AnotherAbby's blog

Giacomo Balla was a futurist painter who lived from 1897-1958. The futurist movement was one based on, frankly, movement, and the idea that paintings culd be more than static images. He and his contemporaries tried to express velocity in an object by using planes of color to realistically or abstractly create a work that was more than a still life. It was a very progressive movement that gave birth to thousands of painting and sculptures that challenged the idea that a motionless canvas must contain a motionless subject.

The Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash

http://uploads8.wikipaintings.org/images/giacomo-balla/dynamism-of-a-dog-on-a-leash-1912.jpg

The Street Light—Study of Light

http://uploads1.wikipaintings.org/images/giacomo-balla/street-light-1909.jpg

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/50455/Giacomo-Balla

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/862

It looked a like a bunch of noodles from alphabet soup that had been left overnight in the broth, so they absorbed too much water and became bloated before someone pushed them all together and slapped them on the building.

I honestly couldn’t even tell if I was looking at letters, or if I was just looking at abstract shapes that someone had painstakingly spray-painted onto the wall.

It was a tag, and it’s just one of the many I’d seen around Philly. The walls and bridges I saw on the train ride in were lousy with them. Some pieces looked like they’d been there as long as the walls, while others looked like they could have been put up this morning.

The parts of the city we explored were not as graffiti-rich as I’m sure others are, because they’re tourist destinations, and are most likely scrubbed clean every month or so. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any to be seen, but at the time, I didn’t even pay the small tags much attention.

"a brief history of the future":

She wasn’t paying attention to which streets they were passing.

And her feet hurt.

And she wondered when Mexican groceries moved into the Italian Market. 

“Has it been an hour yet?”

“Nah, 50 minutes.”

“We’re supposed to be here for an hour, but I think we’ve seen almost everything.”

“There’s too much here to see everything.”

Far

too

much

Beginning our trip into the city this week, I wasn’t sure if I would be more or less scared to explore the Philadelphia than I have been to explore DC. The train ride was very different from what I’m used to—people actually came to collect my ticket, and there were no turnstiles in sight. That was the biggest tip-off that I was a stranger in this place.

In some ways, that thought put me at ease more than when I go into DC. I didn’t have to worry about tipping anyone off to my status as a “tourist” by openly checking a map, or taking pictures of a landmark. In DC, I’d feel ashamed doing those things, but here, hell, I’d even go so far as to ask someone for directions if I had to. I could approach Philadelphia with more anonymity and curiosity than I could DC by embracing the fact that it wasn’t “my” city.

Getting off the train, my fears were further alleviated. I’d been to this part of the city before with my family members who live in Philly. I remember sitting on the second floor of Mace’s Crossing—a pub overlooking the Circle—on St. Patrick’s Day three years ago, watching off-duty school buses shuttle drunk twenty-something’s along the pub-crawl route. I felt better. I had some knowledge of the area.

So, feeling less anxious and more empowered, we began our trek through the city. In the true spirit of Serendipity, we wandered with no particular destination in mind, ending up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sadly, just after cresting its famous steps, we had to return to the Free Library in order to attend our section of The Quiet Volume.

I think that Sunstein presents a very interesting issue in the disappearance of serendipity in favor of filtered control over what we read and hear. I, personally, enjoy the ability to wander and discover new things and opinions. I think, in terms of issues like amazon stores tracking browsing history to offer a more personal shopping approach, the filtration of information isn’t necessarily as bad as, say, filtering the news to only hear stories that agree on certain problems. One is trying to help you stumble upon another book or DVD you may like, while the other is trying to potentially warp your opinion. Growing up the daughter of a conservative journalist and liberal graphic designer, I have understood the values of listening to and understanding both sides of an argument from a very young age. By cutting people off from the opinions of others, especially in hot button issues like politics, people on both sides are deprived of the essential understanding of opposing viewpoints. I would much rather talk to people whose views differ from my own, especially on issues I don’t understand, in order to form an opinion, than blindly pick a side based on my existing bias. This, more than any other reason, is why I think the sacrifice of serendipity for careful management is tragic. 

My relation to the City is best summed up by an anecdote: The Time Jacob and I Found the 9:30 Club (pictured above).

I live in Herndon, Virginia, a small town in the shadow of Washington, DC. There are always a lot of events my friends and I think of going to, but never actually do. Then, my best friend Jacob noticed that one of our favorite bands was coming across the pond to play a show at a small but well-known venue in DC, The 9:30 Club, the night before Homecoming of our junior year. Unlike the times with other bands when we would wistfully shrug and say we’d “catch them next time”, Jacob and I actually bought tickets. In the days before the concert, we painstakingly planned what metro stop we’d get on at, where we’d transfer trains, and which street we’d take after we left the station.

The night came, and our carefully planned commute got us to our stop right when we thought it would, so all that was left was for us to actually walk to the club.

The problem was that neither of us had ever been there before.

We turned left out of the station, and then walked up the road until we saw what we thought was the street we were supposed to turn right on. We followed that for a couple blocks until we noticed that the numbers were going in the wrong order.

Well hello everyone,

I am one of the many Mawrtyrs named Abby in the class of 2017, and one of at least three in my dorm. That's where my username comes from. It's kind of self-depricating, in a way; like, I'm just another Abby, with nothing special about her, which isn't the case at all. But I personally think it's funny in a dry sort of way, and distinguishes me from other Abbys moreso than calling me "Abby 3" or something along those lines.

The picture of me was taken around Junior year of high school, by my best friend, while we bought supplies for our first big physics project of the year. I typically make faces in photos, since I'm not one of those people with the perfect photogenic smile, and I think it makes me seem more approachable, anyway. Besides, in every horror film it's the woman down the street who never stops smiling who turns out to be the murderer, not the girl who sticks her tongue out as you as you walk by in the beginning of the movie. She's got nothing to hide.

I also don't mind putting my face out on the internet, attached to my work. I feel like even if I wake up twenty years from now and think everything I've written here is juvenile and stupid, I won't regret it and want to deny that I'm the one who wrote those things. Everything I write is going to be a reflection of how I think right now, and that will make my work something of a time capsule for future-me to laugh at, maybe feel a little embarrassed about, and then think of fondly.