe music and videos can have such an amazing aspect to it as long as it's used in moderation. Bull’s writing really examines how people use phones, ipods, etc to shape their experience as a normal life. Thinking about how different other generations had it,and did they benefit more from not having it? I like how he linked this to individualism, which I think is very important for people to give, but the bad paper is when people become isolated. I feel like it’s a very thin line that we should be careful not to cross with the rise of technology.